Chapter 1 – Despair
"I don't know why they cancelled it, Emma. I didn't make any other plans for summer."
Summer Camp had been cancelled. No reason was given, just a post in the mail telling us that there was not going to be any summer camp this year and all payments that were already made were to be refunded to us by a cheque in the post. I had spent years trying to get permission from my dad to go to Summer Camp, to have it taken away from me when my dad finally said yes was devastating.
"It's not that bad, Taylor. At least it means that we can spend summer together. My dad's always busy at work fighting some case or something and mum's just as busy with all the social events she organises. I'm surprised I'm such a well-adjusted kid given the lack of parental support in my life." Emma smiled at her own joke and wrapped her arm around my shoulders in a gesture of reassuring comfort.
Emma was my best friend in the world. She and I have been through a lot. From surviving grade school together, crying on each others' shoulders whenever we get punished by our parents for bad grades to her helping me handle the death of my mother. I had cried non-stop in her arms when it happened. Nothing could break us apart. Our bond of friendship grows stronger with each difficulty we encounter together. Now that I'm not going to Summer Camp this year, maybe we can see if we can build on our bond, strengthen it. Especially now that the both of us were about to start high school in Winslow together in about two more months or so, it'll be us against the rest of the student population, Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde. Well, if Clyde was female, I guess.
"You sure I can't get your dad to sue them for emotional damages?" I quipped.
Emma giggled and replied "I'm quite sure. Even if my dad is willing to try, Mrs Dallon, his boss, would never let him. They told you of the cancellation ahead of time and have already offered to refund all fees. And besides, how much emotional damage will you suffer spending time with me?"
"Depends if I have to suffer through another viewing of Mean Girls with you, I think I can recite all the lines in the script given the number of times you had me watch it with you over the years." I whined.
I turned and saw Emma's scandalised look on her face and smirked. Then we both broke out laughing, making the other people walking along the Boardwalk turn and look at us like we were crazed girls. Maybe we were.
"Come on, let's get you out of this melancholic rut you're in with some clothes shopping." Emma said suddenly, pulling me in the direction of the nearest boutique. Melancholic rut? Didn't we just laugh over a joke I just made? Either she's not good at psychology or I must really been whining a lot recently. I vote the former.
"But.. but .. I hate clothes shopping, all you want is an excuse to buy clothes for yourself" I protested not-so-firmly as I tried to pull in the other direction
"You know me all too well, Taylor. All too well." Emma said, pulling harder. I gave up and followed her into the store.
Emma and I spent the next few days together hanging out at the park, doing up each other's hair (her red hair was much nicer than my dark locks), comparing notes about boys in the library and soon I stopped thinking about Summer Camp and how much it could have changed my life going to it. I just basked in the warmth of friendship and happiness, healing from the deep scars of hurt that were inside me since my mother's car accident last year.
The smile that was on my face did not go unnoticed by my dad when I came home after a sleep-over at Emma's.
"Guess I was right about not sending you to summer camp all this while, Taylor. You sure seem a lot happier then you were two weeks ago." My dad winked from across the breakfast table.
"Dad! I'm just happier because I have a great friend in Emma who know how to comfort me in my times of need. I do hope I can repay her for all that she's done for me one day." I said, not letting his jibe get to me.
My dad's face changed for a second and he looked at me straight in the eye. "Taylor, are you and Emma… err… how can I put this…together?"
What?! Did he just say what I think he said?
"Dad!" I shouted out, scandalised "I'm not… We are… I mean, no. We aren't together. We are the best of friends and we both like boys. Whatever made you say something like that?!"
Danny Hebert's eyes twinkled and he pointed at his daughter with his cereal-laden spoon.
"So… you like boys, huh? Guess it's time for me to give you The Talk." He said seriously, though a smile was about to escape his otherwise serious looking face.
"DAD! Stop making fun of me!" I got out of my chair, covered my reddening face with my hands and rushed out of the kitchen. As I ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, I distinctly heard my dad's laughter echoing through the house.
I hated it that my dad could get to me so easily. I thought back to what Emma said a few days ago and shook my head. *I'm* surprised *I'm* such a well-adjusted kid given the fact my dad is trying so hard to cover the job of two parents, from the verbal pokes to the over-protectiveness he exudes sometimes, how does he expect me to be a sane individual?
Emma brought me along to a birthday day party one day so that I could get to know more people. The birthday girl, Christine, or 'Chris' as Emma calls her, was a couple of years older than Emma and I and schooled over at Arcadia where all the Wards were rumoured to have gone. So, naturally, I was soon caught up in cape talk with some of Christine's schoolmates while Emma went to the restroom.
"So, given that most of the people invited are from Arcadia, do you think there are any Wards here?" a girl in a red summer dress asked openly.
"Nah, Christine doesn't like capes at all, thinks they are so uncouth. All that fighting and all is work for 'lowly types', not 'upper-class' material. I don't think she would be friends with any of the Wards" another girl in white replied in a snotty voice
"But isn't that the best cover for a cape? I mean, no one would suspect a cape is friends with someone that against capes. For all you know Christine's a cape and her distaste for capes is just distraction to hide that fact" a rather muscular guy rebutted. The more I looked at him, the more I think I've seen him somewhere before.
"So, what do you think?" he turned to me and said, just as I was checking out his biceps. I must have blushed bright red as I stammered "I… er… I think for every cape that believes in trying to maintain a 'cover' in public, so to speak, there is a cape that just plays it simple and just plain does not attract any attention. So there is no hard and fast rule to figure out who is or is not a cape just by examining a person's behaviour in public or preferences."
"Very good point. Very good. I've never seen you in Arcadia before, are you Christine's friend from outside of school?" he asked, his bright blue eyes staring straight at me.
I started to sweat at the attention I was garnering from not only the guy but also from the other people in the group. "I'm… well, just a friend of a friend."
He smiled and put out his hand to shake. "Glad to meet you then, I'm Rory, Rory Christner."
Christner. That's the Mayor's name. I'm making a fool of myself in front of the Mayor's son.
"I'm Taylor. Taylor Hebert." I said softly as I shook his hand, hoping that my face wasn't beet red. Given how hot I was feeling all of a sudden, I think it was a lost cause.
Emma waved at me from across the room desperately so I hurriedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, excused myself from the Mayor's son and walked briskly towards Emma.
"Come on, Taylor. Let's leave and go do some shopping, the sanitation system there in that house is so old and terrible. Don't know how Christine can actually survive in this house" Emma declares out loud once we leave the party. I blink and just follow her, my mind still trying to process the fact that I not only was talking to the Mayor's son, I was caught checking out his muscles. Dad is going to mock me silly if he gets to hear about this.
The rest of the day went by quite quickly with Emma getting 5 new dresses and me getting sore feet from all the walking around. Ah, what would I do without a friend to get me out of the trouble I get myself into. I really need to repay her for not only the dresses, but also for being my friend.
The days slowly passed and I started to not care that the calendar on my bedroom wall showed that I should have been at summer camp, rowing across a lake or down some waterfall, most likely only able to gossip about the people in camp to Emma over the phone. Now, instead of all that I was going to accompany her on one of her modelling interview things, something she calls "Open Call" or something. I know I don't have the goods or the looks to be a model, but she wanted me there to give her moral support.
I didn't know why it had to be held at night though, but she promised dinner after. Mr Barnes, Emma's dad was good friends with mine and it was easy to get permission to go with them. My Dad would have even come along if he didn't have some major Dock Union pow-wow session this evening to attend.
So here I was, waiting in front of my house to get picked up in Emma's dad's car, wondering what I did to deserve a friend like Emma. She had been my moral support all this while and she needs*me* to be around her to support her? I'm going to do my very best to be her bestest of friends, she deserves nothing less. The feeling that this day was going to be the first day in a whole new life for me had been in my mind since the morning and it made me happy. Maybe the modelling agency would think I was good enough to be a teen model too and life would never be the same again.
I watched as Mr Barnes' car come down the road and stopped in front of me, Emma was saying something to her dad from the back seat as she opened the car door to let me in "…. androgyne is cool, dad. It's, like, *the* thing in modelling….. Hiya, Taylor, jump on in."
As I climbed into the car to seat beside her, Emma turned back to her dad and continued "I could never cut my hair short, but if some major magazine or fashion designer wanted me to, I might consider it. Will miss my hair though."
"What do you think, Taylor? Should I be willing to cut my beautiful tresses if Elle magazine asked me to?" Emma asked as she focused back on me.
Soon we were discussing hair styles and dye colours that would look good on her or me and became completely oblivious to everything else as we drove down past Chinatown until I heard Mr Barnes call out "Girls!"
We both looked up at what Emma's dad was looking at and I saw that our car had come to a stop in the middle of a narrow one-way street. A dumpster had been shifted to block the end of the alley. Blocking not only the way out, but also the light from the street ahead. Then, suddenly, bright red lights flashed from behind us, tinting the alleyway crimson.
I spun around to look out of the back window and saw a white van had stopped at the other end of the alley, its red tail-lights glowing bright in the night. We were trapped in the alleyway, between a dumpster and a van, a virtual Scylla and Charybdis. A group of Asian-Americans slid over the hood of the van and into the alleyway, casting weird shadows on the walls as they pulled out knives and baseball bats into view.
The ABB! It was the ABB! Half my mind wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, the other half wanted to just crawl below the back seat and hide. I sat there paralysed in fear and indecision on how to save my life as Emma started to whimper and shake beside me.
Mr Barnes shouted "Hold tight!" and stepped on the gas, moving the car slowly towards the dumpster.
Go! Go! I screamed in my mind. Wondering why the car wasn't going any faster.
Mr Barnes made the car just touch against the dumpster then floored the gas pedal and tried to shove the dumpster out of the way through pure horse power. The screech of rubber on asphalt filled my ears and I ducked my head between my legs in what passed for a 'landing position' in those airplane safety videos.
The dumpster didn't budge. Not an inch.
I lifted up my head between my legs just as Mr Barnes shouted out "Call the police,"
I didn't have a cellphone. My dad never let me have one due to the fact my mom died driving while making a call.
My mom. I wondered if I was going to see her again tonight in Heaven.
Emma didn't move. "Girls! Call the police!" Mr Barnes repeated loudly and insitantly.
Emma's hands shook with fear as she fumbled for her phone and her fingers trembled as she tried to use it. I ignored all sense of courtesy and snatched the phone from her trembling hands and jammed the numbers 9-1-1 as fast as I could.
But just as I lifted the phone to my ear and heard "Hello, BBPD, how ma…", the window to my right shattered and glass flew everywhere.
I screamed.
