Chapter 6: Watermelon
They walked toward the car at a clip that forced Kakarot to jog his stubby legs to keep pace. Vegeta barely paused to tear the stuffed ape from the boy's arms that was slowing him down. It seemed like a cowardly retreat, hoping to avoid further confrontation, but the way he'd felt it all again, the convulsive loss of himself for those few seconds was more than enough to scare his instinct from fight to flight—not fear of Yamcha and Tien, of course, but fear of his own damn madness.
Raditz had stopped, squatting a bit to hoist Tarble further up his back when he remarked with a kind of convivial delight, "Dude, that shit is gonna be viral in like a minute! You dropped him without even trying! Sucks I couldn't record it."
His cousin's sudden change of heart was reverential, as if he'd been the one to flatten the academy's QB into a whimpering mole against the pavement with a single punch. If the kid wasn't on his back, Vegeta was sure Raditz would be skipping in circles, and as much as he appreciated the show of solidarity, he was very nearly being carried off with an equal measure of nervous dread. Raditz was right that news of the incident would soon be pinging the phones of the entire student body, and not just them but their parents and faculty.
"Why the hell didn't you just go to the car like I said?"
"You had the keys!" The lilt of his cousin's pitch, whiny and defensive, tainted the truth of the fact. Raditz's didn't have to beg an excuse that they both knew was legitimate. That his cousin felt the need to do so only made Vegeta feel like an asshole and an idiot for not having considered giving the moron his keys in the first place.
The short trek back to the cabin was done in silence, with Raditz refreshing social apps on his phone hoping to be the first to catch the news he was certain would light-up the feeds at any moment and insert his own firsthand perspective in the comment threads. In the backseat, Kakarot napped against the ape, and Tarble mulled out the window with his lips pressed together in a flat line.
As much as his brother's leadened features concerned him, enough to know he should debrief the event, help Tarble sift through the thoughts that had muted him in pensive silence, Vegeta couldn't find the means to configure his own feelings on the subject. His stomach had locked up tight, and blood filled inside his head, undulated against his skull with such thick, heavy pressure, he was sure that if forced to rehash the incident, his temples would rupture at the seams. The resentment and disappointment he felt for the ease in which he'd given in to Yamcha's instigation was punishing, and he was certain that if he'd dared to catch a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror, he'd find his father's eyes staring back.
Of course, Yamcha didn't expect to be bested, dropped so hard and fast that he was now likely coming up with pathetic excuses to override his humiliation and coax every ounce of the heiress's sympathy. Perhaps the foolish, mouthy weakling really thought he'd have the chance to stand-off against him. It was pointless to wonder, however, because the outcome was exactly what the jerk had hoped for: Vegeta lost his cool in front of Bulma, proved to her that he was recklessly unhinged, violent, dangerous… a psycho.
There was something wrong with him, he was certain. To snap like that in a way that was so uncontrollable, almost out of body, without even a remote possibility of reigning in his actions made him wonder if this is how his father felt. The man was obviously ladened with guilt and fear of being found out in the wake of his outbursts, as evidenced by the luxury car Vegeta was driving, but whether or not the acts sprung from the same blinding, recalcitrant lack of inhibition was another question entirely. He suspected it was, and though it wouldn't change how he felt about his father, it begged the question of whether or not he would ever be able to overcome the trait in himself.
Vegeta thrust open the freezer drawer to assemble an ice pack for his aching knuckles, but in a rush to escape from the others, he opted for a bag of peas and carrots instead. Kakarot's game of twenty questions, or statements rather, punching at the air with the same idiotic amusement his brother had postured earlier was further testing his nerves—even as the kid's attention shifted from the fight to the treehouse, trying to nag a solid commitment as to when, exactly, they could go.
"Kat, just chill for a second, man," said Raditz from the living room where he'd already turned on the TV and threw himself into the couch.
Vegeta slunk off toward the bedroom to ruminate on his own miserable existence and ice his hand, leaving Tarble to sit on the rug with his chin on his knees where he pretended to unknot his shoelaces, picking at them with a dull commitment. He'd tucked himself away between the porch's entry and edge of the couch, crouched with the same passive unease he wore after fights in their home, as if trying to make himself invisible. As much as Vegeta hated to abandon the kid, a moment alone, one fucking minute to depressurize his throbbing skull would serve them both in the long run.
He threw himself against the mattress in the darkening bedroom and pressed the frozen bag of vegetables against his hand with a hiss. Nothing was broken, he knew, but it still hurt like a bitch. He stared blankly at the fiery sunset in the painting framed above the dresser, breathing intentionally deep and slow, hoping to disrupt the tension that swelled inside his head by pulling his mind's focus from all the hatred he felt—for his classmates, for Bulma, for his father, and in so many ways, himself—to study the almost luminous licks of paint, wondering how the artist could so successfully make the scene appear to glow.
He wasn't surprised when the door peeked open. His brother stood hesitantly at the threshold, as if now questioning an act that had always been a procedural recourse to his distress. That Tarble even considered the possibility that the one person with whom he could take refuge wasn't available was undoubtedly the worst outcome to have come from the entire, stupid incident. Vegeta could kill them all for the distraction, for ushering him into a state of mind that left him selfishly stewing and hiding from the only responsibility he gave an honest shit about in this world.
"Come on." He waved the kid over with his good hand. Tarble pranced up to the bed and pulled himself up, careful as a kitten because he knew by now not to jump on Vegeta and chance hearing him wail in agony whenever he'd land on a broken rib.
Though his solitude was disrupted too soon, Vegeta was relieved that Tarble had brushed off the mood and didn't appear to fear him, despite that Vegeta was on the delivering end of an act that, at least in their home, always sent them both into a cautious retreat behind his locked bedroom door. Tarble laid down to scoot his body up against him in the twin-sized bed and rested his chin on Vegeta's shoulder.
He stole one more long, indulgent breath before he turned his face to the kid, who playfully reached to plug his nose. Vegeta puffed his cheeks in response before he blew a raspberry, albeit half-heartedly, in Tarble's face to make him smile.
"You know I would never hurt you, right?" he asked. The comical tone from his pinched nostrils belied the severity of the question.
Tarble lowered his smile with a slow, affirmative nod and released his hold on Vegeta's nose to rest his palm on his cheek. He didn't say anything though, and laid in contemplative silence, staring past Vegeta's face at the wall behind him, likely recalling in his head dozens of incidences he should have never seen. As much as Vegeta wished he'd had the luxury of being alone, if even for a few stolen minutes, he'd been caring for his brother long enough to understand that the kid's sense of safety and stability was far more important to defend than his own frustration over high school drama. That he'd betrayed the fact, let a girl infect his head and pilfer his focus, was shameful, humiliating, and weak. He set the frozen food aside to shift from his back to face his brother and wrapped his arm around Tarble's slender frame, threading his fingers into the boy's hair at the back of his head where he'd buried his nose into Vegeta's neck.
They'd fallen asleep, it seemed, because suddenly the room was full of light and the noise of Raditz's rummaging through his bag.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I don't know about you two, but Kakarot and I are going to hang in the treefort."
Tarble perked up instantly, which was quite a feat for a boy that was normally dead weight once he'd gone down. Even hours after being revived each morning, Tarble was a zombie, mumbling incoherently with half-masted eyelids for hours, to the extreme that Vegeta was often tempted to slip a shot of espresso into his cereal to avoid them being late for school.
Overcome by a second wind at Raditz's proclamation, Tarble tore his face from the pile of drool he left on Vegeta's shoulder and leapt from the bed quick as a rabbit, fully reanimated. Too bad preschool wasn't a late-night romp in the woods.
"You're staying out there?"
"Seems like more fun than hanging back with you," Raditz chided with an air of boredom, scanning Vegeta's pathetic posture where he sulked in bed. "At least until my phone dies," he added as an afterthought.
This was good, fucking perfect! The fact that Raditz was going to be the one to deliver him the free night he'd been craving for years was blowing his mind. He almost didn't believe it was real until his cousin strapped a backpack over his shoulders and clicked a flashlight to life on the porch. But he ruined Vegeta's uncorrupted appreciation when a queer grin spread between his cheeks as he looked to his brother and asked, "Alright boys, you locked and loaded?"
"Yup! Ready!" said Kakarot, who sported a flashlight on a headband and whose palm was wrapped around a device that looked like a giant vial of pepper spray.
"The hell is that?"
"It's for the bears!" Kakarot stated, as if Vegeta was an idiot and bear spray was an obvious accessory for their dimwitted adventure.
Vegeta glanced to Tarble who was struggling to tighten his own flashlight atop his head. He bent to help his brother, while at the same time, looking toward Raditz's excitable features with a weary shake of his head. His dumbass cousin widened his eyes in counter. The white gleam of his teeth almost glowed in the dark as he nodded and smiled like a psychopath, probably hoping for the chance to wrestle a bear.
"Once you get to that fort, you don't come down until morning, you hear me? If you have to piss, do it over the edge! And text me when you get there!"
"Roger!" Raditz clicked his tongue against his cheek and shouted for the boys to follow him into the forest.
Vegeta lingered on the porch, watching them disappear into the black woods until he could only hear faint remnants of their voices, and once those left him too, the moment when he should have felt grateful for the fleeting chance to be alone, truly alone, there was nothing but a hollow emptiness left in their wake. As he stepped back inside the quiet cabin, he wondered what the hell he was supposed to do.
He paced the main floor in circles, round and round, trying to settle an odd displacement of nerves. The bucket list of indulgences he'd imagined entertaining with his freedom, binging movies or video games or books were all repelled by the restlessness of his mood, the equanimity those types of activities necessitated being impossible to summon. Usually, when he was peaking in a fit of anxiety, his brother was there to serve as a distraction. Not as a crutch either, but out of necessity, because the kid always needed tending—to be fed and bathed and comforted. But in one of those careful what you wish for kind of moments, without Tarble's needs to serve as his focus, Vegeta had nothing to distract himself from his own crushing thoughts.
The more he paced the room, the more his useless energy pooled, accumulated in his veins like an unstable element without a viable outlet. He felt as if he'd blast apart under the pressure, and they'd all return tomorrow to find him speaking in tongues and bleeding from his ears. As he considered, briefly, to make a run for it through the woods to catch up to his cousins, knowing that doing so would put him instantly back into the caretaker role he sought for at least one evening to escape, his focus was caught by a bottle of tequila Bulma had left on the counter.
It was a terrible idea. He knew it was the moment the bottle grabbed his attention. The disciplined side of him, the rational one that desperately tried to be the opposite of his father and avoid the same pitfalls, was uproariously disgusted that he'd even consider the shit. But at the same time, the muzzled teen in him was quickly churning out justifications—that he was, for the first time, free to be selfish without consequence, that he fucking deserved it, that indulging once didn't make him his father; it made him human and seventeen. He was allowed to act his age for a night, possibly the only night in the foreseeable future, so why waste it pacing a miserable trench into the Briefs' hardwoods?
Vegeta put his lips to the bottle and tipped his head back. The foul substance burned as it snaked down his throat. He waited a minute, but nothing seemed any different, so he took another swig. Then another and another, until he felt the strange, uncoordinated incapacity he'd felt the time his father forced him to drink.
It was far less satisfying than he'd imagined. Without serving to mute the loud, angry thoughts that refused to cease their recall of the weekend's shitshow of events, instead the alcohol only amplified the noise, rerunning every insult and embarrassing ploy in his head out of sequence in a blurry smear.
Drinking alone could hardly be called an activity, especially one to pass the time, and his ability to pace the yard was becoming increasingly ineffectual with the clumsy way his feet began to stagger, getting caught in each other's way. He tripped up the porch steps, and without the reflexes to properly catch himself, he landed with a heavy smack against his palms and the tip of his chin to witness two bottles roll in perfect unison across the wood planks.
This was bullshit. As he pushed himself up from his stinging palms, he didn't bother to retrieve the bottle from the ground and stumbled into the cabin. He only wanted the night to end and wake up tomorrow under another sun and head home. His father would be gone at least through the week, and despite knowing he'd spend every day with increasing dread, as his father surely would have heard by then what he'd done to Yamcha, if he hadn't already, in the moment he didn't care. He only wanted to be done with this place, sobered up and gone. He threw himself onto the bed and watched the ceiling fan spin around his head as he passed out.
The sun had sunk below the tree line, yet the stale heat lingered, disagreeably strong and claustrophobic. Bulma, unaware of where they were going when they'd first climbed in Tien's Land Rover, assumed their destination was his cabin or Zarbon's Tavern, but when Tien turned down an unmarked road, she realized they were headed to a place called the Lookout—a stupid name considering it looked out over nothing and was rather a kind of cul-de-sac nestled deep in the forest. The rumor was a man named Popo had purchased the plot for himself and his wife to erect a dream home, but when she'd passed away unexpectedly, he didn't have the will to even turn a stone. The dead-end drive now served as a destination for underage teens to drink and partake in a number of unseemly activities.
As Bulma sat in the backseat, the mild state of shock beginning to wear, it took something of an effort to unlatch her seatbelt. She found it difficult to stop her mind's replay of that vicious jab. The sound of his knuckles landing with a squelched displacement of cartilage and bone turned her stomach with sickening anxiety. Though she'd heard the cruel remark about Tarble that triggered Vegeta's reaction, it didn't make it right. More than that, the way he'd ripped her nearly off her feet seconds before, animosity fermenting in his dark eyes, felt almost predatory, like a bloodthirsty animal snatching up its prey. Perhaps they'd been right about Vegeta, and he was dangerously unhinged.
But to accept that was to admit that she knew nothing about this boy she grew up with and spent half a decade transfixing in wistful fantasies. And seeing him again, if there was one thing she did not question, it was that Vegeta was stressed. For all intents and purposes, he was a teenage parent, and despite playing the part by choice, she sensed a greater motivation than the one he claimed: that he just liked the kid. There was much more to the story than he'd been willing to disclose. Something was desperately wrong, and she wracked her brain for clues that explained his excessive, selfless commitment.
Even before Tarble was born, Vegeta had been a bit of a precocious bore. It would take an extreme effort on her part to pry the fun out him with the jaws of life before he'd give an inch and reluctantly took part in her games.
But this was different than abject pretension. That he'd derail everything he'd worked for to be at the top of his class, was willing to forego guaranteed admission to any university he wanted and balk his father's hopes for his future, all in favor of caring for Tarble didn't make any sense, which meant he was hiding something. With all of the rumors about the little boy, she guessed his secret had everything to do with Tarble's health. Maybe whatever it was that plagued his brother was terminal.
It was with a distracted mind, weighted by morose theories on Vegeta and his family, that Bulma watched Tien gut a watermelon flavored Swisher Sweet with a pocket knife and shake the tobacco into the grass. He smoothed the paper out against the hood of his car and unscrewed the cap of a silver grinder to carefully tap-out weed as replacement.
Bulma listened to the three of them brainstorming their revenge, her uneasy dread evident perhaps in her silence. It was awful the way their minds worked. She couldn't understand the inordinate hate they held for Vegeta, as if his mere existence was an affront. Being upset about a broken nose, she could commiserate to an extent, even though Yamcha deserved some amount of punishment for foolishly insulting a six-year-old, but she'd never support their plan to retaliate.
Yamcha's nose had stopped bleeding, but it was swollen and a little crooked across the bridge, rending his voice with a clogged, nasally texture she found impossible to take seriously. His hand began to stroke over her hip, fingertips brushing against her skin with an unconscious claim, as if despite the distraction of his own supercilious prattle over Vegeta's cheap and lucky shot, deep down he still believed he'd won a cock match, and she was his prize. Bulma had half a mind to swat him off her, but for Vegeta's sake, she endured his unwelcome touch. Whatever they were planning, she needed to hear it, not just to warn Vegeta, but to understand the extent of the warp of their minds. It wasn't more than a day ago that she'd been enamored by these very people, yet now, listening to their soulless, twisted schemes to make the life of a fellow classmate utterly unbearable, she was embarrassed that she'd ever fallen for their seduction.
"Can't find him on any social networks," said Launch, whose face was ghoulishly illuminated by the glow of her screen.
"Shocking. Did the word social not tip you off?" Yamcha mocked.
"Shut up. I'm just thinking... You can't get him back playing his game unless you want to get your ass kicked again, no offense." She stuffed her phone into the back pocket of her shorts, ignoring Yamcha's bristling objection to her claim, and began to pace a little circle. "We have to get him to play one of ours."
"Well, good luck, 'cause I'm sure daddy's PR firm claimed every damn variation of his name on all those apps."
"Who says we need to use his real name Mr. Hailmary6969?"
"What are you guys gonna do?" Bulma found the wherewithal to ask, trying to stifle the concern from her voice.
"Well, sex vids are out, since the weirdo's a prude," Yamcha said in a tone so casual it seemed like a routine tactic that sat at the very top in their toolbox of vengeance.
"That's overdone, and besides, it doesn't land with a dude. Can't tell me you assholes wouldn't just get off on some public vid of yourself banging a broad."
Tien, who had been quietly focused, running a lighter across the skin of the blunt to cement it shut, still nodded along as if he agreed with his girlfriend's sordid assertion. He carefully ripped the excess twist of paper from the tip and popped the other end between his lips.
"Oh!" Launch snapped her fingers. "I've got it. Gotta say though, it's pretty evil… Like we'd need to use proxies kind of evil cause if we get caught, we're fucked." She ran a finger across her throat to drive home the point.
"Whatever, let's hear it," Yamcha said, extending his hand to take the joint that crackled faintly over Bulma's shoulder as he inhaled. His fingers resumed their stroking after he'd passed it to her and began to mingle with the hem of her shirt before they slipped beneath it, and his palm pressed against her stomach to pull her backside flush against him.
It wasn't Bulma's first time smoking with them, but as the heady herb fogged her head, she suddenly felt inverted, as if strung up by her ankles with a stomach full of stones. The sickness wasn't just from mixing the two substances whose compounded effects she learned could spin the head around even the most veteran stoner. More than that was the fact that a week ago, she would have relished the feeling of cozying up to the academy's top athlete, yet now the heat of his hand against her skin triggered a revulsion that was almost primal and left her wondering just how long she'd have to endure before she could artfully deploy a request to take her home without drawing suspicion.
Whatever Launch was plotting, she sensed it wasn't in the realm of the kinds of playful pranks she and Vegeta used to unleash on unsuspecting guests at the Briefs' galas—like triggering remote-controlled fuses on firecrackers they'd hidden behind potted plants at the pool's edge to scare couture-clad guests off their feet and hope they'd fall in. This was serious, and Bulma tried to hide her unrest behind a cloying smile. The way Launch was eyeing her meant that the girl had her suspicions about which team Bulma was batting for, and she wasn't about to reveal her scheme without some assurance that it was hers.
Bulma extended the joint to her and threaded the fingers of her other hand between Yamcha's at her abdomen for show and said, "An asshole has what's coming to him, right?"
"Right," Launch agreed and bugged her eyes as if whatever asinine plan she'd come up with was a spark of genius, so good maybe she couldn't have held it back had Bulma objected. Perhaps she would have forced her to sit in the hot car, oblivious to the fact that it wasn't exactly soundproof, especially with the volume Launch tended to carry.
"So… We make accounts for that nut job. It'll be easy to get people to follow him. But we need to borrow his phone and a credit card without him knowing, plant a trail that leads back to him. That'll be easy with little miss first kiss on our side."
The twisted grin Launch shot her way was a clear threat, suggesting that when the time came, if Bulma refused to flirt her way into an opportunity to snipe Vegeta's personal effects, she'd not just be blacklisted from the entire student body, she'd be their next target. A plan of the unholiest kind was afoot which required her active participation, an initiation of sorts, and though Bulma had no intention to abide, it didn't lessen the dreaded anticipation of learning its full extent.
"We post a few depressing, cryptic posts, make 'em angrier after a week or two, and insinuate that he's gonna do something crazy."
"Like shoot up the school?" asked Yamcha.
"Would you be surprised?"
"Nope. Shit, Launch that's dark as fuck. He'll definitely be expelled," Yamcha asserted.
"Tch, are you kidding? He'll be lucky if that's all he gets."
"You're a cold bitch," Tien said, grinning at her wretchedly as he plucked the blunt from her outstretched fingers.
"It's why you love me."
The arrogant toss of her hair over her shoulder as she threw herself at her boyfriend to shove her tongue into his mouth should have been the last straw to break the act Bulma was struggling to uphold. They weren't joking around. That they'd really try to sabotage Vegeta in a way that was so permanently damaging was hindering her ability to maintain her feigned cool, and hard as she tried, she couldn't think of a way to summon an excuse that was inconspicuous enough to make an exit.
Even if their plan wasn't successful, merely attempting it would ruin not just his reputation, but his father's too. Being the school's black sheep was one thing, being slandered publicly as some attempted mass murderer was another entirely.
While she'd planned to pretend she was on board with whatever harebrained prank they came up with and still tip him off, this was so inexorably horrible, leagues beyond her capacity to even fake compliance. It needled her nerves, making every pore across her skin itch in distress the longer she stood mute with Yamcha's hands casually fondling her torso, watching them. Tien and Launch's slobbering, as if she and Yamcha weren't standing three feet away, sent the boy at her back to drag his fingers further up her shirt, as if bearing witness to their friends' public groping served as consent. The second she felt his palm squeeze around her breast, she snapped, spun around by the sudden kick of her heartbeat, as if it'd been blasted from the gates and was now cantering out of control.
"Don't you fucking touch me!" she shrieked with a potency that felt as if her vocal cords had been ripped in half, and her outrage that had concentrated into her palm deployed across Yamcha's already bruised face with a resounding slap.
"What the fuck, bitch!?"
The aftershock of Bulma's hit echoed through the trees. Tien and Launch detached from each other's scum-sucking mouths to catch it with wide-eyes, before suddenly, Launch's face contorted into something monstrous. The girl's truth was revealed with new clarity, like a mirror defogged, and Bulma could finally see that underneath the flawless pores of her skin were horns, and behind her pretty lips was a sharp, cruel beak.
Yamcha hadn't yet grasped his senses, beyond his initial reaction, and was still holding his palm to his cheek when Launch opened her hideous mouth to berate, "I fucking knew it! I told you, Yamcha, didn't I? I called it! This weird-ass, homeschooled bitch can't be trusted! Fuck you, Bulma Briefs. You're a nobody!"
Hard as it was to feel the burn of Launch's scalding words, Bulma forced a show of confidence with a straight back and arms folded protectively across her chest. "Well, I'd rather be a nobody than associated with you psychos."
"You think we're the psychos? Kami, you really are in love with him, aren't you? Well… Tell you what… You wanna live on freak show island with that angry little troll, be my guest. I ain't gonna stop you. But just know this, princess, nobody gives a shit who your daddies are. They're not gonna want to come within a foot of your fucking plague. I'll personally make sure of it."
It was the one declaration Bulma had feared since the day she'd enrolled, that she'd somehow be marked, not just ostracized because of her father's stature and resented simply by her affluence and proximity to his power. That was a possibility she was prepared for. The greater fear was that because of all the years she spent secluded, she'd be damned by her inexperience with peers, branded an oddity, and treated more like a zoo animal than a person because she lacked the social acumen needed to fit in with a crowd that had been together, probably, since kindergarten. That fear was materializing before her very eyes in the most disturbing fashion. It made the entire purpose of her attending the school obsolete and, quite frankly, terrifying. If they were willing to ruin Vegeta, the son of a prestigious senator, what would they do to her for taking his side?
She wasn't abandoning the world-renowned tutors her father had personally vetted to attend the academy for its sub-par academics. She wanted friends. More than anything, she wanted to live a normal adolescent life, to socialize among people her age. But coming face to face with ones like these—ones that sought so carelessly and malignantly to destroy the life of another person over a little broken nose, that she was certain now, Yamcha fucking deserved—was disillusioning on so many levels that she wondered if she should cut her loses and disenroll. The attack left her frozen without a rebuff. Without ever having been in direct conflict with a peer before, or anyone really, she was slow to react and strum-up a solid defense. Instead, she stood dumbly against the gravel a few feet away with her arms hugged around herself trying not to cry.
"Ta-Ta! Scurry home now little rat. Good luck getting there." Launch shooed her with a wave of her hand.
They really expected her to walk back, knowing her cabin was at least three miles away down the long, unlit road. Bulma opened her mouth to protest, but the pointless degradation of begging for a ride that they'd obviously refuse, forced her to close her lips. Instead, she mustered all the confidence she could to turn from them and strut her way down the drive and into the black woods.
"Hope you don't get eaten by a bear!" she heard Tien shout, followed by the sound of their raucous laughter.
Emerging onto the main road did little to ease the ominous tension that hung in the atmosphere, oppressive as the heat. She felt like a bimbo from a horror film, perfectly staged for failure. Bulma didn't have Vegeta's number, but she tried calling Raditz, whose phone went directly to voicemail. She sent him a private snap, hoping he'd at least check the app, but that he wasn't responding immediately meant his phone was dead.
Nothing but wild forest stood on either side of her where tall pines extended toward the starry sky. The few cabins that she knew existed lakeside weren't visible from the road, tucked down long driveways and thick trees that blocked even the glow of their bonfires. She considered turning down every hidden trail she passed to solicit a ride from the strange residents that perhaps dwelt at the opposite end, but to do so in this state, drunk and stoned out of her mind, would be embarrassing, not to mention risky. She didn't know these people from Adam.
There was nothing to fear on the road; that's what she kept telling herself when every snapping twig or rustle of leaves sent her to lurch ahead, jogging frantically and tripping over the toes of her flip-flops, until she was certain the noise was nothing dangerous and just paranoia conjured by her poisoned head.
Headlights glowed behind her, almost hugging her from behind with welcome relief to melt the constant state of alarm, a distorted feeling that now felt like a stupid overreaction. As Bulma turned to wave down the driver who was already slowing on approach, she swore she'd never smoke again. It wasn't worth the vivid delusions.
But when the car came to a halt beside her, and the driver lowered the window, Bulma almost wished she'd hidden herself in the woods rather than come face-to-face with Zarbon's glowing smile.
"Well hello, little fox. What are you doing all alone out here?"
Bulma stared at him wide-eyed, as if blinded by the insidious glow of his teeth. Her body stalled against the gravel in a frightful seizure, like a doe catching the scent of a hunter, sapping the instinct to run. Instead, she found her feet stuck to the ground in his crosshairs. She could barely manage to improvise a stuttered reply.
"Oh, uh… it's funny… I was... uh, just meeting some friends… you see... and… and I thought you might be them. They're due within the second."
"You're meeting friends on the road?" He quirked a dubious eyebrow.
"Yes. At my cabin... I was attending a huge party at that one, actually," she pointed indiscriminately in the direction of wherever she assumed was a cabin hidden behind an acre of trees. "Sorry if I interrupted your drive. I thought you were them. Like I said, they're due within the minute."
"Right," he grinned. Perhaps her stoned mind was playing tricks on her, but his dry tone and the slits of his eyes as they narrowed suggested he knew she was lying. "You're right up the road. Why don't you text your friends to meet you there, and I'll save you the trouble of walking?"
"Oh no, no, no! You're very kind, but you see… Uh, I love to walk... I love walking. I find it therapeutic, clears the head. And like I said, they're right behind me. So close. Any second now! I'm just gonna call them."
As Bulma pulled out her phone to fake a dial, she realized there was nobody to call. She didn't have any fucking friends. At best, her housekeeper in the city would answer, but that would hardly help her if this creep tried anything funny. Her only option was to dial emergency and hope her signal could break through trees to ping a cell tower and diagnose her location. She imputed 9-1-1 into her phone, faking a smile over the top of the device, praying he'd leave before she was forced to hit send. But the moment he shifted his car to park, all sense was purged from the human parts of her head with a sinking horror. The blood pumping in her ears plummeted to the soles of her sore, poorly-clad feet. She darted into the forest like a spooked animal before Zarbon could unbuckle his seatbelt.
Bulma kicked off her sandals and scampered mindlessly through the thick density of trees fast as a fox jetting a hound, unable to discern whether or not Zarbon had the ambition to follow. According to Tarble, bears could run in excess of thirty miles per hour, much faster than Zarbon, much faster than herself for that matter, but she had no choice but to chance it through the forest. She'd only need to cut a quarter, maybe half a mile through the woods before she hit the beach, and from there she could run up the coast to reach her cabin, or swim across the lake to the other shore as a last resort. Bears didn't swim, right? And Zarbon was too prim and pristine to follow her into the murky water, wasn't he? Kami, why didn't she get Vegeta's phone number?
She didn't chance stopping, despite the burning in her lungs, and dodged between the trees, almost ricocheting off their thick trunks as she touched them, ignoring the hard jabs against the soles of her feet as she mindlessly leapt across rocks and buried roots until she spotted the beach ahead. Seeing the sparkles that skittered across the waves in the moonlight felt like sanctity, like watching the gate stretch open at her urban estate. Glitter reflected off the dark waves like the city's lights to make her feel protected the way she did at home by an unwitting herd of guardians bustling up and down bright sidewalks. People... she wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by the safety of people and faces and voices and lampposts.
There was movement behind her, and recognizing the obvious displacement of branches and thumping feet sent her adrenaline to peak, plugged in like a drone, and she shot toward the water's edge, screaming at a pitch that would wake every damn predator in the vicinity. Whatever or whomever was running after her was closing in, and just as her feet met the sand, a pair of arms closed around her.
Shrill cries ripped through her throat as she thrashed against a strong, tightening grip. Yet the voice that shouted back against her ear in a smattering of words she wasn't cognizant enough to make sense of wasn't totally unfamiliar. The limbs that held her weren't furry, nor were they slim and pale like Zarbon. Bulma stopped flailing to force her mind to catch up.
"Kami, princess! It's just me!"
"Raditz!? What the fuck is wrong with you? Oh god! Oh my fucking god, am I happy it's you!" Bulma spun toward the linebacker who'd dropped her back to the sand to puzzle out the confusing encounter, his face almost strained by the effort of deciphering her contradictory response. "I had a terrible night. Can you please not ask questions and escort me home?"
Raditz could be a damn doll when he wanted to be, and they walked arm in arm up the beach without any nagging questions on his part. But it didn't mean she couldn't seek her own, once she felt safe again and found her voice returning.
Raditz explained that he'd been with the kids in the treehouse until they fell asleep and his phone died. That's when he got bored and made his way back, only to find her bursting through the trees toward the shoreline, shrieking as if a horde of zombies were after her brains.
"Where's Vegeta?"
"Sulking like a baby. That'd be my guess."
The lights were still on, she noticed, as they strolled up the steps of the porch, but Vegeta didn't appear to be in the front of the house that they could see through the windows. Bulma nearly tripped over a bottle, but her death grip on Raditz elbow saved her from rolling over it completely. When she let go to pick it up, her brows pinched as she examined the shot or two that remained in a liter that was more than half full when she'd left. Raditz jumped to defense.
"I didn't drink that!" he declared, throwing up his hands as if he mistook her for his mother. The sideways look of disbelief that rolled across her features was meant to amuse him, get the dolt to consider the pointlessness of lying. She didn't give a fuck if Raditz drank her booze, but he was holding strong to his story, and more than that, he appeared to be wholly perplexed by the near-empty bottle. Their eyes locked with the same dubious realization.
"You don't think…?"
"No fucking way. That dude is hardcore. He would never."
Bulma yanked open the sliding glass door. As they both searched the quiet space, she realized she was higher than she'd thought as she lifted a couch cushion like Vegeta was a lost remote control. Raditz seemed to lose interest once they discovered him asleep, or perhaps passed out, in bed. He'd probably hoped to witness his straight-laced cousin's intoxication, and without the thrill, he dejectedly sloughed across the hall to throw himself onto the queen-sized mattress in the boys' room and plugged in his phone.
Bulma remained in the doorway of Vegeta's room, watching the rise and fall of his back. It was obvious that he'd drank that bottle. All the lights were still on, including the bedroom where he laid atop the covers fully clothed down to his tennis shoes, his arm dangling off the side of the bed.
It was strange to watch him sleeping, to witness his features relaxed for once, eyelids fluttering softly in dreams. She wondered what a person like him dreamed about. Did he have dreams that were his own, above his commitment to Tarble? Things he wanted for himself? If he did, she sensed that Vegeta would never see his personal aspirations through, likely even exterminated them with a blow torch the second they'd pop up to scurry across his subconscious. So long as he held himself to the role of his brother's parent, his own life was effectively benched. A part of her wondered if the senator noticed. Their father was busy, always away, a lifestyle she understood in lieu of her own upbringing, but was the man really so absent that he was unable to see his eldest son's burden? Perhaps Vegeta hid the impact. It wouldn't surprise her. That he was so adamant to take it upon himself to ensure Tarble was raised by brotherly love above a nanny's paychecks, was willing to expense his own future to see that his sibling felt nothing in this world beyond the safe and precious existence that Vegeta kept for him was perhaps the most beautifully human thing she'd ever witnessed, from anyone. He wasn't a psycho. He was a bear, and he was protecting his cub from Yamcha's insensitive slurs when he'd hit him. He was protecting her too, she realized now. That's why he pulled her away, because he was trying to save her from the monsters she didn't know.
"I'm really sorry, Vegeta," she said and flicked off the light.