Page 45 of The Falcon and the Foe

“Scout Leader Cal, can you get me the spikes?”

I walked behind him to grab the spikes while he laid out the tarp. His fabulous ass stuck up in the air, a perfect piece of cake draped in khaki, with a divot in the middle for his crack. Russ must’ve done squats on a regular basis. He did say he exercised every day. I committed the cake to memory and handed him the spike.

“Why don’t you help?”

“Right.” I pressed the first spike into the ground.

“That’s too close,” Russ said.

“We put it by the tarp, right?”

“But you need to make it far enough so you can pull it taut.”

Why did he say taut when he could just say tight?

I moved the spike out.

“Good,” Russ said.

I bashed it with the mallet.

“Not too rough,” he yelled. “Or else you’ll break the spike. And the last thing we need is a broken tent that flies away.”

“Look at what happened to Dorothy inThe Wizard of Oz. And maybe this tent will fall on your sister. I mean, not because I don’t like your sister. She’s wonderful. But you...like a house dropped on your sister...”

The faces of the scouts twisted in confusion, trying to follow my train of thought.

“Is this your longwinded way of calling me a witch?”

I hung my head. “Yes.”

I hammered in the remaining three spikes while Russ prepped the rods and tarp.

“Now for the final piece. You need to thread these rods carefully. They’re strong but also fragile. You don’t want them to snap, or else your tent won’t be able to stand up.”

I held up the rods like I was hawking them on QVC. Russ rolled his eyes. So I kept doing it to annoy him. I found in this life there were few pockets of things to enjoy, so I had to find entertainment where I could.

Just as I was going to give them over, I spotted a spider crawling over the tent.

Panic set in me.

There were two kinds of people in this world: those who weren’t scared by spiders and those who were freaked the fuck out by them. I was in the latter camp.

I gasped and pointed, my finger shaking in fear.

“What?” Russ looked at me like I was crazy. I was a woman possessed, possessed with getting rid of this eight-legged beast.

“Don’t move a muscle,” I whispered. I thwacked the rod at the spider and missed. It was wilier than I expected.

“It’s just a spider.”

“Just a spider? It’s a vessel of evil.” I hit again and missed. The scouts watched, riveted, and goaded me on like I was in a street fight.

“When you catch it, we should dissect it!” Quentin yelled.

“You can’t dissect a spider,” Josh said.

“You can dissect anything.”

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