Page 4 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

2

The first step is the worst. Rory’s right: this isn’t Lochkelvin forest. The trees here are spindly and tall, full of small cheeping birds instead of massive cawing ravens. I stumble over rocks and trip over tree roots but it’s my own nerves doing it, not unexplainable Lochkelvin magic.

I’ve somehow convinced myself I have a phobia of forests.

Rory glances back every time I fall, but I catch myself just in time, holding firm to the trunk of a tree and hauling myself upright before he gets the chance to notice my failure. Still, the smirk at the edge of his mouth never lessens and Captain Porthos decides to trot beside me, possibly on behest of his owner, after my third stumble.

It’s unnerving how deep the forest goes. Rory’s confident here, never faltering, walking as though the route’s been imprinted in his mind the moment he became a laird of these many, many acres. I wonder how often he came here as a child. Did he camp outdoors beneath the rain and the stars? Did he have a treehouse to nobly defend against evil adult savages? The more time I spend in his estate, the less I picture Rory playing inside it.

Wet leaves land on my face, sending me spiraling to another place, another year. Clearing the bank of a loch from leaves and having a bag of them end up on my head…

I don’t trust Rory, and I trust myself even less around him. So when he stops moving, pulling up against the thick trunk of a tree and peeling away a giant fern from his vision, I stop moving too. Captain Porthos leaps on ahead, though his happy barks have minimized slightly, and I wonder if he too is keeping quiet over what lies beyond.

From behind, Rory signals at me to come closer. When I don’t, he turns his head and scowls at me. Why should I do anything he says? Why should I make life easier for an asshole who whisked me away from the place I was supposed to be? When his whims trump my feelings, then yeah, I’m gonna be cranky about it.

He ignores me from then on, as though thinking better than pursuing the issue. Captain Porthos waits loyally beside his feet, his wagging tail skirting the forest floor, as though to prove that at leastsomeoneis happy to follow his master’s orders.

Rory unpacks an item from his brown bag and my heart flies to my throat when I note that the shape is mighty similar to a handgun. I’m all too aware that I’m alone in this forest with a bona fide maniac. I was there, frozen with sickness, when I saw him torturing Benji.

But it isn’t a gun.

He draws the object up to his eyes, and I’m reminded for a brief moment of the opera. Rich people from centuries ago, watching opera through tiny delicate glasses. They’re binoculars. Rory’s looking through a pair of binoculars.

It’s irritating, because now Iwantto know what’s so interesting on the other side of the forest. I want to be by his side like the dog at his boots. I want to know what he’s seeing through the lenses right now… but I don’t want to give away my interest. Rory doesn’t deserve that. He thinks he has me all figured out, thinks he’sking of my heart, when I can’t even figure out my own numb feelings.

When he’d whispered those words in my ear during our waltz, I was amazed to discover I’d still been in possession of a beating heart. After the death of my father, I’ve long considered it an absent organ, but Rory… stirs it. He gives it shock treatment every time he turns those stone-gray eyes on me, with the superior raise of his chin, the twist of his lips and the drawl of his perfect English accent.

Rory snaps the binoculars shut, his head tilted to the dreary sky. “We have to climb,” he declares, as though I’m going to go along with every stupid impulse he has.

“I want to go back.”

He doesn’t even look at me, just presses on ahead as though I hadn’t spoken. For a moment, I think I hear a scoffing sound, but it could equally be the slap of rain against the canopy of the trees or the energetic panting of Captain Porthos with his tongue hanging out.

I miss the warmth of indoors. I miss curling into the corner of the chaise, huddled in blankets with a pot of tea that the staff had unexpectedly made for me. I’ve been on a Dworkin kick lately, angrily reading and agreeing with every word inWoman Hatingwhen applying it to the blond fuckboy in front of me. It’s cathartic, having your suspicions confirmed through the medium of text from decades ago. Nothing ever changes.

“I want to goback,” I repeat, voice firmer. “Take me back.”

“No.”

And so he traipses through the forest, and I, lost and without direction, am obliged to follow him too.

I should never have agreed to be alone with Rory. What was I thinking? What good could possibly come out of this?

We walk in silence over hills that increase in both height and breadth. If I had a pedometer, it’d be reading well over ten thousand steps. Maybe twenty thousand. The more we walk, the more my feet begin to pinch, the rubber of the loaned boots gnawing at the sides of my toes. I just want to go back. I’m so weary from so much walking through misty, gloomy rain, I can’t tell what’s rain and what’s tired, exhausted tears. I just want to goback.

And then Rory stops. He stoops low at a branch on the forest floor, tugs out his binoculars again, and then points to the side, as though confirming the direction we’re headed.

“Are we still on your land or have we reached Wales?” I mutter spitefully.

Rory laughs at me, weirdly fond, and the sound makes me want to gag. “Yes. This is still our land. And as we’re traveling northwest, I’d be surprised if we reach Wales anytime soon.” His gray eyes turn to me, curious. “You don’t do much hiking, do you?”

I scowl at him. No. No, Idon’tdo much hiking. As if my mom would have let me, and even then there’s the whole aspect of this verdant landscape looking totally alien to anything that resides in Florida. As we climb yet another hill with an almost vertical face, the largest one so far, it strikes me how unreal this land is. Pretty purple flowers — heather and thistles — dapple one side like the sharp spikes of a ball-and-chain. The skin of the land consists of a grassy patchwork of dark and light green. In the distance, mountains swell, bulging from the earth like the joints and limbs of a sleeping giant. And on those dark distant mountains, peaks erupt with snowcaps as white as teeth, flashing up to the constant storm-gray eyes of the sky.

And all around us: nobody. Not a soul. A complete absence of people, a barrenness of wanderers.

Just me and Rory and Captain Porthos.

In this world, I have to rely on Rory, and yeah, that scares the shit out of me.

---