Page 61 of Playing By Their Rules

Maisie

Mina offers to drive, and I let her because truthfully, I’m exhausted. We bicker happily over which music to listen to.

“I think we need an eighties playlist,” I say.

“No way. Contemporary pop,” she says.

We compromise by listening to contemporary pop for the first half and then switching to eighties. When we get farther into the hills, though, the music streaming service stops working. I’d forgotten that annoying detail about this place—cell reception sucks.

It’s midday when we reach the woods and Mina turns down an unmarked dirt road. There will be twists, turns, possibly fallen trees.

“You said you came up here a while ago?” I ask. “The road was clear?”

“Clear enough.” She takes us onto the shoulder to navigate us past a tree trunk that blocks part of the road.

“It didn’t look like Percy’s been poking around?” The cabin was at the edge of his property, but far at the back of the acreage. Mina and I suspected he never even knew it was there.

“No.” She chews the side of her lip. “I heard that asshole died in a fire.”

“What?” I spin in the seat to face her fully, clutching my heart. “You never told me that. Shit, Mina. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

I don’t regret his death, hell no. But dying in a fire sounds horrible—I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

She shrugs. “I didn’t want to think about it, but you’re right, I should’ve told you.”

Damn. A fire for old Percy.

“What about Tara?” Our foster mom had never been around much, probably trying to keep herself away from Percy just like Mina and I used to do.

“She wasn’t there during the fire, I guess. I don’t know where she is now.”

“Holy freaking heck,” I mutter. I don’t know what to think. That’s just…that’s a lot. A dark, secret part of me wonders if Tara would’ve been capable of starting the fire. She seemed so defeated all the time, working her ass off and receiving absolutely no love or affection from Percy, as far as I ever saw. He was too busy paying attention to the teenage girls under his roof.

We trundle along the dirt road. The tree cover makes it darker than it should be at this time of day—it looks like dusk instead of just after one p.m. I peer through the shadowy trunks, hoping for glimpses of the big pond that rests in front of the cabin. I’m still shocked that nobody has come out to claim this place—it would make an awesome vacation spot, a retreat from the big, scary world beyond the woods. Back when Mina and I were still living with Percy and Tara, we’d dream about making it big and coming back with our riches to buy this land.

Finally, I see it. “There’s the pond,” I say, pointing.

The water reflects the blue sky in places, and in other spots, it’s covered with a bright green algae that looks solid enough to walk on. A rickety dock juts outward from the shore. Mina and I used to sit on that dock, our pants rolled up to our knees, feet in the water.

Just past the pond is the cabin itself. I feast my eyes on its familiar, boxy shape. The windows are still intact, which is a surprise, but the porch is listing dangerously to one side, and the door isn’t all the way closed. Rot stains the wood siding black in places, like mottled bruises.

“Wow,” I say, “it looks so small.”

“It doesn’t seem quite like the mansion we used to pretend it was, right?”

“Yeah.”

I’m seeing my adolescence with new eyes. Were we really so desperate for escape that we thought this falling-apart cabin was our fortress? “You said you came here a couple of months ago?”

“Yeah.”

“There aren’t any…any people living in there?”

“No, this place is too remote, I think. Nobody else has been around.”

She pulls up to the front of the cabin and stops the car. We both stare at the building for a long moment, neither of us speaking. I remember running here, hand in hand with Mina, our long legs carrying us away from Percy’s shouting and the feeling of his gaze burning us as it raked over our bodies. Tara couldn’t stand us. Jealous, maybe, or more likely I think it was guilt that she was a part of our lives but unable to protect us. She seemed to hate Percy as much as we did.

“Remember that one time,” Mina says. “I thought he was going to…”

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