To The Death

“Dude,” Brian shouts, pounding his fist against the shower stall. “Hurry up. I’m hungry.”

Zacky rolls his eyes and sticks his face underneath the showerhead one more time. He’s dragged out his usually quick morning shower to a lengthy twenty minutes, mostly because he knows it’s pissing off Brian, who’s apparently decided to follow him everywhere for all eternity. He hasn’t spent much time with his friends since arriving at the retreat, and they seem to take it as a sign that he’s being antisocial and needs constant company lest he succumb to some sort of mental breakdown. In other words, he can’t even piss in peace.

“Come on! You’ve been in there for like half an hour!” whines Brian.

Fuck you, Zacky thinks. I like showering.

“If you’re doing this on purpose, I’m going to kick your ass. I’m so hungry I could throw Johnny on a grill and eat him.”

“Just go get your fucking breakfast, then!” Zacky snaps. “I’m a grown man—I don’t need a babysitter.”

Brian sighs. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re having fun.”

“I’m in the shower!”

Zacky’s frustration reaches its boiling point. He turns off the water, dries himself with one of the fluffy white towels he hung over the stall door, and puts on some jeans and a Pantera t-shirt. He emerges from the stall and glares at Brian, who’s leaning against one of the sinks with his arms crossed impatiently.

“Finally,” says Brian. “Goddamn.”

Zacky waves his toothbrush at Brian.

“I still haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“You’re a little bitch, you know that?”

Chuckling, Zacky drops his clothes onto the floor and commences tooth brushing. He doesn’t drag out the simple action quite as long as he did his shower, but he does make sure to take longer than the generally recommended two minutes. When he’s done, the two of them go back to their cabin so Zacky can drop off his other clothing. They dash through the heavy rain that’s been pelting the island since dawn, grab umbrellas, and head to the main pavilion for breakfast.

“So,” Brian says, as their footsteps slosh along the muddy path. “There are a lot of hot girls here.”

“And your point is?”

“You don’t have to spend all your time showering. There are plenty of other ways to stay occupied.”

Zacky smirks, a twisted feeling stabbing his gut. None of the guys have any idea how he spent his nights back home. He’s always been fairly promiscuous, but he doubts any of them can imagine how much of a slut he’s become. It strikes him as funny, in a really perverse way, that Brian’s advising him to do sleep around, when he’s already gone so far above and beyond that suggestion.

“I know that,” he says mildly. “What I don’t understand is why you guys won’t leave me alone about being social.”

“We’re worried about you.”

“So you’re just going to ambush me every time I’m by myself? What if I want to be left alone?”

“No one wants to left alone,” Brian says. “They just tell themselves that to make their loneliness seem okay.”

Zacky rolls his eyes. “I’m not lonely.”

“That sounds pretty defensive.”

“If you keep this shit up, I’m going to punch you in the dick—”

“I’m just saying! Maybe take an inventory of all the girls. Like Johnny used to do in high school, remember?”

He vaguely remembers numerous dull afternoons of classroom instruction livened up by Johnny’s rating of every girl in the class. He would write their names in a notebook and rate them on a scale of one to ten for looks, personality, and anything else that came to mind. It had seemed like a good idea until some nosy girl had seen what he was writing, stolen the notebook, and distributed copies to the entire junior class. Needless to say, Johnny had encountered great difficulty finding a date to junior prom.

“No,” Zacky says. “Johnny was a dick to make that list in the first place. He made like half of the girls in the junior class cry. I’m not going to be that much of an asshole.”

Some bitchy little sarcastic voice in the back of his mind remarks, And what makes your recent sexual activities to different? You’re no better; don’t even try acting superior.

Brian laughs. “You don’t have to write it down. That was his mistake. It’s just for fun, anyway. Here, I’ll start: There’s Camille, that cougar you got with the first night here.”

“I did not fuck a cougar. She wasn’t that old. Maybe like, late thirties.”

“Right, sure.” Brian sidesteps a puddle. “There’s that travel journalist—Sandra, or Sarah, or something—”

“Suzanne,” Zacky corrects. He remembers meeting her on the first night. “And I think someone must have brought their daughter. I’ve seen some teenager wandering around a couple of times.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They go back and forth for a while more, trying to identify the women whose names they don’t know.

“And then there’s those triplet girls,” Brian says, after they’ve been through everyone else they can recall. “Robyn and Lennox.”

Zacky experiences a wave of heat that envelopes him and leaves behind a prickling sensation. What the fuck?

“Yeah,” he says distractedly.

“They seem nice. I’ve talked to Robyn a couple of times…”

Brian goes on to say something else, but they’ve just turned the corner into the pavilion, and the smell of food annihilates Zacky’s concentration. He’s relieved, for reasons he doesn’t want to think about, to get away from the conversation. He breezes through the food area in the hopes of being unseen by his friends, barely aware of what he’s actually putting on his plate until he needs to grab silverware. He glances down at his tray to see a large bowl of chocolate Cheerios and a glass of orange juice. He blinks, then grabs a spoon and drops it into his bowl before he can give his breakfast choices any more thought.

“Zacky!”

Matt’s voice rings across the pavilion. He’s waving to him from where he’s sitting with Val, the rest of the band, a random NRF employee, and the triplets.

Reluctantly, Zacky joins the table. He slides into the available seat in between Jimmy and Brian and across from Kingsley. Annoying redhead triplet girl and Lennox both sit at diagonals from him. Lennox looks miserable. Her hair hangs around her face in wet clumps, and her purple tank top is plastered to her body. She’s shredding a slice of banana bread with her fingers, and the look on her face suggests she’s imagining that the bread is a person.

“For fuck’s sake, Lenny,” Robyn says suddenly. “Get over it already.”

Lennox’s eyes dart toward her sister, but she says nothing.

Kingsley looks displeased. “You know she’s not going to get over it. She holds grudges longer than Dad does.”

“Well, Dad’s a fuckwad. He has an excuse. Lenny’s normally not this bitchy.”

Lennox calmly squishes the shredded bread back together, forming a ball, and lobs it at her sister’s face. Robyn reaches to retaliate with one of her pancakes, but Kingsley’s hand comes down on her arm before she can do anything.

“Um,” Zacky ventures hesitantly. “What’s going on?”

“Robyn’s umbrella broke, so she stole mine,” Lennox says, glaring at her sister. “Even though I told her we could walk together and share if she’d just wait five fucking seconds for me to put some clothes on.”

“I told you I was hungry!”

“You still could have waited!”

Robyn makes a frustrated screeching noise. The two begin yelling at each other in some foreign language, despite Kingsley sitting between them.

Zacky watches with amusement and eats his cereal.

Eventually, the two sisters get up and storm off in opposite directions, still screaming in the direction of the other. Kingsley just sighs and steals one of Robyn’s uneaten pancakes.

“What the hell?” Brian asks, laughing. “Does that happen often?”

“You’d be surprised. They’ll probably yell at each other in Korean for about another twenty minutes, ignore each other for the rest of the day, and be back to normal by morning.”

“But they were fighting over something so stupid!” Zacky says.

Kingsley bites into his stolen pancake. “Welcome to my life.”

Their end of the table erupts into laughter.

There’s the sudden sound of microphone feedback from the stage at the front of the pavilion. A.C. appears, wishes everyone a good morning, and, like yesterday, begins reading a list of activities. Today’s list is much shorter, however. Zacky’s still laughing, so he only hears the last activity: Downpour Aerobics.

“Downpour Aerobics?” he repeats. “That sounds extremely unpleasant.”

“I think it sounds fun,” Jimmy says. “Gives me a good excuse to spend the day playing in the rain.”

Brian points at Jimmy with his fork, a bit of scrambled egg speared on the end.

“Don’t expect me to bring you soup when you get sick from being out in the rain all day.”

“Fuck you, then. I’ll get my own soup,” Jimmy responds, laughing.

Brian shakes his head.

Gradually, people finish their breakfasts and begin breaking off into groups for the different activities. Zacky realizes as he slurps down the chocolate-y milk left at the bottom of his bowl that he has yet to pick an activity. He also realizes that he’s not too devastated about that fact. Yesterday’s ropes courses took a toll on him, and using today to recover sounds like an excellent idea. So when the rest of the table gets up to leave, he follows them out of the pavilion and toward the main road winding through the area. But instead of veering off on the appropriate path for some dumb activity, he quietly slips into the trees.

The foliage is dark and cool around him, and aside from the occasional annoying insect flitting in front of his face, the spot he’s chosen serves its purpose without disappointment. He sits on the ground—after hoping to himself that the unfamiliar plant surrounding him isn’t poison ivy or anything—and runs through guitar rhythms in his head for about an hour. Once he’s satisfied that he’s waited a sufficient amount of time, he crawls out from his hidey hole and returns to the now-abandoned camp.

Just beyond the pavilion is a smaller enclosed area, which houses other entertainment options for the retreaters to explore when they’re not involved in some NRF activity. Bookshelves filled to bursting with books and board games are situated against the wall, while a cluster of chairs, sofas and ottomans occupies the center of the room. Zacky is so busy thinking about what board game he can play by himself that he doesn’t notice he’s not alone until he hears a clicking noise from behind him.

He turns around from the shelf of games to see Lennox lying on her stomach on an enormous sofa with some sort of electronic device in her hands. For a second, they just look at each other. Then, Zacky grins. He takes advantage of the fact that Lennox looks surprised by his presence, hurries over, and snatches the device from her hands before she can react.

“Hey!”

She’s up on her feet in an instant, looking murderous.

“What’s this?” Zacky wonders, holding the device far above his head. Lennox isn’t short by any means, but he’s still got a couple of inches on her, and she’s unable to reach her precious toy.

“What the hell does it look like?” she snaps. “It’s a Sony PSP. Give it back.”

“Aren’t electronics against the rules?”

“Does it look like I give a shit? I wasn’t planning on coming here. We were supposed to go to a hotel. So excuse me if I’m in possession of contraband material.”

“Still, I don’t think A.C. would be too happy if I told him you weren’t participating…”

Lennox fixes him with a dangerous look that slowly segues into one of actual fear.

“You—You’re not actually going to tell on me, are you?”

Zacky tilts his head to the side in mock consideration.

“Dunno. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Look, if this is about me being rude to you yesterday, I’m sorry,” she says, her hands held in front of her like she’s talking him down from a window ledge. “I probably went a bit too far with the whole ‘choke on a bundle of dicks’ thing. I just get annoyed very easily and I know that’s a sucky excuse…”

Zacky frowns. He doesn’t understand why she’s apologizing to him when he was the one who was harassing her all day. If anything, he should be begging for her forgiveness. He knows he wasn’t thinking clearly. He’d gotten flustered after Val had revealed his intentions, and instead of carefully planning his seduction like he usually does, he’d just used every possible tactic he could imagine. He decides to try a different route for today.

“It’s not about yesterday.”

Some of her previous anger returns to her face. “Then what the hell is it about?”

He shrugs. “You can have it back—on one condition.”

“What?” she asks nervously.

“You have to keep me company. I really don’t want to have to play Monopoly by myself.”

Lennox looks at him for a long moment, then rolls her eyes.

“Fine. What do you want to talk about?” she asks, taking back the PSP and collapsing onto her spot on the sofa. Glancing at the screen of the device, she frowns. “You made me die, by the way.”

“Sorry.” Zacky guesses that she probably doesn’t want to sit by him and takes a seat in one of the chairs. “What are you playing?”

She sighs and presses the power button, turning the game off.

“Final Fantasy.”

With the PSP now resting on the sofa, she crosses her legs underneath herself and raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“I thought you wanted me to keep you company.”

Zacky smiles at her annoyed tone.

“I do. So how’d you sneak off without being roped into an activity?”

“I hid in the bathroom until I thought everyone was gone. I’m planning on pretending that I went for a solo hike, if anyone asks. What about you?”

“Hid in the bushes.”

“Nice.”

“Yep.”

Silence.

“So, the weather…” Lennox trails off, looking at the downpour. The mini-pavilion in which they’re sitting only has three walls, so every now and then they’re hit by a gust of wind or a sprinkling of sideways raindrops.

“It sucks.”

“Yeah.”

More silence.

“So,” Zacky begins. “What was that about you planning to go to a hotel?”

“We were supposed to stay at the Costa Caleta or something like that. But then Robyn saw you guys at the airport and had a psycho fangirl moment and decided to follow you instead.”

“That’s creepy.”

She laughs. “I know. She promised that we’d only stay for a few days, but I highly doubt that she’ll be able to tear herself away from stalking Brian or that those freakish employees will let us leave.”

“Yeah, these NRF people are pretty intense…did you say she’s stalking Brian?”

“Just a bit. She has this life goal of sleeping with him, so—” Lennox falls silent. “Shit. I probably wasn’t supposed to tell you that. But…whatever. Robyn can just deal with it.”

“Your sister is really annoying,” Zacky says, remembering how unbearable Robyn had been during the journey to the retreat’s location.

“Tell me about it. And you didn’t even have to live with her for eighteen years.”

“That bad, huh?”

“She was constantly blasting this godawful music. I could hear always it through the walls when I was trying to study and I wanted to kick her door in and strangle her.”

Chuckling, Zacky leans forward in his chair.

“What kind of music was it?”

“Um…” Lennox looks incredibly uncomfortable all of a sudden. “It’s not important.”

Zacky’s confused for a moment before he realizes what must have caused her sudden silence.

“If you think our music sucks, you can just tell me. I’m a big boy; I can take it.”

“It—It’s not that I think it sucks, I just…don’t really like rock all that much,” she says apologetically. “Also, the only time I’ve listened to you guys was when you came out with a new CD and Robyn was so excited she forced everyone she knew into hearing it. So that might have had something to do with my preferences. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for your taste in music. What do you listen to?”

She blushes. “That’s not important, either.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Rap,” she blurts out. “I like rap, okay?”

“Nothing else?”

“Not really, no.”

Zacky presses his lips together to keep from grinning.

It doesn’t work. Lennox blushes even more.

“Don’t make fun of me!” she shrieks. “I grew up in Atlanta, okay? I think I have a pretty good excuse.”

He can’t help it—he starts to laugh. Surprisingly, Lennox joins in.

“Yeah, I know. I’m weird. Whatever.”

As they calm down, their laughter fades into silence, as does the rain. Zacky’s feeling confident because she’s already volunteered so much information about herself, and he thinks it’s worth a shot to try and dig a little deeper. He’s strangely intrigued by the fact that she hid until everyone was gone, like he did, and some troubled part of himself—that he doesn’t want to admit exists—is foolishly hoping that perhaps he’s found someone he can relate to.

“So…why didn’t you go try another activity? You seemed to enjoy the rope thing yesterday.”

Lennox stares at her hands as she considers the question. “I…didn’t feel like it.”

“Because of Robyn?” Zacky guesses.

For a split second it almost seems as if she’s going to give a different reason, but she doesn’t.

“Yeah. She was a total bitch this morning and I didn’t want to have to deal with Kingsley trying to convince us to make up. He always, always takes her side and it’s so fucking annoying…” She studies him. “You look confused.”

“It’s just weird to hear that you guys don’t get along. For some reason I always think that twins and triplets and whatnot are like best friends.”

Lennox shakes her head.

“No,” she says decidedly. At least not us. I don’t know…I never really feel like a triplet. I mean, yeah, we all look the same, but apart from that, it’s just like we’re regular siblings. And Robyn and Kingsley are usually allies.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “We’re not like, actively warring, or anything, but when people think of us, they tend to think RobynandKingsley…and then me. They’ve always just been closer to each other than they were to me.”

Yet another moment of silence creeps through the mini-pavilion. Zacky is so pleased by how well the conversation is going that he wants to shout it from the mountaintops, but his good mood dissipates somewhat when Lennox abruptly gets to her feet.

“Anyway, um…I’m really tired, so I’m gonna head back to my cabin.”

Zacky blinks. He feels as if she’s dumped another bowl of Cheerios on top of his head.

“Wait, what? But—”

“See you later, okay?”

Lennox grabs her PSP from the sofa and takes off. And all Zacky can do is stare after her, happy that he got her talking but still not sure what the hell he did wrong.

+++

Idiot, Lennox thinks, sloshing through puddles on the way to her cabin. What were you going to do, tell him your entire life story?

She scoffs at her own stupidity and steps in a puddle with a particular gusto to ease some of her frustration. She regrets not leaving immediately upon Zacky’s arrival in the game area. All the green eyes and attractive hair in the world can’t make up for how rude he was yesterday. And even though she’s not too pleased with him, she’s even more upset with herself for continuing to talk to him even though she’s convinced he doesn’t want anything but sex. She’s the giver of second and third and fourth chances but never the recipient of anything so kind, and she’s sick of herself for being sick of something she could change if she actually tried.

Lost in thought, she doesn’t hear the voices approaching until they’re nearly on top of her. She dives behind one of the trees surrounding the lake just in time to avoid being seen by her sister, Matt, and Brian.

“I am never going Downpour Hiking ever again,” Robyn declares. “I feel like a drowned rat.”
Matt laughs and wrings water out of his baseball cap.

“Thank fuck it’s stopped raining. That was literally the worst hike I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.”

“I would have shared my umbrella with you if you asked,” Brian points out.

“Aw, thanks, man.”

“I was talking to Robyn.”

“…Fuck you.”

The three of them burst into laughter. Brian and Robyn exchange a look.

Lennox watches the exchange through thick leaves heavy with rain. Instant, bitter jealousy of her sister races through her as if it were injected. She can’t even recall how many times she’s wished for a flirtatious glance to come her way, and of course, her sister sister receives the coveted looks as often as junk mail. She knows she should be happy for Robyn since she seems to be making progress on her goal, but she’s not—she never is—and so her brain becomes a mush of self-hatred.

She waits for the coast to clear so she can get to her cabin without enduring any social contact. Vaguely, she registers noises nearby, but her distraction is so all-encompassing that she doesn’t assign labels to the sounds until the second before she turns around to see who’s responsible for the footsteps and ragged breathing. Nothing meets her eyes except for a bunch of plants in varying shades of green.

As she’s turning to leave, a hand clamps down on her arm, and from the corner of her eye she sees the mottled, decaying flesh and the stark white exposed bone of an arm.

She yanks herself away, too startled to scream, and careens into another body. There is a roar of anger, followed by not-quite-whole hands shoving her so hard she loses her balance. She hits the muddy ground almost facedown, and scrambles to her feet in the next second.

Without a backward glance, Lennox runs for her cabin. She slams the door behind her and takes comfort in the near-silence of the air conditioning. She reaches up to run a shaking hand through her hair only to discover a thick flap of discolored skin clinging to her arm.

Horrified, she pulls the door open and violently shakes the entire left side of her body until the unwanted flesh is dislodged. Then, she shuts herself in again and promptly bursts into tears.