Scout

Anabel Barnett

The Boy Scouts come to Amelia’s farm twice a year. They camp for a weekend in the hay field on the edge of her property, that her mom bought from some woman named Jennifer in the year after Amelia entered middle school. The boys stay in the furthest wooded inlet from the road, about a hundred acres across from the rusted gate that opens onto Peak Point Road. On Friday, the boys are driven by parents and trooper leaders to their makeshift campsite, gear in tow.

This always makes them laugh, the girls. “Such wilderness explorers,” Amelia would say. “They can’t walk a quarter mile ‘cross a field. Their feet’ll hurt.”

The scouts are here tonight, so the girls are too. They’re licking pizza grease off their hands in Amelia’s room. They talk of boys and masturbating with electric toothbrushes. Chris Evans and Kylie Jenner Lip Kits. They hold up their phones to examine their faces using the Snapchat camera.

“I wish it wasn’t so big,” one whines as she pokes her nose.

“I wish they were bigger,” one says, rolling her bottom lip onto her chin.

They pull the skin away from their stomachs and thighs and sigh. They flick mascara on their lashes and rub Revlon concealer on their cheeks. One fills in her eyebrows with a pencil a shade darker than her hair.

Amelia leans on her dresser, watching them trade neon tee shirts for black long sleeves and pull their hair back in braids.

“I’m so glad you texted us.”

“Yeah,” one adds. “We haven’t missed a scout weekend since your mom bought that field.”

They all turn to Amelia. She shrugs and smiles, her traps move beneath her shirt.

“I didn’t want to ruin tradition.” She stares at the tops of their heads. She kicks the back of her left heel with her toe and looks in the mirror above her dresser, meeting her own gaze. The girls are silent as she runs her right hand through her blonde hair, pushing baby hairs back towards her bun. She turns back to them.

“Are we taking the usual route tonight? Or are we going through the woods?” One says, pulling leggings from her backpack and stands to shimmy them on, pulling them up around her thighs. She tugs the fabric into her ass. “How do I look?” She poses like a gym influencer, her right leg a step back behind her left, twisting her hips towards the rest of them.

“Girl you have the fattest ass. I can’t.”

“I think the usual route is our best course of action.” Amelia’s smile is tight as she sits down on the patchwork rug covering the rough oak floorboards of her room. They join her, completing the square of their knees circled around a bottle of Simply Lemonade. Amelia takes the stack of four cups and distributes them in front of the girls. The carpet digs through their leggings and half of them lean back on their elbows.

Amelia fills their cups in even, precise pours.

“To Boy Scout Hunting,” they say, and scratch plastic together in a toast. They gulp while Amelia sips.

“It’s like a shot,” one girl grins. “We should do this drunk next time.”

They say it’s good to be back on the farm, it’s good to see her. Amelia smiles at them and agrees. “It’s good to see you too.” She scratches her arm while looking out her east facing window, her gray shirt sleeve bunching around her fingers.

“We missed you at school,” they say.

“Yeah,” one adds. “You missed the last month of Hot History Teacher. He pulled me aside after class and, like, sat on my desk and everything, telling me I’m like the best student he’s ever had. He definitely wants me.”

They haven’t seen Amelia since the last Boy Scout Hunting. She stopped coming to school. Not that it mattered much. There was only a month left anyway. They didn’t see her over the summer either. No sleepovers in the loft spent whispering Cosmo tips for sucking dick, giggling. No swimming in the creek at the bottom of Amelia’s hill, hoping to be seen by drunk college kayakers passing through. No gas station ice cream or Harry’s BBQ.

They tried calling her, they did. She never answered, not for movies or parties or any of it. Or her mother would pick up the phone and tell them she was busy working. Working the farm, she’d clarify. Ok, they’d say, and hang up, confused but thankful the conversation didn’t last long.

They used to show up unannounced at the farm. She’d welcome them, no questions asked. Turning horses out, corralling escaped goats, collecting eggs. Dinner and movies in the basement. A haven from suburban life, the farm was. A good way to tan, they always thought, but kind of gross. They didn’t like shoveling horse shit for hours until the blisters on their palms popped. They didn’t like touching her dogs, blood caked to their mouths after they killed a rogue groundhog or squirrel. They didn’t like watching from afar as Amelia placed a dead, half-frozen chicken in a plastic Wawa bag and tossed it effortlessly into the big blue dumpster outside the hayloft, the wind dragging her baby hairs through her mouth. They didn’t like the blank, tearless stare that took over her face when she talked about the death of her first pony, her first dog, her beloved goat, Matthias. They didn’t like digging potatoes, the leaves scratching their forearms, the dirt caked under their fingernails for weeks afterwards. Amelia would laugh at their hesitation, at their trepidation working with the earth, working her land. “This place loves you,” she said. “If it didn’t, it’d bury you.” She’d smear topsoil across their faces, making them scream. They didn’t do that this summer. They did guess work in their group chat, the one without Amelia, but no one really knew why.

The girls rub their feet on the carpet, back-forth, back-forth, back. They say they hope there’ll be more cute ones this time. It’s no fun when they’re ugly. Who wants to be chased by ugly boys? Ugly boys are creepy. They giggle at their joint conclusion. Amelia’s stares just beyond her lemonade cup. She checks the rubber watch on her right wrist. She sighs.

“Will one of you braid my hair?” She asks. Two of them volunteer and kneel behind her back, glance just landing on the crown of her head. Her hair’s removed from her tight bun and as it falls past her shoulders, blotches of baldness appear, dotting her scalp in naked, concentric circles. The girls quietly exchange glances.

Amelia was always self-conscious about her alopecia. It had slipped out of her life for good, they thought, last spring. She had what she called “sprigs” growing in the previously bald places, and though she didn’t like them, she’d rather that than hairlessness, but now they too were gone.

“That shit’s not normal,” the girls would whisper to each other, in hallways at school, in the backseats of their own mothers’ Jeep Cherokees, when Amelia got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of Pitch Perfect.

“French?” They ask her.

“Dutch, please, actually,” she says.

They section her hair into six strands and begin at her widow-peaked hairline, tugging lightly each pass to ensure each braid is tight and clean. They cover the bald spots quickly and wordlessly with the stretched strands. Amelia’s eyes are closed.

“Thank you,” she says.

They grimace and say you’re welcome. Under, under go the three strands of hair beneath whichever one’s in the middle at the time. When it’s finished, Amelia runs her hands over the two braids, feeling for their twists, their innards.

“Thank you,” she says again. She rolls her shoulders back and stretches her arms, her delts and lats pushing against the shirt fabric in ways theirs don’t.

“Did you start working out or something? You look huge,” one asks.

“I guess.”

“Do you want us to do your makeup?”

“No, that’s okay. It won’t be necessary.” They laugh at her plainness, at her desire to be plain, at how good she is at it. They love and hate her for it.

She glances down at her watch again. “It’s probably time to leave.”

They all agree. They’re glad her hair loss has disappeared beneath their work, hidden once again, and they stand and look from one to another. Their smiles become grins. Amelia’s is the biggest, stretching across the circumference of her face but not quite reaching her eyes. She gathers the glasses from the floor and joins them in standing.

“Could one of you grab those?” She gestures to the empty pizza box and the half-full lemonade jug. They gingerly pick them up, avoiding the grease and stickiness, as Amelia leads them from her room, down the stairs with the railing they can’t use because the wood isn’t sanded down enough, and into the kitchen.

They sit on the floor of the foyer to tie their sneakers. They pull their black Nike socks to the middle of their calves, over their leggings, to protect from the surviving summer ticks, as Amelia taught them. Amelia sets the glasses in a single line on the counter, places the lemonade back in the fridge, and shoves the pizza box down in the trash can, forcing it to fit.

“Where’s your mom? We should thank her for the pizza,” one of them asks, scratching under the strap of her sports bra.

Amelia places her hands flat on the counter and leans towards them, her tricep forming a crab-claw shape on the outer part of her arm.

“She’s out tonight. I’ll pass on the message.”

They nod. She glances over to see if they’re finished. They smile back at her.

“Let’s go.” She moves towards the door, barefoot. It’s her tradition.

They stand and join her. Amelia opens the door with a quick jerk and motions them to exit. She follows out behind them, pulling it shut and pulling again when it gets stuck, like always. The sky is clear, and stars are visible. Amelia always says fall and winter stars are better than spring and summer stars, contrary to what their science teacher believes. They’ve seen it themselves, helping Amelia with night-check at the barn and on nights like these, on hunt nights.

“Maybe it’s the farm stars,” one said once, leaning on the lab table.

Amelia turned from the bunsen burner. “That’s true,” she said. “Our stars gaze back at you.”

They start up the driveway with languid strides. They walk side by side, in no particular pattern, just like all the other years. The space around them is charged with anticipation but they keep it cool. They are cool. They are cool in their black clothes, going to chase boys. Going to yell and taunt boys into the night.

The first time they ever hunted Boy Scouts was a disaster. They had no plan. Didn’t dress properly. Just exploring, seeing if they could find them (they knew they could) and if the Scouts would pay them any mind (they knew they would). They didn’t get very close to the camp then, just observed from the top of the hill. Amelia stood at the front of them, cocked her hip, and shouted, “Heyyyyy Booooyyy Scoutsssss!” The Scouts came running up towards them then, pouring out of their camp, but stopping before they reached the girls, tentative. Defensive khaki ants allergic to women, to girls. The girls ran away from them then, laughing their asses off.

After that, they became more strategic. They’d come at the Scouts through the woods and dress in dark clothes. They poked and prodded them from all sides, tormenting them, chasing them, locking them on their patch of claimed land, of Amelia’s land. They knew the hunt was over when their yells grew into howls and roars and yawps, when they became unrecognizable to themselves. When they became wild things. They’d drop the boys limp from their jaws and return to the house to recount their tales to each other until they fell asleep.

They reach the top of the hill and turn right. They walk up past the barn, seemingly empty, to the entrance of the field, just wide enough to fit a medium sized John Deere through. Amelia pats the post and rail fence, the one that her mother wanted the girls’ help with replacing that summer but clearly didn’t get around to it.

The grass is relatively short from a recent haying and collapses easily underfoot. They slowly form a single file line as they begin their descent into the Scouts’ valley. They follow the edge of the woods that leads to the inlet. They brush the remaining gnats from their faces, taking careful steps around pockets of dried mud. Amelia is the head of their scout-eating snake and she stops them every seventeen steps, her lucky number, to listen for male camaraderie. Their voices are stark against the crickets and occasional sparrows.

They reach the edge of the woods before they bend back in a U shape, in the center of which lies the Scout camp. They crouch down and peek around the corner. The camp is lit by a fire some forty feet into the woods. The two porta potties they bring every year block the line of tents from sight.

Amelia crouches down, weight in her heels. They follow her lead, but collapse cross-legged instead. They steal glances at each other, directing their overt attention to Amelia for instruction. Her gaze remains fixed on the horizon, on the crest of the hill, in the opposite direction of the camp. The girls giggle.

“Are you planning on going in the porta potty again this year, Amelia? I forgot to ask earlier.”

“I don’t think so, no.” Her face hardens.

“It was so awesome, though.”

“You just... disappeared. You went into the porta potty and forty minutes later, you’re back.”

She smiles a tight smile. “It was what it was.” The corner of her right eyelid twitches slightly.

“What happened, again? While you were there?”

Amelia turns her head from them towards the camp, her body rigid against the soft ground.

“Amelia...” they say, nearly whispering, their voices trailing off into the night air. Their held breath hardens around the four bodies, containing them together as one.

Amelia turns back to them. She’s wearing the face she wears when she talks about her dead first pony or her dead first dog or the beloved goat, Matthias. “Just boy things,” she says. “They just did boy things.”

They glance from one to the other. Amelia says nothing.

They break from their stillness and nod, flipping their braids over their shoulders, keeping their eyes on the dirt and away from their friend.

Amelia looks up. “I learned a lot while there,” she clarifies. She stands. She gazes back towards her farm, the top of the barn just visible over the hill. “Let’s put it to good use.” She smiles at that, showing them all her teeth, her incisors white and clean. They nod again.

“You enter through the woods on the left,” she instructs two of them. “You, come in from the right. Grab trophies, whatever you can find. I’ll come from the front.” She spits on the ground, in a patch of dirt. She rubs it around, making mud. She swipes it onto her cheeks, creating two dark lines under her eyes. She sucks the rest off her finger. The girls stare. She laughs quietly.

“This is my makeup.” They laugh politely, awkward and subdued. “Come on, let’s go.”

They stand beside her, beside each other. They pull at their braids and head in the direction given to each of them, into the earth, into the hunt.

࿓

Amelia is not with them when they reach the top of the hill, out of breath and sweaty from tearing through the camp and withdrawing just as quickly. They grin at each other, a knowing smile of success. Their makeup slides down their sweaty faces, pooling just below their jawbones. Flyaways escape from braids as they catch their breaths. One pulls a patch from her pocket, another, a stolen flashlight. One has five bags of marshmallows and a fire starting brick. They rejoice in their spoils before they realize Amelia still has not joined them. They wait five minutes. The smiles fade, and they strain their eyes searching for her running form, her moving body, in the October night.

“She’s probably doing something insane,” one says.

“Definitely,” confirms another.

They brush flecks of dirt from their sleeves, wipe dewy grass from their white sneakers. The screams begin. They sound fake, a trick, perhaps, concocted by the enemy. They listen as more voices join in.

“Oh my god, she's so iconic.” They grin and anxiously wait for her retreat, to hear what she found, what she did.

The screams do not subside. They increase in amount and volume until the entirety of Amelia’s field is screams.

“I think we should go,” one says.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Does she have her phone on her? Should we call her?” They knew she didn’t.

They try her phone and slowly migrate back towards the farm.

“Maybe we should tell her mom? Maybe she’s home by now.”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

“Should one of us stay?”

“I don’t know.” They shift on their feet, continuing their movement to the house. They cannot hear each other anymore. Their own voices climb amongst the boys’. They scream in each other’s faces, mouths open, throats visible in the night. They abandon their spoils on the crest of the hill. They run to the house now. They want to wait for their friend, they do, but they can’t. Once they reach the house, they walk. They say it was just time to come home. Time to go to bed. A fun night of hunting is over, and what a good end the boys gave them, Amelia gave them. Wasn’t that a great prank? So unbelievably funny. They sit at the kitchen table. No one speaks after these assertions are made. They sit, faces wet and throats dry, and they wait for their friend, their brother in arms, to return.

When Amelia appears in the kitchen window, walking slowly up the driveway, she is covered in blood. She opens the kitchen door, giving it a push with the sole of her foot as it sticks in the frame, leaving a bloody footprint on the grainy wood. She doesn’t look at them as she moves to the foyer sink where eggs are washed. They hear her turn the faucet on, the knobs creaking, metal against metal. They hear her running her hands under the water. They hear her humming a song they don’t know. They stare at the doorway to the foyer. They can’t look at each other, they can’t move. They want to cover their ears again and scream, they want to call their moms, they want to leave. The water stops. Amelia re-enters. It is not her hands she cleaned, they see, but her feet, her heels leaving small pinkish pools on the floor behind her. She stands before them in a Boy Scout uniform, now shit-brown with blood, hanging loosely off her body. She says nothing. She looks over them. There is blood in her braids. Her braids are blood. She walks over to the fridge and pulls out the jug of Simply Lemonade. She fills the cups on the counter in even, precise pours. She grabs two glasses in each hand, pinching them by the rim, and brings them over to the table. The girls stare at the table as she sets a cup in front of each of them. Smeared, bloody fingerprints mark the inner and outer edges of the glasses.

Amelia sits down at the head of the long, wooden table. She avoids touching the tablecloth. She takes her cup and raises it towards the ceiling, towards the sky. She searches for their eyes. They stare through the glasses in front of them, at the brown blood quickly oxidizing on the rims of the glasses they drank out of ninety minutes prior. Amelia lowers her glass and chugs the juice. She carefully sets her cup down on the gray tablecloth. She looks back up at them. Her bloody mouth is set in a relieved, toothless smile. The hill-top wind picks up and rattles the weak windows, wind that causes the old farm house to creak and sway. Their bodies jump at the sound of it against the walls.

Amelia’s red fingernails comb through the pointed ends of her knotted braids as they grab for the edges of the sticky, peeling badge number of Troop 230 plastered across her chest. She squeezes the braids, feeling their thickness, their wholeness. Blood and sweat drip onto her lap.

“I think my hair’ll grow back now,” she says.

She folds her hands atop the buttons of the stolen uniform and allows the girls to resume their compliant silences, a collective quiet that strains and breaks against the screams of wind surrounding them.

࿓