Deviant

Chapter 11

Rowen

“Don’t make any plans tonight since I’ll need you to pick me up from work,” my father states with a cold tone.

“Not a problem,” I reply, keeping my face down, staring at the cereal bowl to prevent eye contact. Not that he can see me as he’s standing by the kitchen sink, sipping his morning coffee while staring at the front yard through the window. “But if you want to take the car, I don’t mind walking into town for work.”

“You keep the car. I don’t want you walking around on your own this close to the Harvest Festival. It’s not safe.”

I’m always on my own, but I keep that comment to myself.

“Okay. I’ll be there at midnight then.”

“Thank you,” is his curt response, making my shoulders slump.

Like most of our conversations, my father limits his interactions with me to the bare minimum.

It wasn’t always like this.

Dad and I used to have a great relationship. The best, even. I could confide in him with everything that was happening in my life. He never once judged or reprimanded me for anything, always telling me how proud he was to have me as his daughter.

That all changed last year.

We both changed after what happened, and not for the better.

I’m about to ask if he also needs me to drive him to work when I hear a car honk outside.

“That’s Bobby. I’m off to city hall to review the festival’s security measures with Mayor Davenport again. We can’t be too careful,” he says before placing his empty mug in the sink.

He then picks up his sheriff’s blazer off the back of the kitchen chair and rushes to put it on, eager to head out and start his day without me.

“Dad?” I call out before he’s left the room.

His body immediately tenses at the sound of my voice calling him ‘Dad.’ It’s like the word has lost all its meaning to him, and if he had it his way, he’d never hear it come out of my mouth again.

“What?” he replies with that same arctic tone I’ve come to detest, not bothering to turn around to look at me.

“Never mind. Have a good day,” I mumble defeatedly.

Even though he hears the sadness in my voice, he doesn’t stick around to comfort me in any way, preferring to leave me to wallow in my guilt alone.

I rise from my seat and take my half-finished cereal bowl to the sink, watching my father approach the cruiser with Bobby at the wheel. Bobby waves at me from inside the car, but my father quickly blocks his view, preventing him from seeing me wave back. A few seconds later, they drive off into town while I remain stuck in this house with only my guilt-ridden memories to keep me company.

And boy, do they love to torment me.

Usually, I try to block them out, knowing that if I let them in, I won’t be able to fake that everything is peachy in my world. But ever since I found Nora’s little scribble on the margin of that ledger, I can’t seem to keep them at bay.

And now that the floodgates to my memories have been opened, the past keeps flushing in.

Especially the one memory that ended up costing me the two people I loved most in this world.

“Are you lost, Rowen?” Bobby teases when he sees me walking into the station. “I thought your dad was only coming tonight for the graveyard shift.”

“He is,” I quickly explain. “He just left his thermos here yesterday, and I need it if he wants to have a home-cooked meal tonight.”

“Good thinking. I’ve seen your dad live off of black coffee and little else more nights than I can count.” Bobby laughs.

“My point exactly. Coffee hardly constitutes a meal.” I force a smile. “Someone needs to look after him since he can’t be bothered with it.”

Bobby’s eyes soften at me before placing his hand on my shoulder.

“I hope that my little Brittany will be just as devoted to her old man as you are to yours when she grows up to be your age. Hank sure got lucky in the daughter department.” I continue to smile nervously, uncomfortable about lying to him when he’s all full of compliments today. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he says, tilting his head toward my father’s office. “Give me a shout if you need anything.”

“Will do,” I reply with a cheerful high-pitched squeak.

Tone it down, Roe. Or you’ll get caught for sure.

I wait for Bobby to return to his desk and make sure he’s occupied himself with something else before I head to my father’s office. Though I see my father’s thermos sitting pretty on his desk, I don’t go inside to grab it.

My father forgetting his thermos is nothing new. It’s the reason why I have three others at home whenever he forgets them at work. But that’s not why I’m here—Nora is.

I steal one last glance behind me to ensure that no one is paying attention to me before I slip down the narrow corridor leading to the evidence room.

My heart jackhammers in my chest as I grab the keychain I stole from my father and locate the key labeled ‘evidence room’. After working graveyard shifts all week, I found it surprisingly easy to steal his keys since he slept soundly throughout the entire endeavor. He’ll be out like a light until dinner time, so I’ll have plenty of time to do what I need to and slip his keychain back into his pocket without him being none the wiser.

Of course, if my father were to wake up and catch me in the act, I’d think he might have found it in his heart to forgive me for going through his stuff.

However, if he knew that my intention was to go into the evidence room to steal drugs, I doubt he’d be as forgiving.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

I have to stop Nora before she does something she will regret.

At first, I thought about getting her drunk to the point of passing out, but then I quickly remembered why that wouldn’t work. Not only would Nora read right through my intention and realize what my end game was, but she could also drink me under the table. I’d pass out long before she ever would.

So, since alcohol was out, I had to come up with a more creative way to keep her from her objective. Some Rohypnol should do the trick of knocking her out and preventing her from going anywhere tonight.

Roofing my best friend definitely falls on the gray side of morality. If I had more time, I might have been able to think of another solution. Unfortunately for me, time is something I don’t have—hence the Rohypnol.

I use the key to open the door and step into the evidence room. My eyes and hands sweep across the various shelves inside, encountering items I would never have imagined being stored in plastic bags. Bloody clothes, guns, knives, and other weapons line the shelves, casting a sinister aura over the entire room.

But I don’t want a weapon.

I want drugs.

And if Rohypnol isn’t an option, then I’m sure any would do in a pinch.

There has to be some in here.

There just has to be.

With the Harvest Festival approaching, I have no doubt that my father and his deputies have confiscated a wide range of drugs. Blackwater Falls is plagued by addiction, as many members of our community have chosen to escape the harsh realities that come with living in this town by using meth, fentanyl, heroin, and a variety of other illegal substances.

I know there are plenty of people who look down on these poor souls, thinking their existence should be eradicated from our town. But if no one in Blackwater Falls has ever dared to lift a finger to end The Scourge once and for all, then what moral high ground does anyone have to judge on how a person deals with such a thing hanging over their heads?

It’s not like they are an eyesore in our town since most prefer to live at the border, living off whatever the forest can provide.

Nora took me there once when we were kids just to watch them from afar. I’m not sure what the purpose of the visit was, but I know it scared me half to death. All those people… looking completely lost in their despair… it was heartbreaking.

Nora, however, had a different reaction.

She got angry.

“It’s not fair. They get to escape while everyone else has to deal and suffer.”

At the time, I knew where her resentment was really coming from. Elias had just turned eighteen and was old enough to qualify for the games.

By some ill stroke of luck, we never saw anyone that suffered from addiction ever get picked for the Harvest Dozen. It was always the smartest and strongest of us that seemed to get selected. And to us, there wasn’t anyone that fit that bill quite like Elias Larsen. He just oozed confidence and strength.

I spent many afternoons in the Larsen’s home backyard, just watching him chop wood for the winter without even breaking a sweat.

Not only that, but Elias also had brains. He skipped two years in high school and graduated early at only sixteen.

However, it wasn’t any of those attributes that fascinated me. What really intrigued me was how he went through life with no worries or concerns, even with the threat of death staring him in the face. Call it a schoolgirl crush, but even at thirteen, I knew my best friend’s older brother was one of a kind.

But when Elias didn’t get picked for the Harvest Dozen that year or the following one, Nora started to breathe easier, whereas the rest of us became suspicious of her brother instead.

Maybe something was wrong with Elias after all. I mean, there must have been a reason for him not to get picked.

Over the years, we witnessed men and boys being summoned who, compared to Elias, were far weaker and much less intelligent. At the time, rumors started to spread that he knew a secret that the rest of the town didn’t—one that enabled him to be spared from the games.

I, myself, spent endless hours wondering if the rumors were true or not.

Not that I wanted Elias to be chosen.

I liked Elias.

I mean… I really liked Elias, even if he never spared me so much as a second glance.

He embodied something I always wanted to be.

Like Nora, he was fearless.

Their brother, Aidan, not so much. Sure, he’s friendly and sweet when he wants to be, but those traits are of little use in a town like Blackwater Falls.

I should know.

Since those are the traits people think of when they think of me, too.

When Nora called me a “good girl” yesterday at the cemetery, she knew exactly which nerve she was hitting. She was well aware that after my mother’s death, I became so fearful of my own shadow that I felt the need to do everything perfectly. I didn’t dare break a rule or color outside the lines, always careful not to upset anyone for fear of the repercussions. I lead the most boring life, thinking that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough for no one to really pay any attention to me. And by no one, I mean whoever is behind the selection process for The Scourge.

I didn’t want to have the same fate as my mother. And for Nora to use that against me, it felt like a sucker punch to the stomach.

“Come on, Rowen. Snap out of it. Now is not the time to throw yourself a pity party,” I chastise, forcing myself to pull all my focus back on my objective instead of dwelling on things that I can’t control.

After checking online that the drug is most potent in liquid form, I continue to scan the small room, searching for a bottle that might resemble something like that. But for the life of me, I can’t seem to find anything similar lying around here.

Time is ticking.

I’m going get caught if I don’t hurry up.

“Come on, come on, come on. Where are you?” I mumble under my breath.

And then I see it. Right at the back of the evidence room, standing stoutly against the wall, is a locker with a sturdy grid frame of iron bars that allows a glimpse into its shadowy confinements while a heavy padlock glints ominously at the front.

Typical of my father—keeping the guns out for anyone to take, but the drugs under lock and key.

With the keychain at hand, I try on almost every key, desperation starting to wreak havoc on my nerves, thinking that perhaps he keeps this locker’s key somewhere else. But just as I’m about to give up, the lock clicks open. I let out a sigh of relief and open the door, finding more drugs than I’ve ever seen in my entire life—and all labeled, no less. Though, to be fair, the only drug I was ever exposed to was a joint that Aidan persuaded me to smoke before losing my virginity to him.

“It will relax you. Trust me.”

It didn’t.

All it did was make me paranoid that someone was listening to us doing it for the first time.

It made the whole experience way more awkward and uncomfortable than it had to be.

I push Aidan out of my mind and focus on the task at hand. Having prepared myself beforehand, I pull a little bottle from my backpack and start pouring the odorless liquid into it. I fill it to the brim to ensure I have enough and then seal it shut, carefully placing it into my bag.

Just as I’m about to close the locker, a little plastic bag with pink pills in it catches my eye. I’m pretty sure they’re ecstasy pills, but the label on it is too smudged to be sure. I strain my eyes and make out the letter E at the start of it.

Good enough.

“If the Rohypnol doesn’t work, it’s only smart to have a backup plan,” I mutter softly to myself as I store two pills in my pocket.

With the drugs carefully stored away, I slowly leave the evidence room and rush over to my father’s office in a nick of time.

“Rowen? I’m surprised you’re still here. I was sure you’d left ages ago,” Bobby says behind me.

With my back turned to him, I pick up the photograph frame of my mother that my father always keeps on his desk.

“Sorry. I just needed a minute,” I explain, making a show of waving the frame in my hand before placing it back in its proper spot.

“You look like her, you know?” Bobby says, with a sad taint to his voice. “I’m sure Hank sees it too. How much you look like Sarah when she was your age.”

I swallow dryly because I didn’t expect to get so emotional with Bobby’s remark despite wanting to get him off my scent.

“In five years, I will be older than my mother was at the time The Scourge took her from us.That is assuming I don’t get chosen first.”

Bobby’s eyes close as if the mere idea of that happening pains him.

“That would fucking kill your old man. Don’t even think about such a thing. It does no one any good.”

“Easier said than done,” I smile meekly at him. “This town can’t think of anything else this close to the Harvest Festival. It shouldn’t surprise you that is all I can think about either.”

Thanks to Nora, it’s all I think about twenty-four-seven lately.

“Now, don’t you fret about that,” Bobby says, trying to comfort me. “I very much doubt you’ll get picked. They don’t want good girls like you. Trust me.”

And there it is.

Good girls don’t get picked.

Does that mean that my mother wasn’t good?

If so, does that mean this town is full of liars then?

Because everyone who has ever talked to me about my mother always paints her as some kind of saint. Like she was the very heart of Blackwater Falls.

So which is it?

Was she good or not?

Am I truly made to believe that every girl or woman who was ever selected for the Harvest Dozen was somehow bad?

Is that what he’s trying to imply?

Is that what this fucking town wants me to believe?

Because I’ve grown tired of it.

Tired of being referred to as good.

“Anyway, do you have what you came for?” Bobby asks, his attention now split back outside to the bullpen.

“Yep. I got what I came for,” I reply, stuffing the thermos into my backpack.

“Good to hear. Now, I wouldn’t say no to some of your famous lasagna if you make more of it. Doing a double shift tonight, so I need all the nutrients I can get.”

“Sure. I’ll make you a portion.” I smile, hiding the need to get out of here. My backpack suddenly feels like it weighs a ton with the Rohypnol bottle inside as I bypass Bobby out of my father’s office and into the bullpen.

“Like I said. I hope my daughter is half as good to me as you are to Hank. You really are a good girl.”

My heart sinks at his supposed words of praise.

Good girl. Always the good girl. God, how I hate that term.

When did subservient, afraid, and fearful become synonymous with being good?

Nora is good. She would risk her life for the people she loves. That is good.

Me? I’m not good. Not really. Because if I were, I’d let Nora try and save her mother in any way she deemed possible. No. I’m not good at all.

What I really am is damaged goods. Because I would rather Nora’s mom live out whatever remaining years she has left in pain than risk losing Nora to The Scourge.

Tell me again how good I am now, Bobby?

I dare you.

Still, I smile like the fucking good girl they all believe me to be and walk out of the sheriff’s station with a bottle of Rohypnol and two ecstasy pills. Because that’s what fucking good girls do, right?

Right.

Once I’m behind the wheel of my car, I groan in both aggravation and frustration.

It doesn’t matter, Rowen.

None of it matters.

Only saving Nora matters.

With the first step of my plan done, now the second part commences.

The simpler one, hopefully.

All I have to do is drop the Rohypnol in her drink, and Nora will, in fact, sleep over my house just like she told everyone she would as her alibi.

Tomorrow morning when she wakes up and realizes she missed her chance to be selected for the Harvest Dozen, she’ll be pissed for sure.

She’ll probably accuse me of being a shitty friend.

She’ll shout and cry and say all sorts of mean things to hurt me.

She might even say that we’re no longer best friends and that she’ll never want to see me again.

But at least she’ll be alive.

The rest is just noise.