Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men - By Regan Wolfrom Page 0,4
them in their place.
I used to do it, too. I was doing it just a few months ago.
I missed high school already.
“This isn’t funny,” I told her. “I can’t see a thing.”
“That’ll wear off, stupid. Gawd.”
“How can you know?”
There was a pause; I know she rolled her eyes right then. “It’s so much easier dealing with men. You muffin-top girls are a waste of time.”
“Is that supposed to be an insult?” I asked. “Like there’s something wrong with not having a spray tan or a silver spoon crammed up my ass?”
“I think my nose is being thrown the biggest insult here. You smell like hog manure. Seriously.”
I stepped towards her and felt my knee slam against a metal stall.
“You’re locked in, stupid,” she said.
“What? Why are you even doing this?”
Another pause, but I didn’t sense an eye roll. “I’m not doing this to you, Amanda. You did this to yourself.”
I heard her hard-heeled boots walking back down the concrete hallway.
Then it was quiet. And still completely black.
I think it was only twenty minutes or so before I started seeing light in my eyes. It was just a lighter shade of dark at first, but then it was like when you close your eyes and you’re facing the sun. Then there were splotches, then blobs, and then I was in a box stall in a well-lit stable, at one end of what seemed almost an endless expanse of empty horse stalls.
The stall was like a prison cell, with iron bars running from the half wall up to the ceiling, and a heavy padlock on the gate.
I’d been shivering from the start in the wet air, still dressed in my basketball gear, and still unsure of what had come after I’d walked into the changeroom after skills. Did the other girls end up here, too? There was no one else in the stable with me, but since I’d never been locked into a horse stall before, I didn’t have much of a frame of reference.
If I was living in a teen sitcom, I’d be the star player on the championship team, kidnapped by ne'er do wells from the other school just before the big game. Of course, I’m only on the team because there are hardly any girls in Dover who play basketball at all, and it’s nice to be “good” at something; we’ve got one girl from Finland who’d never even heard of the game before we signed her up for skills camp. And Sayra’s from Guatemala and has yet to figure out the meaning of man-to-man.
There’s really no reason why anyone would want to kidnap me, some off-white girl from the poorer side of town who doesn’t even know who her father is. I’m like the worst possible candidate for getting a ransom.
She came back after an hour or so, dressed in red jodhpurs and matching boots, along with a man who was dressed somewhere between a farrier and a farm vet. He was carrying a large duffel bag and a long yellow wand.
“See?” the girl said. “I don’t think she’s responded to any of it.”
The man walked up to my stall and put his bag on the floor. And then he stared at me.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
He kept staring. “She’s quite aware of her surroundings,” he said. “Quite aware.”
He took a key from his pocket and opened the padlock on the metal gate.
“Watch her,” the girl said.
The man bent down and unzipped his bag. “I have ways to control you,” the man said to me. He held up the yellow wand. “For beef cattle and crowd control. You’ll be good, won’t you, darling?”
I nodded. I always lie when I’m planning on kicking someone in the balls.
He opened the gate.
I went at him.
He stabbed the wand at my chest. The shock ran through my body, every muscle convulsing. I fell.
“Don’t do that again,” he said without any hint of surprise.
I nodded again. I meant it.
He checked me over, inspecting me more like a prized mare than a person, even checking my teeth like all I really needed was a good deworming.
“Do you know where you are, Amanda?” he asked me.
“In a horse stall,” I said.
“Yes. A horse stall. In Vermont. Only a short drive from Rutland. Do you know where that is?”
“Not really. I’ve never been to Vermont.”
He smiled. “And now you live here. There’s a trail that runs north of here that takes you right over Gorham Bridge. It was built in 1842.”