The Fort (Aric Davis)

“I’m just in here reading.”
    “It’s Tim. Can I come in?”
    “Why?”
    “I need to ask you something.”
    “You’re lucky I’m bored.”
    “So I can come in?”
    “Yes, hurry up.”
    He’d rarely seen the inside of his sister’s room in the past few years, and he took in the sights the same way a traveler voyaging to forbidden lands would. The walls were covered in posters for bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses, and all the people on the posters looked as though they were going insane. Men dressed like women, with big, teased-out, dyed hair. They wore very little clothing—what there was was mostly leather and spiky—and were covered in tattoos. As Tim lived in a household sans MTV, it was a small culture shock.
    “Stop staring at everything,” Becca said from atop her covers. “What do you want?”
    “I want to ask you some questions about what happened the night Molly got taken.”
    “Nope,” said Becca, her eyes returning to the hardcover book she was reading. “I already told Mom, Dad, and the cops everything that happened. Not that it’s any of your business, and not that anything I could tell you is going to help you out of the hole you’ve lied yourself into. Trust me, if you go to Mom with any more stories, you’re just going to get in more trouble.” She turned a page in her book violently. “If that’s even possible.”
    “Maybe I can get in more trouble, maybe I can’t,” said Tim. “But I do know one thing. You could get in way more trouble if I tell Mom what you were really doing.”
    “I was at the movies, duh. Best of luck. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”
    Tim gave her a look that she met and matched. He knew that he needed to get her attention, and do it fast, or he was never going to hear the truth. “Aren’t you even worried about Molly?”
    She threw herself upright against the headboard, the book closed, forgotten on her lap. “That’s a shitty thing to ask me, you little turd. Of course I’m worried about Molly. Not that it’s doing any good. The cops think she’s dead.”
    “I don’t think you are,” said Tim, treading in shark-infested water. “In fact, I think you and your friends are sort of hoping maybe she won’t come back, and then none of you will get busted for what really happened.”
    “You shut up. You can’t just barge in here saying all this awful shit. My friend got kidnapped, and you and your stupid friends got jealous and made up some dumb lie that you immediately got caught telling, and now you want to bring me down to your level.”
    Tim took a deep breath. It was time to go for the kill. Becca was teed up for it. “You aren’t even considering one thing,” he said in a measured tone. “My friends are telling the truth, and so am I. I’m telling you, we saw Molly with a dark-haired guy in the woods. He had a gun to her back. A black gun, and Molly was scared out of her mind.”
    Becca grimaced slightly at that. It was barely there, but Tim saw it.
    “Well, good job, Becca. You and all your friends lied, and now one of your best friends is going to die. That detective might think he caught the real liar, but he’s wrong. You haven’t told anyone the truth.”
    “Shut up, would you?” Her face was paling by the second, and her eyes were sparkling with greasy-looking tears. “Just shut up!”
    “You need to tell the truth, Becca. She’ll die if you don’t.”
    “I can’t ,” she said, backhanding the tears from her eyes and glaring at him. “I can’t. It’s terrible…we’d be in so much trouble. Mom and Dad would, like, I don’t know, disown me, or send me off somewhere.”
    “You guys weren’t at the movies at all, were you?”
    Becca shook her head back and forth, tears streaming down her face. Tim knew that now that she was started she’d tell him the whole thing, she’d be desperate to blurt out every sordid detail of what had really happened Monday night. For better or for worse, Tim was going to get the truth.
    “They threatened me, said that if I told anyone, I was done at the high school. If I was lucky they’d just kick my ass, or maybe even something worse would happen.”
    “Why did they not want Molly found?”
    “Tim, you don’t get it,” said Becca, exasperated with him. “That happened before we went out. All the threats, the don’t tell anyone, ever —all that happened before Molly was gone, before we were even there.”
    “What are you talking