The Riptide Project

ᴛʜʀᴇᴇ

Kerry is in the kitchen when I arrive at my apartment. She glances up from her laptop and pulls her headphones off when she sees me.

"Hailee, dear. Why were you out so late? You'll catch your death of the cold!" I come home at the same time every day, and she says the same thing every day. She knows where I hang out after school, though not through any choice of mine. 

Hanging out at the Shack has been an after-school ritual of mine ever since Dad first took me there. The first few times I got back to the apartment past dark, Kerry scolded me for being late, announcing that it was unacceptable behaviour and just so dangerous for a young girl like you to be out and about at this hour! She set a curfew of nine o'clock, but after I broke it a week straight she finally gave up. Then one day she paid a classmate of mine to shadow me after school. I caught him trying to sneak through the fence at the Shack and sent him home with a bloody nose.

Kerry, being Kerry, had a freakout when that happened. First she said I was grounded for hurting an innocent boy. Then: "You hang out at a gun range? With grown up men?" She once again tried to enforce curfew, but I kind of beat her down—figuratively, of course, not literally—and she gave up trying to get me to hang out at the mall with "regular girls."

She brought it up with my dad once when he was home. "It's unladylike for her to be hanging out with those brutes," she told him. "All they do is drink and curse and shoot things. And it's dangerous on top of that."

"She can take care of herself," my dad had replied. "That's what it's all about, isn't it?" Then they went into his bedroom and I didn't hear anything after that.

"I made soup," she says now, closing the lid of her laptop, but not before I catch a glimpse of a bare-chested man. "It should still be warm."

"Thanks K." Kerry can be a bit of a flake, but I love her. She does more than the deal with Dad calls for, like making soup on a cold day or taking me for a Slurpee on the hottest day of summer. She's like the mom I never had.

~

I try to sleep. But I can't.

After having three bowls of Kerry's soup, I was exhausted for some reason so I said goodnight to Kerry and went to get washed up. At midnight I climbed into bed.

After going pee for the third time I crawl back under the covers and lie there, eyes wide open. Moonlight filters through a window beside my bed, casting a soft glow into my room.

My attention moves to the ceiling. I can just make out the little cracks running across the plaster. They're like a map. Rivers and roads running in one direction, and then splitting off into another. 

I was fascinated with maps with I was little. Especially treasure maps. It's why I loved Dora so much as a kid. Every time I got in the car with Dad I would ask him to show me the road map, and then I'd pore over it and give him directions to whatever destination we were heading off to. Kind of ironic that I'm such a terrible navigator now. Then again, Dad always ignored my directions, turning left when I said right.

A tapping sound has me jolting upright. I sit, ramrod straight, trying to still my breathing. I listen carefully. It seemed like a knock of some sort. Is someone at the door? But that's crazy. It's two in the morning.

I've just about convinced myself it's nothing, that either I imagined it or there's just some builder downstairs who got an idea and can't wait until morning, but then the noise comes again. Maybe I'm just psyched out, but it seems like it's closer this time.

Then a face appears in the window. I shoot away from the wall and take a tumble off the side of my bed. I've never been a screamer, but it takes all my self control to stifle the shriek rising in my throat.

Who the heck is that? 

The moon gives the person's face an eerie glow, but I can't make out any of their features. I realize a second later that that's because whoever it is is wearing a mask.

This is where my fighting skills might come in handy. I took Taekwondo for ten years, but then I quit because my opponents sucked. 

But what am I supposed to do? The guy is outside. And anyways what would I do, break the window? Maybe it's just some crazy graffiti artist. I might get arrested for knocking him off the fire escape landing that he's on. He might break his neck and be paralyzed.

My dilemma is solved when the lower half of the window pops open and the stranger sticks his head in. 

"Don't hurt me, okay?" he says. His voice is deep, so deep that I almost can't tell what he's saying. "I'm just here to help." Definitely a man. I hope.

I'm off my butt now, on the balls of my feet, fists clenched by my side. But I don't move. Not yet.

He takes this as permission to come in. Which is quite a process, as the open portion of the window is about the size of two cafeteria trays side by side, while this guy is so massive he's basically a bear.

Then I notice what he has in his arms. A gun. A big one. An AK-47?

My foot kicks out. Unfortunately, he's so tall and I'm so short that my foot doesn't meet its target—his head—and I'm thrown off balance. Bear lets go of the gun with one hand and uses it to grab my ankle. But instead of throwing me to the ground or flipping me over his shoulder he lowers it slowly and then nudges me in the back. Off balance, I can't stop my forward momentum and I fall forward onto my bed.

As I struggle, I curse myself. All these years of training, and for nothing. I mess up on my first move. 

A hand clamps over my mouth. I try to bite him. My teeth get one finger, and a moment later his hand is removed but then he's shoving my face further into the mattress.

"I'm just here to help," Bear says again. "I'm not here to hurt you. I promise. There are other people here to do that."

I ignore the last part. This guy's clearly out of his mind. Who breaks into a teenager's apartment, dressed in all-black with an AK-47, and then claims that they're just here to help? 

He releases the pressure on my head and I jerk up, glaring at him. "I don't need your help or protection or whatever it is you're offering," I growl.

That's when my door explodes.