Sunbound

☀ There's No "I" in "Team," But There's a "YOU" in "Fuck You"

C H A P T E R   10: There's No "I" in "Team," But There's a "YOU" in "Fuck You"

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    As Scout-Juliet Compton sweat a tidal wave and lost feeling in her calves, she wracked her brain excruciatingly hard to discover how every event that had taken place in her life, from birth to her mother leaving to Antonio cheating on her, lead up to this. This as in dragging a two-hundred pound, middle-aged man wreaking of booze, gasoline and piss across a large portion of Santan Valley, Arizona on a day of record-breaking heat... as a favor for Mandy Morgan. Before that day, just the thought of doing Mandy a favor was enough to send Scout into cardiac arrest. Now, however, as she dragged the unconscious pervert by his left foot, and Mandy dragged him by his right, with their shoulders often touching in such a way that made Scout want to vomit at the proximity of herself to Mandy, she wondered if she had died and this was her own, personal Hell.

    But before she got to analyzing her motherless childhood and the toll Mandy's emotional abuse took on her psyche, she decided she would start at the events of that morning and how they all culminated into one of the worst days of her life...

    "Skylar's a prick, a douchebag, and I hate him."

    Scout repeated that so many times that it became her mantra. Although, by definition, mantras were supposed to aid in meditation, but the more Scout thought about it, the more tense she became. By the fourteenth repetition, her muscles were as stiff as boards and she thought she would be stuck in that bathtub for the rest of her life.

    "Your feet are in my face, and they smell weird, but I still love you," Bo chuckled from the other end of the tub.

    Scout sighed, exhaling slowly. The only response she could fathom speaking was, "Skylar's a prick, a douchebag, and I hate him." But then she thought of something even better: She vacantly muttered, "I just wanna die," into the dust motes dancing in the sunlight that immersed the bathroom.

    "Come on, SJ," Bo whined, slapping Scout's denim-covered thigh, "bathtub bonding always makes us feel better."

    Before that day, this was undoubtedly certain: Whenever Santan Single-Stop ran out of Ben & Jerry's and Lifetime was not airing Titanic, Scout and Bo could lay at opposite ends of Georgia Morgan's bathtub and talk out their problems until they reached some life-affirming catharsis. Today, however, there was no Ben & Jerry's, Titanic was not scheduled in the TV guide, and the bathtub only made Scout want to plunge underwater until she felt her lungs sting and her eyes pop out of their sockets.

    "I've never asked for much," Scout said all of a sudden. She did not think that would help her in reaching the catharsis, but at least it would shut Bo up... although that was not a guarantee. "All I've ever wanted was to get the hell out of Santan Valley. But now look!"

    "I'm lookin', don't know what I'm lookin' at, but I'm lookin'." Bo propped her feet up on the side of the tub and let Scout's depression fester like a mold saturating every molecule of air in the confined bathroom.