Chapter 10: The Best Friend's Bargain
The knock at the front door was like a gunshot.
Annie froze, her breath catching in her throat. Jake’s eyes snapped open, wide with a sudden, defensive alertness. For three long seconds, they were statues entangled in the dim room, listening.
The knock came again, firmer. “Annie? You home? I brought mint chip!”
Susan. Of course. Annie had completely forgotten their loose, mournful plan for ice cream and a rant session about Clara. That felt like something from another lifetime, not something that happened this same morning.
“Shit,” Jake hissed, disentangling himself from her. He moved quickly, pulling on his discarded jeans with a wince as the denim brushed his injuries. “Get dressed. Get out.”
Annie scrambled off the bed, her own body a chorus of aches. She yanked her clothes on, fingers fumbling with buttons. The intimate, charged silence of the room had shattered, replaced by a frantic, scrambling panic. She could hear Susan trying the door handle.
“Coming!” Annie called out, her voice strangled. She shot a wild look at Jake. “Just… stay here.”
She hurried out, pulling the bedroom door mostly closed behind her, and half-ran down the stairs. She smoothed her hair, took a deep breath that did nothing, and opened the front door.
Susan stood on the porch, holding a melting carton of ice cream and a bright, sympathetic smile. “Hey, you. I figured you could use—” Her smile faltered as she took in Annie’s appearance. Her flushed skin, her too-bright eyes, the general aura of someone who’d just been in a fight. Or something else. “Whoa. You okay? You look… wrecked.”
“Fine. Just… morning stuff. Come in.” Annie stepped back, too quickly.
Susan walked in, her cheerful demeanor clouding with confusion. Her gaze swept the living room, then drifted up the stairs. “Where’s everyone?”
“Dad’s out. Clara’s… somewhere. Jake’s in his room.” Annie’s brain was a humming blank. She needed to get the ice cream, get Susan into the kitchen, keep everything normal and far away from the closed door at the top of the stairs.
But Susan was already moving, drawn by some unknowing curiosity. She started up the steps. “I gotta pee like a racehorse. Be right back.”
“No, the downstairs one’s—” Annie started, but Susan was already halfway up.
Annie followed, a cold dread pooling in her stomach. Susan headed down the short hallway, past the bathroom, her steps slowing as she approached Jake’s door. It was open a crack.
“Susan, don’t—” Annie whispered, but it was too late.
Susan pushed the door open. The scene was plain: the dim room, the rumpled sheets, Jake shirtless by the window, his back a landscape of stark, fresh welts. The tube of cream on the nightstand. The particular, heavy smell in the air.
Susan stopped dead. Her eyes went from Jake’s marked back, to the bed, to Annie standing frozen behind her. Her face cycled through confusion, dawning horror, and a flicker of something else—a sharp, recognizing intrigue. She’d seen Annie punished before. She knew what those marks meant. The context assembled itself with brutal clarity.
“Oh my god,” Susan breathed, not in shock, but in a low, almost voyeuristic understanding.
Jake turned. His expression wasn’t embarrassed. It was something darker, more volatile. The humiliation of the breakfast table, the confusing intensity with Annie, the violation of this new witness—it all coalesced into a blunt, surging anger.
Susan took a step back, the ice cream carton slipping from her hands. It hit the carpet with a dull, wet thud. “I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
She turned to flee. Jake moved faster.
He crossed the room in two strides and caught her wrist. His grip was iron. “You’ve been watching,” he growled. The words weren’t a question. They were an accusation and a conclusion. He’d seen her looks before, the way her eyes would linger a second too long when Annie walked stiffly after a session in the shed. The pretended comfort that edged into fascination.
Susan tried to pull away. “Jake, let go. I’m leaving.”
“You were always right there, weren’t you?” he said, his voice low and rough. He yanked her, not toward the door, but toward the bed. “With your ice cream and your sympathy. Watching. Getting a little thrill from it.”
“Stop it!” Susan’s fear was real now, sharp and metallic.
“You don’t get to watch and then run.” The logic in his head was twisted, airtight, born from his mother’s lessons on accountability. “If you’re part of the audience, you’re part of the protocol. Now you’ll participate.”
He threw her onto the mattress. She landed with a gasp, scrambling to get up, but he was already there, a knee on the bed, blocking her way. He looked at Annie, who stood in the doorway, her heart hammering against her ribs. His eyes held a challenge, a passing of the terrible baton.
“She knows,” Jake said to Annie. “She’s always known. She likes it.”
Annie looked at Susan—her best friend, wide-eyed and terrified on Jake’s rumpled sheets. She thought of all the times Susan had patted her shoulder, her touch lingering, her questions a little too specific about the sting, the sound, the aftermath. That hidden, shameful curiosity they’d never named.
A cold, wicked clarity settled over Annie. This was power. Not the confused, angry coupling she and Jake had just shared, but a deliberate, directing force. She could stop it. She could scream for her father, for Clara. She could be the good friend.
Instead, she stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind her. The click was soft, final.
She walked to the nightstand, her movements deliberate. She picked up the heavy, polished wood hairbrush. It was still warm from Jake’s skin, from her own hand earlier. She weighed it in her palm.
Susan watched her, a betrayal dawning in her eyes. “Annie? What are you doing?”
Annie didn’t answer. She looked at Jake. “Hold her.”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face, then a grim acceptance. He moved, pinning Susan face-down on the bed, his hands clamping on her wrists. Susan bucked, a muffled cry against the comforter.
Annie sat on the edge of the mattress, beside Susan’s hip. She tugged at the waistband of Susan’s jeans, pulling them and her underwear down in a single, efficient motion. Susan flinched, a fresh sob catching in her throat.
“You wanted to see what it was like,” Annie said, her voice eerily calm. It wasn’t her voice. It was an echo of Clara’s instructive tone, of Jake’s grim determination. It was a voice she’d learned in this house. “Now you’ll know.”
The hairbrush came down with a solid, resonant crack. It was a different sound on Susan’s skin—softer, somehow, but no less severe.
Susan screamed, a raw, shocked sound.
Annie brought it down again. And again. She found the same rhythm Jake had used on her at the table. Measured. Intentional. Each stroke painted a fierce red rectangle on Susan’s pale skin. Susan’s screams dissolved into frantic, gulping tears, her body jerking against Jake’s immovable hold.
Annie lost count. She wasn’t counting for Clara. She was counting for herself. For every secret, curious glance. For the thrill her friend had stolen from her pain. For the awful, intoxicating feeling of being the one holding the brush, instead of the one waiting for it to fall.
Her arm ached. The room filled with the sounds of crying, of impact, of harsh breathing.
Finally, she stopped. The silence was heavy, broken only by Susan’s ragged weeping. Annie dropped the brush on the bed. She looked at her friend’s blazing, tear-streaked skin, then at Jake. His eyes were on her, dark with something like awe and revulsion.
“Now you know,” Annie said quietly, to both of them.
She stood up, her legs unsteady. She walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the bright, normal hallway. She pulled the door shut behind her, leaving Jake and Susan in the dim, perfumed chaos of the room.
Leaning against the wall, she listened to the muffled cries. Her own breath was shallow. The adrenaline was receding, leaving a hollow, echoing chill in its place. Downstairs, the front door was still open, a square of sunlight hitting the hallway floor. The mint chip ice cream was a greasy, green puddle on Jake’s carpet.
From the kitchen, she heard the back door open and shut. Clara’s crisp footsteps on the tile. “Annie? Is someone here?”
Annie pushed herself off the wall. She walked to the top of the stairs, looking down at her stepmother’s upturned, questioning face. “Just Susan,” Annie said, her voice remarkably even. “She had to leave. Suddenly.”