The Barn Run - Part 7

“We finish,” Stephi said. “Same as always—we finish.”

When ‘Death will come’ for turning back, the option of living but being mauled to shreds didn’t seem much better, but we carried on. Slower, quieter. At the corner of the barn, when we veered right and along the side of the house, the dog started barking more insistently, to remind us we shouldn’t be there.

“Wall!” Stephi said, and we hopped on and off a knee high wall, and weaved through a row of what looked like square planters. The dog hadn’t stopped, and now it was scratching at a door somewhere, getting frantic with the barking.

Jojo looked this way and that, his hands waving ‘no’. “Fuck this,” he said. “Nobody mentioned dogs.” He backed towards the dark side of the barn.

“You can’t!” Stephi told him. “You have to finish. You can’t turn back.”

“No?” he said, “Just watch me, Steph,” and he jogged away, looking back to us, like we should follow, like he wasn’t sure he should go it alone.

We’d stopped running again. “Well?” Stephi said, and it was my call.

Maybe Jojo was right. Fuck the kiddy tales—if they let the dog out, how would I feel spending the rest of my life looking at the scars on Stephi’s face where the dog ripped her open? The scars I let her get. The scars no amount of make-up or surgery could cover up. Jojo, he’d be just fine. He’d be saying if we’d gone back there and then, she’d still be as pretty as she ever was.

“We’re going back,” I said. “It’s over.”

Her shoulders slumped the way they had when I told her I had homework and could hang out with her. “It’s not something we get a choice about,” she said. “With you, or without you, I’m finishing.”

And she would.

There are times people you care for do things which are stupid and might even be the last thing they do, but because you care for them, you know you have to stand with them every inch of the way.

“This is dumb,” I told her, and she nodded.

“So?”

“So, what’re we waiting for? Let’s finish together.”