against the starless sky. A dark spot clouded over her waist, spilling out like hot lava against her
white shirt. It grew exponentially as I drew nearer to her. It felt like an eternity, but I finally got close
enough to press my palm against the area.
“Sylvie, look at me.” Her face was white, but she was still breathing. It gave me hope. “Please,
open your eyes.”
She blinked them open, looking confused. “Tex?”
I breathed a sigh of relief, stroking her hair with one hand while firmly pressing her side. “Listen
to me. You’re going to be okay. Do you understand? You’ve been shot, but you’re going to make it.”
“It hurts.”
“I know, baby. I know, but you are a brave girl and you’re going to be fine.” I questioned how
my words sounded strong when I was so doubtful. The warm, sticky blood oozing from her wound
seeped through my fingers, no matter how hard I pressed. There was so much of it. I stared at her
face, so frail and haunting. An indentation marred the flesh of her cheek. Oh, my God! That bastard
had bitten her.
“I’m cold.” Her eyes fluttered. I laid my arm across her body in an effort to warm her.
“No, do not close your eyes. Listen to me. You have to fight. You have to survive. Promise me
you will.” I tilted her face toward me.
“Don’t leave.”
My own tears salted the wound on my cheek causing it to burn my skin. The blood from the gash
in my head covered my eyes as if trying to blind me from her. I couldn’t let her see me weak when I
needed her to be strong. “I promise I won’t. Don’t leave me. I need you. I love you, Sylvie Cranston. I
love you so much. You have to fight for me. Fight for us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, closing her eyes. I knew what it meant. She was saying goodbye.
“No!”
Her eyes fluttered and finally opened. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Listen up, girl. This is not our
ending! Do you understand?” I head the crunch of footsteps. “Here,” I called out. “We’re here.”
“Cal, is that you?” Sheriff Smalley called.
“Yes. Two ran into the woods, but we’re here. She needs medical attention. She’s been shot, but
she’s okay.” I feigned a weak smile. “You’re okay, right? Just tell me you’ll be okay, baby. Say it. I
need to hear it.”
“’K-Kay,” she whispered, as her lips started chattering. I kissed them, softly.
Several officers ran into the woods. Paramedics surrounded us. They pulled me away from her.
“I can’t let go. She’ll bleed out,” I screamed.
“We have her,” one of them replied.
“She’s been shot.”
“So have you.”
Then I couldn’t see her again until we were both on stretchers. I tried to get out, but strong hands
pushed me back onto it. “I need to go with her,” I demanded when they placed me in another
ambulance.
“You can’t, Cal. There’s only one bed in each. You need to calm down and let us do our jobs.”
“No, I have to. I promised I wouldn’t leave her.” I tried getting up again, but the straps belted me
in. I turned my head toward the other stretcher where she lay. “Sylvie, listen to me. I’ll see you soon.
Stay awake. I love you. I need you. Do not die on me. Do you hear me, girl? Do you?”
I felt the pinch of a needle followed by darkness. I still heard the words of my mantra, but I
wasn’t sure if I was saying them aloud anymore.
* * * *
I woke up in the hospital room. My leg was bandaged, but it didn’t hurt. My face was free of
blood but it did hurt, especially my head, which felt like it was lodged in a vice grip. My mother was
sitting in a chair next to me. She smiled, but the telltale streak of tears and her tired face told me she’d
spent many hours crying.
“Momma?” I said, blinking my eyes open.
“Cal, oh, sweetheart. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you. I was praying so
hard.” I stared down at my leg and back up at her. She cleared her throat. “You’ve been shot in the
leg. They found several stray bullets where you were. Praise the Lord, they missed you. There’s no
paralysis. You can walk. You may not be able to run for a while, but you can walk, son.”
I was only half listening to her. My mind was recalling the events like some horrible nightmare I
wanted to forget. “Sylvie?” I asked.
“You need to worry about getting healthy now.”
“Sylvie?” I said in a louder voice. My hands were trembling.
“Cal, you need to calm down.” She tousled my hair and practically begged me with her eyes not
to ask again.
“Sylvie?” I screamed.
My mother shook her head. “She didn’t make it. I’m sorry, son. She lost too much blood.”
“No!”
“Cal, you have to be calm.”
I sat up, but it felt like my brain fell apart with the movement. I tried to shift my legs off the bed.
“She’s alive. She promised me. Where is she? I need to see her.”
“You can’t,” my mother said.
Two nurses came in. My father had taught me long ago that hitting a woman was at the top of the
deadly sins list, so I tried to punch the male nurse, but I couldn’t even manage to connect my fist. They
laid me back on the bed as if I was a child, fastening cuffs to my wrists. “I know she’s fine. She
wouldn’t leave me.”
“Cal, I’m so sorry,” my mother said. The pinch of a needle pricked my arm and drowsiness set
in.
“Momma, I love her,” I croaked, trying to fight against closing my eyes, but it was too strong for
me. The darkness was coming for me, claiming me for membership.
“I know you did, son.”
* * * *
I spent several days at the hospital like that. I kept insisting she was alive. They kept telling me
she was dead until I became so hysterical they shot me up with another needle.
The police and even the FBI came to talk to me. They asked me a million questions. I couldn’t
tell them much. When it came time for my questions, they refused to answer. I begged so much that
they gave me another damn shot to put me out.
It was when the third psychologist came in to analyze me that I realized my leg was healed, but
they wouldn’t let me go home until I admitted she was dead. That was what I did. After all, I couldn’t
very well start my search for her laid up in the hospital.
Sylvie and her father were cremated. Of course they were. There was no evidence of her death,
no body to view. There was no funeral either. They had no family in Prairie Marsh, and apparently no
family to speak of, except Uncle Joe. My mother said it wasn’t right and insisted on having a
memorial for them at our house. I think she did it as much for me as for Sylvie. She wanted me to have
some kind of closure, but it provided no relief. How could you bury a girl who wasn’t dead?
I hobbled around with a cane like an old man. The physical therapy helped, but I still limped.
My football career was over before it had ever started. People said that was part of the reason I was
acting so crazy. They were fools. I didn’t even care about that.
I preferred to sit in silence. Everyone greeted me with wincing faces or blatant pity. I didn’t
want any of it. What I really wanted was to run into the woods and scream. Instead, I sat in the living
room with my arms crossed, glaring when mourners went on about what a wonderful girl she’d been.
How tragic her death was. What a bunch of hypocrites. They’d never even known her, choosing to
spread malicious gossip instead of embracing the smart, sweet, funny girl I’d grown to love.
Wendy Watson came over and put her arm around me. “I think you need a friend right now.”
“Get the fuck away from me,” I said. She did.
I spotted Sheriff Smalley and limped my way over to him.
“Hi, Cal, how are you?” he asked cautiously.
“Don’t you have a duty to find the truth? Don’t you care that there’s a cover-up in our town?”
“I told you, son. It’s not our investigation.”
“I am not your son,” I spat.
He flinched at my words. I felt the slight hindrance of guilt, because he was a good man, but I
wanted him to do his fucking job. “The FBI took it over. I don’t know anything. They’re saying it was
random.”
“There was nothing random about the shit that happened that night. They knew her name. She
knew them.”
“I know you want to get justice for her.”
“No, you’re wrong. First and foremost, I want to find her, Sheriff. I want to make sure she is
okay and if she’s not, I want to help her recover. Once I do that, I’ll worry about beating down those
assholes who did this. Right now, her safety is my priority. Why isn’t it yours?”
“Cal, maybe you can talk to the agent assigned to her case?”
“I call him twenty times a day. He won’t return my messages anymore.”
“Well, I would take that as a sign to stop calling. Let them do their jobs.”
I gave up. The man was no use to me.
That was when good old Uncle Joe strolled through the door. He talked to my mother for a
while, thanking her for the memorial. He even hugged her.
I waited until he was alone to approach him. “Well, well, what do you know, Uncle Joe?”
“Hello, Cal,” he replied, with a sigh. “I know you’ve been asking a lot of questions, but—”
“Are you her mother’s brother or father’s brother, Joe?”
“Father’s,” he said tightly.
“Funny, because you don’t look like either of them.”
“I was adopted.”
“That’s convenient. You know she never talked about you. Where’s the rest of the family, Joe?”
“There is no one else. I’m surprised you don’t know that seeing as you two were supposedly
very close.” He was trying to piss me off. It didn’t make sense. He seemed somber, but there was no
raw emotion there. The man had just lost his brother and his niece for crying out loud.
“We were best friends, but you’re her family. I mean even if you don’t believe she’s still alive,
as I do, you surely want the men who took her away from us to pay for their crimes.”
He pushed his face into mine, trying to threaten me with his height. I didn’t back away. We were
both close to the same size anyway, although with my leg it wouldn’t have been a fair fight. “Listen,
kid, she’s dead. Her ashes are in that urn over there.” He gestured to the fireplace mantle where two
urns sat. “You need to cut this out.”
“If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself, but I will find her.”
“Cal, come with me,” my mother said, suddenly appearing behind me.
I didn’t want to end the conversation, but Joe had already backed away from me, so I obliged.
People were murmuring all around us. I could hear the gossipy evil in their quiet voices, especially
Mona Simms since her whispers sounded like horse shrieks. She made some comment about how
she’d known Sylvie was bad news. How any girl who dressed so weird wasn’t normal. How Sylvie
was a troublemaker and must have been on drugs to bring such chaos to our safe town.
I stomped my cane into the wood floor right in front of her. The thick shoulders any linebacker
would be jealous of abruptly jerked to attention. Her mouth clamped shut, stopping the spew of
garbage flowing from it. “Shut the fuck up. You’re not even good enough to shine her shoes, you fat
bitch. The only troublemaker is you.”
Her eyes widened and the mole on her cheek grew as her face morphed into shock.
“Caleb James Tanner! Get in here now,” my mother screamed from her bedroom doorway.
I staggered into the room. She slammed the door behind us.
“You have to stop this madness right now.”
“Momma, you have to believe me. I know she’s not dead. She promised me she would fight. I’d
know if she died. I’d feel it. She was part of me. She was in here,” I said, pointing to my heart. I
sounded frantic, but I needed someone to have faith in the idea. “I love her. I know—”
The hard slap stopped my tirade. My mother looked at me with those stern, but sharp green eyes.
She took hold of my shoulders. “Cal, I know you have suffered more than any boy your age should,
but you need to stop this now. Don’t you think I loved her? Don’t you think Mandy did? We’re all
mourning her, but carrying on like this is making it so none of us can grieve and move on. She would
have wanted you to go on, Cal. As long as you keep holding onto this false hope you never will.”
My own momma thought I was crazy. Everyone did. “I’ll stop talking about it.”
It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear, but she accepted it. I knew she wanted me to
denounce my views, but I would never do that. “I won’t make you apologize to Mona Simms, at least
not right now, but I think you should apologize to Joe. He was her only family. He said he’d like you
to spread her ashes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied through gritted teeth. I would spread them. I had a feeling that both urns
contained her father’s ashes, so I would give him a proper burial and say a prayer. I would do that for
Sylvie.
I wouldn’t bury her. She wasn’t dead.
When I walked back out, Joe was leaving, with some excuse about needing to catch a plane. I
was glad. I didn’t want to see him ever again. I didn’t like him. He was lying to me. Sylvie was out
there and all alone. She needed me. I needed her.
I sat on the couch next to Mandy. I swear there were invisible eggshells on the floor because