Slain (39 page)

“I have nothing to be ashamed of,” I say.

She squeezes my hand in hers, so tight it feels like my bones could snap.

“You think I don’t know about you, but I do. I know everything. I saw you with that boy months ago, in the park, throwing yourself at him, bold as daylight.”

She saw me? She knew about Jackson all along?

“I’ve had my eye on you ever since. I’ve seen you drift away from Christ, harden your heart to Him, and it’s made me sick. You standing up in front of everyone, pretending to love our Savior when you’re really whoring around in the shadows? You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Emma. Those children will be better off without you to lead them astray.”

She grips my wrist even tighter, and something slices across it. I scream as pain shoots through me.
 

She’s holding an old-fashioned straight razor, the flip-out kind with a long blade. I recoil against the wall, trying to hold my wound closed, but the blood dribbles down my arm, drips into the bathtub.

Suicide. She’s trying to make it look like I committed suicide.

“How are you going to explain this to the police?”
 

Blood pumps cloudy trails through the water. It turns my stomach to see it.

“A sad affair between an over-sexed teen and a lascivious pastor. You killed June when she saw you, and you killed yourself when he left town.”

“No, please. There’s still—“

“Quiet!”

She forces my body down under the surface. She’s strong, so much stronger than I imagined.
 

I writhe against her grip, kicking, fighting. She may be strong, but I want to live.
 

I launch myself out of the bathtub and land on top of her. She throws me off, onto the cold tile. I slide, then I see it. The razor, spinning across the floor. She lost it.

I reach for it and grab it. She’s on me, behind me, binding my arms to my body, preventing me from hurting her. Her grip is suffocating. I grip the blade so tight it cuts deep into my palm.

“It’s your destiny, Emma. Don’t fight it. Go to God.”

She’s right. I should stop fighting her. I can’t win this way. I let my body go limp in her arms. I let my tears turn into desperate sobs.

“Okay,” I say. “I beg your mercy. I beg God’s mercy. He sent you here to guide my path, but I was blinded by my own pride. I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t listen.”

She loosens her grip. “Give me the razor.”

“Let me do it. If it’s really God’s plan, then let me do it myself.”

She switches her grip to my wrists and tugs my back toward the tub, taking the razor out of my hand.

“Please let me do it myself,” I beg. “It just scared me is all, your doing it so fast.”

I go back into the tub of my own free will, sit down in the water, watch my blood curl into its depths. I lie back. I close my eyes.
 

“Dear Jesus,” I say, “please forgive me for all I’ve done. I come to You a broken and helpless lamb. Let the glory of Your light shine upon me and heal my aching heart as I meet You in Your glory.”

I feel her hand on mine, squeezing. “Was that so hard?” She slips the razor into my hand.

I launch upright and swipe her eyes, missing one, but slicing a line across the other.
 

She screams, reels back.

I tumble out of the tub, fighting the sway in my head that swirls my vision to mud, but I don’t make it.

She lurches forward, blind, blood dripping down her face, and finds my neck with her hands. Suddenly there’s no more air in my lungs. I open my mouth to gulp, but nothing makes it down my throat.

The razor. I still have the razor. I slash madly, furiously, and make contact.
 

The gurgle of blood rips across her throat, deep and dark.

It’s the last hit I make.

She squeezes harder, but has to pull one hand away to hold it to her throat.
 

I struggle out of her grasp just as she falls backward, gripping her neck with both hands, a fountain of red spilling against the pure white of her gown.

I stand and slip, slide my way across the tiles.
 

I reach for the doorknob and feel her fingers wisp past my ankles as I stumble out.

The air as I leave the house, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, police lights blaring toward me, the stars kissing my fingertips as I reach up for them, is the sweetest I’ve ever breathed.

I find my phone and call Boyer.

“I’m at Pastor Pete’s. With the killer,” I say.

Sitting on the steps as they carry Miss Hope out on a gurney, paramedics racing her still-breathing body to the hospital, I think about June.
 

I think about June’s life cut too short, how she was one of the few people who deserved kindness. Deserved it and never got it.

I think about June free. I think about June as a star in the sky.
 

I think about what she believed, about heaven and God and angels singing at the pearly gates to welcome the faithful. I hope, for her sake, heaven is real.

P
AIGE
FINDS
ME
IN
the hospital. My parents too, but I scream them out of the room. I don’t want to speak to them. I may never want to speak to them again.

So it’s Paige, not them, that sits by my side through the night, holding my hand when the nightmares hit and promising everything will be okay.

She’s the one who goes to meet Tessa in the park, to tell her where I am and help find her a place to stay.

She’s the one who finds a hairstylist who does hospital visits to transform my chopped locks into a pixie cut.

She’s the one who tells me it was the IP address of Miss Hope’s computer that the police finally hunted down from the e-mail she sent to all my friends. She’s the one who tells me they found my acceptance letter to NYU at her apartment, and my money too. I won’t get it back anytime soon, but when I do, it’s all going to Tessa.

Paige is the one who lets me know they’ve officially released Jackson, and dials his number for me so I can apologize. But when his parents answer, they say he doesn’t want to talk to me.

She’s the one who dries my tears. I guess I don’t blame him, but it still hurts, thinking about all he’s had to suffer because of me. Thinking about not being his anymore.

When I’m about to be released from the hospital, Paige is the one who goes to my house and packs a bag for me, telling my parents how things are going to be from now on.

She’s the one who takes me to the airport to put me on a plane to my Grandma Wellington’s in Maine, where I’ll stay until college starts in the fall, the school having agreed to just give me my damned diploma after everything I’ve been through.

We sit in a coffee shop and watch the foot traffic at Denver International Airport, me still looking like I just got released from the loony bin with bandages around my wrists, and her trying to be as cheerful as she can, but knowing this is goodbye for what may be a very long time. We haven’t been separated for more than a couple weeks since we were babies. And this goodbye is coming three months faster than either of us expected.

“Before, you said you had something to tell me,” I say. “But you never said what it was.”

“Maybe later,” she says, stirring her coffee with a spoon. “Another time.”

“When’s that gonna be?”

“You know I’m gonna come out and visit. As soon as I can.”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay,” she says warily. “Promise you won’t freak out?”

“There’s basically nothing that could shock me at this point.”

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” She’s talking fast, like she does when she gets nervous. “I…“

“What?”

She takes a deep breath. “I don’t like boys,” she says.

“You what?” Maybe I was wrong when I said I couldn’t be shocked. My eyes go doe wide.

Wait. She’s not saying? Oh god.

“Not you, stupid. Don’t make it weird. We’re like…
sisters
.”

“Okay. That’s—good for you.”

“Oh boy. You’re making it weird. I knew you were gonna make it weird.”

“No. No! It’s fine. It’s totally, totally fine. I’m just surprised is all.”

“See? Weird. Super weird. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m glad you told me. I swear. I am. When did you—? How did you know?”

“I don’t know. That time I kissed Ben our freshman year? There was, like, no spark. So then I kissed Ryan, and Greg, and Clark, and remember that boy at summer camp, Martin something? Who was really good looking?”

“Yeah?”

“Still nothing.”

“Well, at least you were thorough,” I say with a grin.

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. Really, though, Paiger, it’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s a big deal, but not a big deal.”

“I kinda figured you’d be cool with it, what with all your recent revelations and everything.”

We sit there in silence for a moment. She’s giving me space, but I can tell it’s her personal mission to bring me back into the fold. It’s sweet of her, and I know why she’s doing it. A year ago I might have done it too if our places had been switched, even after everything that’s happened. Maybe especially after everything that’s happened. But today, the odds aren’t exactly in her favor.

“I’m still, you know…I still believe in God. I know you don’t, but I do. I want to change things for other kids like me.” She sits up tall in her seat. “I want to be a pastor someday.”

This blows me over almost as much as the other thing. I don’t know which will be harder for her. Being gay in a fundamentalist church, or trying to be a female pastor. But either way? I know she’s gonna be just fine. She’s still the strongest person I know.

“I’m sure you’ll be amazing at it,” I say, tugging the ratty edges of my old T-shirt—one of my favorites from a mission trip we took together to Costa Rica a few years ago, well worn and so much more comfortable for it.

She smiles, softens. “Thanks.”
 

Paige checks her watch. The moments are ticking away, and we both know it.

“So how about you? Are you ready for this?” she says.

I think about everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks. About love and about suffering. About faith and about trust and how the two are so different. Faith is believing without evidence. Trust is seeing evidence over and over, and still believing, even in the little moments when the evidence doesn’t look like it’s there anymore. Trust is something I can get behind. Faith, not so much.

I’m standing on this threshold to a new beginning, and don’t know the answer to her question. I don’t know the answer to any of the questions. Am I ready for everything to change? So fast? Will I ever speak to my parents again? How will I keep myself from falling apart if I see Jackson on campus in just a few short months? I don’t know. But I’m okay with the not knowing. I trust Paige, and I trust myself. For now, that’s enough. I, too, will be just fine.

“I think so,” I say.

It’s time. She stands, and I stand, and we hug like it’s the last time we’ll ever see each other. It won’t be, but it sort of feels that way right now. I can’t imagine not having her a few blocks away. I can’t even think about her being on an opposite coast by the fall. There are phones, and airplanes, but that’s not the same. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done to let go of her, but eventually, I do.

“Text me every day, okay?” she says.

“I will.”

“I’m gonna be so pissed if you don’t.”

“I will.”

She hugs me again, then yanks herself away. “Okay. You better go before I lose it and chain you up in my basement.”

“Love you, Paigers,” I say.

“Love you too, Embot,” she says. “Everything’s gonna be good from now on. I promise.”

I squeeze her hand then walk toward security, turning back to look at my best friend, her face shiny with tears, biting her cheek like she used to do when she was a little girl, and still my best friend after all this, after knowing everything there is to know about me, about each other.

By the time I get to the plane, it’s already boarding. I’m one of the last to arrive, which is exactly how I wanted it. Fewer people to stare. I scan the aisle numbers, looking for my seat.
 

That’s when I see him, in the seat next to my empty one. He’s looking right at me, no doubt in his eyes, no shock at the mess I must be. Just steady, strong. What he’s always been really.

Something that was broken inside me seals back together, melted wax reshaped around a fresh wick, ready to burn again.

“Jackson?” I say, my throat tight.

He stands, the height of him bowed against the overhead compartment, making a cave of the two of us together. His face is so close to mine. So close.

“I’m going to kiss you a lot of places, Emma Grant,” he says, his voice hushed, just for me. He reaches out, slides his hand against my cheek. “But first I’m going to kiss you right here.”

And he does.

And we fly.

STILL
 

WANT
 

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