by Anne Malcom
Jaclyn would’ve hated the funeral, since she was being buried in a Catholic cemetery with a priest eulogizing her. Jaclyn hated organized religion. Her father had been a lapsed Catholic who still held on to the notion he could sin however much he wanted as long as he asked for forgiveness afterward, with Jaclyn or her mother on the floor bleeding. This funeral was just another way that Orion had failed her.
Planning things wasn’t exactly her area of expertise, and to be fair, she’d been in somewhat of a catatonic state these past few days. She’d been residing in her heart of stone since Maddox had walked through the door to Jaclyn’s apartment and made this all too real. Which meant she didn’t have enough energy to argue when April’s mother and April decided to take over.
Now she was glad of the catatonic state, considering this was the first time she’d seen Gretchen Novak since she was fourteen and Gretchen was sending her home with some homemade cookies stuffed in her backpack. It wasn’t like she was her second mother or anything like that. Gretchen Novak was a good person and a good mother. So, she was kind to Orion because that’s what good mothers did. She invited her over for dinner often, gave her leftovers when she realized Orion didn’t get homecooked dinners, and was generally nurturing toward her daughter’s broke best friend. Nurturing in a distant sort of way. But as good of a person as she was, she didn’t like her daughter hanging out with trailer trash. Sure, she hid it well, almost perfectly, but even as a kid, Orion had seen the way she tilted her nose ever so slightly up at her. The way she’d make little comments here and there about clothes that didn’t fit Orion, or hair that needed cutting.
There was no nose tilting when Gretchen first saw her again. There were hugs, tears, and general horror for Orion. Palpable empathy. Luckily the tears and physical contact hadn’t lasted for long since Gretchen decided to go straight into “mom mode” and proceed to organize the entire funeral, in a way an upper-middle-class Catholic mother might do.
So, exactly in a way Jaclyn would hate.
But it was a service. It was something to show her life mattered.
Members of the media were everywhere, of course. Police were barring entry to the cemetery, along with members of B.A.C.A.—Bikers Against Child Abuse. It was big news and local government took the privacy of the girls, and the funeral, seriously.
That didn’t mean the media members didn’t try.
Another victim lost. Another fucking headline.
Orion hadn’t realized that the priest had stopped droning on until April squeezed her hand.
Orion snapped her head up.
April was holding out a rose for her.
Orion blinked.
“You throw it in,” she said gently.
Orion looked in front of them, at the hole they were lowering Jaclyn into. Then back at the rose April was offering her. It was white.
She didn’t want to take it. It disgusted her in all of its beauty, like some kind of insane ritual to make death graceful or peaceful when, in reality, Jaclyn died with a needle in her arm and demons in her heart.
But she took the rose anyway. On autopilot, she dropped the rose onto the coffin, even though she knew that the rose wouldn’t stop Jaclyn’s body from rotting, decaying to nothing.
She pretended she wasn’t the slightest bit jealous of her.
“Ri,” April said gently.
Orion didn’t speak, didn’t correct her even though the name cut like a blade.
“Mom organized a little reception at our place,” April continued.
Orion flinched inwardly at the mere thought of walking through that front door. That porch. That fucking porch.
She continued to stare at the raised patch of dirt. No headstone yet. They took a while, apparently. Which was good, since she had no clue what was meant to go on it.
‘Jaclyn Reynolds lived for eleven years total outside of captivity.’
Orion wondered what her own headstone would say. Probably much of the same.
“Orion,” April repeated.
“I . . .” Orion trailed off. She wanted to tell her to go away. She wanted to banish her, scream, and rid herself of any responsibility of going to a fucking wake that was tastefully catered and sufficiently nauseating. She would’ve said it, but something stopped her. Something about the softness of April’s voice. The fact she never left, no matter how cruel Orion was to her.
It gave her pause.
But it wasn’t going to stop her forever. Because if she had a choice to be cruel or to walk through the door of that house again, it would be the former.
“I think we’re going to need a moment,” a voice interjected. Smooth. Confident, if a little wobbly with grief.
Both Orion and April’s eyes went to Shelby.
She was almost unrecognizable in a sleek black dress underneath an expensive looking black coat, leather gloves, and long black boots.
Orion sometimes forgot that she came from money. Or at least what a trailer park girl thought of as money. It was nothing compared to what they had now.
Orion hadn’t chosen to dress up for the occasion. She was wearing black jeans, spike heels—that didn’t sink into the ground because it was that frozen—a black turtleneck, and an expensive leather jacket. All bought online, of course. Orion had no intentions of walking into a fucking mall, or some expensive boutique where they’d sniff the poverty on her, no matter how expensive her perfume was.
But Orion discovered she really liked clothes. Fashion. The way she could transform herself. Hide herself in lace and leather.
Shelby didn’t look different because of her clothes and her makeup, slightly smudged with tears. No, she looked stronger, stood taller, despite the fact she was shorter than both April and Orion.
“I’ll take her back,” Shelby said, voice still firm. Orion hadn’t heard her speak like that . . . ever.
April looked hesitant, as if Shelby was some stranger. As if she was still her best friend with no years between them.
“It’s fine,” Orion said, her voice not sounding nearly as strong as Shelby’s. That filled her with shame.
April’s eyes went behind them, to where she knew Maddox lurked. “Okay, well, I’ll see you at my place?”
Orion nodded, though she had no fucking plans of heading there. It was rude, but having gone through what she went through, you got away with being an asshole. She’d send a fruit basket to Gretchen or some shit.
April squeezed her hand once more before turning and leaving, the ground crackling underneath her boots.
Shelby and Orion stood in silence for a long time. They stared at the dirt slowly covering Jaclyn’s body. The earth swallowing her up.
“It was our fate to die there, Shelby,” Orion said, not unkindly, but not gently either. She did not have the capacity for gentle. “That’s what kept us together. Our fucking ankle manacles and the locks on the door. The second it opened, the clock started ticking. We never would’ve encountered each other in the real world. And that’s okay. We got each other through as well as anyone could. And we’re through, as much as we can be. We’ve got lives to figure out.” She paused. “Or lives to end.”
“No,” Shelby said. “We made our own fate. We did this. We got out.” She swallowed. “And Jaclyn did this. Maybe not on purpose, but she did it. It will break my heart forever, but you are not using this as an excuse to push me away. I won’t let you.”
Orion wanted to smile. Shelby bossing her around was a turn of events. Jaclyn would’ve enjoyed it. She didn’t smile, of course, didn’t say anything. She was struck dumb. Most of all, she was tired. Tired of it all.
“I’m writing a book,” Shelby said matter-of-factly after a beat.
Orion blinked at her, jarred by the sudden change in conversation. “What?”
Shelby wrung her hands. Her eyes darted from side to side. She was nervous. Scared. “I’m writing a book,” she said. This time her voice was smaller.
Orion didn’t say anything, just waited.
; “My therapist suggested I keep a diary,” Shelby said. “At first, I didn’t like it. Seeing everything on the page like that.” She shuddered. “I wanted to escape it all. Never see it again. But I guess . . .” She trailed off. “I had a little episode. That’s what Mom and Dad call it. It’s less scary, confronting, than a suicide attempt.”
That struck Orion. Not that she had done it—a cold, calculated part of her had expected it much sooner. She had not expected Shelby to survive her.
It struck her because she hadn’t known. She hadn’t heard anything about such things from Shelby, only those quotes and messages that she had gotten good at ignoring.
Guilt filled her up like rancid milk, curdling her stomach.
Shelby smiled, as if she were reading the thoughts on her face. “Yeah, I guess it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. I was always the weakest, wasn’t I? Not strong like you or Jac.” Her eyes went toward the patch of dirt. “But I guess it showed me I wanted to live. And that I didn’t want this to define me. This is going to follow us around for the rest of our lives, no matter what. So, I thought, why not have it follow me on my own terms, in my own words? I think I know now that putting it down on paper is the only way I’ll get past it. The only way I’ll be able to move on from it.”
Orion was shocked to say the least, at how articulate Shelby sounded. How stable and certain. If Orion were a betting woman, she would’ve said Shelby was going to be the first of them to crack, the first one six feet under. It had been that way in The Cell. Her grip on sanity was tenuous, and she had lost hold of it almost immediately upon entering The Cell.
But it made sense. Orion and Jaclyn held fast in The Cell—as much as one could expect—and couldn’t handle it out here, whereas Shelby was the opposite. She was a different, more unassuming type of brave, masquerading as weakness.
“I want to have a family, you know?” Shelby continued. “I want a life.” She blinked the tears away, looking upward at the moody sky. “A husband, kids, the white picket fence. All that nonsense. I want it. I want normalcy.”
“Yeah,” Orion whispered, knowing it was the one thing she’d never have. Shelby could never know her plans. Some part of her had been toying with the idea of forcing the knowledge on her, if only she could have a partner in this, maybe even be talked out of it. But hearing the naked hope in Shelby’s voice killed all of that.
Shelby squeezed her hand, looked behind them. “You seem to have a life waiting for you too, Orion.”
Orion followed her gaze. Eric was gone, but Maddox still stood there, legs splayed, breath coming out in visible puffs, watching them.
“That’s not a life,” Orion said, turning back. “That’s just the past not wanting to let go. Or him thinking he has some fucked up responsibility to me” She shrugged.
Shelby raised her brow. “Now I know I’m not an expert on love or men or anything really, but I’m not blind. He is not here out of duty. He’s here for you.”
“He doesn’t even know me,” Orion snapped.
Shelby didn’t flinch at her tone, harsh as it was. Another surprise. She looked at Orion, blank faced. “Then why don’t you go introduce yourself?”
She leaned in, kissed her cheek, and then walked off.
Orion spent too long contemplating the words, the strides Shelby seemed to have taken while Orion was hiding in her apartment, fantasizing about murder, and Jaclyn was injecting poison into her veins, numbing the horrific pain.
By the time she turned around, the cemetery was empty except for her and Maddox. It seemed like the entire world was empty.
She glanced around. That bitch, Shelby, had fucking ditched her.
For the thousandth time that week, Orion wished she could drive. It turned out she would have to learn, take a test like everyone else. She was not ready at all to start learning, to be in a car with a stranger.
She hated the lack of independence that came from that. The reliance on people. April had told her all about Uber, downloaded it to her phone and everything. Orion thought the idea of getting into a car with a total fucking stranger was insane. Before she was taken, all people were doing was warning you against that. It seemed this world was all about advertising certain kinds of dangers but forgetting about others.
Orion sank her teeth into her lip, staring at Maddox. She had her phone in her purse, and she was trying to decide whether potentially getting murdered by a stranger on Uber was worse than being in a confined space with Maddox.
He didn’t move. She waited for him to do something. To push himself on her. To rush to save her from the mental breakdown teasing at the edges of her consciousness.
But he didn’t. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, ten feet away from her, staring. Waiting.
She sighed, cold creeping up from her toes. Walking toward him was like walking on fucking death row.
“Then why don’t you go and introduce yourself?”
Shelby’s words echoed in her mind. She had uttered them as if it were that simple. As if a fucking handshake was going to fix everything.
Of course it wouldn’t.
But it would be something to show him that Orion was not Ri. That he could not hold on to that version of her he’d kissed on the porch. Just like she couldn’t hold on to a version of her.
For now, at least, he wasn’t going anywhere. She had tried silence, hostility, and it wasn’t working. What was the worst that could happen if she took Shelby’s advice?
“Hi,” Orion said. She felt awkward. Confused. Bleeding from the inside out. Just when she thought she might get even, be able to move forward, fucking Jaclyn pushed her back. And she couldn’t be angry at her because she was dead. Being angry at a dead person wasn’t right. Also, it wasn’t productive.
“Hey,” he replied.
She waited. For the questions, the benign ones asking her if she was okay, how she was holding up. Nothing came.
She swallowed. “I’m Orion,” she said.
He blinked, his face empty of expression. She wondered if he thought she was going crazy. It didn’t matter.
“I am twenty-four years old and I don’t have a driver’s license,” she said. “I don’t own wine glasses. Twitter, Instagram, and Uber are among the many, many words I don’t understand. I can cook a lobster bisque from scratch.” She sucked in a breath. “I came out of a basement two months ago, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be normal or anything like the girl that was kissed on a back porch ten years ago.” She sucked in a harsh breath after spewing all of those words. She wished she could swallow them back down—too much of herself was out there. “I’m never going to be right. I’m never going to be normal.”
Maddox’s eyes danced with light and darkness, hope and fear. “Nice to meet you, Orion,” he said, voice slightly rough. “I’m Maddox. I like pineapple on my pizza. The only thing I can cook is ramen. I drink too much whiskey. Don’t sleep enough. I have a short temper. I’m a cop because I want to save everyone, because I want to make up for the one person I didn’t save.”
The words thrummed between them, beating like a living thing.
“Nice to meet you, Maddox,” she said, her words small.
They stared at each other for longer than was appropriate, longer than was safe.
“Guess the no license thing means you need a ride?” Maddox asked, a lightness to his voice that they both knew was a lie.
Orion wanted to collapse with relief. She didn’t need any more truths right here, in front of her best friend’s grave.
“Yeah, I’d like a ride,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”
They didn’t speak on the ride home.
Maddox put on music that was familiar to her and comforted her. Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Green Day. Orion wondered if he’d created the playlist on purpose.
He didn’t press her. Drove easily, one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on his thigh. She spent a lot of time pretending not to look at his hand. A strange pull kept her eyes from g
oing there. She didn’t quite understand her fascination with that hand.
No, that was a lie.
She did.
She knew that she was imagining what it might be like if that hand was resting on her thigh. It might’ve been more realistic to imagine what it’d be like to grow wings and fly around. She was never going to ride in a car with a man’s hand lazily resting on her thigh, Maddox or not.
That possible future had been stolen from her.
An easy touch from a man was nothing but a fantasy. Even if she worked up enough courage to let a man touch her, it would never be easy. His fingertips, his hands, would be touching places already bruised, battered, and ruined by the men who came before him. They’d be like irons, burning her flesh.
She spent the rest of the drive angry at herself for thinking about Maddox’s hand on her thigh minutes after burying her best friend. She should have been focusing on other things. More important things. Like revenge.
“I can teach you,” Maddox said.
They had stopped, Orion just realized that. They were parked in front of her apartment complex. She’d even blanked on him entering the gate. It was good security too. She would’ve had to reach into her purse to show her brand new ID. She must’ve done that, though she had no memory of it.
“Teach me?” she parroted.
“To drive,” he said. “And before you immediately say no, I’m a good teacher. I taught April. She only screamed at me once.” He shrugged. “Never crashed though.”
Maddox was right. She was immediately going to say no. Today—getting in the car with him, offering him information—was an exceptional circumstance.
Temporary insanity.
Orion had already made promises to herself regarding Maddox. Promises about never being alone with him, cutting him out as much as possible.
But she paused before she uttered her refusal because who else was going to teach her? The only other person on earth she felt comfortable with was Shelby and she couldn’t drive either. He dad was teaching her. Orion didn’t have a dad. By the time Shelby could drive, Orion imagined she’d have changed even further. She’d be nothing more than a stranger who she shared a past with.