He lays his hands on me, right there in the front row. Before I know it, others do too. They crowd around me, all of them grappling for a piece of my salvation.
I can’t breathe. They’re pushing each other farther and farther in. Hands reach and hold. Layers of hands around me, three people deep.
I wrap my arms around myself. Their voices rise louder and louder, some shouting, some wailing, some speaking in tongues, all blending into a confusion that drowns out every thought in my mind. It would be so nice, so easy, to float away on it. But I don’t. I look up, but there are too many hands above me to see anything. The air is thin inside this bubble, and it is so hot.
I sink to the floor. As I do I hear them swell to bursting. They think I’ve been slain in the Spirit. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m finally experiencing it for real this time. Maybe God feels like drowning.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THERE’S A KNOCK ON my door at six the next morning, then it opens. It’s my dad.
“Wake up. Time for school,” he says. This isn’t something he usually does. It’s my mom who wakes me every morning. He starts to leave, and I stop him.
“Dad?” I ask. “Please don’t make me go to school today. Please.“ I can’t handle it today. Not after church yesterday. Not after the video. I can’t handle all their eyes on me, hating me. And besides, shouldn’t I be expelled by now? If it hasn’t happened yet, it will happen today. Why even go?
“I’m not going to allow you to hide from the repercussions of your actions, Emma. School is non-negotiable.” His face is grim, stony. “I expect you to be ready to leave in forty minutes.” He walks out.
I dress quickly and stuff my school books into my backpack, feeling sick at the thought of walking down those halls.
Breakfast is a lesson in being seen and not heard. I eat quietly and quickly, sneaking glances over to my mother, who’s at the dining room table buried in her Bible. I want to beg her to let me stay home, but there’s no way I’m interrupting her devotional this morning. It wouldn’t matter. She won’t defy my dad, and he has his mind made up.
I put my dishes directly in the dishwasher and even wipe down the kitchen counter. By the time forty minutes have passed, I’m waiting for them in the family room, ready to go.
They drop me off in front of the school. As I’m walking away, I hear the window of the passenger side come down.
“Emma?” It’s my mom.
I turn back. “Yeah?” I ask, my eyes wary but hopeful.
“I love you,” she says, and grabs my hand. Tears spring to my eyes. Maybe there’s still a chance to fix all this. I don’t know how, but maybe. Maybe she’s still on my side.
I rush forward and hug her through the open window. “I love you too,” I say.
No one says a word to me as I make my way toward my locker, and I’m thankful for it. I open it up, put my schoolbooks inside. Then I hear someone behind me. I turn around. It’s Paige. She has a look of determination on her face, the hard focus she gets in tennis before she goes in for the kill.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s up?” The words feel too normal, too wrong.
“Everyone says I shouldn’t talk to you at all, Emma, but I think you deserve to at least hear this from me.”
“What?”
“We can’t be friends anymore. You’re not the person I thought you were.”
I’ve dreaded this moment for months—the moment when she finally realizes that the gulf between us is too great. But still, hearing her say it is so much more painful than I ever imagined. It feels like my air has been cut off, like I’m sinking into the deep of the ocean. I can see the light sparkling above me, and the blue sky, and birds, but it’s too far, and I’m too heavy.
“Paige, please.”
“It’s like I never knew the real you at all. You lied about so much, Emma.” Her voice starts to break. “Why would you do that? I thought we were friends. No. I thought we were something bigger than that. Something better. I thought we could trust each other. Do you know what it’s like to feel like you can’t trust your best friend anymore? I’ve never felt so lonely in my whole life.”
“You can trust me. Let’s just sit down and talk, okay?”
“All you had to do was say you were sorry and tell me the truth. You know that, right? I would have—I don’t know, I would have at least tried to understand.”
“I’m so sorry. I—”
“Too late. I know God says we’re supposed to forgive, but I don’t know how to do that right now. I’m sorry.”
She turns and walks away. Down the hall, a group of girls—Ruth, Naomi, and Katie—surround her and squeeze her tight. I want to die. The part of my heart that’s always been her is gone.
There’s a jolt from behind. Not hard, but a surprise. I stumble, fly forward, land on my face. There’s a scuffle of feet near my eyes.
“Back off, man, she’s not worth it.” I look up to see Mike holding Nicolas back. Nicolas. From me. Chuck and Ben are there too.
“Is it true?” Nicolas asks.
“What?” I say from the floor, pushing myself up to a seated position, shocked into tears.
“Come on, guys. Let’s go,” Chuck says.
“Did you do it?” Nicolas asks. “Because of me?”
“Nicolas,” I plead. How could he think that? He knows me. He might have even loved me once. Maybe not real love. Maybe just a baby sort of love, but still. “No. I—no.”
“How am I supposed to believe that? You’re a liar, Emma. A total liar.”
Chuck tugs Nicolas away. The boys shuffle off, consoling Nicolas. As they go, Mike puts a fist to his mouth and fake-coughs, “Slut.” Some of the other guys snicker. Only Chuck looks back with any sort of remorse on his face. My cheeks are wet and hot.
I hate that he made me cry. I hate that they all watched me break. It’s so stupid. I feel so stupid.
Then Miss Hope walks up and offers her hand to me on the floor. “Come on. Get up.”
“Go away,” I plead. “Please just leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that, Emma. I think you need to talk to someone about all this.”
“I don’t want to talk, especially not to you,” I say. I sound like a child who just dropped their ice cream cone. I can’t help it. I want to hit her, just for looking at me.
She kneels down on her heels and crosses her arms over her chest, exasperated.
“What did you think was going to happen, Emma?”
I wrap my arms around my legs and bury my face in my knees.
“Huh? Did you think you could go on deceiving everyone and get away with it?” she asks, “Yeah. I saw that video too. And let me tell you, I was very disappointed. Very disappointed. How could you do something like that? I thought you knew better. I thought you were a good example that I could tell other girls about.”
Fuck her. Fuck her and her high horse and her stupid fish mouth. I’m not going to sit here and listen to this. I stand up and swipe the tears away from my eyes.
“Well you were wrong. I’m not good. I’m bad. I’m everything everyone says, so go ahead and do whatever you’re going to do to me because I just don’t care anymore.”
I stalk away, and she grabs my arm.
“You still have a chance. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.””
“Oh, fuck off!” I tear my arm away from her and race down the hallway. I don’t know where I’m going. I can’t go to class. I can’t leave, or I’ll lose the little favor I have left with my parents. I have nowhere to go.
I dart outside and head over to the football stadium. I just need a minute to collect myself. Just a minute. Then I’ll know what to do. There’s a gym class running laps on the track, and another group playing soccer, but no one seems to notice as I climb the bleachers on the far side of the field.
I sit down and take in air until my breaths are slow and even again. What should I do? Where should I go?
There really is only one thing
to do. I have to find my parents and beg. Maybe they’ll let me homeschool until the end of the year. Other students have done it. Cassidy Long did it when she got knocked up. Maybe if I leave for a while this will all blow over and everyone will forget about me.
I stand up and walk down the bleachers. I’ll go to my mom’s office right now, ask her to call in my dad.
I’m just about to the bottom when I see something strange. Three big, muscular men dressed in black and accompanied by Principal Hendricks. They’re walking straight toward me. I see Principal Hendricks point to me and say something to them. The men pick up their pace. I stop.
Something in my gut tingles. I have a sense, a fleeting second of awareness that I should run. But I force it away as irrational. Principal Hendricks is there, my parents are across the street; what could happen? The men reach me.
“Emma Grant?” one of them asks. He looks like a white-trash version of The Rock—scraggly goatee hiding a weak chin, and muscles that stretch the arms of his T-shirt to their breaking point.
The runners on the track have stopped to watch. The soccer game is on pause. Everyone stares in my direction.
“Yes?” I say. My instincts tell me to deny it, but it would be worthless. I wonder why they even ask. They must already know.
Before I can ask what they want, he grabs me, whips me around, and squeezes my wrists between one of his hands. I scream.
“You’re coming with us,” the man says.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THE OTHER TWO MEN descend and each takes one of my arms away from him. They yank my backpack off my shoulder and toss it onto the track. My pencils and pens spill out on the red rubber surface. My notebooks flap open and flutter their pages in the wind.
My arms are pulled behind me, and something cold clicks into place on my wrists. Handcuffs. But these men aren’t wearing uniforms, so they can’t be police.
Which means they must be, they must—oh God.
“No!” I scream. I should have run. I should have run. I should have run.
I scream and kick at them, flailing my legs while one of them grabs me by the arm and lifts me off the ground. It’s like kicking a concrete wall. The entire force of my blows is absorbed in a meaty thigh, a trunk-like chest. I am nothing against them.
“Calm down,” somebody says.
Whoever I kicked grabs both of my legs and secures my ankles under his arm. I fight against it but am reduced to a squiggling worm. One man holds my arms, the other my legs. The third brings out a roll of duct tape and wraps it around my ankles.
“You can do this the easy way or the hard way,” somebody says.
“Either way, it’s gonna happen,” somebody else says.
Principal Hendricks is just standing there. He doesn’t even look concerned. He’s doing nothing as they attack me. Surely they’re not allowed to do this.
I try to speak, but the words won’t come out. Instead I scream. I scream and writhe and flail against them.
My eye catches another girl’s on the field. Erica. She’s holding a soccer ball, frozen, watching me. I beg her with my eyes, with my screams, to help. But I can’t make words, and she couldn’t help even if she tried. Her eyes are the last thing I see.
“Guess it’s gonna be the hard way,” somebody says.
A dark hood slides over my head. There’s something cold pressed to my back, under my shirt.
A jolt of electricity tears through my body. It is fire in my veins. And ice too. I feel my body go rigid, though every instinct is to run away. But I can’t move. I’m paralyzed by the force of it.
My chin dives into my neck as my body shakes violently. I feel bile rise in my throat and burning, burning, burning. My skin crackles. I suck in burlap with a hard breath, and everything goes black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
I WAKE TO JOSTLING and stifle the urge to scream. I’m lying on my side. My body bounces up and down on something soft. I can’t see anything. There’s country music playing, some twangy something I don’t recognize. It smells like stale French fries and cigarette smoke. I can hear the whirr of pavement beneath me and feel the slick of leather against my hands. I’m being moved somewhere. How long have I been out?
My feet and ankles are still bound, and there’s something else around my waist, holding me to the seat. The seatbelt? I wiggle my body toward where I think the buckle will be, but my feet thunk against what must be a door.
“We got a live one,” somebody says.
The hood is yanked off my head, and I scream.
“Keep it down.”
I stare into the face of a red-faced white guy with a shaved head. He’s holding what I can only assume is the Taser they used on me.
“Please,” I say. “I haven’t done anything wrong. You can’t just do this to me. I—“
“Quiet,” the guy says.
“I’m gonna be eighteen soon.“
“Did you like getting buzzed before, kid?”
No. Not again. Please. I shake my head.
“‘Cause that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you say one more word. Just one. Got it?”
I nod, my face sloppy with tears.
“Good girl. Now I’m gonna let you sit up.”
He pulls at my shoulders until I’m upright. I’m in the back seat of a large SUV. There are two single seats between me and the driver’s row. The one on the left is empty. That’s where baldy must have been sitting. Now he sits beside me on the long back seat. Goatee man from before sits in the seat on the right. Up front the third guy, big with a mop of thick black hair, drives. There’s the shoulder of someone else in the passenger seat. It’s smaller, maybe a woman’s, but I can’t make out anything else from where I sit.
The windows are tinted dark, but I can see the shape of things through them. The mountains are to my left, which means we’re headed north. We’re not in the city, we’re out on the prairie somewhere. It reminds me of the landscape on the way to the Limon Correctional Facility, and I feel a lump rise in my throat. Everything from Denver to Montana looks like this. Where are we?
The landscape makes me almost long for the prison, for a chance to try my case, to at least know where I’m going. Am I even still in Colorado? I was never formally charged by the police. Is it illegal to go out of state when you’re a suspect? Would they look for me if I disappeared? Or do they already know where I’m going? I could be headed anywhere.
“Here’s how this is gonna work, Emma. You’re going to do everything we tell you to do. You’re going to do it right away. And you’re going to do it without questions.”
I nod. I shift in my seat, trying to slip my sore wrists out of the handcuffs, but they’re too tight.
Baldy continues. “We told you before that things can happen the easy way or the hard way, remember?”
I nod.
“You chose the hard way before. It’s up to you whether you choose it again,” he says. “So which do you think you’d like to choose? You may answer.”
“The easy way,” I choke out.
“The easy way what?” he asks. At first I don’t know what he means, then I realize.
“The easy way, sir,” I say.
“Good girl. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I shake my head.
“Sit tight. Won’t be long now.” He settles in next to me. I try not to think about what “Won’t be long now” means.
We drive for what feels like forever. Eventually, my hands go numb. I try to move them but I can’t tell if my fingers are wiggling or not. I peer out the window and try to recognize anything on the landscape. There’s nothing. No mile markers, no signs for towns, no businesses. We are on some back highway somewhere. The speed limit is sixty-five, and I haven’t seen another car. It wouldn’t matter if I did.
“Lean your head toward me.”
Baldy’s holding the hood again. We must be close to our destination.
I don’t want to, but I do it. It’s sick how quickly I’ve gone from
fighting to total, complete obedience. What will they do to me if I don’t do it? What will they do to me if I do?
The hood slides over my face, and it’s dark again. I suck in a breath, and my mouth fills with canvas. I try not to cry.
A few more minutes of driving. The car turns right, the road gets bumpy. There’s a jolt as the car stops. Someone grabs my shoulder.
“Time to move.”
Outside the car, there’s dirt under my feet. I want to ask where I am, but I don’t dare. They wouldn’t tell me anyway. I have a pretty good idea, and I’ll know the specifics soon enough.
I hear a squeak and flinch. A door? The body next to me moves behind me and pushes me through. The darkness inside the hood grows darker. The surface under my feet changes too. Concrete? Tile? I hear a muffled gasp. I hear a whisper, but can’t make out the words.
I’m shoved into a seat. It feels like a metal folding chair. Someone grabs both of my wrists. There’s a click, and the handcuffs release. I want to rub my wrists, but I can’t. In the moment it takes to wish for it, my hands are separated and cuffed to the poles that make up the chair’s back. At least I can rest my back against it now. I do.
I hear something that sounds like whimpering. Who else is here? For a moment I imagine opening my eyes and seeing June, alive, kidnapped and being held here too. But I saw the bullet hole with my own eyes.
The hood is torn off my head. A couple hairs get ripped out with it, and I flinch with the sting. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I’m in a dimly lit room. There are others here with me. Beyond the lights that shine directly above my head, I spot a familiar face that solidifies all my fears.
My mother.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
THERE ARE OTHER FACES too. My dad. Pastor Pete. Mike. Paige. Paige and Mike’s parents. They are in a semicircle, and I am at the center. It should make me feel safe to see them, but it doesn’t. It just confirms every suspicion I’ve had since those men grabbed me at school. I’m at some reform school, some wilderness camp or something like it. There were rumors at church about different places like this, bad kids who left and never came back, but we never found out the details. I’m just as scared, if not more, than I was before.
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