The Reformation of Marli Meade

by Tracy Hewitt Meyer

  Run, Marli. Run.

  The idea seemed so far out of reach, I almost laughed. But then, I didn’t.

  “MARLI MEADE? ARE you with us today?”

  The class erupted in laughter. I pushed upright, smoothing my long skirt. I was in biology class, but the teacher could’ve been talking Shakespeare for all I was listening.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  Janelle raised her hand. “I heard Marli is going to get married. Maybe she’s thinking about her new fiancé and what it’ll be like to be sixteen and married.”

  Laughter continued.

  “Janelle, that’s enough,” Mr. Cummings said.

  The girl shrugged, a graceful movement despite the nastiness of her words. “I’m just saying that she’s probably preoccupied. Are we going to throw her a wedding shower? I’m sure it’ll be followed by a baby shower the way they reproduce on that mountain.”

  My nerves were raw and exposed, leaving me more fragile than a newborn chick in a pit of copperheads. Suddenly unable to stand it a minute more, I bolted out of the classroom.

  “Marli!” Mr. Cummings hurried behind me.

  I didn’t stop, though, my footsteps pounding on the tile as I flew into the girls’ bathroom.

  “Marli?” Mr. Cummings called through the door.

  “I’m fine. Please, just give me a minute.” I struggled to make my voice loud enough to be heard.

  “Do you want me to get the nurse?”

  “No! Really, I just need a minute. I’m fine. I promise.”

  “Okay. If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’ll send the nurse to check on you.”

  “Okay,” I managed, though I doubt he heard me.

  Tears filled my eyes and I couldn’t catch them fast enough before they slid down my cheeks in relentless waves. Sobs poured out of me from a deep, dark place in my soul. I didn’t hear the door open.

  “Marli?”

  I looked up. It was Nate.

  “What are you doing in here?” An ill-timed hiccup flew out of my mouth but I didn’t care.

  He glanced over his shoulder, left then right, and slipped inside, closing the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

  I tried to dry my cheeks but the tears kept coming, and soon I wasn’t even sure why I was crying so hard.

  “Has something happened?”

  “Why are you here?”

  His brows pursed. “What do you mean? I saw you run down the hall and I wanted to check on you.”

  “But why? Why are you bothering with me? I’m a mess. I’m stuck in an engagement I can’t do anything about, in a family, a church that makes no sense to me, that’s controlling and dominating and…scary!” My voice rose with threads of hysteria, reverberating off the tile walls. “My best friend’s sister is spiraling out of control…people in this school make fun of me every turn I take.”

  I paused to regroup.

  “And my father? Owns a black box that has something alive in it that he takes around to homes to scare people! But…” I threw my hand in the air and turned my back to Nate. “On the flip side, I don’t know anything but this church. It’s my life, my world, my existence. What would I be without it?”

  I faced him again and swiped a hand at my clothes. “I don’t know how to dress! I don’t know how to act! The only thing I know about the real world is what I see from other people or read in the newspaper.”

  Nate handed me a paper towel and I wiped my nose. “But other than that…I’m nothing. I know nothing! I want freedom…I want so much more, but I don’t know what I would do with it! Probably crumble up and die!”

  He watched me in silence.

  “I mean, I couldn’t escape anyway. There’s Charles. Edna. The church and all the congregants. I’d never get away.” My exhale quivered and my hands shook. “If I did manage to leave, I’ll always be known as the girl from the mountain and will never fit in. Anywhere. I wouldn’t know how to survive. I might as well just give in. Give up.”

  At the first break in my words, Nate stepped forward. I sniffed and looked around, suddenly uncomfortable with his closeness. What if someone walked in?

  But then I found I didn’t care. I needed to feel alive because right now all I felt was dead. Dry. Brittle. Hollow.

  With the first touch of Nate’s lips, pressing against mine as his arms wove around my back, one hand pushing into my hair, something in me blossomed like a moonflower. Alive.

  He pulled my braid down in one swift move and I stopped thinking. For once, I started feeling and only feeling. Desperate, urgent, irrational feeling. I pushed my arms around his neck and pulled him close.

  Make me forget. Make me forget who I am.

  His kiss deepened as if he’d heard my silent plea. For the first time, his tongue pushed between my closed lips.

  For one second I was shocked, unmoving. Then my instincts took over, matching his actions motion by motion.

  I was nothing but sensation and feeling and energy and…life.

  Finally, life.

  Everywhere his hands touched burst with an energy I never knew a body could have. I pushed against him and he pushed back. As close as we were wasn’t close enough. Would never be close enough.

  Electricity shot through me, waves and waves of energy, raw and powerful. He took the kiss deeper and I responded.

  His hands worked a magic trail up and down my arms and over my shoulders. I hoped mine did the same for him as I let them roam over the muscles of his upper arms.

  We slid to the floor and I didn’t even notice the cold, hard tile. The only thing I was aware of was his warm, solid body.

  No, this wasn’t life. This was Heaven.

  “YOU OKAY?” NATE asked.

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  We sat outside at the edge of the grass, under a soaring oak tree. It was lunch break and the first time we’d been able to reconnect since the stolen moment in the bathroom. It was a breezy day and the wind ruffled my hair, still loose after Nate pulled the tie out.

  Students milled about in the distance but I didn’t care. Right here, right now…for just this moment, I didn’t care.

  He traced my knuckles with his thumb. “We’ll only ever go as far as you want. I’ll never pressure you.”

  “I know. I trust you.” And I did.

  He pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. “No one sees you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one sees the real you. I see you. But no one else does. I mean, people put you in this box. You’re this Holy Roller from the mountain. You go to church all the time. You wear clothes that are loose and cover almost every inch of skin. You’re engaged and you’re only sixteen.”

  I cringed.

  “But they don’t see you’re so much more.” He yanked a weed out of the ground. “It’s a shame no one knows the real you, but I’m glad I do.”

  “I’m glad you do too.” My lips pulled wide, my heart fluttering in a soft manic beat.

  He studied my mouth. “Your lips are beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes, unable to make said lips quit smiling. “You can stop now. You’ve charmed me enough to last a year.”

  “They are.” He touched the bottom one. “Your top lip is thicker than the bottom.”

  “I know. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Huh-uh.”

  As he leaned in to kiss me, I should’ve pulled away. Half the school was outside. Since Polly and her siblings were absent today, I felt a slither more allowance, but had to be careful. People talked. Like Janelle. How had she known I was engaged? Word traveled far too fast in a small town, even with the separation between mountain and town.

  But yet, I didn’t stop his kiss. Really, in the end, there was no help for it.

  It seemed too right.

  Primitive emotion was the only thing I had, and I let fear trail behind me like a discarded scarf. It was a rash, bold way to tackle the world, but if my life was about to be taken, I was going to do all I could now to live
.

  “Want to reconsider skipping the library? Just once?”

  The five-minute warning bell reverberated across the lawn. “I can’t. I think my father saw us together yesterday at the library, through the glass door. Or if he didn’t, it was awfully close.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was outside early and you kissed me by the door. Remember?”

  Nate nodded. “Did he say anything?”

  “No. So he probably didn’t see anything. I just don’t want to get in trouble. I’m doing a balancing act as it is. If the scales tip, I’ll be in way over my head.”

  I shuddered, flashing back to those awful, eternal nights in the church.

  “What can we do? I really want to see more of you.”

  “We can meet in the morning,” I blurted, unsure of the sudden shaping of words coming out of my own mouth.

  “Before school?”

  The plan unfolded like an accordion pulled wide. “Some mornings I go for hikes, before school. Early, like even before the sun comes up. Charles and Edna know about these walks so it won’t seem like I’m sneaking around. I’ve never, not once, run into anyone. If you can get away from your dad’s place and manage to get up the mountain…well, you could meet me.”

  “How would I get up here? I can’t steal a truck.” He smirked. “Again.”

  “There are old hiking trails that are actually a more direct path up the mountain than the road. If you want, you could hike up the mountain. It would take about twenty minutes if you keep moving. It takes so long with the road because it winds around.”

  Oh, the possibilities!

  “I mean, it’ll be a lot of walking.”

  “I’m not afraid of walking. I could always use the exercise.”

  I giggled like a little girl who just met her favorite Disney prince. “Meet me near the cemetery just up from our house. The trail will end close to it so it shouldn’t be hard to find. Use the entrance across from the school. I think it’s even marked, but if it isn’t, it’s obvious there is a hiking trail there.”

  “Time?”

  “Five. Is that too early?”

  “Nah. I don’t sleep much. Are you sure this is safe, though?”

  I nodded. “We still have to be careful, kind of like hiding in plain sight. But the woods are as thick as molasses.”

  “Thick as molasses? Is that a mountain analogy?”

  Excitement nearly bubbled out of me like boiling water in a too-small pot. Uninterrupted time with Nate was too good to be true, but yet it might just work.

  “As long as you don’t think you’ll get caught by your father and Edna. To be honest, they scare me.”

  Maybe it was first-crush delirium. Maybe it was time I learned to make my own decisions, even if those decisions involved taking risks…grave risks. But I felt powerful and bold, unlike I’d ever felt in my entire life.

  “We’ll be careful. Just bring a flashlight and keep a lookout for snakes. They’re venomous.” Somehow just being in his presence erased every bad thing in my life, or at the very least, forced it to the far, distant background of my mind. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  He nodded. “See you then, beautiful.”

  I ignored the look of concern that hovered just behind his smile.

  FOUR THIRTY THE next morning I threw back the bed covers and sat up, a blast of cold air causing my skin to prickle. My excitement, though, was enough to start a fire in my blood, warming me with each passing minute.

  I hurried to the closet. For the millionth time in my life, I yearned for a different wardrobe, for jeans and boots and sweaters and North Face jackets. Instead, I pulled on thick tights, a skirt, and a heavy sweater. Though the days were warm by afternoon, the mornings were damp with a bone-deep chill that made even the heartiest shiver.

  I left by the back door, closing it with a soft click. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the nearly nonexistent light. The sliver of moon barely illuminated the sky surrounding it, but I knew this area so well I could walk it blind.

  When I made it to the tree line, I glanced at the house. There were no candles suddenly lit, no lights turned on. I looked at Robert’s cabin and it was dark as well. There was no sign anyone had been disturbed. I started toward the cemetery, my feet barely touching the ground.

  Wispy, sparse rays of moonlight captured the headstones in the faintest glow, and I shivered. It was too early for Nate to arrive, so I strolled through the cemetery, offering a wide birth to the headstones and the snakes that often coiled around them. I picked a small bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and placed it on Orpah’s little gravestone.

  Then there was a rustling. Even though I knew it was Nate, I still jumped, a flash of fear igniting inside me.

  “Hi, beautiful.”

  “Hi, yourself.” I smiled, any trace of angst blowing away with the mountain breeze.

  He walked toward me, black clad and serious, his eyes darker than midnight. He carried a small flashlight that illuminated small circular patches of ground. When he stopped in front of me, I wove my arms around his neck as he wrapped his around my waist. I pulled. He tugged, trying to get close. Always closer.

  He smelled amazing even though he’d just been hiking up a very steep mountain. Or maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was both. Whatever it was infiltrated my nostrils until my head spun. And when his lips parted, mine followed, my body remembering exactly what to do. When I shuddered against him, he paused, then deepened the kiss if that was even possible.

  This can’t be wrong. There is no way.

  We were so isolated here at the top of the world that I felt like I was shedding layers of skin, seeking the true Marli who had been so suppressed she had started to think she didn’t exist.

  But the Marli here today existed, brimming even. I liked this Marli. A lot.

  “You’re an amazing kisser,” he whispered.

  “I have a good teacher.”

  He took the next few minutes to show me exactly how good a kisser he thought I was.

  When I regained my breath, the first faint graying of the world colored the sky.

  “We don’t have long. Let’s walk.” I tugged on his hand.

  Fingers intertwined, we started toward the river, mist swirling up from the water like ghostly hands reaching, wanting.

  “Did you have trouble sneaking out?” I asked.

  “Nah. No one ever checks on me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have a lot of freedom, that’s all.”

  “When do you turn eighteen?”

  “Six months. I’ll graduate next May. Well, I graduate if I have enough credits.” He snorted. “I’ve missed a little bit of school in my time.”

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “More personal than my birthdate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What did you mean when you said that someone stole your mom? I know you got caught sneaking into that house to find her. But what does it all mean? I’m sorry if this is painful, but it was an odd thing to say.”

  “It’s simple. My mom left us. Met another man and moved in with him. She couldn’t take Dad’s drinking. She wanted me to come with her when she left, but I didn’t and said some awful things to her. As I got older, I better understood why she had to leave like she did. He was beating her and had threatened to kill her. I guess she finally thought he’d gotten to the point he might actually do it. When I realized how dire it had been for her, I tried to go and find her.”

  “And that was the trespassing?”

  “Well, no. She didn’t live there any longer. She’d moved and hadn’t given me her new address.”

  My heart shattered.

  “I understand why, though.”

  “Why?” I asked, my voice ragged with emotion.

  “She was afraid. She had to go into a sort of hiding.”

  “And you still don’t know where she is?”


  He shook his head.

  “It doesn’t seem like living with your father is a good idea. I mean, not if he’s that violent.”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal. “He’s more talk than action, at least when it comes to me. Plus, I’ll be out of there soon. My PO told me I might be able to become emancipated.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll be considered an adult even though I’m not eighteen.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Yep. If the judge agrees.”

  “And you’ll, like, be in charge of yourself? Live by yourself?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “Wow, I wish.”

  As the horizon eased from gray to pink, he turned. “Come here. Enough talking.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  He brought his lips to my cheek, jaw, then settled into my neck for several minutes. I had no idea kisses on my neck, soft trails of his tongue over my skin, could alter every chemical in me, but they did, and I knew I would never be the same and that my legs would forever feel this deliciously unsteady.

  I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.

  We didn’t pull away until the pink sky was cast in yellowish orange, signaling another mountain sunrise.

  I WAS RESTLESS in English and asked to be excused. I meandered through the halls for several minutes then made my way to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I regretted my decision immediately. Heather and Janelle were there swiping gloss over their perky lips, overfilled makeup bags spilling out over the long sink.

  Janelle’s eyes widened in delight. “Hey, mountain girl. Want to borrow some lipstick? God knows you could use some.”

  Heather watched me through the mirror, her expression impassive.

  “I gotta run,” Janelle said. “Catch ya at lunch.” She shoved makeup into her hot pink bag, air-kissed Heather, and walked past me. “You know, those skirts are just so rad.” Laughter followed her down the hall.

  For a moment I stood still, unsure whether to move farther into the bathroom or leave. Just as I made the decision to return to class, Heather turned.

  “Does it bother you when we make fun of you?” Heather’s face wasn’t sarcastic or mocking.