Christmas Eve

by Molly O'Keefe

  But that Tommy thought people would listen to me made me feel like a superhero. Even if he was wrong.

  “I should have told him then,” I whispered, turning back to the art room, where Mr. Mendoza stood watching us from the door.

  “No way.” Tommy pulled me away. “And then you’ll get sent to a hospital. And you’ll get put on some kind of fucked-up medicine.”

  I stumbled along after him, scared because my mom was the kind of doctor that put kids on fucked-up meds and I never told Tommy, but I’d been on my share. And I never wanted to do that again.

  “I’m scared, Tommy.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. And he tried to be convincing, he did and I would love him forever for it. “We’ve got each other. We’re gonna be okay.”

  But he was lying.

  Chapter 2

  That Night

  St. Jude’s School for Court-Placed Delinquents

  Beth

  We were in the kitchen after dinner. The girls cleared and washed dishes while the boys sat with The Pastor as he picked his teeth and asked them questions about school. It didn’t seem like Mr. Mendoza had said anything. Everything tonight had been normal.

  Except they let Tommy have the same food as us. As much as he wanted.

  Which should have made me happy. Should have made me ecstatic but it only made me feel like someone was stepping on my stomach.

  Rosa was washing, I was drying and Carissa was clearing the table, bringing in stacks of dinner plates and setting them down on the counter without a sound.

  “What the hell is going on with you two?” she whispered. We were good at whispering at St. Joke’s, we were practically telepathic, that was how quiet we were.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. They fed him and you didn’t eat barely anything.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, because that was what I was used to saying. It was what people liked to hear from me. That I was fine. When inside I was a black hole. Negative space. I was worry and I was fear.

  And I was so much anger. I wanted to shatter every fucking dish in my hand, just smash it against the counter until the floor was filled with glass shards and The Pastor and his wife would be cut to ribbons.

  But I didn’t do that. Instead, I wiped dry every bowl and put them in the cupboard where they belonged.

  Carissa came in with the bowl of cooked carrots and a stack of plates scraped clean.

  “Here,” Carissa said, handing me a miniscule piece of folded-up paper. Tommy must have tucked it under his plate. The note-passing system at St. Joke’s was next-level.

  I opened the paper and read his tiny block letters.

  Tell R and C. Everyone needs to be careful.

  I put the note in the garbage and Rosa leaned over and dumped the water that had been in the bottom of the bowl of carrots over the note, pretty much destroying it.

  “Something happened today,” I whispered.

  “No shit,” Rosa said.

  “At school Mendoza caught Tommy and I kissing.”

  Carissa put her hands over her face and Rosa turned away to the sink, her head bowed. In the heavy echo-y silence I realized again how serious this was. And I felt like my head was going to explode from the tears and the fear I was holding back.

  “You should never have started shit with Tommy,” Rosa said. “For real. This is gonna hurt us all.”

  I swallowed back my apology, unwilling to be sorry for how I felt. Tommy and I were the only good thing I’d had in my life, I wasn’t sorry. But in the end I was just the kind of person who had to apologize. It was second nature. “I’m sorry. I just…I really like him.”

  Rosa said, real quiet, “I get it. I know what it’s like to not be able to keep your hands off someone.” She turned sideways as if making her point with the bump of her stomach.

  “Girls?” The Wife came into the doorway, her face backlit by the light from the hallway behind her. I thought, as I had for probably the hundredth time that her disguise was so complete. She looked nothing like a monster.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No problem,” Rosa said, smiling over her shoulder, her hands back in the soapy water.

  “Good, once you’re done, you have homework in the church.”

  “The church?” The words fell from my mouth without thought, and Rosa stiffened next to me. Usually after dinner we all did homework together at the table, but questioning The Wife was a bad call.

  “Rosa,” The Wife said, “I think Beth can finish washing and drying the dishes on her own, don’t you? Go get your schoolwork. Carissa, finish clearing the table and meet us in the church.”

  Rosa left, shooting me a for god’s sake keep your mouth shut look over her shoulder.

  I stared down at the heap of dishes I was going to have to do on my own, and I had a report due in World Studies. Shit.

  Carissa came back in with the platter and all the cutlery.

  “Maybe nothing will happen,” I whispered, hope making my voice crack.

  Carissa laughed, low in her throat. “Something will happen,” she said and it was so shocking to hear her talk my mouth fell open. “And when it does—” she leaned forward right into my space, her eyes glittering and hard, “—fight.”

  Chapter 3

  That night

  St. Jude’s School for Court-Placed Juveniles

  Tommy

  The dream was Beth. The dream was always Beth.

  We were under the crab apple tree at school. Our tree.

  I mean, dozens of kids sat there but it was our tree. And she had her sketchbook and I had her.

  That was all I needed. Ever.

  In the dream, her hair was loose, which was how I knew it was a dream. I’d never seen her hair loose, she always had it pulled back in really tight buns or ponytails.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked and then she smiled, revealing the way her two front teeth leaned just slightly against each other. Not crooked, but not straight either.

  “You,” I said.

  “Well, stop. You’re supposed to be looking over there.” She pointed with her bitten pencil to the lunch tables on the far side of the quad.

  “I want to look at you.”

  Beth had freckles scattered like stars across her creamy skin, caught even on her lips and eyelids. She didn’t like them, I knew. Her red hair and her many freckles. They made her feel different in a way that was uncomfortable. But I wanted to put my lips against every one of them and whisper thank you, thank you for being here.

  “You said I could draw you, remember? And I can’t draw you like this.”

  “I think I lied.” I felt the smile spreading across my own mouth and I still wasn’t used to it. Smiling felt weird. I was sixteen and I don’t think I’d ever in my life smiled as much as I did with Beth.

  I leaned in to kiss her, but she put her free hand against my chest, burning through my shirt.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked, looking over my shoulder. Her smile was gone and I wanted to tease that smile back. The sun was suddenly gone too and we weren’t under the crab apple tree, we were in the art room and I shook my head, fighting with everything in me to stay in the dream.

  “Tommy. Wake up. You heard that.”

  I did. I heard that. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to stay in this art room forever.

  “Tommy,” she whispered. “Please.”

  I opened my eyes, the dream shattered, my skin trying to hold onto the sensation of her hair against my palm. The taste of orange Skittles on my tongue. My brain to the sound of her voice. But it was gone.

  I lifted my head from the thin pillow that smelled like someone else’s sweat, and listened.

  The house was the same eerie quiet it always was.

  But that sound… Something woke me up. Pulled me away from the magnet of Beth.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see the lamp on over the desk. Simon was sitting there—of course—all hi
s books open in front of him but he was turned, looking at the door.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked.

  Simon’s glasses caught the lamplight and I couldn’t see his eyes, so I couldn’t see what he was thinking. Not that I ever knew what that guy was thinking. He could cut open his head and show me his brain and I’d still be fucking clueless about that guy.

  “You,” he muttered. “Having a wet dream.”

  “Fuck off.” But I put my hand under the covers, checked to make sure. Hard dick. No come. Phew. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but my stomach had been full for the first time in months. It wasn’t sleep as much as a food coma.

  “You heard something in the hallway.”

  “No,” he said and turned back to his books.

  “Did someone knock? One of the girls?”

  “It…wasn’t a knock.”

  “Was it Beth?”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “What is it with Beth?”

  Everything was the answer. It was everything with Beth.

  “You’re going to get all of us in trouble,” he said.

  I felt like shit that he was right.

  They let me have dinner, as much as I wanted. Which was ominous as fuck. And then—after dinner—we’d been split up all night.

  Also ominous as fuck.

  But the worst thing was The Pastor… The Pastor had that look in his eye.

  The look that made me cold in my skin. The look that made me want to find safe places for everyone to hide. That look made me want to be a million feet tall, and wide and strong enough to stop him from hurting anyone.

  But he would come after me. He liked coming after me the most.

  I made sure of that.

  “She might be having another nightmare.” I put enough scorn in my voice to make sure Simon understood he was being an asshole.

  She had nightmares. Every night. She and Rosa shared the room next to ours and we could hear her screaming sometimes, crying others. Rosa always knocked on the walls—three short fast knocks—letting us know she was okay, that nothing bad was happening. Well, nothing worse. Because being here was pretty bad.

  Beth said she didn’t remember what was so awful in her dreams, but mostly I think she didn’t want to talk about it.

  None of us wanted to talk about the shit that came to us at night.

  I lay there listening, trying not to feel all the walls in this place. All the walls between me and Beth.

  There was a knock on the wall from Carissa, who had the room on the other side of us. Two fast knocks.

  I knocked back three times.

  Everything okay?

  Fine.

  But not really. And we all kind of knew it.

  Any minute the Pastor was going to come for me.

  Simon closed one big heavy textbook and opened another.

  “It’s after one, dude,” I said, picking a fight because I had to do something. “What are you doing studying?”

  Simon didn’t say anything. He didn’t say shit. Ever. He studied and he kept his head down and he didn’t get in trouble or get involved in any of the scary business that went on in this place.

  His dad had been an immigrant from Pakistan, married his mom, had Simon, was living the American Dream, but then a few months ago he lost everything in some shady business deal. His dad killed his mom and then shot himself.

  Murder suicide for real.

  It was fucked-up and I was ready to cut the guy some slack on it, but Simon looked away when some pretty heinous shit went down in this place. And that I cut no slack with. No one here was going to take care of us—we had to do it ourselves.

  But Simon walked around like he didn’t see any of it. And worse—didn’t care.

  Also—he was some kind of genius, so on principle I hated him.

  “You know we share a room,” I said. “How am I supposed to sleep with your fucking lamp on all the time?”

  “You were sleeping just fine—”

  The sound came again and I could identify it now because I wasn’t sleeping.

  Not a scream.

  It was the sound of a scream cut off before it could get started. It was a sound a thousand times worse than a scream, and all the hair on my body stood up. A door shut and there were footsteps walking down the hallway away from our room. Away from the girl’s room next to ours.

  There was heavy thump. The footsteps stopped for a second and then started back up.

  “That was from Beth and Rosa’s room, wasn’t it?” Simon whispered.

  I said nothing, staring out the window at the bright white light of the streetlamp. When I first moved here I pretended it was the moon. Like the moon out the window of the apartment I’d shared with my mom. Like the moon outside the bedroom in my first foster home.

  “Shit,” Simon whispered.

  He didn’t come for me. He came for Beth.

  And I just sat there. We both did. We sat there doing nothing.

  When I curled my hands into fists and I could still feel the scars, the rough papery skin over my palms like burns that never went away from my last trip to the office after the graham cracker incident.

  The scars matched the ones on my back. Across my ass.

  Simon probably had the same ones.

  The office was a fucked-up place where fucked-up shit went down.

  As bad as my punishments were, I had this sinking fear that when the girls got taken to the office they got something different. Something worse. Carissa said when he took her all he wanted to do was pray with her, but I was pretty sure that was only part of the story. She left the worst of it out.

  There was another thump and then a sob.

  Silence.

  All at once, I couldn’t fucking take it. Not for another night. Another second. He had us so scared we couldn’t stand up for each other. He had us so terrified we couldn’t tell anyone what he did to us. How we were treated.

  For years I’d kept my mouth shut, told myself half the time that I deserved what The Pastor did to me. Or I didn’t deserve any better.

  But I couldn’t sit here, staring at these walls and pretend nothing was happening. Like I did when Simon got taken. When Carissa got taken.

  The way they pretended nothing was happening when I got taken.

  Not again.

  Because Beth fucking deserved better.

  I charged for the door even though I knew it was locked. Locked on the outside. Like it was every night. We were trapped inside.

  I grabbed the doorknob with both hands and rattled the door as hard as I could, but nothing budged. In this old fucking shithole of a house, the doors had all been reinforced. I braced both feet against the wall and pulled as hard as I could. And then I put my shoulder against the door and pushed as hard as I could. Nothing. Not any movement.

  “What are you doing?” Simon asked.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like you’re being an idiot.”

  “I need to help her,” I said, straining against the door, counting all the ways I’d made this happen. I knew the art room was a bad idea but Beth just had to smile at me and I didn’t care about anything but her.

  This was my fault.

  “You gonna fucking help me or not?” I said to Simon, but I knew he wasn’t going to help. He was going to sit at that fucking desk pretending no one was getting hurt in the other room.

  I was so sure of that, that when Simon showed up at my shoulder, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “The hinges,” he said. “They’re on the inside of the door. If we can get those off—”

  “With what?” I asked, even though it was a great fucking idea. “We don’t have any tools in here, Simon.”

  He ran the three steps back to his desk and pulled open his book bag.

  “If you have a screwdriver in there I’ll take back every single shit thing I’ve ever—”

  He pulled out a metal protractor. The thing nerds used in high-level math class. Disappointment
bottomed me out.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s what we’ve got.” He pushed me out of the way so he could get down on his knees and start trying to pry open or unscrew or who the fuck knows what to get the hinges off the door.

  I ran to the window, which was locked and sealed. Every kid who came to St. Joke’s figured that out the first night, when they tried to run away from this place. Jacob, a kid who was here when I got here, he broke a window open one night and the cops came and took him away.

  Last I heard he was down in San Bernardino serving four years.

  The door slammed at the end of the hallway, and Simon and I both looked at each other.

  “It’s Beth, isn’t it?” Simon asked. “What’s he doing-“

  “You know what he’s fucking doing,” I sneered, guilt chewing a hole right through me. “Hurry the fuck up.”

  “It’s not…” Simon shook his head. “The hinges have been sealed with something. I can’t do it.”

  I grabbed Simon’s chair, lifting it over my head.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, getting up off his knees, coming at me like I was the problem.

  “I’m going to throw it through the window—”

  “And then what? We’re on the third floor!”

  “I’ll climb down!”

  “You’ll fall and break your neck.”

  “So we do nothing!” I whisper-shouted. “I can’t do nothing anymore! He’s hurting her.”

  “You don’t know that. Not for sure.”

  “What happened when he took you into the office after that shit with the candle?”

  His face got red and he looked away because none of us talked about what happened in that office. And it wasn’t just because he said if we told we’d lose our court placement and go to jail. I mean, we were all scared of that.

  But if we all pretended like it didn’t happen, then we could believe that it didn’t happen. We could just put it away. Hide it someplace where we didn’t look at it, think about it and never…ever…talked about it.

  It was the only way we could survive this place.

  Not talking about it meant not going crazy with it.

  The sound of a key in the lock of the door made both of us go still. I could feel my blood turn to ice, like it was cracking in my veins. We’d been whispering but we’d still been too loud.