“Did you?” I’m so far forward on my chair I’m in danger of falling.
“No,” says the pastor, quietly. “He turned her away. That motherfucker wouldn’t even let her in the house.” In all the months he’s been coming to the bar, skulking around our apartment before dawn, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the pastor curse. For a second, it’s like all his artifice falls away—his stupid shiny jacket, his vintage car, his fire and brimstone—and he’s just a person.
A person who knew Mama. Who knelt with her, once a week. There was real emotion in his voice when he spoke about her just now, and I believe him. Lacey comes over, plunks a root beer in a tall red glass in front of me, slides a slice of pie to the pastor. I avoid her eyes.
I don’t know what to say now, what to think. I lift my root beer glass, sip it slow. The light through the red plastic makes the ice at the bottom of the cup look like rubies. The pastor digs his fork into the pie, takes a bite.
I think maybe I hate him even more now.
He knew Mama. I never will.
“Hey, Butch,” says the pastor to an old man with wispy hair and blotchy skin who has shuffled over to our table. “Take a seat. This is Jolene.”
“Jo,” I say, correcting him.
Butch takes the chair next to me. He and the pastor chat about the halfway house over in Needle where Butch is staying. The rest of the Bible study group shows up shortly after. One of them, Sheila, is a regular at the bar. She’s always deeply tan, and she dyes her hair icy blond, which gives her a sort of reverse-negative look. Aggie doesn’t like her much; says she dresses like a teenager. Though you can’t really win with Aggie. She hates the women who wear girlie clothes, fitted baby doll tees, too much makeup, but she’s just as angry at the women who she thinks have given up, whose oversized T-shirts have holes in the pits, who let their stomachs loll over the bands of their sweatpants. It’s hypocritical, since Aggie thinks women shouldn’t be judged by their looks. But Aggie is a hypocrite. Shacking up with the pastor proves that. Aggie herself dresses a lot like Grandpa Joe in the pictures I’ve seen of him. Worn jeans and work shirts. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed since she started seeing the pastor, at least.
The pastor opens the gold Bible to a page with a blue Post-it note and reads us a passage about the devil trying to tempt Jesus in the desert. Jesus refuses the devil’s temptations and then some angels show up and then the pastor turns to us and says, “So what can this story teach us?”
Sheila is chewing on her fake nails. Butch pokes at his pie crumbs with a fork.
“Just say no,” I suggest.
“You bring up a great point there, Jo,” says the pastor.
“I do?” I can’t tell if he’s calling me out on my sarcasm or if he’s oblivious.
“Brother and sisters,” says the pastor. He’s really pouring it on, holding his hands out to the sides, palms up, like he’s testing for rain. “The devil is not some ancient figure, not some myth, some symbol. The devil is alive in these hills. Alive and well. The devil lives in glass pipes. The devil lives in ground-up pills. Some of us at this very table have fought the devil. Some of us are fighting him still.”
“Amen,” says Butch, his voice like a cough.
“Jo?” says Savannah.
I whip around in my seat, and there she is. Standing a few feet from our table. She looks like hell, face puffy, eyes bleary and red, eyeliner applied so heavily that she might as well be in disguise as a raccoon.
I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life.
“I went by the bar,” she says, “but Aggie said you were here.”
“Savannah—” I say, but before I can get another word out, the pastor cuts me off.
“Excuse me, young lady,” he says. “We’re in the middle of something important here.”
“Oh,” says Savannah. She looks around the table, skeptical.
“You will have to wait.” The pastor stares her down.
Savannah scowls, turns, trudges away. I face the pastor, eyes pleading.
“Can I just talk to her? Please? For like a minute? We won’t go anywhere. We’ll just be out front. Please? She’s probably really upset about last night. I’ve got to talk to her. Please?”
Behind me, I hear the bell over the front door ding.
“Please,” I say one last time, putting every ounce of desperation I can muster behind it.
“Fine,” says the pastor. “Just for a few—”
But I’m already up and running.
I push through the front door and skid to a stop on the sidewalk. Savannah is leaning against the rough bricks of the Elks Club building next door with her phone out, texting.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask. She shoves her phone in her pocket.
“Jack.” She’s staring down at the ground.
“How is Henry? Have you heard anything?”
“He’s okay.”
“Okay?” That’s good, I guess, but not enough. “Is he still in the hospital?”
Is he talking? I don’t say, Has he said anything? Said anything I wish he wouldn’t?
Savannah looks up at me, finally. Her eyes look even more bloodshot up close. She must be feeling pretty sick, too. She swigged way more Mountain Dew mystery drink than I did.
“What happened last night?” she asks. It sounds like an accusation.
I just stare. I’d been so excited to see her, I’d almost forgotten the last thing she said to me. You’re lying. I know you are.
“Tell me what happened on the bridge,” she says. “Tell me for real.”
“I already told you.” I pull the sleeve of my hoodie lower over my left wrist, force myself not to look away, though Savannah is glaring at me, nose wrinkled as though I am a smell that offends her.
“You’re a liar,” she says. “It wasn’t a wolf.”
“It might have been a dog,” I say, desperate. “I don’t know.”
“No. It wasn’t. I know it wasn’t.”
My heart sinks. A wolf is probably the stupidest lie I could have come up with, but I wasn’t thinking straight last night. I remember Jack shouting, What the hell did you do! How did it look to the two of them, stumbling out of the woods on the other side of the bridge? Henry on his back, bloody. Me kneeling over him, touching his neck. My sister already gone. It must have looked bad. But Savannah should trust me, she should know I’d never do anything like that.
“Tell me what happened,” she says. “Tell me the truth.”
“I—” But what do I say?
Savannah turns away again, pulls out her phone, types furiously.
“Me and Henry kissed,” I say.
“Really?” Savannah looks up, suddenly interested. I’m pulling the same trick as the pastor, offering her information I know she can’t resist.
“Yeah. I made the first move, but he totally kissed me back. We almost French-kissed, even, but then we heard the ghost.” My sister, actually. But that isn’t the point. Savannah should be happy for me. She’d been rooting for this. If my sister hadn’t ruined everything, we’d be celebrating right now.
“Yeah,” says Savannah, wide-eyed, and I think it’s working. She’s back. My best friend. “We heard that too.”
“And what were you two doing at the time?” I poke her in the arm, grinning.
“Doesn’t matter.” She looks away and just like that she’s gone again. “Jack thinks you attacked Henry.”
I let out an exasperated breath. Jack can shove a stick up his ass. “I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”
“At the hospital they said the bite was from a person. Not an animal. Jack told me.”
Well, shit.
“It wasn’t me,” I say, trying my hardest to sound like I’m telling the truth. Which I am, but I can hear how desperate I sound anyway. I should h
ave come up with a different lie last night, but what could I have said? An escaped convict came running past? A crazed cannibal? “I swear.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what happened?”
I don’t know how to answer that.
“I saw something,” Savannah says flatly. “On the bridge.”
I blink at her. I don’t get it.
“There was someone else there,” she says.
She tries to meet my eye, but this time I’m the one who looks away. I feel dizzy.
Savannah saw my sister.
“Who was it?” Savannah asks. She steps forward, puts a hand on my arm. She sounds less angry now, more pleading. “It can’t have been a stranger or you wouldn’t be lying about it. It’s someone you know.”
Someone I know. Yes. But how could I say, Someone I’ve known nearly all my life.
It was dark, right? So Savannah can’t have seen her very well. And she just said she saw someone. Not a girl. Not a girl in a blue dress who looked like me. But still.
“Goddammit, Jo. Say something.” Savannah’s voice catches like she’s going to cry.
I want to cry too. Or melt into a puddle. Or run and run and never stop. It was what I wanted to happen, all those years ago. But now I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “Did you plan it? You and whoever that was? I thought you liked Henry.”
“I do.” My voice comes out very small.
“I thought you were my best friend.” She actually is crying now, the tears mixing with her eyeliner, glistening like an oil spill.
“I am,” I say. Don’t be stupid, I want to say, but I’m on shaky ground here. I know I am. How do I make her understand, make her forgive me, without telling the truth?
Savannah shakes her head, wipes roughly at her eyes. She seems about to speak again, when her gaze shifts to something behind me. She waves.
I turn around.
Up the block, Jack is cutting across the street, heading right for us.
He must be the one Savannah was texting. She must have told him I was here.
I turn back to her. She’s avoiding my eyes, dabbing at her makeup with her sleeve. She’s trying to look casual, but I’ve known her for too long. She’s got the same look in her eyes she had last night. She’s scared.
“Hey!” shouts Jack from behind me.
I turn to face him.
“How is Henry?” I ask as he stomps over. He doesn’t answer, just barrels forward so fast I’m sure he’s going to hit me. I want to stand my ground, but I still remember how much it hurt when Aggie hit me last night. And that was Aggie, who loves me. I stumble backward, bump into the wall of the Elks Club, but Jack stops short, with barely a foot of air between us, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Psycho bitch,” he says, and I feel flecks of spit hitting my face. I need to remain calm. Be the bigger person. I am innocent. Falsely accused. A martyr. And Savannah needs to see who the real monster is. Him. Not me. “You stay away from my brother.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” I say, more to her than to him. “I swear I didn’t.”
“Well, it weren’t no fucking wolf,” Jack says. He’s not that much taller, but it still feels as though he’s towering over me. He’s so close I can smell his sweat, practically feel the heat off his body. My heart pounds, no matter how much I try to calm it through sheer force of will. I want to shrink away, to run, but my back is against the wall. Savannah’s just standing there, looking down at her feet again.
“Henry knows it wasn’t me,” I say, though I don’t know if that’s true.
I try to step sideways, but Jack slams his right hand against the bricks by my shoulder. Hard. So hard I think it must have hurt him, but his expression remains the same.
“You’re a fucking liar,” he says, leaning in. His face is so close to mine I can’t even focus on it. When I try, his eyes blur into one monstrous cyclops eye.
“Okay,” I say, breathing through my mouth to avoid the sour smoke smell of his breath. I hold my left arm behind my back, to hide my wrist. “It wasn’t a wolf. But it wasn’t me.”
“Well, who the fuck was it then?” Jack leans back a little, thank goodness, though he’s still got one arm stretched out, half a cage.
“It was—” I start, but of course I still don’t have a good answer to that question. “It was someone else,” I finish lamely.
“This is a fucking joke to you?” Jack asks.
“Savannah,” I say, twisting as much as I can to look at her, “tell him it wasn’t me. You know it wasn’t—”
Jack reaches out and jams a big sweaty hand over my mouth to shut me up.
Which is just too much.
Rage flares fast and hot through my body. I nearly bite his hand, but even in the moment I can see how bad that would look, so instead I grab his shirt and yank my knee up hard, slamming it right into the space between his legs. That soft, vulnerable place. Like a bundle of beanbags. A bag of rotten fruit.
Jack roars, doubling over, hands clutching at his groin.
I lunge away.
A booming voice shouts, “Stop!” and there, pushing through the front door of Minnie’s, is the goddamn pastor. Great timing. Just perfect.
He marches over, Sheila tagging along behind him. Jack’s still clutching himself and groaning. The pastor gets right up in his face, putting himself physically between Jack and me.
“What’s going on here?” demands the pastor.
Jack mumbles something about how I’m a raging psychotic c-word. I look desperately at Savannah. Did she hear that? Surely she can’t let that stand. She’s shuffled back toward the sidewalk, both hands shoved deep in her pockets. She won’t look at me.
“Do I need to call the police?” asks the pastor.
“Go ahead,” says Jack. “Have them arrest her.” He lifts one hand from his crotch and points at me. “She attacked my brother. And me. You saw it. That bitch is crazy.”
“I saw you trying to fight a young girl half your size,” says the pastor, “and I saw her defend herself. Now, Jack Bickle, given your illustrious record with local law enforcement, I think it might be best if you just walk away.”
Jack calls him a dickless piece of kiddie-diddling shit, but then he glances over at the front window of Minnie’s Home Cooking. There are at least a dozen faces pressed up against it, watching him.
Watching me, too.
I wonder if this was how Mama felt when she was pregnant. Everybody in town staring at her, judging her. Sheila sidles over to me and puts a hand on my arm. Her fingernails are long as claws and painted a pale pink.
“You okay, honey?” she whispers. I shrug.
I’m not.
“Come on, Savannah,” Jack says. “Let’s go.” He spits on the ground by my feet and strides away, brushing past Savannah on the sidewalk.
Savannah finally looks up at me. Our eyes meet. Please, I want to say, don’t do this. But I can’t speak. Her eyes slide away from mine. She turns and runs down the sidewalk after Jack.
My heart breaks.
CHAPTER SIX
I lost the picture of Mama that I used to talk to. I took it to the woods one night to show my sister.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” I told her.
“Chocolate?” she asked. The dress she wore back then was pink.
“Nope.” I pulled the picture out of my pocket, held it out so she could see.
Lee took one look at it and then she snatched it out of my hands and ran.
I chased her for ages, but it was no use. I lost sight of her eventually. Gave up, exhausted. Sat down on a rock and cried.
I didn’t know how to get home and I thought I might be doomed to die out there, but she came back. I tackled her to the ground, p
awed at the pockets of her pink dress. The picture was gone. She’d stashed it. Wouldn’t tell me where.
I chased her to the edge of Grandma Margaret’s backyard.
“If you don’t give it back,” I shouted as she disappeared into the trees, “I’ll tell on you!”
And I did. I told Grandma Margaret.
“My sister stole from me,” I said.
“What have I told you about lying?” Grandma Margaret said. I was seven, I think. It had been a long time since I’d mentioned my sister to Margaret or Aggie. It had been a long time since I’d mentioned her to anyone.
“It’s a sin,” I said. “I know, but I’m not lying, I swear. My sister is real and she lives in the woods and she stole from me. Isn’t stealing a sin too?”
I knew it was risky, knew I might get slapped or spanked or worse, but I was too furious to care. I wanted to punish Lee, the worst way I knew how.
Grandma Margaret sipped her coffee. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Stealing is a sin all right, so how about this. You tell your little imaginary friend that if she comes near you again, I’ll shoot her right in the heart.”
“She’s not imaginary,” I said, frustrated that she wasn’t taking me seriously.
Margaret pushed her chair back from the table and left the room. I was worried she’d gone off to get a belt, but when she returned a minute later, she was holding her hunting rifle. She didn’t point it at me, to my great relief. Instead, she crossed to the window that faced the backyard. She knelt, pushed the window open, braced her rifle against the sill.
She took aim and fired into the forest, again and again. My relief evaporated, replaced with cold terror.
The sound was deafening in the small room. I couldn’t think over that sound, could hardly breathe. The windows rattled with the force of it. Later I would find the bullets, count them. Seventeen, each of them lodged squarely in the bark of a different tree. I cried then, when no one could see. I was sorry for telling on my sister. I knew I was lucky Margaret hadn’t believed me. Lucky it was still light out.
“There,” Margaret had told me, when she finally stopped shooting. The sudden silence rang out almost as loud as the shots had. “Your imaginary friend is dead now. I’ve killed her and she’ll never steal again.”
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