Sins of the Innocent

by Jamie McGuire

  Grandmother, Grandma Lillian, Claire, Ryan, Bex, Mom, and Dad all took turns with the camera, taking a thousand pictures of me in the same pose, standing with a variant mix of my family.

  I carried the hat I'd just tossed, a nice conclusion to the human living experience Mom had insisted upon. It wasn't that I hadn't enjoyed them. Something about going to dances, attending high school classes, and even graduation had felt disingenuous. I was mostly human, but pretending for the sake of perspective had been a waste of time.

  I looked at Mom. She was dabbing her eyes, laughing, and shaking her head, deliriously happy. Disingenuous or not, making her happy was worth it.

  "I guess you're off to the graduation party?" Mom asked. "Are you coming home to change?"

  I unzipped my gown and handed it to her. "Will you take it home for me?"

  She nodded.

  But Grandmother wore her trademark scowl. "Really, Eden? You had to wear your ratty sneakers with that beautiful dress?"

  I looked down at the ivory fit and then flare dress that Claire had chosen for me. My fingertips brushed against the exposed skin from a daring but not risque V-neck, down to my skirt, falling in between the strong pleats. "No one could see that I was wearing a beautiful dress."

  Grandmother narrowed her eyes at me. "I'm sure they couldn't guess, only seeing the graduation gown and the dirty sneakers."

  "Sorry," I said.

  Grandma Lillian hugged Grandmother to her side. "But doesn't it add just enough individuality? I just love her style."

  Grandmother stood politely still until Lillian released her and then discreetly moved further away.

  "Okay"--Mom hooked her arm around my neck and pulled me in for a hug--"I'll see you later then."

  "Remember when I broke your collarbone when I was four? Before I knew to be easier with you than Dad?" I asked, immediately cursing my failure to filter.

  Mom released me, pressing her lips together. "Are you trying to make me cry?"

  I winced. "I was trying to make you laugh."

  She chuckled and then wiped beneath her eyes. "Sure, it's funny now."

  Claire smiled, her eyes invisible behind her oversized dark aviator sunglasses. "It's still funny."

  Mom shot her a look, and so did Grandma Lillian.

  "Okay then," I said, fidgeting.

  "Go," Dad said. "We'll see you later."

  "Okay," I said, waving. "I'll be with Morgan."

  Bex began to follow me to the Audi.

  I pointed at him. "No."

  "What?" Bex asked, his eyebrows shooting up.

  "No chaperone tonight," I said.

  "I'll stay in the car."

  "Didn't you hear me? Morgan is coming."

  He shrugged. "I'll follow on the Vulcan."

  I sneered, knowing Bex would love nothing more than to have an excuse to take out Dad's ancient--or vintage, as he liked to call it--motorcycle. "I'm officially an adult. I don't want a chaperone."

  Dad frowned. "I think in light of recent events, it's probably best--"

  "Who are we kidding? What could he do that I couldn't handle?" I asked.

  Bex frowned. "Since when does Hell only send one to attack at a time?"

  "Still wouldn't need you."

  Bex's mouth fell open and then snapped shut. "What did I ever do to you?"

  "Enough. Eden, I disagree," Dad said, his tone final.

  "You've got to give me some space. If I can't save myself, how am I supposed to save the world?" I asked.

  Dad and Mom traded glances.

  Then Mom approached me, tenderly touching my face. "You're right. Have fun. Be back by sunrise."

  I eyed her, suspicious. "Don't do that," I said, pulling away from her. "That's one of Dad's old tricks. Don't tell me you're going to let me go it alone and then send Bex to babysit me from afar." I sighed. "I've trained every day for the moment when I will have to defend myself. Just ... please trust me."

  Mom shook her head, sad. "It's not about trust, Eden. It's about responsibility. We love you, and we want you to be safe. We also know what's at stake."

  I glared at Bex, who seemed surprised at my sudden hostility, and then I trudged to my car.

  Morgan was already standing next to it, the excited grin on his face easily erased by my appearance. "Whoa. What happened? Family fight?"

  "Kind of."

  I pressed the keyless entry and then opened my door, trying not to yank it out of anger. I'd broken several things in my childhood during a temper tantrum or two.

  Morgan slid into the passenger side, reaching for his seat belt. He was reluctant to ask his next question. "Do you want to cancel?"

  "Absolutely not," I said, clicking my own seat belt and pressing the ignition.

  Morgan's mouth didn't seem to know whether to smile or frown. "Um ... okay. So, now what?"

  "Now, we do things we shouldn't." I turned up the volume on the radio and looked over at my friend. "You ready?"

  He shifted in his seat, anxious. "Oh, yeah."

  I gripped the steering wheel and shifted the gear. "One wild night coming up."

  Morgan and I lay on the hood of the Audi, muffled indie rock reverberating through the fiberglass. We were on a dead end road, looking up at the stars while listening to the crickets chirp.

  "Sorry," Morgan said, apologizing for the dozenth time.

  "Stop. I like this better anyway. Besides, if we didn't leave, those guys from Saint Mary's who came with Lacie were going to find a trash can to stuff you in, and I was going to have to stop them. This is preferable to all that drama, don't you think?"

  Morgan inhaled, his cheeks filling with air before exhaling completely. "Just for one night, I wanted to feel like I belonged, you know?"

  "Yeah," I said, "I know."

  The stars twinkled above us, and Bex's scent mixed in with the smells of freshly cut grass and salt water from the bay. Besides my uncle, Morgan and I were alone with the lights of the stars above and the fishing boats on the Narragansett.

  "I'm famished," Morgan said. As if on cue, his stomach gurgled.

  I took in one last breath of fresh air before my senses were filled with thoughts of after-midnight greasy fast food, but then I choked. I sat up, coughing, and Morgan sat up, too.

  "Geez, you okay?"

  "Yeah," I said, feeling the burning in my nose and lungs.

  No longer needing the drudens to cover his scent, Levi's presence was full-strength. I braced myself, ready for a fight.

  Levi strolled through the tall grass just beyond a knoll, wearing a white V-neck T-shirt and black jeans. This time, he'd paired it with the predictable black Converse.

  "We should go," Morgan said.

  I could sense his discomfort.

  "You smell," I said to Levi.

  He breathed out a laugh. "You should talk. I feel like I'm breathing in dime-store fabric softener to cover some scaly grandma's cheap perfume."

  "Wow. That was rude," I said, tucking my chin and turning toward my shoulder just enough to see if he was right.

  "And a lie," Morgan said, looking at me. "You smell like fresh laundry and summertime. Nothing better."

  Levi laughed once, unimpressed with my friend.

  Morgan began to speak, but I touched his chest. "Don't talk to him. Just get in the car."

  After some reluctance, Morgan did as I'd asked. He trusted me more than my parents did, and for that, I owed him not just protection, but my loyalty. He closed the passenger side and waited.

  "Your uncle still comes with you on dates?" Levi asked, nodding in the general direction where I knew Bex was waiting.

  "This isn't a date."

  Levi gave me a once-over with his eyes. "Could have fooled me. That's a very pretty, very short, dress."

  "I have a dad. Thank you."

  Amused, Levi bent down to wave at Morgan, and then he looked at me from under his brow, flashing his most charming smile. "What are you doing later? Surely not him."

  My mouth fell open
, but I snapped it shut. "Do you need something?"

  "Yeah. I'm hungry. I thought maybe I could take you out for a late graduation dinner."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Stop watching me."

  "I can't."

  His admission made me pause. "Why not? Are you waiting for a weak moment? Because, you know, I don't have those."

  He plunged his fists into his pockets and shrugged. "I think you know why. At least you have a feeling, am I right?"

  "No."

  "You are the most beautiful when you're stubborn. Thankfully, it's often."

  I thought of several mean things and a few not so mean things I wanted to say, but they all fell over his compliment and face-planted in the back of my throat.

  "Just say yes," he said. "Yes isn't hard. It's easy."

  "I'm with Mor--with a friend."

  "Morgan. Morg. I know his name."

  "You leave him out of this," I hissed.

  Levi held up his hands. "Okay," he said, his tone an octave higher. "I just want dinner. That's all I want."

  "Too bad," I said, opening the door.

  "I'm not going to hurt him, if that's what worries you." Levi kept his voice low, so Morgan wouldn't hear him. "I wouldn't do that."

  "You are literally the spawn of Satan. You would hurt him, but I won't let you. You're also a liar, just like your father, so move along. I'm not interested--at all--in anything you have to say."

  "You wound me."

  "You have no clue how much pain I will cause you. Stay away from me."

  I ducked into my seat and slammed the door.

  Levi leaned down, placing his palm on the window. Fog instantly formed around his fingers. "Does that mean no to dinner?"

  I rolled my eyes and pressed the ignition. Spinning the tires, I backed away and whirled the car in a one-eighty. All the way to Morgan's, I drove well above the speed limit, fast enough to escape anyone's demons ... especially mine.

  "It's just funny. That's all," I said, fingering the lid of my coffee cup.

  Morgan looked down at his iced coffee and then to my caramel macchiato. "Drinking a hot beverage when it's stifling outside. Now, that's funny."

  "Maybe we should have gone for ice cream instead," I said, turning to watch the pedestrians walking by.

  My eyes took in what they wore and how fast or slow they walked, and my ears picked up on key words in the conversations, like move, her, and now. It might be common to most, but it was not when you had spent your entire life waiting to be attacked.

  The air conditioner was on full blast in La Cafe. Morgan had chosen this spot because of the cinnamon sticky bun iced coffee. I liked that it overlooked Providence River.

  I ached to be sitting on the patio furniture just outside the front door, wishing Morgan wasn't so sensitive to extreme temperatures. The sun lit every surface, washing out colors and forcing shoppers into the shade.

  My mind wandered in a hundred different directions, and as it often did when I relaxed, my mouth moved without thinking of the consequences. "He missed graduation."

  "Huh?" Morgan asked, confused by the jarring turn in conversation.

  I pressed my lips together. Morgan was used to my random changes in direction, but bringing hurtful subjects to light was something we both struggled with.

  The Ryels and Greys didn't have the luxury of sugarcoating the truth. Sometimes, we'd keep it hidden away until it was necessary, for the sake of sparing needless anguish, but that was usually for the mortals--like Mom, for instance. For her, mixing the spiritual world with our earthly plane was harder on some days than others. When it seemed like she needed normalcy for a while, we would pretend.

  Although an absentee father seemed trivial compared to the pressures of saving the world from Hell on Earth, Morgan felt it as deeply and as real as I did with any trouble of mine.

  "I'm sorry. Geez, I'm really sorry," I said. But it was too late.

  "Oh. My dad" Morgan picked at his napkin. "He had to work. In Texas, I think."

  "He's still with that oil company?"

  Morgan nodded.

  "He's the one who missed out. I know it doesn't feel like it, but one of these days, Morg ..." I slowly shook my head and exhaled. "He's going to have a lifetime of regret to sort through."

  "I know. It's not real."

  I reached across the table and covered his skinny, long fingers with mine. "It's real to you."

  He stared at the tabletop, nodded once, and then looked up at me with a smile. "You're a good friend, you know. You don't think you are, but given the choice, I'd rather you'd fished me out of that trash can than you not be here at all."

  My heart filled with a sweet warmth that only love and appreciation from a friendship could provide. "Morg, you know what I mean when I say that I love you, right? You remind me why humanity isn't a waste. My dad says that one is all it takes ... and that's you."

  "I'm honored," he said, his eyes bright. "And I feel the same way." He patted me with his free hand. "Finished?"

  "Quite," I said, grabbing his cup and tossing them both into the bin. I stood up, slipping the brown leather straps of my canvas knapsack over my arms and onto my shoulders.

  "Whoa," Morgan said. "That was at least fifteen feet."

  I shrugged, watching him stand and gather his things. "I told them to put me on the basketball team."

  "You did?" His nose wrinkled.

  "No. Let's go bake in the sun for a while."

  Morgan's shoulders slumped, and we pushed through the glass door to the sizzling sidewalk outside.

  Morgan put on a Panama hat and sunglasses, and I looked up at the sky, glad to let it scorch my face. With the hair tie around my wrist, I pulled back my platinum hair into a tiny ponytail at the nape of my neck.

  "I'm going to burn," Morgan said.

  I pulled a small sunscreen bottle from my knapsack and handed it over.

  "That's not embarrassing at all."

  "I brought it for me."

  "You trying to spare my feelings is even more embarrassing. You've already got a nice tan. I don't think I've ever seen you burn. Do you see all the freckles on my arms? I keep thinking, one day, they'll connect, and my skin will look like yours."

  "Just get it on, so we can enjoy our time between shade trees."

  Morgan squeezed a large glob onto his hands and began to paint his skin white, rubbing it on his arms, legs, face, and neck.

  "Don't forget your ears."

  "And now, you're mothering me."

  "Sorry."

  He handed back the sunscreen. "I have to be home around dark. You know how Mom gets at night when dad stay away this long."

  I waved him away, trying to be as casual as one could be when regarding depression. "Yeah. No problem. C'mon," I said, pulling him toward an ice cream cart.

  We sat on a bench in the shade of a maple tree, letting our laughter escalate into cackling without caring who might hear. We had been holding in our smiles for too long.

  We joked about our upcoming adulthood to deny our terror, skirting the issue that either of us would have to return to real life when our day of walking along the river and eating ice cream was over. We could start over again the next day and the next, living out our summer break after senior year as it was intended, but we would always have to go home, back to reality and its horrors, and we hung on to the lie until the sun began to set.

  The violets and fuchsias of the sky reflected off the water, but I still pretended we had all the time in the world. I crossed my legs, getting comfortable on the wooden bench. Morgan rested his arm behind me and then decided to make a fist and let his head rest on his hand.

  "I hope we get to have more days like this," he said.

  "Melted ice cream and sticky fingers?" I asked.

  "All of it."

  "What makes you think we won't?"

  He shrugged.

  The standing hairs on the back of my neck alerted me to something approaching, something not human. It wasn't until the pung
ent smell that was Levi hit my nose did I relax.

  "Look who it is. My favorite couple," Levi said, hopping over the bench--and Morgan's head. Then he wedged his backside between Morgan and me.

  Morgan instantly stood and took a few steps back, trying to look casual by shoving his hands into his pockets. I suspected Levi made him nervous--and with good reason.

  Levi stretched his hand behind me and across the ledge of the bench, cupping my shoulder and pulling me close. "Hi, gorgeous. Have you missed me?"

  "No," I said without pause.

  Levi feigned shock. "Did I interrupt?"

  "No," Morgan said, waving him away.

  "Yes," I snapped, frowning at our unwelcome guest.

  Levi used his free hand to point all four fingers at Morgan. "Morgan says I can stay, and I respect him. He's logical. I like that in a human."

  Morgan puffed out a laugh and pushed up his glasses, too easily flattered. "As opposed to what?"

  "Me," Levi answered matter-of-factly.

  "Leave him alone," I warned.

  Levi settled into his seat, looking out onto the water and sniffing once. "As you wish."

  "Funny running into you here," Morgan said. "Levi, right?"

  I sat up straight. "Don't talk to him, Morg."

  Morgan's eyes danced between the half-demon and me. To Morgan, Levi was probably just uncomfortably confident, but I knew what he was capable of if Morgan let him get too close.

  "That's just," Levi chuckled while he spoke, "rude!"

  "You came here uninvited. Tell me more about being rude," I said, standing up.

  "Wow, that was easy," Levi said, leaning back against the wooden slats of the bench. "I actually just wanted this bench to myself."

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I knew full well he was going to try to manipulate me by playing into my competitive nature, but we both knew who would win in a fight. At least, I was ninety-nine percent sure. "I know what you're doing. It's not funny. This isn't a game."

  "Says who?" Levi said. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers intertwined.

  "Me. I say. Go away."

  "Eden ..." Morgan said, more than a little surprised at my demeanor. "Do you know this guy?"

  I lowered my chin, trying to show Morgan with my eyes just how much I meant my next words. "Yes. He's dangerous, Morgan. Stay away from him."

  A group of young men walked together along the fence line. Right away, something felt off. The one in front was wearing a red ball cap.

  He noticed Morgan right away and nodded to his friends. "That's him," Red Hat said, too far away for Morgan to hear. "The kid from Lacie's party."