The Hollow Inside

by Brooke Lauren Davis

  I tell myself that she wouldn’t leave me. She needs me as much as I need her.

  But my own memories contradict me.

  I know what it’s like to be left by her. She made sure I knew. When I was thirteen, I made her angry—I don’t even remember how. What I remember is that she pulled the van over on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, and she said, Get out. And I had snapped back, Fine. I slammed the door behind me and flipped her off while she drove away.

  As the sun went down, I walked. And walked and walked. It took me nearly an hour to find a gas station and another hour of waiting until a couple went in, and I could slip in behind them and shove my pockets full of granola bars and candy while they distracted the man behind the counter.

  I was feeling pretty good when I stepped out into the parking lot, the dark gathering like a blanket drawing in close. I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone. I’m too clever to starve. Too quick to get caught.

  I walked to the cornfield across the street from the gas station and disappeared between the stalks. I sat on the ground, the corn so tall that it obscured my view of everything else and everything else’s view of me. I ate a granola bar and a pack of Reese’s Cups and occupied myself for a while folding and unfolding the wrapper into the vague shape of a cat—the little orange cat I’d always wanted. But then the wind swept it away, and I couldn’t find it in the dark that had suddenly become impenetrable, and I lay down.

  And then I learned what it’s really like to be alone in this world.

  I hadn’t thought it was a cold night before I lay down, but it wasn’t long before I started shivering, pulling my arms inside my T-shirt.

  Then came the noises. The noises must have been there all along, but it had just now gotten quiet enough for me to notice—twigs snapping and wind whistling and the rustle of the corn that I was certain was the whisper of someone who wanted to hurt me, and it startled my pounding heart into my throat.

  I didn’t have Mom’s warm hand against my back. Her promises that one day I’d have a bed, a big house, a cat that would sleep curled up on the pillow beside me. Yes, she was often cold to me, so closed off that I felt a million miles away from her. But at least whenever I woke from a nightmare, someone would be there to hold on to.

  But at that moment I was alone. If I spoke, no one would answer. If I reached out, no one would grab my hand. And when I started to cry, there was no one there to hear.

  Mom left me there for two days, to make sure that I had fully, thoroughly learned my lesson. I’d become convinced that she was never coming for me at all, and I considered going back into the gas station and doing a sloppy job, getting caught on purpose, just so the attendant would look at me. Yell at me. Remind me I existed, that I was real enough to be angry with. To be, for just a moment, the focus of someone’s attention.

  When Mom finally did come back, I wasn’t angry with her for leaving me. I didn’t even think to be angry. No, I jumped into the van and threw my arms around her, and I sobbed and sobbed into her shoulder while she rubbed my back, and I whispered, I’m sorry. I’ll be better. I promise I’ll be better.

  -

  By the time I hear the van creeping up the path, snapping and grinding its way through the trees, I’ve been lying on my side by the pond and prying at the dirt under my fingernails for half an hour, even after there was no dirt left.

  I sit up and wipe my sleeve over my damp face before she can see me.

  She parks the van a few yards from where I’m sitting. She doesn’t hurry to get out. And when she does, she walks right past me to the edge of the water and crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Mom.”

  She doesn’t answer me.

  “Mom, it’s okay.” My voice cracks with desperation, and I swallow to steady it. “I came up with a new story, and they’re letting me stay with them. They don’t suspect a thing. We can still do what we came here to do.”

  Still, she acts like I’m not even there. To punish me for getting caught.

  She gathers a pile of clothes from the van and starts to wash them. She dips a shirt into the pond, scrubs the soap in with her fingers, rinses away the bubbles, and hangs it over a low tree branch. Then she grabs a pair of jeans and does it over again.

  I watch and wait for her to look at me, and I try to pretend not to care, the way she pretends not to. But I’m having too much trouble keeping my lower lip under control.

  She gets through the whole pile of clothes, then sits at the edge of the water, her elbows resting on her knees, staring straight ahead.

  When she finally speaks, it’s so quiet that I almost miss the words, “I don’t think you understand what this means to me.”

  I get on my knees, my hands clenched in my lap like I’m about to pray to her. “I do. I swear I do.”

  “You’ve ruined everything.” The last word comes out rough, and when she turns to look at me, her eyes burn red.

  “No.” I shake my head. “No. I tricked them. It’s all going to be—”

  But then she lunges for me, and her fingers are digging into my shoulders. “You wanted me to fail. You wanted to get caught so you could get rid of me.”

  “No! No, I—” I grasp for something to say.

  “They’re going to poison you against me.” Her voice is a raw hiss, her eyes on me but seeing something else entirely. “You’re going to choose Ellis. Everyone always chooses Ellis.”

  “Mom, it’s not—” My voice hitches, and I fight to control it. “I know it wasn’t part of the plan.” I gently press one of my hands over hers, but her grip doesn’t ease. “I know I messed up, and I could have ruined your only chance. But I didn’t. The Bowmans are going to let me live with them. Do you understand? I’m going to get close to them, and I’m going to find out what we need to know, and I’m going to get him to confess. Okay?”

  When her clutch still doesn’t loosen on me, I remember my conversation with Tim and say, “I already found something. There was an accident. He hit a kid with his car. Killed him.” I relay my conversation with Tim in a rush.

  After an agonizing stretch of silence, she lets go of me. My shoulders ache where her nails pinched them.

  Mom turns and scans the rippling surface of the pond. Her face has gone blank again.

  Is she thinking or ignoring me again? In desperation, I rattle off a list of other details big and small in the hope that something will pique her interest—Jill wears long skirts and elephant bandanas. Neil is gullible and a good cook. Melody has a bad attitude. There’s a baker in town with a shrine to Ellis.

  When I mention that the baker has the original manuscript, she meets my gaze for half a second, and I think I’ve found a way back in.

  But when she does finally speak, she says, “Why did you come here?”

  “I thought—I thought the accident was important.”

  “I don’t see how. You don’t even have the whole story. Just scraps. And if Tim was so forthcoming with you, the details clearly aren’t a secret. He said it was written up in the paper. So how exactly do you propose we use it as leverage against Ellis?”

  “I just thought—maybe there’s more to it. Maybe—”

  “You shouldn’t have risked coming here for maybe. You could have been caught. Your recklessness could have ruined everything again.”

  I shake my head at the ground. She grabs my chin and makes me look into her dark eyes. Her mouth is a hard line. I guess our first night away from each other didn’t affect her as much as it affected me.

  “You really think the Bowmans will trust you?”

  I nod immediately, pushing Melody’s suspicious glare from my mind.

  She gives me a measured look. Searching my face for something. “You lucked into a second chance.”

  “I think so.”

  “You won’t get another.”

  It’s not a question or a guess. It’s her decision—if I mess up again, she’ll never forgive me.

  “Now go and find m
e something I can use. And don’t you dare risk coming here again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  She stands and paces away from me, back toward the cabin, and disappears inside.

  That’s it. I’ve been dismissed.

  So I walk back to the broken trail between the trees.

  Nina knew her father didn’t really care all that much about the bow. He only wanted to prove to her that he was in charge, and he always had been, and he always would be.

  She knew she should have just worn it without a fight. But nobody at school wore bows anymore, and when you’re sixteen years old, looking ridiculous feels like a slow death.

  Her father leaned in the bathroom doorway and watched her fidget with it. He said, almost sympathetically, “I know most of these kids get to run around and do whatever they want, but we’ve got to be better than that.” He stepped up behind her, and she watched him in the mirror when he squeezed her shoulder. “We’re the example.”

  “And the more boys I scare away, the better?”

  He laughed and hugged her too tightly, and she tried not to smile, but she did anyway.

  They had a car, but they walked to church, because that’s what they’d done since she was old enough to make it the whole way without being carried. Sometimes he practiced parts of his sermons on her, or they talked about school or her drawings or people in town. Sometimes they went the whole way without saying a word.

  She sat in the front pew to watch him. He carried his Bible in a tight grip while he paced the stage. He spoke with a slow voice that rose and rose until it was a red-faced shout, and then he let it go soft again for the closing prayer and held out his hand for her to come up onstage and sing the closing hymn.

  Ellis wasn’t at the piano today. It was an older woman who sometimes stood in for him when he was sick. Nina felt his absence like a hole in her chest. Even though she’d seen plenty of him lately—he’d kept his promise about teaching her to play piano.

  They met every Thursday night, when the church was silent except for the wind that made the old wood creak. He always sat next to her on the narrow bench, nodding patiently through her botched attempts at “How Great Thou Art,” sometimes putting his big hands over her small ones to show her just how to move her fingers.

  Alone onstage now, her fingers twitched at her sides the whole time she sang, fighting the urge to pull the bow from her hair.

  Afterward, she stood by the cookie and juice table and twisted her hands together, looking down at her black, felt shoes. She occasionally glanced up to meet the gazes of the kids she knew from school, and they didn’t laugh at her, but they didn’t talk to her either.

  She was starting to feel sorry for herself and had almost worked up a hot round of tears when she felt someone tap her shoulder.

  Ellis beamed at her. His face was lit up like Christmas, and it was the first time she could remember so much emotion being directed at her, and for a moment, she was too happy to speak.

  “Where’s your family?”

  “Jill’s at home with the twins,” he said. “Neily had a fever this morning. But I had to come see you. I’ve got news.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded, his grin so wide and his chest so full, it looked like it could crack open. “I did it,” he said. “The book is getting published. My agent called this morning.”

  She laughed out loud. Tears sprang to her eyes while he clutched her hands and laughed with her.

  “I knew it would be. I told you it would be.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened without your help, Nina. Really.” His voice had gotten thick, and his face was flushed. “You’re the one who should be the writer, not me. You made a hillbilly from Jasper Hollow sound like someone people should listen to.”

  Going through his whole stack of paper with her red pen had taken two weeks, and they’d spent more than one night at the Watering Hole after he closed up, sitting at a little table in the back room with their heads bent over it and talking about changes. She told her father she’d gotten a part-time job cleaning the restaurant after closing as an excuse for being out so late.

  She knew people would read the book and like Ellis because his voice was compelling. His struggles relatable. His resilience inspiring.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling her toward the doors. “Time to celebrate.”

  Nina looked over her shoulder. “My dad—”

  “I just talked to him. Told him I needed your help at the restaurant while Jill’s home with the twins.”

  She saw her father on the other side of the building, and she waited for him to stop them. He wouldn’t trust any other man alone with his daughter. Not for a second. But this was Ellis Bowman, so he waved them off with a smile, and Ellis led her away.

  She didn’t know where he was taking her. She thought they might go to the restaurant for a celebratory coffee, but he drove past the Circle and wound around Pearl Mountain instead. He chattered the whole way with his big hands moving and his eyes wide. “It’s no rinky-dink publisher either. I looked it up. It’s the same place that published Billy Graham’s latest book. I’m telling you, this is the start of something. It is.”

  She nodded and laughed, and it felt nice to be with him until Ellis took a turn that led away from the Circle. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I thought we’d go to Jameson’s,” he said. “He isn’t home. I just figured it’d be nice to have some privacy. I’m not ready to spill the beans to everybody yet about the book.”

  “Cool,” she said, reflecting his casual tone, even as her heart skittered and it got hard to breathe.

  Ellis had gotten married to Jill and moved out of the cabin on Pearl Mountain a few years ago, and as far as Nina knew, Jameson was the only one living there now. When they pulled into the clearing, Jameson’s truck wasn’t there, like Ellis had said it wouldn’t be. They were truly alone.

  Nina’s father had warned her about going anywhere alone with a boy. He told her that boys had trouble controlling themselves around girls, that she needed to take responsibility so she wouldn’t find herself in this kind of situation—in a secluded cabin, with no one else for miles around.

  But she wasn’t with a boy. She was with Ellis, and her father trusted him. Loved him. He’s got a pure heart if one ever did exist, she remembered him saying.

  “Just helped my little brother redo the roof,” Ellis said as they pulled up to the cabin. “Looks nice, doesn’t it?”

  “Very nice.”

  Ellis stopped the car next to the pond and jumped out. Nina had trouble making her fingers work well enough to get her seat belt undone. He opened her door and didn’t ask what was wrong with her. He just smiled, reached over her lap, and undid it himself.

  He offered her a sheepish smile—one so innocent, it relaxed her just enough before she followed him into the cabin.

  There was a bottle sitting in a bucket of ice on the table. He poured two tall, delicate glasses and handed one to her. The bubbles fizzed and popped in her mouth, and she fought the way her lips wanted to twist at the taste.

  He laughed and said, “You don’t have to finish it.”

  She put her glass down in the sink, and he left his empty one next to hers.

  He touched her face then, and she was so surprised that she flinched.

  “You’re not scared of me, are you?” he whispered, leaning in close, those blue eyes pouring right into hers.

  She swallowed and shook her head, grabbing the edge of the table to keep her knees steady. She breathed in deep, eyes closing, and leaned into the big palm of his hand.

  Then she remembered her ridiculous bow, and she tried to grab it, but he caught her fingers. He ran his thumb over the blue velvet. Then he unclipped it, gently pulling it from her hair, and put it in his pocket.

  He was gentle when he kissed her, too, careful not to scare her away.

  This was the first time she’d ever kissed anyone, but she watched a couple from scho
ol once when they snuck out of the cafeteria and went to the gym, under the bleachers. That’s how she knew just when to open her mouth and to tangle her fingers in his hair.

  Something danced in the pit of her stomach. At first, she thought it was elation, but then it soured into something closer to fear. She’d thought about kissing Ellis before. She’d imagined it would make her feel warm and safe and loved, the way she did when she sat on the porch at night and listened to him talk to her father about the mysteries of the universe.

  But actually kissing Ellis was more like jumping off a tall building—like she was falling fast toward the concrete, and there was no way to go back to the safety of the ledge now. And she felt like she was falling all alone, even though Ellis was right there, the warmth of him clutched tight in her fingers. She wanted to stop. She wanted to scream, Help me, but she didn’t know what Ellis or anyone else could do to save her.

  Then the door opened behind Ellis, and the light burst in, and she was so startled that she bit his lip.

  “Christ,” Ellis hissed, covering his mouth with his hand. Blood dripped down his chin.

  Jameson Bowman stood in the doorway, a mix of emotions frozen on his face. Surprise. Confusion. Hurt.

  Ellis turned to his brother. Nina’s heart hammered, but his voice was calm when he said, “You told me you wouldn’t be home until tonight.”

  “I wanted to see why you needed me out of the house so bad.”

  “Go. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Nina waited for Jameson to say something. She wanted him to speak up, though she didn’t know exactly what she wanted him to say.

  But he didn’t argue with his big brother. Instead, with one last glance at Nina, he pulled the door closed and left them alone.

  Chapter 14

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO MY dress?” Melody whispers in my ear a few seconds after I slide into the pew next to her.

  I whisper back. “I fell.”

  “Into a dumpster?”

  I get extra close, just to irritate her, and she wrinkles her nose at the smell of sweat and mud and whatever the hell else got on the dress when I trekked up Pearl Mountain earlier. But she refuses to shy away from me, even an inch.