by Mina Bennett
I felt a little sick. If I'd known how much guilt would settle in afterwards, I never would have slept with her. I would have told her to go with Mark, if I'd thought that's what would truly make her happy.
But it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. And she knew, too, which was probably why she felt so trapped that she had to leave behind everything and everyone she knew.
A fresh start. It was an awfully tempting prospect. Just getting away from this town that we'd lived in our whole lives, away from all the people who thought they knew us better than we knew ourselves. To be able to make a decision without the nagging hesitation in the back of my mind: what will everyone think?
I got to the bus station in record time, walking my bike in and leaning it against the seats in the corner next to me. Here, I was slightly out of sight from the doors, so if she came in, at least she wouldn't bolt immediately.
After a while, the attendant stuck his head out of the window.
"Hey, man," he said. "Are you going somewhere?"
I shook my head.
"Well, you can't hang out here if you're not going somewhere. You gotta buy a ticket."
"I'm waiting for somebody," I said.
"Waiting for somebody," he repeated. "You brought a bike here, what are you gonna do, give them a ride home on the handlebars?"
"Maybe," I said.
"Look, man." He sighed. "I don't like it either, but all this terrorism and shit, if somebody looks at the security camera tapes later and sees you just sitting there, they're gonna ask me why I let you hang out here. Why I didn't call the cops. If I see something, I'm supposed to say something."
"But you didn't see anything," I insisted. "Just a guy, waiting here for someone."
"Come on, man, just buy a ticket."
"All right. For crying out loud." I stood up and pulled out my wallet. "What's the cheapest one you have?"
He stared at me as I approached the window. "Technically, that's a red flag too."
"Are you really going to do this right now?"
"I'm sorry, I'm just trying to do my job."
"Okay, all right. Give me the second cheapest ticket."
"Twenty-one dollars and five cents, please."
"Thank you." I snatched the ticket from him. "You've been very helpful."
He kept sticking his head out and eyeballing me suspiciously, but I kept on ignoring him, my useless ticket shoved in my back pocket. This wasn't exactly a highly-trafficked station, so I sat there in utter silence except for the low murmur of the TV in the corner, which was tuned to some shopping channel. They were really excited about some kind of new squirrel-proof bird feeder.
The door creaked open. My heart thudded but I forced myself to take a deep breath before standing up and walking around the corner.
She looked like a ghost.
Pale and exhausted, dark circles around her eyes, almost dwarfed by the bags she was carrying. When she saw me, her eyes went wide, but I started talking before she had a chance to do anything.
"Mari, listen. Your parents have been looking for you all morning. It's George. He's sick."
Her face changed. The inner battle was obvious - when she'd decided to leave, she must have known that she'd never see him again. But knowing that he was suffering at this moment, and she had one last chance to say goodbye...that was different.
She just stared at me. "I can't go back there, Jacob." Her voice was quivering. "I can't. I just can't."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I just thought - I thought you should know. Your parents are going crazy. Did you even leave a note?"
She ignored my rhetorical question. "This was it," she said. "This was my chance. If I don't leave now, I'll never get out of this place."
"Maybe you don't have to."
She looked at me like I was exactly as stupid as I felt, for saying that.
"I know, I know," I said. I felt sick to my stomach. I knew if she didn't see George, she'd always regret it. But I also knew that she'd never be able to gather up the courage to leave again, if she turned around now. I couldn't even imagine.
"Look, I'll help you," I said. "I'll help you leave town, once you've had a chance to...wrap everything up. I can give you some money from my loan. Do you even have enough to live on right now?"
"But I can't...I can't take your money."
"Of course you can," I said. "Come on, Mari. Please. Just come with me."
Marissa was crying. Shaking, helpless, standing in the middle of the bus station and there was no one but me to comfort her. I hated it. I hated myself for the part I'd had in her suffering. I hated that I didn't have any answers, that there were no verses or classic sermons or C.S. Lewis quotes that could fix what was wrong. There was nothing. Nothing I could do, nothing I could say.
"I'm sorry." My eyes were starting to water. "I'm sorry, Mari, I'm so sorry. I don't know what to tell you."
She was half-heartedly covering her eyes with one hand, as if that could somehow conceal her crying.
"I'm sorry about the other night," I said, finally. "I should have...I should have stopped. I never wanted you to feel like this."
Suddenly, her hand came away from her face and she looked right at me. The thick eyeliner that she wore, specifically because she knew how much her father hated it, was smeared. "I'm not upset because I feel guilty, Jacob," he said. "I'm upset because I don't."
I just stared at her.
"I'm upset because it felt right. I'm upset because that's all I want, to just be with you and wake up next to you and I know it can't happen because nothing can ever happen like that for me, I can never just be happy. It can never be simple. That's why I'm crying. That's why I left. I can't see you anymore. I can't look at you."
"Yes, you can," I said. "Things can be simple. You just have to..." But I couldn't even finish that sentence. I couldn't pretend like I had the answers.
And I still hadn't told her about Mark and Chrissy.
"Come on," I said. "I'll carry your bags."
At first, she didn't react. But then she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, enough for the strap of one of her bags to slip down, letting it fall to the floor. I picked it up and slung it around my neck.
"Let's go," I said, grabbing my bike and wheeling it alongside me. "It's not too far from here."
"I know where the vet is," she muttered, following behind me.
We walked in silence for a while.
"I have to tell you something," I said. "Now's probably not the time, but to be honest, I don't know when would be a good time. So I'm just going to say it."
She looked at me.
"I went to Mark's school when I was trying to find you. And I found him. But he wasn't alone."
She just kept staring.
"He's cheating on you," I said, finally. "And it sounds like he has been for a while."
Marissa was silent for a long while.
"Well," she said, finally. "Isn't that the icing on the cake?"
When we arrived at the office she snatched the bag from me without a word. I didn't bother following her inside. What was the point?
Coasting down the streets on my bike, I ran over her words in my head, again and again and again. I just want to be with you. Wake up next to you. It was so simple, it should have been simple, but it wasn't.
After a while, my phone started ringing. I recognized the number as Mrs. Moore's and picked it up quickly.
"Jacob, thank you," she said. "I don't understand, she won't talk to me yet, but...thank you."
"You're welcome," I said, hollowly. "How's George?"
She let out a long breath. "He's stable now. They still don't understand exactly what happened. The emergency vet thought for sure it must be cancer, but the scans didn't find anything - and he's getting better, eating and drinking. They're just going to run a few more tests, but they think it was just some kind of acute infection. I feel a little stupid for being so dramatic about it. But I'm just glad to have my girl home."
"Me too," I said, wi
thout thinking.
After we hung up, I kept on coasting down the streets, from one end of Hobb's Vale to the other, until it got dark out.
I didn't get any sleep that night.
***
Over the next few days, I was amazed at my own ability to act like things were completely normal. I smiled, I kept my head upright, I went to work and I helped customers and no one was any the wiser.
No one except Marissa.
I tried calling her a few times, even though I knew she wouldn't pick up. I had a distinct feeling that I'd permanently ruined any chance of friendship with her in the future, let alone anything else, despite what she said about wanting to wake up next to me.
That was going to haunt me forever, I was sure of it.
By the third day, I was starting to have brief moments when I didn't constantly obsess about the situation, and how I could have handled it differently. Naturally, it was during one of these moments, at family dinner, that my mom had to ruin the whole thing.
"Did you hear about Marissa?"
I stopped chewing for a second, then started again. "Which part?"
My mom looked over her shoulder, like someone would be listening in our own house. "Well, you know that she and Mark are split up now. He was cheating on her with someone from the seminary school."
"Wow," I said.
"You don't sound surprised."
"Well," I said, swallowing. "You know. There was always something about that guy."
"I never picked up on that." My mom went to the fridge to fetch more juice for Sara. "Apparently, neither did anyone else. He's done this before - he gets close to these girls, the most isolated ones, you know..."
"Like a lion going after the gazelle with a broken leg," Sara cut in, helpfully.
"...and he influences them." Mom gave her A Look. "Sara, that's not a very nice thing to say."
"Well, it's accurate," Sara muttered, but Mom decided to let it go.
"He never proposed marriage before, though." Mom shook her head. "It's a little unnerving how easy it is to have a wolf in the middle of your flock and just never know it."
"What do you mean, influences them?" Sara asked. I'd never seen her this interested in any of our dinnertime conversations before.
"That's not really appropriate to get into," said my mom. "Eat your broccoli."
"I heard he made them take naughty pictures." Sara smiled, very self-satisfied with her insider information.
"Where did you hear that?" Mom was scandalized.
My dad's fork clattered onto his plate. "Can we please not discuss this at the dinner table?"
"When is it okay to discuss it? This is real life, dad!" Sara snapped.
Mom heaved a massive sigh. "Okay, you know what, Sara? Go to your room."
She got up and left the table, fuming silently, but just before slamming the door, she shouted back towards us: "You can't silence me, Mom!"
"Oh good lord." My dad stared at his plate.
"That's it," said my mom. "I'm calling that adolescent counselor they mentioned at the hospital."
"Or an exorcist," Dad muttered.
Mom stared at him.
"I'm kidding!" he insisted. "You know. Mostly."
***
I headed straight to my own room after dinner, but on the way there, I noticed Sara's door was still open a crack. I hesitated for a moment, before realizing that being alone with my thoughts was really the last thing I needed right now.
I knocked softly, and Sara made a noncommittal noise. I figured that it probably didn't mean "go away," so I pushed the door open slowly.
"Hey," I said, shutting it behind me. "Sorry about what happened at dinner."
She shrugged. "I should know better than to speak up."
"Well, you know. It makes Mom and Dad uncomfortable that you know about that stuff."
"I know." Sara swiveled around in her desk chair, staring at the ceiling. "But for some reason I can't stop rubbing their noses in it."
I couldn't help but smile. A few years ago, I'd been going through this stage - not exactly the same thing, of course, because there were always parts of Sara's life I'd never fully understand. But she definitely had more insight than I did, at her age.
"It's hard," I said. "You want them to know you're growing up, but they're not ready to deal with that. Especially because..." I hesitated, trying to think of a delicate way to put it.
"Because I'm an invalid," she supplied, smiling wryly.
I laughed. "Yeah, okay," I said. "I wasn't going to use that word, but - okay, sure."
"You know more about that Marissa situation than you're letting on," she said. "I can tell."
"Is that obvious?"
"Probably just to me," Sara said. "You've still got a crush on that girl."
"I do," I said, because there was no point in denying it.
"Well," said Sara. "You should really do something about that."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Marissa
I told my mother everything.
Well, almost.
It was much easier, once I started, than I'd thought it would be. The words started tumbling out, faster and faster, until I wasn't even sure if I was intelligible anymore. But the look on my mom's face, the utter shock and disbelief, told me she understood enough. I skirted the part about the pictures - I wasn't quite ready for that. And neither was she, I was sure of it.
The tears started falling before I could even get through the first third of the story. By the time I got to the cheating, she was sobbing.
She made a token effort at comforting me, but after I assured her a few dozen times that I was fine, she retreated to her room, to grieve in her own way. It didn't bother me any. I knew she needed to process things alone.
Later in the evening, she came out, asking me if I felt like eating. I was about to say no when my stomach rumbled.
"Spaghetti and meatballs?" she suggested.
My childhood favorite. For the first time in days and days, I smiled.
"Okay," I said.
She had the plate in front of me in record time, and I ate the whole thing so quickly I got a stomachache. It was glorious. The pangs served as an undeniable reminder that I was alive, in my body, still breathing. Still feeling human things. I hadn't disappeared.
George purred and wound himself between my legs, just like always. The vet still wasn't sure what had happened, exactly, but George was still with us and that was all that mattered right now.
Mom and I didn't talk about Mark again until the next night. I'd noticed she had spent a great deal of time on the phone, murmuring quietly in corners, and fleeing every time I got close enough to overhear. I had a feeling I knew what she was up to, but until she came into my room with wide, red eyes, I wanted to believe I was wrong.
"I just spoke with Mark's mother." Her voice was very low, and very quiet. I couldn't read her expression, but I could see from her eyes that she'd been crying. "Did he ever...did he ever say much about his parents to you?"
I shook my head. "Just...he just said they weren't Christians and they didn't approve of his going into ministry."
My mom nodded, swallowing audibly. "Well, that's not exactly the story she told me."
After what felt like eons of silence, she finally spoke again.
"He has a...pattern." Her voice was starting to shake. "He's done this kind of thing before. It just never - it never went this far."
"What do you mean?" I managed to say, finally. "What do you mean 'this kind of thing?'"
"Innocent, young..." There was a sob stuck in her throat. "Girls..."
I felt my own throat begin to tighten as I stood there, watching her. There was a buzzing in my head growing so loud it almost drowned her out, but not quite. I wished it would.
"Mari," she said, tears beginning to run down her cheeks as her face crumpled. "Mari, I'm so, so sorry..."
What could I possibly do, or say, or think? I couldn't even begin to process any part of th
is.
"Honey, did he ever...did he ever take pictures of you?" She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "I know it's got to be hard to talk about, but his mother, she told me some of the girls before - they wound up with their pictures on the internet, on one of those disgusting websites - after she told on him."
I couldn't answer her, but I'm sure my face told the story.
"Oh, Jesus." The floodgates were open now, and she collapsed forward with her head in her hands. "Oh Jesus, God, how could something like this happen? Why didn't we..."
I thought it would be a relief that she wasn't holding me responsible, but at the same time, I felt like maybe she should. I was an adult, after all. I could have said no.
I could have just walked out of his house and never come back. So many times.
"Honey, you know you're not - you know this isn't your fault, right?" It was uncanny how she sometimes knew exactly what I was thinking.
"Yeah," I said, nodded to emphasize my point.
"People like him, they manipulate you, they make you think - he took us all in, Mari. People like me and your dad, and everybody at Eternal Grace. People who should have known better. You've got nothing to feel bad about."
She reached out for my hand and I took it, letting her pull me closer. The tears came faster and she was sobbing before I knew it, and it was a little while longer before she could speak again.
"Mari, I know...I know it's always been...I know you and me, we haven't always seen eye to eye. And I don't really know why that is. But I never wanted anything like this to happen to you. And all I can think is, if we'd been closer - if I'd tried harder to understand - I would have seen something, I would have known that something was wrong..." She dissolved into tears again, and I didn't know what to say.
"It's not your fault, Mom." I held her hand tightly. I didn't know if she believed me, but it seemed like the only possible response.
She didn't say anything. All I could do was repeat it, again and again, until it was true.
"It's not your fault."
***
"Honey." My mom was standing over me as I sat slumped on the living room sofa, thinking about everything and nothing. "I was thinking about calling Pastor Dave. Explaining that's happened, you know. As much as you're comfortable with him knowing."
