Chaste

by Angela Felsted

  “Look, I’m sorry. But you’re a good person. And I’m not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It means I care too much to hurt you, damn it! Unable to hold back tears any longer, I blink and let them flow down my cheeks.

  “Kat, you’re crying. What’s wrong?”

  I love you too much. My lips tremble as I try to pull myself together. So what if my heart is cramping with pain. So what if I feel like I’m breathing through a straw. I have to be strong because if I truly love Quinn, there’s only one right thing to do.

  Letting go of his hand, I force out the hardest words I’ve ever said.

  “I don’t love you, Quinn. This is over.”

  44

  Quinn

  It’s almost Christmas, and I haven’t had Kat in my life for weeks, not since the day she left me in the hospital. My mother never returned to Europe. Instead she decided to go back to college, study during the day and help with Elijah at night.

  Bishop Andros has yet to say I can take the sacrament of bread and water again. The repentance process I’m going through is similar to Amy’s, except that I have to write at least a paragraph on each chapter of Miracle of Forgiveness as I read it.

  I’ve confessed the things I’ve done with Kat, been forced to admit how close I came to breaking the law of chastity, and have a new appreciation for what it feels like to have everyone in church know that you’ve screwed up. There’s something deeply shameful about realizing you aren’t worthy of God’s forgiveness.

  I told the bishop I was over Kat.

  I lied.

  Every time I fall asleep I see her face.

  Since Kat left I lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling while my mother takes care of Elijah. The irony isn’t lost on me. For months sleep was all I wanted. For months I felt like the walking dead. Now that I have help, I feel more like a zombie than ever.

  Right after I got out of the hospital Kat transferred to a different school. A private girl’s boarding school in Middleburg, Virginia. A small town with only one traffic light. I know because I looked it up on Google.

  At least a few good things have come from that crazy night. Pastor Jackson apologized to my parents and took the anti-Mormon propaganda off his church’s website. He’s even working with Bishop Andros on a campaign to supply blankets and warm clothes to the homeless.

  My friends have rallied around me since I returned from the hospital. Preston and Molly take turns coming with me to physical therapy. Amy goes to church with us. My mother cooks dinner, and my house is filled with music—Dad on his Xylophone, Mom on her violin, Amy on her once neglected Clarinet. I can’t turn around without running into people. And yet, I’ve never felt so alone.

  When Kat left she took a piece of me with her, the wild part capable of letting go and having fun. Now I look at my mission as something I need to get through, an obstacle standing between me and the rest of my life. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, but I wonder what will be waiting for me when I get home. If there’s anyone else who will accept me like Kat did, who will make me feel both free and complete. Maybe a person has only so much love, and whoever I marry will have to settle for half.

  Sitting in physics on the last day of school before winter break, I avert my eyes from Kat’s empty chair and open my bag to fish out what little I’ve done of the project. It’s due today, and I’m going to fail. Mrs. Williams plops a paper with familiar handwriting down in front of me. When my eyes fall to the page, I see Kat has done the project for me. Her name and mine are listed on the title page next to our grade, B+

  “Good job, Mr. Walker,” Mrs. Williams says. “Nice of your partner to drop this off. I see you finally understand teamwork.”

  She walks off. My last conversation with Kat comes back to me with the force of a bomb.

  Even though I need to move on, it’s hard. For once I envy Amy, who’s gotten over Ray enough to start dating again. My feelings for Kat are too intense.

  I grip the report with both hands and rip it down the middle, into quarters, into eighths, into tiny shreds. My fingers shake as I throw the pieces into my backpack.

  Molly turns around. “Quinn, what are you doing!”

  I bite my tongue and push down the hurt. Men. Don’t. Cry.

  “Pull yourself together,” she says, eyes darting around the room. “You’re making a scene.”

  Tasha walks up behind me. “Come on, Quinn, did you think she actually liked you? You’re not her type. She only wanted your body anyway. Didn’t you hear about our bet?” she says too loud.

  Bet? My mouth fills with bile. “You mean that was true?”

  She leans on my desk and curls a strand of hair around her finger. “Tell me, Quinn. Did she get into your pants? Cause if she didn’t, I’d be happy to finish the job. I’ll even use Kat’s, oops, my camera to record us. We can show her the video and rub it in her face.”

  Bet or no bet, I know Tasha’s full of BS. Kat cared about me. Why else would she pull back when she could have won? Why else would she protect me when Mike showed up, or cry when she held my hand in the hospital?

  John gets up from his seat and pulls on Tasha’s arm. “You’re just mad because she broke your nose,” he says.

  She shakes her head at him. “Why does Mike get sent to jail for giving Kat what she deserved?”

  “No one deserves what Kat’s been through,” I say, standing and lifting my shirt to show Tasha the bullet scar below my ribs.

  “Mr. Walker,” my teacher says. “No stripping in my classroom! If you think this is a brothel, you can leave.” She points to the door. “Now.”

  Blah, blah, blah … I am so gone. I take my backpack and exit the classroom, climb into my car and listen to the engine idle. The trees next to the school look like skeletons. A cold wind whistles through my clunker’s bent doorframe. When I shiver, it’s more from emptiness than cold.

  Turning out of the parking lot, I stop thinking and drive until I find myself in a neighborhood of gated doors and mini-mansions. Kat’s house looks just like it did the day I brought her daisies. Her Jeep is in the driveway with the door wide open.

  Afraid of getting caught, I pull over a few houses away and take a deep breath. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. Did I come to talk, or to spy?

  I squeeze my eyes shut. If I were a decent person I’d say hello, thank her for finishing the project and show her we can still be friends. But when I open my eyes and see her unloading groceries from her Jeep, balancing a gallon of milk in the crook of her arm, I have this urge to follow her inside and kiss her.

  Dang it, Quinn, what were you thinking? There’s a lead weight pushing on my chest, making my heart constrict. The wind howls. How I wish it could fill me, anything to make me feel alive again.

  By the time I get home, my mood is hostile and unfriendly. I greet Amy with a curt nod, run up the stairs, throw my backpack on my desk and lock the bedroom door. When my mother rings the dinner bell, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.

  I hear a knock.

  “Go away!” I yell.

  “Don’t make me pick your lock,” Amy says.

  Fine! My bare feet hit carpet three seconds before my fingers fumble with the door handle. Instead of acknowledging my sister, I turn back and sit on the edge of the bed, open my backpack and dump the shreds of Kat’s physics project over my knees. My eyes fall to a piece of paper with the word SON printed on them.

  It’s the end of her last name, which makes me think of the end of our relationship. A different kind of sun had streamed through the window when she told me it was over. And my mother, who looked paler than I did at the time, had assured me that the Son of God would slowly mend my heart.

  “She did it for a bet,” I say.

  “Who?” Amy asks.

  “Who do you think?” I snap.

  My sister stands and shuts the door. As she sits beside me, the mattress creaks and sinks. She rubs circles into my back. Slow, soothing circles
that remind me of when my sister and I were kids. Amy would kick me, I would cry and my mother would make the hurt go away by drawing figure eights over and around my spine.

  “I saw the way Kat looked at you,” my sister says. “It made me want to gag. Not that I don’t want to see you happy, but.” She clears her throat uncomfortably. “You’re my brother, so it sort of grossed me out.”

  My black cello case is standing beside my desk, halfway open so I can see the velvet lining. The bow is strapped into place and the music is falling out of the pocket. Black dots with stems and staff lines blur together before my eyes. That’s when I know I’m going to cry.

  I look at my sister’s pulled-together brows. She has a point. Kat may not have loved me, but at the very least she cared. In the hospital she said she wasn’t a good person. Even now, with my heart broken to a million pieces, I don’t believe she had it right.

  The image of Kat kneeling on the floor while Mike made her say horrible things about herself comes back as strong as the night it happened. He called her a worm, forced her to grovel and used his personal knowledge of her to make his accusations stick.

  What’s worse than an outright lie? A lie mixed with just enough truth to make it seem legitimate. Kat didn’t think she was good enough for me because she believed what Mike had made her say. Now my hands are tied because I can’t change her mind, not without resorting to tactics that would make me the same as her ex.

  The realization takes the wind out of me. Kat needs to see the deception for herself. She needs to hold it up to the light of day in order to reclaim her worth. But she has to do it in her own time, and there’s nothing I can do to speed that process.

  My shoulders slump as tears roll down my face.

  Amy pulls me into a hug. “You’ll get over her eventually. Believe me, Quinn. I know how hard it is when you’re in love, but soon.” She sighs. “Your heart will mend.”

  My sister is right. If she can get over Ray, I can make it through the rest of the school year. One minute, one hour, one day at a time. Kat may have hurt me, but I’m still alive. It’s a miracle I’ve taken for granted. I need to be grateful for the people who love me.

  “Thank you,” I say

  Amy squeezes my shoulder. Then, just as she’s about to exit the room, she turns and says, “I bet Kat still loves you.”

  45

  Katarina

  For the last eight weeks I’ve done nothing but try to forget Quinn Walker, to drown out the voice in my head that keeps saying he loves me. It’s why I transferred to Foxcroft—a girls’ school located off a gravel road, dotted with brown brick buildings where I dressed according to the blandest dress code ever: in collared shirts and khakis. I ate in a cold cafeteria where no one salted anything, went to mandatory morning prayer and learned to ride a horse. When I hung out with my new friends, they’d speculate about their perfect guy. How tall he’d be, the color of his eyes, even the condition of his shoes.

  But when they turned to me I’d look out the window as if I didn’t hear, unable to answer through the lump in my throat, seized by the memory of blond hair curling around my fingers.

  I needed to erase him from my mind.

  Wracking my brain, I decided it was guilt and started working on the physics project with a friend to make amends. Maybe if I kept my hands busy with this paper and went to every sports game and equestrian competition, I’d forget how much I ached to hear his voice, touch his skin, feel his solid arms around me.

  After awhile I stopped pretending not to feel the loss. Watching my friends braid their horses’ tails made me think of Quinn’s cello bow. The grass in the open fields of Foxcroft prickled my palm like his five o’clock shadow. The mandatory silent period at the end of the day made me think of the silence I shared with him.

  And I realized that while Quinn’s easy smile and baby powder smell made him irresistible, both those things were only surface. The stuff which really drew me went deeper. The natural way he held his nephew, his commitment to friends and family, his decision to put his heart in my hands when he knew I’d likely break it.

  One night at the end of November, I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Then I told myself the pain was no worse than the hurt I’d caused. As I pictured Quinn’s limp body on my bedroom floor, I ripped some paper from my spiral notebook and wrote him a confession, telling him about the bet with Tasha and how truly sorry I felt.

  I stared at the words until tears clouded my eyes. They dripped off my nose and onto the page. The ink smeared. Sending it to him was out of the question. If I did, he’d never speak to me again. Shaking my head in resignation, I put it on my shelf.

  The next day I wrote him a love letter.

  The day after that, I wrote him a poem.

  After one week of writing unsent letters, I gripped my sheets and sobbed into my pillow. For months I’d switched off my emotions, my eyes were always dry, my heart always numb. Nothing affected me because I wouldn’t let it. Tears make people weak, I told myself. My mother is weak, my father is weak, but I’m not like them. I’m strong.

  Letting out my feelings was like opening a dam. I wrote an ugly note to my ex, a list of reprimands for my mother, a sermon for my “righteous” father. I went through an entire bag of ballpoint pens writing Roland angry letters before reading them to an empty chair as if my brother’s ghost was there. Guilt and sorrow and bitterness went through my body in waves. They leaked from my eyes, made my insides shake and used every ounce of my strength until I knew … it takes courage to let yourself feel.

  So now, two days after coming home from Foxcroft, I kneel in front of my brother’s grave. The ground is cold, the sky an ominous gray. The creaking trees make moving shadows on my legs.

  “Roland, forgive me,” I say, “for the hatred I’ve carried in my heart.”

  The long-stemmed roses I’ve brought him mock me, drawing blood as I spread them on the ground.

  I push my palms into the thorns and glance down at my bloody hands. My brother is dead, and I never said goodbye. He’s dead, and I can never take back my final words, apologize for real or show him that I care. So many years of feeling bitter and refusing to forgive when the only one it hurt was me. My hands are stained, and I’m forced to admit that no matter what he did, I’ll always love him.

  I hear the crunch of shoes on stone and turn to see who’s there. Amy stands behind me, hands in her pockets, breath white.

  “What … how?” I mouth.

  “Your mother told me where you were.”

  She kneels beside me and runs her gloved hand around the mouth of the Dutch oven I’ve brought with me. It sits between us, filled with unsent letters, sermons and reprimands.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I lie. “How’s Quinn?”

  A crease forms between her eyebrows. “What did you do to him?” she accuses more than asks.

  My mouth goes dry. I know she’s talking about the physics project. If I’d had more resolve, I’d have gone to his house and handed the damn thing over in person. But I didn’t because I’ve caused him enough trouble as it is. If I see him, there’s no telling what I’ll do to get him back.

  I shake my head. This is better for him.

  “Stay away from my brother,” she says in a tense whisper. “I may not be the best sister in the world. There are times I take advantage of him, that I’m bossy and give him a hard time for nothing. But I still love him darn it!” Her voice shakes with fury. “No more subtle reminders you’re around, understand?”

  My eyes fill with tears, which makes no sense, since she’s saying exactly what I’m thinking. I already plan to let him go. There are too many reasons Quinn doesn’t belong with me. First, he’s honest where I’m not. Second, he’s polite where I’m rough around the edges. He’s kind where I’m cruel, careful where I’m reckless. Last, he has a huge capacity to love. I have the emotional IQ of an onion.

  Okay, so maybe that’s a bit harsh. Let’s
not insult the onion.

  When Amy sees my tears she mumbles an apology, pats the back of my hand and says she didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. Then she warns that if she finds me anywhere near her brother, she’s going to hunt me down and pull out all my hair.

  I inhale sharply, shocked at the threat.

  The rocks crunch as she walks away, leaving me to my thoughts.

  From my pocket, I take a matchbook with the word Hilton written across the front, tear out the flimsy cardboard match and strike it on the friction strip. Fire eats holes in my angry letters, my poetry, my heartfelt confession, even the words of love I wrote for Quinn. Bitterness mixes with remorse and turns to ash as I wipe my hands on my rough wool coat and glance at my newly opened wounds, blood dripping to the cemetery soil.

  I lift my eyes to the sky and ask God to take the red stain off my hands, and that’s when everything changes. Freezing rain pours from the clouds. It soaks through my clothes and makes a puddle in my shoes. My teeth chatter. I can barely feel my skin as the fire goes out. I squat by the pot of ash and stare at what’s left.

  Nothing. Well … not nothing.

  There’s a charred shred of paper at the bottom still white in the middle. I put my fingers into the ash and pull it out, then freeze as I read the words. My breath catches. When did I write this?

  I remember the first evening I let my feelings flow, when the paper torn from my binder couldn’t contain the regret in my heart. I’d run out of space and had to write in the margins. I’d turned the page over to tell Quinn not to blame himself, to forgive himself for trusting me. I didn’t want what I’d done to make him jaded.

  Forgive yourself, the charred note says. Shivering, I read my own words before glancing at my hands to see the rain has washed the blood away. My father’s voice comes into my head, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. I bite back a sob and trace the letters on my brother’s headstone.