Slain

by Harper, Livia

  I look around until I spot the people I do know. Mike and Paige are standing near the front, where someone has set up the cross we danced around at the Purity Ball. It’s right on the front lawn, buried in flowers and teddy bears and florist balloons printed with We Miss You and Rest In Peace. There are drawings too, and pictures. Someone has put together a collage of photographs, most of which I’ve never seen before, but all of which seem to have been taken at various youth group activities.

  And around it all, on the lawn, her name is spelled out in candles:

  JUNE

  Glowing. Flickering in the darkness. Her name.

  The sight makes my throat thick.

  Paige spots me and waves. Mike nods to me too. I haven’t talked to him since that night, though I’ve been meaning to call, because it’s what I would do if I was really his girlfriend, in my heart. It suddenly seems strange that he hasn’t called me yet. But he’s probably been as sidelined by this as everyone else has.

  All the other kids are here too: Chuck, Ruth, Ben, Angela, Erica, Katie, and Nicolas (June’s boyfriend). I walk over to them and join their ranks. I’ve grown up with these kids. I may not believe the same thing as them anymore, but they’re the only ones I want to be with right now. None of them know what the police are thinking about me, and not one of them would believe it if they did.

  Paige hugs me when I walk up to her.

  “Say something, please,” she says through her tears. “The adults aren’t saying anything, and her parents aren’t even here, and all this silence is killing me.”

  I look up and see Angela nod to me, Chuck too.

  “Please,” Paige says. “You knew her better than anyone but Nicolas, and he’s mess.” I look over to him. He’s totally destroyed, barely standing he’s crying so hard. I’ve never seen him like this before. The sight of him so broken breaks us all a little bit more, I can feel it.

  “What am I supposed to say?” I ask Paige.

  “I don’t know. You’ll figure it out. You’re good at this kind of stuff.”

  Angela speaks up, “Do it. It would make everyone feel a lot better.”

  Then Ben chimes in too. “Come on, Em.”

  And Chuck, “Yeah. Say something.”

  My hands are shaking as I leave their circle and take a few steps toward the cross. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe this is a bad idea.

  Once I’m there, everyone stares at me expectantly, at least everyone close enough to see. I clear my throat, trying to think of what I should say, but nothing’s coming. Nothing at all. What can I say about her? That she was sweet? That she was brave? That she was loved? I don’t know, not really, if any of that is true. What I know of her seems so small compared to what her entire life must have been made up of. Who am I to say anything at all?

  The only thing I can think of, the only thing playing though my head, is the song I sang at my Grandma Betty’s funeral: “It Is Well With My Soul.”

  I don’t have anything else, so I sing.

  “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

  When sorrows like sea billows roll;”

  The crowd, all of them now, turns their attention to me. My voice quavers, but I keep going, letting it swell and rise with the melody.

  “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

  It is well, it is well with my soul.”

  I take a breath to calm my nerves, then move on to the refrain.

  “It is well…”

  And I hear it then, the words sung back to me as they are when it’s sung in church. The echo is from my friends. Paige and Angela and Ruth and Katie, joining in so I won’t be alone.

  “It is well,” they sing.

  “With my soul,” I sing.

  “With my soul,” they echo in response, the boys coming in now too. Ben’s deep bass and Chuck’s shaky baritone. Then all of us together, and someone from the crowd joining in with a harmony.

  “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

  I move on to the last verse, and now they’re all singing with me. The whole crowd, at least the ones who know the church, who know the song. You can tell the intruders by their silence, but the rest of us are singing it out into the night, together. Which is good, because the tears are coming again, too hard to stop, and I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself, not without them.

  “And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,

  The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

  The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

  Even so, it is well with my soul.”

  It seems right somehow, this song. Perfect. Not in the way it’s meant, that Jesus is coming one day to show himself as God. But in the spirit of it: the faith shall be sight. The whole idea of being steady in the storm because the truth will come out. Someday we will find out who did this to her. And I’m going to do everything I can to make that day come as soon as possible.

  I get my breath back, and sing the last refrain in full voice.

  “It is well,

  It is well

  With my soul,

  With my soul,

  It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

  I don’t have to start the next song, or the next. They seem to spring up spontaneously after that. We sing more, and cry more, and hold each other’s hands and hug until there’s nothing left inside any of us. Eventually, people start to leave.

  By nine thirty, it’s just the core group left. We convince our parents to let us to stay out late so we can meet at a diner and talk. School has been cancelled all week, so the parents give in. I think they know we need to be with each other right now.

  “Why don’t you ride with me?” Mike says. He seems tired, drained just like we all are.

  “Okay,” I say. “Sure.”

  We walk toward his car alone, Paige having agreed to ride with Katie so Katie wouldn’t have to drive by herself in the dark.

  We get to Mike’s car, but he doesn’t unlock it. Instead, he comes around to my side, steps close to me, then reaches past to open the back door.

  “I got you something,” he says, pulling out a dozen roses, but not yet handing them to me. He just stands there with them. It seems like he’s trying to say something, but can’t get the words out.

  “What are those for?” I ask.

  In that moment a vision flashes in front of me of what my life would look like with him: married at nineteen, chained to the house with a string of babies, an endless series of “Yes, dears” and bland dinners and doing laundry, and never doing anything for myself, just because it makes me happy, ever again.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to give them to you,” he says. “But what I saw tonight made me believe in you again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He steps close, and instinctively I back up a step until my back is against the car.

  “I mean that these flowers are a gesture. Something to tell you…”

  He takes a deep breath.

  “…to tell you that I forgive you, Emma.”

  “Forgive me for what?”

  “I saw you,” he says, the words twisting a knife inside him. It flashes on his face, but just as fast he buries it. “The night June was killed? I saw you with that guy.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MY HEART PLUMMETS TO my stomach. Mike was the noise. He was the one snooping around in the dark. And if he wasn’t with Paige, then he could have been anywhere.

  I squeeze out past him into the open space of the parking lot, which is now empty.

  “I thought you were helping Paige with the soda.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “Why weren’t you with her? Tell me, Mike.”

  “This was afterward. We couldn’t find the hand truck, so I borrowed one from upstairs. When I went back to return it later I saw the light on outside the studio. And what do I find? My girlfriend, naked, fucking that guy from the football game last fall, like a fucking whore.” />
  I’ve never heard Mike swear before. Not once. The words sound so off in his mouth, so wrong.

  He takes a deep breath, calming himself. I see a piece of him loosen, then pull back together, rearing forward toward his goal. The way he does when he’s blocked playing basketball, not the lithe player but the powerhouse, shuffling his feet, barreling his bulk past the opposition, his eyes never leaving the hoop. There’s a fine line between being persistent and being stubborn.

  “But like I said,” he says slowly, regaining his control. “I forgive you. I want to make things right between us.”

  “Mike…” I don’t know what to say. I think he wants me to break down into tears so he can pick me up and put me back together again, Humpty Dumpty style. It pricks up my anger. But he keeps talking, totally unaware of my feelings.

  “You’re the one I want. I’m willing to put the past behind us and move on.” This line sounds practiced. I wonder if he’s been repeating it to his image in the mirror.

  “I don’t get it, Mike. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you still want to be with me after this?”

  “Because I’m not a quitter. And I won’t let you be one either.”

  It’s the kind of thing coaches have been saying to him in locker rooms his whole life. It should make me feel good, but it doesn’t. It’s bullshit. Mike doesn’t care about me specifically, he just doesn’t want to lose.

  “Well I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s quitting to break up.”

  “Don’t you see, Emma? This is exactly the kind of moment we’ve learned about. Churning through relationships like this? Hookup culture? It’s all just practice for divorce.”

  I almost roll my eyes, but I don’t want to get him pissed off again. It’s such a joke. The whole idea that dating a lot makes you more prone to divorce is insane. How am I supposed to figure out what I like if I don’t date? All anyone has ever told me is to find a good Christian boy who doesn’t pressure you into sex. Don’t worry about looks, just worry if he has a heart for God. Those are the only requirements. But what about everything else? How am I supposed to figure out the rest of what makes someone a person, and especially a person I want to spend the rest of my life with? What if I want someone daring or ambitious or strong or, god forbid, good in bed? Doesn’t that matter at all? The whole thing sounds like a system designed to make me set my standards low, and settle for being miserable with whatever I get. I’m done acting like it makes any sense.

  “I don’t want to be with you, Mike. And yes, I went about it in a really shitty way, but—“

  “Nice, Emma.” It’s just like him to scold me after he was the one who dropped the f-bomb twice.

  “— but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to stay with you.“

  Mike is flustered now. There’s a crease of skin above his nose. It’s the same thing he does when he’s taking a test. He can’t figure this out. He can’t figure me out.

  “I gave you a promise ring, Emma. That means something to me. I thought it meant something to you too. God spoke to me, and I don’t take that lightly. He told me you were going to be my wife someday.“

  “I’m not marrying you, Mike. I’m just not. We’re not good for each other. And as of now, we’re not together anymore. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief you saw what you did.”

  ”A relief?”

  The roses are squeezed near snapping inside his meaty palms. He doesn’t know it, has never asked, but roses are my least favorite flower. They’re a boring flower of street-corner salesman and Walgreens refrigerators, something women are taught to want and never question if they truly love. I’m an orchid girl. If Mike knew that, there’s a chance I wouldn’t be with Jackson at all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SO IF I WAS so unhappy with Mike, why didn’t I just break up with him a long time ago?

  It’s not a simple question to answer, but it boils down to this: I wasn’t always unhappy with Mike. There is a before and an after, but in between there was love, or at least something that wanted to be love, and isn’t that almost the same thing?

  As far as church guys go, Mike is a prize. He’s a pastor’s son, a natural leader, a spiritual force. Not to mention the whole athletic, dimpled, Superman good looks thing he has going on. I guarantee there’s a girl right now scribbling Mrs. Michael Kent a hundred times in her notebook, dotting the “i” with a heart and wishing I was dead in some tragic, senseless way that would leave him consolable. Probably Katie Reed. Definitely Katie Reed.

  The thing is, I never really saw him that way, not for a long time. Sure, people always thought we’d get together. But to me, he was just Paige’s annoying twin brother. He was the boy who always called shotgun first, the boy who stole our teddy bears for target practice, the boy who outed us for sneaking the first Harry Potter book from the library and devouring it like it was our last meal (which, as far as Harry Potter went, it was.) He was the boy who pulled my pigtails and elbowed me in the ribs and chased me with two handfuls of baby garter snakes out on his grandparent’s ranch the summer we were ten. As most sisters do, Paige despised him, and we were fiercely loyal to each other, still are. So it was either Team Paige or Team Mike, and I was Team Paige all the way.

  The time he stole our Barbies and chopped their hair? We cut his hair in his sleep, Delilah-ing him into an emergency buzz cut on picture day in first grade. We got grounded from each other for a month for that one.

  In second grade, he lifted up my skirt to show the playground my underwear, and I slapped him right in the face. The teacher saw it and made me write a hundred times, I will not hit boys. Not I will not hit, but I will not hit boys. He received no punishment, just a warning not to do it again.

  In retaliation, I made him an apology hot cocoa and peed in it. Paige and I nearly busted open laughing when he took the first sip, even after he spit it out and threw it all over us. We were wicked little things back then, before we had the wicked pressed out of us by the expectation of sweetness and light.

  But we grew up. Mike got handsome, and I hit puberty, and we mostly ignored each other because it was just too awkward to think about at first.

  Then at some point I started to notice Mike’s intense passion for God. There was nothing false about it, nothing forced. He simply loved Christ. Our junior year, Pastor Pete started to create nights at youth group for students to preach. Mike was the first to sign up. He spoke about being on fire for God, and it made us all on fire too. Mike only has two speeds: sprint and stop. His sermon was no different. All that intensity showed up there too, and it woke something up in me. It made me hope that everything I’d had doubts about could actually be real after all.

  By then he was playing big brother to me and Paige about everything, even though he’s the same age as us. He drove us to school. He hovered close whenever we were dating anyone. Of course in private he criticized all my love interests, and I pretended his opinions didn’t matter. Only they did. I don’t know how to explain it, but I wanted his approval because I wanted the relationship with God that he had, or that I thought he had at the time. He was doing something right. I wasn’t. So when he hinted he was interested, I broke up with Nicolas and said yes to Mike.

  Everyone was so excited for us; we were like church royalty. But as far as my spiritual life went, nothing changed. There were no revelations, no new understandings. Just the same confusion as before, but with the added pressure of making it seem like we were equally yoked.

  And all that spark we brought to our fights? It didn’t transfer to our relationship either. But by the time I figured that out, it was too late for an easy exit. The thing about great battles is that eventually someone has to lose, and that’s what it was like to date Mike. As soon as we got together, he won and I lost.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “A RELIEF?” HE SAYS again. He’s huffing in the moonlight, pre-Hulk mad, humiliated by my refusing his generosity, and maybe fixing to teach me a lesson. Pastor Ken
t has always been very pro-spanking. Paige doesn’t talk about it a lot, but I’m pretty sure she still gets the belt. Mike has a look on his face like that’s exactly what he’d like to do to me right now. I try not to remember how big he is, how quickly he could snap me in two with those fingers if he wanted to.

  “You need me, Emma,” he says.

  “Really?” I say.

  “You think I don’t know what’s been going on with you? That the police are looking at you for June? Terry Graham tells my father everything.”

  So much for attorney-client privilege.

  “So what? You suddenly have some sway over the police? You’re just gonna barge in there and tell them to back off and everything’s gonna get better?”

  “I might not be able to make things better, but I could make them much worse. I wonder what the police would say if they knew Jackson was there that night.”

  Did he just say what I think he did?

  Jackson.

  I heard it come out of his mouth, clear as ice.

  How does he know Jackson’s name?

  “Number seventy-seven? Jackson Thomas? From what I hear he’s quite the bad boy. Did you think I wouldn’t look into him after that stunt he pulled giving you his number?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I asked around. Apparently, he has quite a reputation. I hear he’s even done some time, which I’m sure the police would find very interesting.”

  “He was with me the whole time that night,” I say. Well, almost. He did go to the restroom once, but Mike doesn’t need to know that.

  “And I bet you’re just dying to tell everyone all about how he was with you.”

  “You can’t say anything, Mike, you just can’t. That stuff is all behind him now.”

  “You make me sick, you know that?” he says. “You should be begging me for my forgiveness, begging God for His forgiveness, but instead you’re wasting your breath defending someone who took advantage of you.”

  “You think he took advantage of me? Because he didn’t. I wanted him, Mike. I still want him.”