Slain

by Harper, Livia

“Ruth…Ruth’s face. She looks like…she looks like she’s about to…”

  Then we both look up and, I swear to god, Ruth does this little grinding sway with her hips and makes that face again, and I lose it. I absolutely lose it. Chuck does too. He knows exactly what I mean.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear a harsh whisper. “Okay, you two, out of here.” Roger Smith is hovering over us with a scowl. I turn to look at him and he seems surprised that it’s me. It makes me laugh harder.

  “You’re both excused until you can get yourselves together. Some people here are trying to worship the Lord.”

  He gives us a little shove, and Chuck and I shuffle out the back row and out the room. Everyone’s giving us a look. We are definitely misbehaving. Hooligans! Troublemakers! I’ve never been a troublemaker before. The feeling makes me giddy.

  Chuck and I wait until we’re outside, and then we explode. I’m laughing so hard tears run down my cheeks. My stomach cramps from it. I take deep, full breaths trying to calm down.

  “I thought she was gonna make out with the microphone.” Chuck says.

  And I start up again. It feels good to laugh, really good, like a friend you haven’t seen in years showing up as a surprise on your doorstep.

  “I know. I know,” I say, finally getting myself together. “I thought she was full-on gonna, you know…finish.”

  “Emma Grant.” Chuck raises his eyebrows in shocked respect. “We should ask Ben about that. He’d know.”

  “What?! Are you saying—?”

  “Yeah. They definitely did it.”

  “When? She always acts so perfect.”

  “Camp last summer. They snuck away during chapel. I saw them when I got turned around coming back from the outhouse. His shorts were down. Her skirt was up.”

  “No way.”

  “Yup. Swear to God!”

  “Ruth Stanger and Ben Devine?” I’ve known these two since they were babies. It’s not like no one in youth group ever has sex, but it is pretty rare. And usually when they do it’s followed by a tearful confession and lots of very public prayer requests. The fact that they’ve kept it a secret this long, even after breaking up, is pretty remarkable. It makes me wish the rules were as simple where pastors’ daughters are concerned.

  “I know,” Chuck says. “And I’m supposed to be the black sheep. I’ve never done it with a girl. Not that I wouldn’t.” He looks me up and down, an invitation.

  I give him a look that makes it clear he won’t be losing his virginity to me tonight.

  “Anyway. I’m just saying, everybody thinks I’m so bad, but I believe in Jesus and I haven’t done half the stuff that some kids here have done.”

  I look at him and shake my head. I used to be one of the people that thought of him as a bad boy. He was a problem. Someone who needed to be fixed.

  “I’m sorry if I ever…thought of you like that.”

  “No big deal,” he says, looking away. But it is a big deal. I can tell. He looks so vulnerable, like a little kid clinging to his teddy bear.

  Then I think of something.

  “That night, did you…did you see anything weird when Pastor Pete and Miss Hope took you upstairs?”

  “Naw. We were up in Pastor Pete’s office. He was going at me like he usually does, like making people laugh is the worst thing a person could possibly do.”

  I put a falsely stern look on my face and say, “Lighting your farts on fire is a very serious matter, Chuck. You need to get right with God.”

  He laughs. “Yeah. That was pretty much it. He even asked Miss Hope to wait outside so he could ask if I nearly set my ass on fire to try and impress a girl. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.”

  “Oh really?” I say, grinning. “You dirty dog. Who was the girl?”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s not interested.” I suddenly get the distinct feeling he’s talking about me. “Anyway, then we prayed and went downstairs again. I didn’t see the guy who did it.”

  “So Pastor Pete was there the whole time? You’re certain?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Well, there goes that idea. At least part of it. If he was with Chuck the whole time then he couldn’t have been the one who killed June. But I do have another theory. What if he agreed to baptize her in secret, because of my dad? They might have set up a meeting that got delayed when he had to deal with Chuck. But why not tell the police? Is there something else he knows that he’s not saying?

  Just as I’m thinking up another question to ask, I spot the flashing lights of a police car cresting the hill.

  No, not one.

  Five.

  And they’re speeding right into our parking lot.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  I STAND BY THE door, ready to face them. Ready for them to take me in. But as they shuffle out of their vehicles, they walk right by. Then I spot Boyer and Simms rounding up the end of the herd.

  “Looks like it’s your lucky day, kid,” Boyer says, and goes inside.

  I don’t get it. I look over at Chuck.

  “What was that about?” he says.

  “I have no idea.”

  A few minutes later the police come out again. This time, they’re carrying someone with them: Rick Rasmussen, the church janitor.

  The story comes out in drips and spurts over the next few hours. Apparently, Mr. Rassmussen, giver of hard candy, the person everybody loves, the person no one would think twice about leaving their child with, has a computer stocked full of kiddie porn.

  He made it onto the suspect list because he didn’t have an alibi for that night and, as the only paid janitor on staff, also had an all-access key to the building. He told police that he was home alone that night, but he could have gotten in and out with no trouble at all. The police got a search warrant and entered his apartment by force the minute he left for Wednesday night service.

  The papers are calling him Mr. Clean.

  Now everyone has a theory. Some are saying he tried something with June, and she resisted. Some are saying he was already doing things to June, and she was threatening to tell. Some are saying June saw him doing things to some other kid and was threatening to tell. The parents are in a panic, and the church elders are sweating.

  The church office is supposed to run a background check on every employee before they’re hired, but somehow Mr. Rassmussen was hired without one. If anyone had looked at it, they would have seen that he had been convicted of sexual assault of a minor when he was twenty-two. Which was more than thirty years ago, but still. It’s a huge oversight. By morning, the human resources director, Janet Evans, puts in her resignation. They let her make it look voluntary, but I overheard my dad talking on the phone with some members of the board. It definitely wasn’t voluntary.

  To calm people down, my dad announced a full review of all the employment records, just to be safe. He is personally looking over the files of every single church employee and all volunteers who work with kids or teens. There are over two hundred manilla folders stacked in his office at home.

  But people are still scared. Some of them are demanding that the prison outreach program and the sex offender buddy system be suspended, which is sort of a mixed-up way to look at things. The buddy system was something the Security Ministry came up with to solve the whole sex-offender-in-church problem.

  See, everyone who comes to our church for the first time is invited to a welcome breakfast after service where they all fill out cards with their contact info. The cards are mostly to get people hooked up with the different services the church offers—if they have teenagers, Pastor Pete calls later in the week to invite them to Elevate Youth Ministry, if they’re college students, Pastor Ken calls to invite them to The Peak College Ministry, that sort of thing.

  But the Security Ministry looks at the cards too. They do a simple check in the sex offender registry on every new visitor. If they find anything, they assign an escort to them who doesn’t leave their side while they’re on the p
roperty. At the time they came up with it a few years ago, it seemed like a good way to both protect the congregation and make sure that everyone who wanted to come to church could. So the problem isn’t that we have the program. The problem is that the Security Ministry never got around to checking out current members, only new ones. People who have been coming for a long time, like Rick Rassmussen, never got checked. It’s all a total mess.

  But honestly, it’s a mess that makes me want to dance and sing! I’m lighter now. A thousand times lighter. A million! The pressure has been released. I wish Jackson and I had waited a couple days, sure, but I can’t change that now. And maybe it was for the best. My parents had to find out sometime.

  I’m still grounded, but I send off a quick e-mail to Jackson to let him know the good news. For the first time in a long time my future feels bright again. It’s only three and a half weeks until I graduate and we can get out of here. However rough the next month will be, my future is crystallizing in front of me once again. I have a destination. I have hope.

  The next morning I wake up to a world that doesn’t include the threat of going to prison for something I didn’t do. Everything about me feels lighter. Even my ankle seems to have finally healed.

  I bounce out of bed early and go for a run, which is something I haven’t done in ages. The cool May breeze flushes my cheeks to pink dots and makes my mind feel suddenly clear.

  What I need to do, I decide, is to show my parents that I haven’t changed, not really. I may not be a Christian anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. My values haven’t changed, just the reason behind them.

  When I get home I go straight to the kitchen and make everyone breakfast. When my parents come downstairs I have eggs, toast, bacon, and orange juice laid out for them.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting. I shouldn’t have ditched school, and I should have been more honest with you about a lot of things. I’ve been going a little crazy lately. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you for saying that,” my mom says, though she still seems a little wary of me. “And thank you for making breakfast.”

  “I appreciate the attitude adjustment, but this doesn’t change anything,” my dad says. “You’re still grounded. There are still some serious things we need to discuss.”

  “I know. I know. I’m not asking for anything. I just wanted to say sorry.”

  He gives me a cautious smile, the first one in weeks. I can do this. I can make them understand.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  WHEN I ARRIVE AT school that morning, someone tugs at my elbow. It’s Paige. My face explodes in a smile. It makes me feel warm just to see her. It might not be simple, explaining what happened between me and Mike. But now that they have the killer, all my old problems seem manageable, possible.

  “Hi!” I say.

  “What are you doing here?” Then I register the look on her face. She’s upset about something. Really upset.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  She looks into my eyes, trying to read me, trying to figure me out. “You haven’t seen it,” she says. “Have you even looked at your phone this morning? Or your e-mail?” she asks.

  I still don’t have a phone. My parents aren’t replacing it until I’m done being grounded. “No. Not yet. What is it?”

  She just shakes her head. “Check it. It might be a good day to call in sick.” She walks away.

  What does that mean? I race over to the computer lab. I might be late to class, but I have to know. As I rush through the halls no one even makes eye contact with me. No one says a word, they just steal glances then avert their eyes. I feel both exposed and invisible. What could have happened?

  I log into my account. There are hundreds of unread messages, but one stands out. The address is listed as being from TruthSeeker82@hotmail.com. It was sent late last night. The subject heading is in all caps. EMMA GRANT: HYPOCRITE, WHORE, MURDERER?

  I click it open and see that it has been sent to hundreds of people. There are e-mail addresses for the entire school. It’s only a matter of time until someone forwards it to my parents.

  The message reads like a call to war:

  Who is the real Emma Grant? She’d like you to believe she’s an innocent pastor’s daughter who makes videos like this:

  I recognize the video below the words immediately. It shows my face frozen in a smile. It’s from a vlog I was posting on regularly up until last fall. All of the youth leaders contributed to it. This one is almost two years old. In the video, I talk about the virtues of abstinence and some of the ways teens can combat sexual pressures. It feels like a thousand years ago. I scroll past it.

  But what would you say if you knew that sweet Emma Grant was STILL a suspect in the murder of June Vogel, even after Rick Rassmussen was arrested?

  Could this be true? How?

  Police have been stationed outside her house for the last few weeks, watching her every move. Last week she gave them the slip and DISAPPEARED. Why? Where did she go?

  And there’s more. Take a look at what good little Emma’s been up to lately.

  There’s another video embedded beneath the words. The thumbnail is blurry and dark. I press play. As soon as it begins, I know exactly what I’ll see.

  The camera, the one in his phone, lifts up. I’m sitting on the edge of Jackson’s bed. The bedroom is dark. I’m wearing my cheerleading uniform with the SCHS emblazoned across my chest. There’s no question it’s me. The smile on my face is playful, smirking as I stare at a spot above the camera lens. Then I hear Jackson’s voice.

  “Please?” he teases, “Come on.”

  “No way,” I say faux annoyed. “Turn it off.”

  “But you’re gonna be gone so long.”

  “You’ll survive,” I say, and roll my eyes. “It’s, like, a week.”

  “It’s ten days, and I won’t.” He sets the camera on top of something and steadies it. He crosses over to me, kisses me.

  “So watch, I don’t know, something else.”

  “I don’t want to watch something else. I want to watch you.” His lips move to my neck.

  I don’t see the video anymore. I see his eyes staring into mine. I feel his hands in my hair. I feel his breath on my neck, his lips on mine, the pressure of our bodies pressed close.

  “I need you,” he says.

  “You promise it’s just for you?” I hear myself say breathlessly.

  “I promise,” he says.

  I shut the video off. I know what comes next. I know what everyone’s seen. They’ve seen me. All of me. And him too. It wasn’t sex, not then, but it was practically everything but.

  My face is white hot, drained of blood and on fire. He said he would delete it as soon as I got back. He promised.

  There’s more to the e-mail. I don’t want to look but I have to know. I brace myself and scroll down.

  Is this the kind of person you want in your school? In your church? Babysitting your kids? Dating your sons? I didn’t think so.

  TAKE ACTION!

  Tell the police what you know about Emma on the night June was killed. Do you know where she was? Neither do I!

  Tell SCHS to kick her out so she doesn’t endanger the good students there.

  Tell the board at Summit Christian Fellowship to fire her parents and ban them from attending.

  Tell her she doesn’t belong with the rest of us. She belongs in JAIL!

  My throat closes so tight I can’t breathe. I hear the sound of my breath like it’s coming from far away. It’s wheezing and shallow and fast. I try to suck in oxygen, but there isn’t enough. My heart’s beating too fast, too hard, thumping against my ribs like it’s trying to break free.

  And suddenly I have to break free too. I have to.

  Before anyone can stop me. Before anyone can tell me no.

  I run.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I RUN AND I run. Down the hall, out the doors, down the street to the gas station, my
arms pumping and my chest heaving and my backpack tossing back and forth across my back.

  As soon as I spot the newsstand, I stop. The headline on the front of the Denver Post reads:

  MR. CLEAN NOT MURDERER

  I fish out quarters and pull the paper out, scanning until I read:

  While still in custody for the content on his computer, Rick Rassmussen, known as Mr. Clean, is not being charged for the murder of June Vogel that took place on April 19 at Summit Christian Fellowship. Further examination of Rassmussen’s computer revealed that he was in an online chat room, posing as a teen boy and chatting with an unknowing teen girl at the time of the murder.

  I throw the paper in the trash. I don’t care what else it says. My life is right back where it was two days ago.

  Then I see the pay phone, like a unicorn, a rare relic. I find more quarters. Dial.

  “Meet me,” I say into the phone, barely able to keep the tears from escaping. My voice sounds odd, my throat tight from holding them back. “The Starbucks on the corner of Westlake Road and Sixth Avenue.”

  “I’ll be there. What time? I’m out of school at 3:35.”

  “Now. It’s important.” A sob escapes. I’m too weak to keep it in any longer.

  “On my way.”

  I walk to the coffee shop and wait for him in a booth near the back. The place is as crowded as I expected. There are people at almost every table—moms with small children, men on laptops, some women in suits passing around papers with colored pie charts. The din of steaming espresso and clattering spoons and people’s voices as they chatter comforts me.

  It takes him less than twenty minutes. He wades through the line at the door, finds me, and sits. I got my crying done before I arrived, but my eyes are puffy and telling all my secrets.

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Someone found the video,” I say. “Someone emailed it to everyone I know.”

  His face darkens. “Oh, Jesus.” He leans his head into his hands.

  “You said you deleted it.”

  “I was going to.”

  I can feel the breath rising in my lungs, getting hot and fast. “You were going to? When, exactly? Before my parents saw it or after?”