Slain

by Harper, Livia

  Tessa drops her bag to the floor and starts to unzip it.

  “Not in here,” I say. “Someone might see you. Use one of the stalls in the dressing room.”

  “Good idea.”

  We make our way into the dressing room, which also happens to be the only room in this whole place with an actual window. Tessa digs into her bag and starts to change.

  “How are we getting out? Did you nab a key or something?”

  “The window.”

  She stares at me blankly, stops buttoning her top. Her face looks like someone just stole her puppy.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Go out the window? That’s your big plan? I thought you were smarter than that.” She reaches for her nightgown. “That window leads to a central courtyard where all the dorms meet. They’ve got a guard out there all the time. Last week Shania tried to get out that way, and they put her in the Grace Tank. She was in there for three days. It’s basically a trap to figure out who the bad ones are right away. Otherwise don’t you think they’d put bars on it or something? They want you to run, but on their terms so they can fuck you over, just like everything else around here.”

  “Do you know of any other exits? Any ways out besides the front door?”

  “That’s it. The front door and the window. Unless you’ve got something strong enough to bore through concrete blocks we’re stuck.”

  Shit.

  Tessa pulls the nightgown back down over her head, giving up on escape, giving up on me. “God help them if there’s ever a fire,” she says.

  A fire? God help them indeed.

  “What if there was a fire? They must have a plan for that sort of thing. They seem to have something planned for everything else. They’d have to evacuate us, right? It’d be easy to disappear in the confusion.”

  “You want to start a fire?” Her voice is harsh, skeptical, but she’s stopped herself from taking off her jeans mid-leg. “Haven’t you read the rules? No matches allowed. Lighters either.”

  My memory tries to grasp at something, something that seemed stupid at the time, silly. A movie? A joke? Then Tessa’s eyes light up again, and whatever it is I was thinking of slips away.

  “We could wait until tomorrow. I bet there’s some matches in the shed by the outdoor chapel. We’ve only been there during the day so far, but there’s a fire pit out there. I think they use it for graduation.”

  I remember what it was that my mind was grasping at.

  Tessa continues. “They have to have a way to light it, and it’s kind of far from the rest of campus so maybe—“

  “We don’t have to wait until tomorrow. I know how we can start a fire tonight.”

  It was a couple summers ago, at Youth Council Retreat. The summer was nearly over. After the sun goes down up in the mountains, August feels like October. We all thought it would be fun to build a bonfire. That’s what made me think of it. The fire pit. The bonfire.

  The boys were showing off. They wanted us to see how strong and smart and wilderness-y they were. Only in the church crowd would guys think the way to impress a girl was a bragging about the survival skills they learned in Brothers In Christ. As if any of them had ever been more than a couple miles from somewhere that could sell them a Coke, or ever would be the rest of their lives. But to their credit, they did know what they were doing. There were plenty of matches, but they didn’t use them.

  I remember Nicolas’s hands guiding mine, remember the spark as it started, the glow of it in the night.

  Tessa is staring at me, her face tentative but hopeful.

  “Get dressed,” I say.

  She obeys, tugging her jeans back on, gathering her things. She can sense the excitement behind my words, hear the sureness in my voice. I leave her on her own and race into the bathroom.

  There’s got to be some in here, we’ve been using them for all our chores. I slide open the cabinet under the sink, and sure enough, it’s right there with all the other cleaning supplies. Steel wool, the cheap scratchy kind that gnaws at your fingers with every scrub. Of course Mrs. Hemple wouldn’t spring for the gentle plastic ones. I wonder, not for the first time, what my parents are paying for me to have the privilege to scrub toilets with steel wool.

  It doesn’t matter. Only escape matters now. I grab the steel wool and a roll of single-ply toilet paper for tinder and head back into the dressing room. Tessa is almost ready.

  Whatever these buildings were originally built for, it wasn’t to house teenage girls. There are no electrical plugs for curling irons or hairdryers anywhere. The only electricity piped into the place is for a single overhead light in each room. But the dressing stalls are against the wall, away from the center, and would be dark without extra light. And no good comes from girls left to their own devices in the dark. What easier way to illuminate them than mounting a battery operated tap light in each stall?

  I go to one of them and twist it until the housing pops off of the base. The tab slides off easily, and I pop out exactly what I need: a 9-volt battery.

  I hold my breath and rub the nub end of the battery against the steel wool. A tiny, orange spark lights into the air. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Tessa stares at it, at me, in amazement.

  “How’d you know to do that?” she asks.

  “Long story. You ready?”

  She nods yes. Her robe pockets bulge just like mine, but she’s been smart. She’s only taking what she can carry, no more. I notice her Bible on top of her suitcase. It didn’t make the cut.

  I imagine that places like this turn you into two types of people. The first are people like Chloe who will never trust themselves again and cling to the church even harder once they leave, praying for guidance on every decision in their lives from college to which peanut butter to buy. She’s the kind of girl who believes every bad thing anyone in authority ever says about her, or anyone else for that matter.

  The second are people like me and Tessa, people who may have been on the fence about God before coming here, or at least close to it. We’re the kind of people who can trust no one but ourselves afterward, especially not the church. Especially not God.

  Please let this work, I say to the great someone or no one at all. Please let this work.

  I scan the room again. I don’t want to hurt anyone. All we need is a few minutes of chaos to escape out the window while everyone else is racing out the door. I lug an old metal waste basket directly under the smoke detector that’s closest to the entrance of the dressing room.

  “Open the window just a crack,” I say to Tessa. It’s covered with some type of frosted plastic to obscure the view. “See if the guard’s out there.”

  She scurries over and eases the window up slowly, then peeks out. She looks back at me and nods. There’s a guard.

  “Keep watch,” I whisper. “Signal when he leaves.”

  I fish some papers out of the trash, letters home that have been discarded as either not good enough or too useless to send. Quietly, I pull a curtain down from one of the stalls and stuff it into the waste basket. I rip the toilet paper off the roll and place it on top of the curtain, then stuff the cardboard tube with the letters.

  “Here goes nothing,” I say. Tessa is crossing her fingers. She may not totally believe in a higher power either, but we need as much luck as we can muster right now.

  I rub the battery against the steel wool, holding it right above the cardboard TP tube.

  Nothing.

  I try again. Just a tiny spark this time, that fizzles out to black before it lands on the tube without any heat.

  I ball the steel wool up tighter and strike it against the battery as hard as I can. This time it catches, and hard. Before I know what’s happening the entire wad of steel wool sparks to flame in my hand. I drop it into the can, but miss the tube. It’s not hot enough to light the TP yet. I need the flame to grow from the cardboard and paper, and the wool is burning out fast.

  I nudge the tube toward the flame with
my bare fingers. It smokes for a moment, almost goes out. I blow at the embers gently, evenly. They glow with my breath, then simmer down. I blow again then, whoosh! The cardboard tube lights up.

  It spreads to the toilet paper, and the curtain underneath. The smoke is billowing now, riding high up into the ceiling.

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  The smoke alarm blares to life. I hear the shuffling sound of girls waking and peek my head out into the room, concealing myself in the shadow of the doorway. They’re all awake, looking around, trying to figure out where the noise is coming from, not thinking for a second that there could actually be a—

  “Fire! Fire!” a girl screams. She’s pointing toward the bathroom, to the smoke now billowing out the doorway.

  “Everybody out!” another girl demands.

  Girls scream and cry. They jump out of their beds and panic as they remember that the door is locked. Somebody races to the front door and pounds on it, but it doesn’t open. More girls join her. A crowd surges against the door, banging on it to open.

  “Help! Help!”

  “Let us out!”

  “Please! We’re trapped!”

  Smoke is filling the air, and I resist the urge to cough. I look back to the window, to Tessa. She’s motioning for me to come. Come now! The guard must be gone. But I have to be sure the others can escape.

  The front door whooshes open, and a flood of girls races through it. All sense of orderliness is gone. I race back to the window and hoist Tessa up to the sill. She sits on it and pulls me up. I glance back. The fire has died down to almost nothing now. Its flames barely lick the edges of the waste basket. It’s the last thing I see as I jump out into the cool night air.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  AS SOON AS I hit the ground I feel Tessa grab my hand and lurch me forward. It’s the first time I realize that without her, I’d have no idea where to go to get out of here. All I’ve seen are the buildings that need cleaning. She’s been here longer. I don’t know the place well enough yet. And it won’t take long for somebody to figure out what’s happened. We have seconds—not minutes—to disappear.

  I run, holding Tessa’s hand tight as she dodges between buildings and into the darkness. I’m thankful for my sneakers and my lungs, conditioned from years of track and cheerleading and soccer. Tessa is heaving, but she doesn’t stop. After a few minutes I have to slow down so she can keep up, but she pumps along at my side, not allowing herself to quit.

  We run for what seems like forever. Through buildings and a field filled with rusting farm equipment. We run past the last buildings and out into the fields. We run past what must be the outdoor chapel she talked about, past the shed that might contain matches. We run and we run and we run.

  It’s so open out here. The landscape is low, scratchy brush and dust and dirt. There are no trees to obscure our presence. The moon and stars are so bright it almost feels like morning. There’s no point in trying to hide. We are completely exposed. All we can do is put as much space between them and us before anyone notices we’re gone.

  We climb a hill, and when we crest it I see a fence. It’s at least ten feet tall. There’s barbed wire on top of it too, as though this was a real jail, not just an overpriced time-out corner. Tessa’s pace is barely running anymore. I yank on her hand and pull her toward the fence, but she breaks away from me, leans over and sucks air.

  “Come on. We’re almost there.”

  Beyond the fence there are trees, real trees, which means there has to be a source of water nearby too. Maybe a lake, or maybe even a river we could get in and let carry us off to somewhere. I wonder if Tessa knows how to swim.

  She stands back up, and I tug her toward the fence. I climb up first, but Tessa’s not far after me. The barbed wire looks sharp, but I’m not staying on this side just to avoid getting cut. Just as I’m about to reach for the top, Tessa speaks up. “Your robe! Throw it over the barbed wire!” She struggles up until she’s next to me and helps me out of it, then I help her do the same. We toss the contents of our pockets over the fence, then double-layer the bathrobes over the sharp barbs.

  I go first. As I swing my leg up and over the fence, I hear something that turns my blood cold. Voices. Shouting.

  “Go! Come on!” Tessa says.

  I launch myself over and climb down. Tessa makes it across, then gently pulls our robes off the fence before climbing down herself. She’s smart. I would have left them, signaling to whoever is looking for us exactly where we escaped.

  We barely make it to the trees before we see the bounce of flashlights crest the hill just before the fence. Tessa and I scramble behind a huge trunk just in time. A giant beam scans the area beyond the fence. The light is slow, searching.

  “Check the entire perimeter,” I hear someone say.

  Someone else says, “They couldn’t have made it far yet.”

  I hold my breath, which is impossible with my chest pounding, my blood pumped so full of adrenaline. Gasps of air leak out and betray me, and I know, just know, that someone must hear us, must see us, must be climbing over the fence right now.

  But miraculously, the voices and the flashlights pass on, scanning out even farther, heading away from us. I barely register it when Tessa takes my hand again and guides me farther into the trees. I follow her lead.

  Dawn is moving into full-on morning by the time we hear the cars and nearly stumble right onto the highway. We ditch the robes and nightgowns, pat our choppy hair down as best we can, and stick out our thumbs. It doesn’t take long. Even two dog-faced girls our age could hitch a ride in no time. But with Tessa? It doesn’t take long at all.

  A grungy-looking guy in his late twenties picks us up. I have to shove fast food bags off the backseat in order to find a place to sit down. Tessa insists on sitting in back with me. The guy seems disappointed. Once again, I’m glad she’s here with me. One of us, he could drive anywhere he wanted. But two of us together? He may think about it, but he knows it wouldn’t work. Tessa grabs my hand and squeezes it tight for support. I don’t miss seeing the guy lick his lips in the rearview mirror, churning up who knows what kind of gross fantasies.

  “You guys girlfriends or something?”

  “No,” I say. I let go of Tessa’s hand. Why do some people have to turn something perfectly innocent into something gross? Even though I’m not into girls, I wouldn’t care if somebody thought I was gay, at least not anymore. But this guy?

  “It’s cool if you are, you know. No judgment here.”

  “We’re not,” Tessa says firmly.

  “Okay, okay. Just sayin’. Where you girls headed?”

  Tessa looks over to me, and I realize she has nowhere to go. I hadn’t even asked. I just assumed that she was escaping to get to a girlfriend or a cousin or something. But her look tells me that’s not the case.

  “Denver,” I say. “Where are we now?”

  “Wyoming, just outside of Powell. I can get you as far as Cheyenne,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  He mostly leaves us alone after that. We drive all morning, him chatting away, us trying to play along like we give a shit what he’s chatting away about. Once we hit Casper he buys us some lunch at a diner and offers to get us a hotel room. He backs down after we tell him no, but just to be safe we sneak to the bathroom and go out the back and hitch another ride.

  The next guy is older, a cowboy, probably sixty-five. We slide into his pickup cab, and he doesn’t say a word. I hated the last guy’s chatter, but it’s scarier, this guy not talking. I’m in the middle seat and expecting his hand on my thigh at any second, but he never does. He just drives, eyes on the road and the sun cutting a line across his face where the visor hits. Tessa grips my hand the whole time. He gets us to Cheyenne. As we’re leaving, he forces a wad of cash into my palm.

  “I don’t know what you two are doing out here on your own, but the road’s no place for two young ladies like yourselves. Why don’t you catch a bus the rest of the way?”


  We thank him and wave as he drives off, but I’m in too big of a hurry to catch a bus and it’s too risky besides. They could already have police out looking for us, or emailed our pictures around or something. In this case, a stranger is safer.

  We get lucky on the next car. It’s a woman, middle aged. She tells us she sells pharmaceuticals and talks about girl power and tries to get us to tell her all our hopes and dreams. I think she thinks we’re prostitutes. She probably imagines getting an “all-because-of-you” letter ten years from now with pictures of us super-successful at our non-slutty careers. But whatever. I put on my pastor’s daughter smile and keep the lady talking the whole time, making up a story that we got lost camping and just need to get home. It’s only a couple hours between Cheyenne and Denver, and she takes us straight to my neighborhood. She seems confused by the area when we get there. It doesn’t match what she thought about us. With our awful hair and dirty clothes we can’t seem like we belong.

  Eventually, though, we thank her, and she drives off and we’re standing at the end of my block. The sense of relief that washes over me is physical. But I don’t feel stronger; I feel suddenly weaker. I can see it in Tessa too, a shift, as though she’s just grown smaller. We’ve been up almost a solid twenty-four hours now, and it’s the first time we haven’t had to put on a show. We need sleep. We need food. We need shelter. We have none of it. And I have questions that need answers fast.

  I tell her to wait there, then walk toward my house. It’s just after one in the afternoon on a Friday. My parents should be at church. Should be. But with everything that’s happened lately, who knows? Maybe they’ll finally take a day off. I peek through the tall windows on the garage door and see that mine’s the only car inside. Good.

  I use the electronic keypad on the garage door to get in. Inside, I throw a couple things into a duffle bag. Two sleeping bags. Some food from the fridge. Clothes for me and Tessa. A couple of mementos I can’t bear to leave behind: a photo of me and Paige at camp last year, the Statue of Liberty figurine Jackson gave me. I look for money from my parent’s dresser, but there is none, and I have to go before anyone figures out I’m here.