But Hart’s offer of a place to sleep had come back to me, at least once I’d packed up my stuff and dragged it out to the car and had a good breakdown.
Reacting badlywas a pretty accurate summary of what had just happened. Probably on both our parts. Because after Elliot had fled, I’d grabbed all my stuff and threw it in the Cruiser. Because I couldn’t keep staying in Elliot’s house after that. I hadn’t actually thought about the consequences of storming out, but once I’d done it, I couldn’t make myself go back.
Especially not if Elliot had come home.
Yes,I sent back to Hart.I’m sure.
Making this extra awkward was the fact that I wasn’t really sure what to say to or do with Hart’s mother. Or any mother. Mine… well, there’s a reason I don’t talk about her or think about her really ever at all. And never without an unhealthy dose of bitterness.
Noah and I had moved out at fifteen. Noah, because he didn’t have a choice, and me because I loved my brother more than my evangelical parents whose idea of child-rearing involved fire, brimstone, and regular fasts designed to force us to purge ourselves of our bodies’ naturally sinful nature.
Thirteen was how old we were when Noah told them that he was a guy, and they’d told him that God didn’t make mistakes and tried to have him committed. Fortunately, the psychiatrist they took him to wasn’t the kind of psychiatrist who believed in forced conversion therapy.
When they’d asked me if I thought I was a girl, I told them of course not—because I didn’t. I followed it up by saying that I didn’t evenlikegirls because I was angry and stupid.
So Noah and I both were packed off to some Jesus-camp conversion setup in Appalachia. I don’t remember where. I could draw you every single building in that goddamn shit-hole, but I couldn’t tell you if it was in Virginia or West Virginia or Tennessee. It doesn’t matter.
Both my body and soul were bruised by the summer we spent there. Noah’d had it even worse. I was at least tall enough and big enough that they couldn’t really do that much physical damage to me. But Noah…
I’d sneak out of my dorm as often as I could to go find him, to lay under his bed and hold his hand as he sobbed into his pillow. Because they thought that if they showed him what a woman’s duty really was, that it would somehow change his mind about who he was.
It didn’t.
It couldn’t.
What it could do was break people down until they’d say anything,doanything just to make it stop. They’d become so conditioned to give the right answers and mumble the right prayers that they couldn’t help themselves, even if some part of them inside was screaming or crying or catatonic. Or dead.
Some people died inside.
Some people died outside, instead.
Tracy slit her wrists in the dark and nearly bled to death into her mattress in the bed next to Noah’s before someone came tofind out why there was so much screaming. The ambulance came and took her away. I don’t know what happened to her after that, and I’m too afraid I know the answer to try to look her up now.
Candice took as many pills as she could get her hands on, although she was still breathing when they drove her away. I hope they had the decency to take her to a hospital somewhere.
Randall—I never knew his last name—hung himself in the showers. His was the first dead body I’d ever seen.
I don’t know what they did with him. Called his parents, I assume.
They called mine when Noah and I tied cinderblocks to our feet and threw ourselves off the dock.
Somebody heard the splash and came running. I suppose at least they had the decency to do that. It took Noah hours to wake up. They gave us blankets, but we were still in our damp clothes when our parents came and got us. I only had one shoe. Noah had neither.
My phone buzzed, jerking me out of the dark and waterlogged past.
It was an address.
I took a deep breath, then clicked on it to open up navigation.
I droveup to a split-level cream-colored house with a wide driveway and a two-car garage. Everybody had a garage in this state. Elliot had said it was because of snow.
I had no idea what Mrs. Hart did or didn’t know about me or about why I needed to sleep on her couch, but it was going to get dark soon, and I had to sleep somewhere.
I grabbed my backpack and duffel out of the Cruiser and began climbing the steps to the front door. The door openedbarely seconds after I rang the bell, revealing an extremely short, slightly round woman who looked nothing at all like the tall, leggy elf I knew.
And then I was being hugged by surprisingly strong arms. “You must be Seth.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
