Chaste (28 page)

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.

Roland Jackson, age 18.

Beloved son, brother and friend.

I loved my brother and will never hear his voice again.

I love Quinn.

Lightning jumps from cloud to cloud, the sky rumbles low and deep. Hair falls into my eyes as I grab my stuff and run to my Jeep. My hands are shaking so hard I drop the pot of ash at the base of a tree. It lands upside down. When I pick it up the roots are black. Needle-like rain pelts at my face as I unlock my door and climb into the driver’s seat. The heater kicks on after the engine roars to life.

I head for home.

Best fix my hair before Amy rips it out. My heart beats frantic in my chest.

Quinn needs to know I love him.

46

Quinn

The best thing about Christmas is the crunchy chocolate bark my mother leaves out on the kitchen counter. Taking a bite, I brush crumbs from my shirt without worrying about how my mom will react when she gets home and sees I’ve eaten more than half the plate full.

My dad isn’t here to fight me for it because he had to play a concert tonight, one with ballroom dancers dressed like Mr. and Mrs. Claus, elves in green hats and fake snow falling from the ceiling of the Kennedy Center. Molly called earlier and asked if I’d like to catch a movie with her and John. If it weren’t for the third-wheel factor and the promise I made to watch Elijah tonight, I might’ve gone.

Then again, maybe not. Since my crisis in the hospital, my family has taken over my chores. Mom cooks, my father cleans, Amy feeds and changes Elijah. With more time to do homework, my grades have improved. Everyone’s been great. Which is why, after family prayer tonight, I offered to watch my nephew.

The phone rings.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hey,” Preston answers. “Wanna come to my house and watch slasher movies? Ben and the Emilys are here, my parents just left, and we’ve got pizza with anchovies.”

“Mmm anchovies, how could I say no?” I joke.

Preston laughs.

“Listen, bro,” I say. “Normally I would, but I’m watching Elijah so my mom and sister can have a girls’ night. And if I bring their precious boy to see a Freddie movie, they’ll kill me in my sleep.

“Okay,” Preston says. “See ya later.”

When I hang up the phone, I put a Disney movie into the DVD and sit on the couch. Then I put Elijah on a blanket in the middle of the floor. He turns from his back to his belly and stretches out his arms in a desperate attempt to touch the mini keyboard just out of his reach. I wonder if part of what makes the toy so appealing is how unattainable it seems.