Chapter 15 Salem
CHAPTER 15
SALEM
Eight Years Ago
The group, Mortemia, was weird.
Though twelve-year-old Salem had signed up for the group a month earlier, and though her application was still processing, she was seriously considering leaving it. There was either something wrong with her or something wrong with them, and knowing herself, it was probably her who was in the wrong. That’s what most people said.
The one and only reason she didn’t leave was because of her new friend— morningmansion1515.
He was a boy in the forum also waiting for his application to process, only three years older than she was, in school like she was, and really cool. He had sent her a message almost immediately after she had applied, asking her about her username. At first, she had been a little hesitant, but he had told her a lot of stuff about himself, about how excited he was to attend the university in a few years, how his family had been going for two generations, how he hadn’t yet decided the career path he wanted to take, until she started feeling comfortable enough and sharing stuff with him too. Stuff about her family, how she felt so different and alone, how she had never had a friend.
He had immediately said he was going to be her friend, and though reluctant, she had agreed.
He was the only friend she had made, albeit online, and the only thing good about the group. The rest of it was just… odd. And that was something, coming from her.
Unlike other groups on the forum, it didn’t display how many members there were, or how many were active or who the admins were. Nothing outside of the name. And then every week, the admins of the group would tag a username and give them a task to complete within a certain amount of time. Unless the task was completed as per instructions, the new applicant would be rejected from the group.
But she wondered why no one had talked about how weird the group was anywhere else online. She had tried to look at the regular groups, and even joined the Mortimer University group her sister was in to see what it was like, and it was completely different.
In the Mortimer University group, everyone asked questions and posted pictures and commented on them. They were active and making friends.
In Mortemia, there were no posts, none except from the users called admins .
She dreaded, in the pit of her stomach, being tagged by them and given a task of some kind.
Her phone chimed as she wandered around outside at a dinner party. It was a Friday evening, and someone on their side of the town had an anniversary or something to celebrate, and she had escaped out of the house to their gardens, hating the floofy dress her mother had picked for her. Salem had promptly been dressed for the evening, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail that hurt her head, and dragged out despite her reluctance. Sometimes, it felt like she was behind a glass wall, telling her mother she didn’t want to do something, and her mother just couldn’t hear her. Her father just smiled indulgently at her, like she was a child, and let it go.
She couldn’t help but compare it to how they were with her sister. If Olivia wanted something, it got done. If she didn’t want something, no one would make her do it.
She ignored the bitter taste in her mouth and unlocked her phone, looking at the text notification. Morningmansion1515 was the only one who understood. She didn’t know his real name or his face, nor he hers, since he’d told her it was forbidden to exchange names and face photos in the group for security reasons, but she knew he had a nice chest because he had sent her that photo.
She pulled up the last text she’d sent him.
Goldengirl01: I don’t even know why I’m applying to this group. Can’t I leave and we can talk somewhere else?
He had just replied to it.
Morningmansion1515: No! I’ve told you before. I can’t talk to you out of here if I want to be accepted. There are rules.
Morningmansion1515: After everything we have shared, I thought you trusted me.
Goldengirl01: I’m just not comfortable here.
Morningmansion1515: Sorry, but if you want to be my friend, you have to stay in the group. You will get comfortable, don’t worry. You have me :)
Her stomach sank.
She didn’t like the way he’d said that. But maybe this is how friends talked to each other? She didn’t really know. There were parts of their conversations she always wondered that about. She didn’t have any experience. Should she tell him that?
Her fingers hovered over the keypad, hesitating, before something crashed into her back, sending both her and the phone flying.
“Shit!”
Salem looked up, dazed and slightly shocked at the unexpected fall, flat on her stomach on the grass. As moments passed, the side of her hip began to throb and she looked up, only to see her phone broken a few feet away.
“What the fuck are you doing standing here in the dark?”
Salem turned at the harsh words, phone forgotten as anger took hold of her. The idiot who had come barreling into her, pushed her to the ground, broke her phone, and hurt her had the audacity to curse at her too?
She sat back on her tush and looked up at the boy, surprised to see he wasn’t that old. But he didn’t look like he belonged at the party. One, he wasn’t dressed for it, and two, his clothes were too big, too old for him. His shirt hung loosely on his thin frame, like it had been someone else’s, and the jeans were too faded to have been bought for him new. He couldn’t have been older than her sister.
“Are you crashing the party?” she asked him, anger forgotten in the face of curiosity.
“Mind your fucking business,” he sneered.
“Mind your language,” she clapped back, grabbing her phone and standing up.
The boy’s lips curled and his hands fisted at his sides. “I will say fuck and you can’t do fucking shit about it. Now, move.”
She was about to stand her ground when she saw something that piqued her curiosity even more.
Blood.
On his knuckles, like he had broken skin there.
She had never seen someone’s hand like that in person. No one in her circle fought bloody like that.
He saw her looking at his hands, and shoved them in his jeans pockets, hiding them from sight, sidestepping and walking away from her, heading off the property. She didn’t know what prompted her to do it, but she ran after him, walking at his side, trying to match the strides of his long legs. He was tall in the way boys suddenly got overnight. She’d seen that happen in school too.
“Did you hit someone?”
He gave her a sideways look. “As I said, none of your business. Now, scram.”
“Are they dead?”
He suddenly stopped, looking around to see no one had heard her, then hissed. “Are you fucking mad? I told you to leave me alone.”
She folded her hands over her chest. “Not until you fix my phone.”
The look on his face was priceless. “Excuse me?”
She pointed a finger at him. “You made me drop my phone and break it. So, fix it. Or I’ll tell everyone about you.” It was obvious he was sneaking around and didn’t want to be found out.
He huffed a laugh. “Fix your own damn phone. You have more money around your neck than most people see in a lifetime anyway,” he said, referring to her mother’s emerald necklace. It was called a choker, and she had wondered when she was putting it on if it had choked someone somewhere and got its name like that.
Salem shook her head. “I can’t ask my parents. There are messages in there…” Her voice trailed off. The messages were on her phone and she didn’t know how to explain it to her parents or anyone who knew her. This stranger, she didn’t care about.
“Then ask your little boyfriend to fix it for you,” he told her bluntly, assuming the messages were from her boyfriend.
Voices came from the garden and she dragged him deeper into the shadows of the trees, not wanting to be discovered yet. There was a little thrill in talking to someone who was clearly sneaking around and had fought someone, someone rough around the edges who would totally appall her parents if they found out.
“I can’t,” she spoke, keeping her voice low. “He’s not my boyfriend and I can’t contact him without the phone.” He would think she was stupid.
The boy looked at her in the dark for a long minute. She couldn’t make out the color of his eyes in the shadows, just that they looked light. “You’re telling me you don’t have a boyfriend but you have messages from a boy on your phone that your parents can’t see? Am I getting that right?”
She lifted her chin at his tone, the same condescending tone she’d heard from her father when he thought she was too stupid to understand something.
He brought one hand out of his pocket and extended it to her, palm up, slight scrapes visible even in the shadows. “Alright, it’s the least I can do.”
Salem hesitated for a second, wondering if she could trust him with that, not knowing if he’d return her phone or run away with it. She didn’t really have much on the device anyway, just the messages and her family’s phone numbers that were public information.
He seemed to sense her reluctance. “I have a friend who can fix it for you by tomorrow,” he assured her. “Just tell me where to drop it off and I’ll leave it in a box for you. If I don’t, you can always tell everyone you saw me, right?”
Right. That made sense.
Quietly, she placed the phone in his hand and watched him pocket it. “Leave it at the East Academy front desk, for Salem, Floor Five.” She was the only one with that name on Floor 5. It felt better, knowing he didn’t know her last name or her address.
“Alright, Salem. I’ll see you later.”
With a nod, he walked backward into the woods, disappearing from sight.
Salem went back to the party, wondering if she would see the boy or her phone again.
She didn’t.
Love is my religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. […] My love is sel?sh. I cannot breathe without you.
—John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne