Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
ACCORDING TO WIKIHOW, I CAN use a bobby pin to Pick a Lock in Just Eleven Simple Steps (with pictures!). So I slip out of my room with my hood up and slink down the hall and into the stairwell. Earlier, Daisy unknowingly prepared me for this exact moment.
She explained that she used to sneak out every Thursday night to meet her girlfriend at a make out spot in the woods on the north side of campus.
Apparently the emergency exit door at the bottom of the stairwell has a loose wire.
If you pull it while you push the lever, it won’t trigger the alarm.
Kids have been getting away with this for years, which has started a rumor that either the cameras don’t work, or no one gives a shit where the students go at night as long as they make it back alive.
It’s risky, I know, but I can’t just sit around and wait for the answers to come to me. I need to go out and find them.
For as much as I like Daisy and Sam so far, and though the campus holds a particular kind of nostalgia for me, I didn’t come here to make friends or admire the scenery.
I came here to figure out what the hell is going on with me and why the fuck I had a dream about a bunch of witches and some rude-ass old lady and crazy white dudes and my grandmother with her incredibly unspecific instructions to find some alleged “fated heir.”
Daisy’s trick works, and I silently slip out of the dorm.
It’s late-summer cool and a comforting sort of loud.
Night is when you can really hear how alive the mountains are.
An entire nocturnal world awakens. And I listen to it now, toads and crickets and katydids and owls and the rustling of vermin through the bush.
I pass the fountain and avoid the intermittent lamps, sticking to the shadows where I can.
When I reach the front of Lee Chapel, I pull back my hood and crane my neck to take in the entirety of the building.
I close my eyes for only a second, but it’s enough to let in a wave of emotion, a flash of memories, the smell of freshly printed paper and rain-dampened pine, dusty Bibles and Mrs. Havensworth’s lemon squares, a little soggy around the edges from the plastic wrap.
Green eyes and blue ones, Kool-Aid-stained upper lips, and rough hands around our arms always pulling us apart. Seats on separate sides of the aisle. Terse words slipping between pursed lips.
Gigi used to say that the boys and I are star crossed.
Only destined to burn one another out. But she didn’t hate us together the way Josiah Matsoukas did whenever he was in town.
Maybe she didn’t like them too much. But she loved me.
And I loved them. Star crossed at a crossroads, marred by a history we couldn’t relate to.
Grievances that didn’t belong to us, even if our families acted like they did.
I only open the door wide enough to squeeze through, but once I’m inside, my feet carry me to the seventh pew on the left.
I sit where Gigi always sat, the worn-in slope of the wood so familiar, it hurts.
I don’t know why my heart is thundering in my chest. I don’t know why it suddenly feels like I can’t breathe.
Sliding forward, I press my knees into the kneeler, but I don’t pray. And I don’t weep. I do something wedged between the two. I rest my head against the back of the pew in front of me and let my tears fall, plinking against the leather of the Bible fitted into the holder.
“When did you start praying?” A deep voice slices through the silence of my reverie, and I startle, my fingers digging into the wood to prevent myself from falling.
Pulling my hood back, I take in a gulp of air before turning and confronting the bane of my existence.
“I—what are you doing here?” I ask Malachi as I stand, finding it much too difficult to look at his face.
Instead I take in the way the long sleeves of his black shirt pull taut against his arms where they flex across his chest; the way tension rolls off him in waves as he attempts to mask it with the leisurely way he walks down the aisle and leans against the pew opposite me, even though we both know there’s nothing leisurely about him.
“I could ask you the same thing. First night here and you’re already breaking into the chapel? That’s not like you.” His voice is gruff, tinged with Southern twang. It needles under my skin, bringing sharp slices of pain where it once brought comfort.
I finally let myself meet his miserable green eyes, and it’s like I’ve been shot in the chest.
This isn’t the boy I know. Countenance full of loathing. He’s like a black hole, devouring all the air in the room.
I guess we’re a little too damaged for the pleasantries of a proper greeting.
I lift my chin. “It’s not breaking in if the door is unlocked. The lack of security around here is extremely concerning. No wonder that girl went missing.”
My stomach dips when his nostrils flare at my words, his expression hardening even further. “You don’t know anything about that.”
“And you do?”
Malachi’s gaze lingers on my face for just a second too long. Heat spreads up my chest.
I take a step forward, but he shakes his head, his fingers trailing along his bottom lip as he turns and walks deeper into the nave. Moonlight streams in through the stained glass in beams that cast him in a kaleidoscope of colors.
Without thinking, I follow him. There’s a panicked desperation building inside me, and I’m so embarrassed even though I’m helpless to stop it.
One year. One entire year of silence has led us to this moment, and I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t keep holding it in. I can’t keep pretending like this isn’t all wrong.
“Why?” The shout bursts out of me like buckshot, spraying against his back. He stiffens, the muscles across his shoulder blades contracting like every labored breath is a chore.
“Eleven years. Eleven summers. You and me. Right? Forever… Right? So why? Why did it have to end like that? Why didn’t you fight for us? One stupid argument is all it took to break us? To tear everything apart?”
My eyes are burning as he turns, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.
“I did everything short of quite literally begging you to speak to me! I called, I sent DMs, I texted,” I rattle off all the ways I’d tried to apologize. “I even fucking emailed you, and you blocked me! You ignored me. Both of you did.”
His face is stone as he watches me.
“It’s not fair. You know it’s not fair. I tried to tell you—” I fight against the tears brimming over my lower lashes.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’ll say it a million more times if I have to.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of it. The fight.
Your parents. Lexie…” I can barely say her name. It tastes like sacrilege.
He looks away. Like he can’t bear to hear it either.
And I want to run to him. I want to hold him, to show him how badly I wish I could take that night back.
But I don’t move. “I’m sorry that they—that they died.
They’re all dead.” My voice cracks, but I can’t stop now.
“But I could have… I don’t fucking know.
I could have been there for you, I could have done something, maybe.
But no, actually, I couldn’t—because you wouldn’t let me—”
“Stop,” he nearly growls. “Take a breath, Jesus fucking Christ.”
I fling my arms up and out. “We’re in a church!”
He rolls his eyes as I flop into the pew beside me.
“You abandoned me. You swore you’d never do that, and you did it anyway,” I say, hating how quiet it comes out. How broken. How selfish.
I’m a monster.
His whole family died, and all I care about is how it affected me. How the accident stole them both from me. Malachi and Lucas. I should be ashamed of myself.
But beneath that knowledge and pain is a still-seething rage, because I’ve been a lot of things, but disposable to the people I thought I loved most is the worst of all.
He laughs, and it’s bitter. “Those promises didn’t mean shit. We were kids. We didn’t know any better.”
He could have slapped me in the face and it would have hurt less. I don’t bother mentioning that we’re still kids, even if only just.
I bite down on the memory of our last moments together.
His fingertips skimming the length of my forearm, his bottom lip caught between his teeth; red-rimmed eyes and the blooming bruise across his cheek.
I slam a door on the thoughts of that night.
“You don’t mean that,” I whisper.
He sighs, rubbing his temples as he shakes his head. “You don’t know me, Harper. Not anymore. You’ve got no fucking clue how deeply I mean that.”
The words come out too delicate. Too carefully cruel. Because I’ve always been soft, and he’s always been all edges.
Sucking in a breath, I stand, bracing my hands against the pew in front of me. “So, what, you hate me now?”
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t meet my eyes, and I can’t take it anymore.
I stomp to where he slouches in front of the lectern. My steps crack out against the empty room, and I relish the way his eyebrow twitches with every hit.
He doesn’t yet realize that his edges have sharpened me into a blade, too.
“You hate me? Really?” I don’t stop as I approach him.
Instead I plant both hands against his chest and push.
“You’re not fucking serious! You don’t get to ghost someone who was supposed to be your best friend for life and then sit here and claim to hate me.
You don’t hate me. I hate you! I hate you for what you did to me.
I hate you for not giving me a chance. For not letting me apologize. ”
His jaw ticks, and I savor the knowledge that he’s not as cool as he seems under his hardened facade.
I should stop pushing him, but I can’t. “You’re a coward! You couldn’t stand up to your piece-of-shit father. You couldn’t look me in my face and tell me how you really felt. You let one stupid kiss and a couple of careless words ruin us! And then you threw me away like trash!”