33. Petra
PETRA
PRESENT DAY
“Aaaaaa!” A shrill sound interrupts this vision as I sit up straight in my bed. A few more seconds pass before my throat aches and closes up from the sheer volume and force of my scream. It’s the second morning in a row that I wake up from the same nightmare.
Harry’s dead, my inner voice—of late uncharacteristically resigned—whispers urgently. He died. His head came off his body. He fell through the ceiling. And there was just so. Much. Blood.
Of course, the tears gather and roll down before I can stop them.
Of course, the morning sickness makes me rush to the washroom shortly after.
Of course, today is an overcast, rain-soaked day that’s only going to get worse.
It is the day of Harry’s funeral, and I am shivering from a mix of nerves, nausea, and numbness.
His grief-stricken, devastated family has let it be known that anyone from St. Anselm Hall is welcome to join the service, yet I keep wondering if I can keep my wits about me when they put him in the earth.
Should I be going at all? But no, I have to go.
As has been happening of late, I lose track of my surroundings even as I find and put on the most somber black shirt-skirt ensemble in my wardrobe, walk down to the car, get driven to an understated cemetery, and stand amidst a sea of other black-clad figures.
A number of SAH students are also in attendance, and several of them are sporting the same “ALLY” badge that used to adorn Harry’s backpack. Sobbing family and friends stand in the front while the priest reads moving Bible passages over a closed casket.
Harry’s inside that box.
Do I say this in my head, or do I hear some other kid saying this? It doesn’t really matter because the thought itself is so horrific that none of us has managed to fully grasp it.
My eyes are raw from days of crying as I scan the crowd, and that is when it happens, as if almost in a montage from some artsy, A24 movie. My gaze lands on the kids of the five founding families that Sin had told me about in the crypt.
Daphne Underwood, with French braids and disdainful expression.
Quinn Haas, donning a small, black, netted face veil covering a pair of cold green eyes.
Elijah Rutherford, who looks bored and restless, shirt half tucked.
Leonidas Snowden, with furrowed, bushy eyebrows over an aquiline nose and an expensive Armani suit in midnight black. And—
My eyes instantly drop when they meet Sin’s. He’s been looking at me, too, it seems, and I can feel his glance slide over my skin like the hot tip of a burning piece of coal. But he has chosen to stand with the SAH Club, as I have started calling them.
The five of them appear rather formidable as they look on at the moving tableau of mourners with an impassive serenity that leaves me feeling very unsettled. Who the hell do they think they are?
At this point, I’m already untethered from the proceedings and riding the waves of my imagination.
What secrets are these five hiding?
Why was Harry’s body torn up in such a specific manner?
While I ponder, almost obsessing, over such dark theories, the priest’s words turn into a distant, echoing hum under the constant drumming of the rain.
The parents of my dead friend are almost crouching over their son’s coffin now, unwilling to let the pallbearers lower it into the ground. Their distress breaks my heart all over again.
In the end, Harry’s coffin, dark and glistening with rain, is slowly lowered into the ground, and it really hits home then—he’s gone.
He’s well and truly gone.
As I watch the earth swallow his casket, a hollow sob balloons up in my chest, and I feel a swell of tears forming a lump in my throat.
This can’t be happening, oh God, no.
But dirt has been deposited over the departed, and the gathering begins to disperse, mourners retreating under umbrellas, their figures dissolving into the misty landscape.
When my knees start wobbling from the strain of my despair, I, too, turn away from the grave and start to walk back toward the car.
Like other graveyards in the more affluent parts of town, this place is stately and dignified. The burial plots are neatly lined and spacious, and the whole compound spans several acres.
Stone benches line the main pathways, and one can often sight a hunched, desolate figure or two perched on them, though today they stand empty and forlorn.
The iron fence surrounding the area is covered by the cursive calligraphy of ivy vines.
And the wrought-iron gates at the entrance and exit are similarly rusty.
Even steeped in despair, my senses are on high alert and take in every minute detail around me: the looming, moss-covered obelisks carved from granite, disfigured marble angels guarding the final resting places of doomed men and women (and in the worst cases, children), the crunch of gravel underfoot . . .
I am observing everything with a frantic attention that I haven’t known since I stopped taking Adderall a few years ago.
And as I move through the cemetery, I keep feeling that I’m being watched.
No, I’m certain of it.
Eyes seem to follow my every step, hidden behind the veil of rain and the silhouette of gravestones. I glance back over my shoulder, but the fog and shadows blur everything into an indistinct, menacing haze.
Am I being followed? I wonder, and a chill trickles down the nape of my neck.
The feeling of being watched intensifies, so I start rushing, trying my best to avoid slipping on the rain-slick ground. I glance back, my pulse echoing in my ears.
The central knot of mourners has thinned, but the SAH Club kids linger at the edge of a ragged crowd made up of St. Anselm Hall students.
Are they watching me? I wonder next, and the idea causes a clattering panic that speeds up my footsteps. Fear tightens its grip on my gut as I hurry, the rain blurs my vision, and the sound of rhythmic squelching just behind me catches my attention for the first time.
Thinking you are being followed is nothing compared to realizing that your suspicions are true before you can reach a safe space. In my case, the waiting car.
At the hurrying sounds behind me, I let out a loud gasp, and my umbrella slips from my hand, busily rattling on the unpaved path. But I don’t dare stop and pick it up.
Just then, a firm grip encircles my arm, and before I can say anything more than, “What the fuck?” . . .
I’m tugged into the gloomy fenced-in space inside a mausoleum. While I struggle to free my arm, I look up to see Sin, his clothes soaked and eyes dark with an inscrutable emotion.
“Petra, we need to talk,” he insists.
Talk, talk . . . his voice echoes slightly within the stone walls.
“You’ve been ignoring me,” he adds.
“I don’t want to talk, Sin. Fucking let me go.” I shake off his arm and step backward.
As luck would have it, my feet are almost swiped out from under me as they glide over a mossy patch of ground. Sin catches my flailing arm and pulls me toward him.
Outside, the rain patters down on the mausoleum roof, creating a sonorous mask over our clandestine encounter. Our faces are inches apart in that slightly damp, slightly warm air buffeting around the house of the dead.
In the next moment, I shrug off his grasp on my arm and step away—only this time, keeping my eyes well trained on the ground so I don’t slip again.
“Thanks for that,” I say in a clipped tone, “but I need to get going.”
Sin’s face softens, and his eyes are pleading as he says, “Petra, please. You have to believe me. I’ve never been with anyone else. I have no interest in anyone else.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply indifferently, while my stomach flips around in nervous tension. “And even if I did, how am I supposed to believe something like that, Sin? After everything I heard at the . . . the fall ball?”
He shakes wet hair off his face with a decidedly attractive flick of his hand. A shadow of frustration falls over his face, but his voice remains steady.
“Look, I know it sounds corny, but it’s God’s honest truth. That girl in the bathroom . . . she was lying. I swear to you, Petra. I’m not this cool fuckboy you think I am. I only have eyes for you.”
“Well, I-I don’t know what to believe anymore, Sin,” I shoot back, just as a clap of thunder roars over the windblown trees, and for a moment, a flash of light falls over Sin’s face.
What do I see in it that makes me falter and stand rooted to my spot?
His face is contorted with some anguish I can’t make out. But whatever I do see makes my heart tighten.
He steps closer. “How can you say that, Petra? What about all the time we spent together? Did you think I was faking then?”
He can’t mean what he’s saying. He’s just trying to derail my thoughts with all the romanticism of our storm-struck isolation.