46 Quinn
Quinn
One day before the fall
My dad asked me to come over again.
It’s been so long since I’ve been to his house. I felt bad. He sounded sincere this time. He promised he’d be around all night, and we could play Jenga and watch Die Hard, and that he’d bought a frozen pizza already and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
It was so hard to say no. It was even worse when I lied to my mom. I told her I was going to my dad’s, told her he seemed to be doing better, even detailed what he had planned. She looked so pleased, and guilt tore at me from both sides.
He is walking next to me now. The woods are quiet all around us. A few evening birds find their way back home but mostly there is just the sound of our boots on earth. He carries a rifle down by his side. Seeing it surprised me at first. I physically recoiled, but then I collected myself.
He grabs my hand as if to tell me this is where we should stop, and I suddenly realize this is really going to happen.
A part of me is still squirming internally.
I think about asking if we can just stop, but he entwines the fingers of his other hand with mine and pulls me closer.
He leans in until our foreheads press together.
I feel his breath on my face. He closes his eyes, but I keep mine trained on his face.
He’s acting as if we’re soldiers preparing for battle, or lovers about to face an enemy that wants to tear us apart.
Us against everyone else. Until a few days ago, I thought we were deeply, inextricably bonded.
But now I understand. It’s bloodspell he’s been after all this time.
We wait a whole hour. He asks me in whispers about my friends, my parents.
It’s as if he can’t get enough of me because I’ve told him all there is to know already.
I ask him to tell me more about his mother because it’s the only thing I really know about him and I want to stall, to keep this from happening.
But he doesn’t respond, just changes the subject.
He tells me he called his cousin at an alternative medicine clinic in Wyoming to see if a “new kind” of mind healing would be of interest. Only, he called the clinic Blue Valley Recovery Center.
The thing is, when he first told me about it a few weeks ago he said it was called Blue Lake.
I remember those exact words because I thought of lupine wildflowers and how they look like beautiful blue lakes in the springtime.
It’s a small thing, and I don’t know what it means, but I realize I think he’s lying about something.
He toys with my hair, and I try not to tense.
That’s when we see a movement in the distance. Dozens of yards away, I can barely make out a buck bending down to tear at a leaf. Immediately, putrid regret roils through me. I told him that this is how bloodspell works. This was the necessary first step before the spell work.
He said he’s never killed before, but there’s something practiced in the way he raises the gun to his shoulder and aims with one eye closed. A knife of doubt cuts through the shell around my heart. He knows I’m lying. Any second, he’s going to turn that gun on me.
But the shot rings out before I’m prepared, and in another second, the animal is down.
There’s an echo in my ears because he was too close to me when he fired.
I follow him, stamping through the brush.
The bullet, I see as we approach, has gone straight through to the heart.
There’s so much blood, and the buck’s eyes bulge with terror.
I turn away and throw up into the dirt. At the sound of the splash, the animal jerks and writhes to life.
His legs flail as if he’s trying to stand.
His antlers carve at the air, inches from my thigh. Fear seizes my limbs.
Another shot. I cry out. The animal thunders down again. We wait in silence for at least ten seconds. Eleven. Twelve. Bitter bile sticks to the sides of my tongue.
He decides to take an antler and a jar full of blood with us.
He uses a knife sheathed at his side, and I turn away, feeling the nausea bubbling up again.
We leave the rest of the corpse behind. All evening, my mind is a torrent of thoughts and plans.
My belly feels hard to the touch, like my internal organs are rejecting this new me.
We wait for hours just to give it enough time.
I try, several times, to leave, making excuse after excuse—that I need to be with my dad, that I need to do homework.
Because I need to leave before he realizes this isn’t actually how bloodspell works.
But he tells me he needs me here, and the way he says it, with his eyes spearing me, prodding me, searching for the lie, it feels like I have no choice but to stay.
He rubs my back, and I try not to flinch. He tells me how excited he is to finally do something great with the magic, together, and I offer the appropriate sounds, but inside I am screaming.
He falls asleep easily, with one arm wrapped around me, as if he knows I will try to escape.
All night I stare at the ceiling, trying to understand how I got here.
I feel like I’m waking from a dream, only just blinking into the bizarreness of these last few months.
I think of my friends. I think of the magic. I think of what I’ve done.
In the morning, he wakes abruptly. I tuck the book under my arm and lead him to the spell circle, feeling like a prisoner walking to her own execution.
He sees no path as we walk, not really, because of the illusion spell.
All he sees are aspen trees and thick underbrush.
But it doesn’t matter what he sees. At the spell circle, I speak an incantation, and we wait. And wait.
But nothing happens. And even though the sun hits me through the trees, I am suddenly freezing, all the way down to my bones.
“It didn’t work,” he says. Of course it didn’t work.
I tell him to give it the day, and he agrees.
He has to go to work, but before he leaves, he places his hands on my chest, just above my heart, as he’s done before.
Only this time the pressure of his weight on my chest intensifies for a moment, and I’m afraid he’s pressing too hard.
I’m backed up against an aspen tree. My lungs begin to struggle for air, and my vision starts to blur.
I can feel my ribs begin to give slightly.
Could they be about to crack? Fear grips me, and I try to breathe deeper, shake him off me, but I can do neither.
Suddenly, he is pressing against me with what feels like all his weight.
I can see the effort in his face, which is reddening.
It feels as if my body will collapse under the pressure, and I start to panic.
It’s like he’s taking his frustration out on my body, but I can’t do anything to stop it.
Then he lets go suddenly, and I double over, gasping for air.
He smiles then, kisses me on the forehead, and tells me, pointedly, that he will see me later and we will talk about what to do next.
I run all the way to school. For the whole day, I have an upset stomach. It’s only when I see Elena and Joey and Sophie in the lunchroom, sitting together without me, that everything I’ve done over these past few months cascades over me.
I need help, I realize, almost collapsing into tears. I am deeply ashamed, but still, I need help. It’s the only way out. And I feel so stupid because, actually, help is what I’ve needed all along. If only I had understood that from the beginning.
How did I not see it before? He wants this magic so badly, I know he’ll do whatever it takes. And once he realizes I lied, once he realizes what bloodspell really is, he will come for me.