The way he’s looking at me; the way he spit outteenage girllike it’s the most pathetic thing a person could be. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I froze at seventeen and am still carrying around my tender girl-heart. Because I feel ashamed at the very suggestion that I’m needy. Pitiable.And that shame triggers an avalanche. It all comes back: shame, shame, shame. Over the intensity of my feelings, overTwilight, over wanting contemptible things like love and magic, over my desire for affection, over the ugliness my mere presence seems to bring out in people.
What is it about us teenage girls that claws so deeply under people’s skin? We’re reviled and desired in equal measure; cringed at, laughed at, then lunged at. The sheer effort people like my father and my teachers have spent trying to control us. So many dress codes and rigid rules and unspoken ones we have taken on the mantel of policing ourselves, looking in the mirror and wincing at our reflections, drawing our own blood first, before others can. I think my father wants me to erase myself the way everyone who opposed him erased themselves while he was rising to power. Perhaps he’s doing the same thing to me he did with the occult. Perhaps deep down, like with the swamp spiritualism, he recognizes I could be a threat and must be taken off the map.
“You want me to feel ashamed.” I can’t help the tears that have formed in my eyes. I simply brush them away. “You know what, Dad? Let’s say deep down, Iamstill a teenage girl. I think you want me to feel bad about that because you have a teenage girl inside you, too, and you’re embarrassed. Everything you hate—my hunger, my softness, my need—you can’t look me without seeing those parts of yourself, and you’re terrified they make you weak. But I know they’re strengths. I’m choosing to be proud. Which means you can’t control me anymore.”
“It’s God’s control you should be worried about.” My father closes the distance between us and takes my hands. His skin is fever-hot. “Come to church tonight and repent in front of the whole town. Admit how you’ve been wrong and be redeemed. This doesn’t have to be who you are anymore. Come to the light.”
I don’t remove my hands. Somewhere inside me is still a little girl who desperately wants his touch. “Why will the whole town be there?”
He looks so much like a cunning lion with his dark mane, lips stretching into a smile. “They think the Low Man is our murderer. And they believe Everett is the Low Man. They’re going to hang him.”
Fear freezes my heart. “Who told them to do that?”
His smile widens. “The sheriff and I have an obligation to punish sinners. You refused to give us the evidence we needed to imprison Everett, so we’re improvising. Come with us, Ruth. Choose your family.”
“And if I don’t?”
He squeezes my hands so hard I wince. “Then I won’t shield you any longer.” I try to wrest my hands away, but he only grips them tighter.
“Let go,” I say, sinking at the pain. But his eyes burn. I look to my mother, desperate, but she’s shriveled into nothing.
Here, in the living room where I used to kneel at his feet, praying he’d stroke my hair; where I once watched my favorite book burn, wishing it was me, I finally understand the greatest pain of all. It’s the moment you realize the family who raised you—the people who witnessed you in every moment of tender vulnerability growing up, who saw your small scraped knees, your spilled tears, your young eyes wide in wonder—don’t love you back. At least not the same way. Your love is, and will always be, unrequited. Maybe I’d been a masochist for holding on to hope for so long, or maybe it was only human, the resilience of that tiny flicker in my heart. Either way, kneeling on the floor of their house, the flame is finally snuffed. Loneliness and despair wash over me.
But as my father begins to lecture about repenting, sweat shining on his face, I remember Everett. The person who is more than a person. Who is the shield I once fashioned for myself, a reminder that the world is bigger than this house, and now, the difference between being destroyed and walking away.
My father looks down at me when I stop fighting his grip, my faceexpressionless. His lecture falters. Silence stretches until I ask one last question. One final interrogation. “Dad, did you ever love me?”
Pain flickers over my mother’s face. But he frowns. “When you refuse God, what do you give me to love?”
There. All this time, I’ve been the one chaining myself. I rise to my feet and leave. As hard and simple as that.
46
NOW
Tears cloud my vision as I press my palm to the sun-warmed wall of the library, so I hardly register the bright blur before it barrels into me.
“Ruth!” Nissa envelopes me in softness and her clean citrus scent. We’ve never hugged before—and any other day, this display would cause me awkward consternation. But today’s different. I close my eyes and let myself be held.
“I was beside myself.” She pulls back to study me. “You didn’t show up for work, so I went to your house and you weren’t there. I thought for sure they’d gotten you.”
“The rioters?”
“They’re more than that.” Nissa squeezes my shoulders. “I know I said I found the Low Man theory compelling, but it isn’t a theory anymore—it’s a manhunt. They’ve got guns and knives, Ruth, and they’re searching for your friend to kill him. They think he’s the Low Man—an actual beast, a demon. I thought I knew these people, that they were salt-of-the-earth folk with good heads on their shoulders, but it’s like some switch’s flipped. Even Old Man Jonas is walking around with a fishing spear like a pitchfork.”
This is worse than Barry or my father described. “Where’d you last see them?”
She shakes her sorrowfully. “On their way to Everett’s house.”
That’s where I’m supposed to meet him. If they find him first—
“I have to go,” I say, and start to pull out of her arms, but Nissa tugs me back.
“Listen.” In her tangerine blouse, dark eyes searching my face, she radiates warmth and concern. “I’ve always tried not to act like your big sister. I figured you had enough people in your life tellin’ you what to do. But I need you safe, you hear?”
“I’ll try my best, Nissa. I promise. And thank you for finding John Abraham. It really helped.”
She smiles sadly. “I was a young woman once. I know what it’s like to be torn in different directions. To try to understand whatyouthink is right and wrong, whatyoucare about, whoyouare, when everyone’s trying to sell you their version. It’s a rite of passage as old as time. The only way through it is to trust yourself, okay? Choose your own path.”
