“Jane … ” You crawl forward, then cringe back from the line of chalk and lime, now trapped inside the circle. “Jane?” Max’s work boot stomps a deep hole in your side.
I look away. I’m sorry, Holly. Tyler rushes me back out under the starless sky.
In the van, the city lights sweep through the windows and across LeighAnn’s expression. My rotting shirt tears like paper in her hands as she checks me all over. The tendrils and roots disgust her. While plucking them from my skin, her face turns as pale as the moon. “Why didn’t you stay in the circle?” she asks, almost pleading. “You were—”
“LeighAnn? Lee-Lee?” Max sits among loose tools and spools of wire. He pants hard, trying to keep panic down. White blisters on the palms of his hands burst open with bloody dandelion heads.
She scrambles to him. He grits he teeth when she pulls one out, and I remember him grabbing you, Holly, pushing you away from me.
“Why did you reach out of the circle?” LeighAnn shrieks at me. “You were safe. We were all—how was that too damn hard for you?” Steam spent, she turns, cradles Max’s head, and teases the flowers out as quickly as she can with trembling fingers.
I tear plants from my skin, accepting the pain that makes my hands shake, letting the blood drip off my elbows. Bile splashes the back of my throat, but I refuse to make a sound.
Twenty
My hand is swollen and purple like strange fruit. The scabs keep breaking, oozing blood that stains my shorts. Tyler spent the night here, tossing on the living room floor. Even though he couldn’t really do anything, he wanted to stay close by. At least it’s Saturday, so none of Stratofortress have to go to work. Ultimate went to Britney’s, though, and LeighAnn and Max have been in their bedroom all morning. When I hear Max crying, I go to see if he’s okay. Before I can ask, though, LeighAnn pushes me back out into the hall.
“Getting dangerous keeping you around, Sesame Street,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
LeighAnn studies me.
“Sorry,” I say again, quieter. She won’t kick me out, but LeighAnn isn’t my friend right now, either. The man she loves almost died because I’m an idiot. She gets two cans of Mountain Dew, a box of tissues from the bathroom, and disappears into their bedroom again.
Why didn’t I stay in the circle? What did I think I could do?
I go nudge Tyler with my foot. “Hey, wake up.”
He jerks up with a gasp, looking all around. “Wh—what is it?”
“We have to talk to Auntie Peake. Figure out why the prayer didn’t work.”
The drive out to Decatur stretches by in dead silence. We go to Morningside Nursing Home and find Auntie Peake sitting up in bed like last time. I tell her what happened, but she just shakes her head sadly. “The prayer would have worked for any lost lamb of Christ.”
“Well … it didn’t.”
“Then maybe your friend, maybe in her heart, wasn’t as Godly as you think.” Auntie Peake won’t look at us while she says it.
“No, no. Holly was the best person. She loved God even after He took away her parents.”
“Isn’t there something else we could try?” Tyler asks. “Another prayer?”
“Any prayer’s power comes from faith. Faith in the Lord and love for Him. If your friend didn’t have that, no amount of praying will help her. I’m sorry.”
I tell her all the good things you did, Holly, how wonderful you were. I tell her how you wrote FEAR NOT across your guitar. Auntie Peake just shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter if she was a nice person, it only matters if she believed in the power of the Lord. Faith can move mountains and wash the most sinful soul clean. But if your friend doesn’t have it, down at the very bottom of her heart, then there’s nothing we can do to save her. I’m sorry.”
“No!” I shout. “You didn’t know her! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Then one of the staff comes in and says we have to leave. Now.
I stomp out to the truck. On the road, I keep shouting. “Where does she get off thinking she knows Holly?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler answers softly.
“She won’t help us anymore because she doesn’t think Holly had faith? You know what it is? The old bat’s probably just embarrassed because her stupid magic didn’t work, and now she’s trying to blame it on Holly, blame anybody but herself.”
Tyler nods. “Maybe. Maybe if we find another root-worker, they can help us.”
“Stupid old bat. But … ” I pick at a scab, and my anger fades. When it fades, I’m left with doubt, with a question mark like a rusty fishhook. “But what if she’s right? What if Holly didn’t have any faith left?”
“Of course she did. You just yelled at an old lady for five minutes about how Holly played music at church, had FEAR NOT on her guitar.”
“I know she said she did, I know she acted like she did, but … what if, down at the bottom of her heart, Holly really didn’t love God anymore? What if it was all an act?”
“Why would she act like that, then?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s just, for weeks now, I’ve been trying to figure out how Holly loved God after all she’d been through. And maybe the answer is, she didn’t. I mean, we’ve been through a fraction of what she went through, and you don’t love Him anymore, right? I don’t love Him.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud, said it to anybody but you, Holly. I start to choke up and struggle to voice the rest of my thought. “What if she didn’t have any faith, and that means we can’t help her? What if she’s just going to be trapped in the drowned forest forever?”
“Hey, hey, no, no. We’re gonna find another root-worker, okay? We’re going to figure this out, okay? Okay?”
I don’t answer. Tyler keeps promising it’ll be okay, but he doesn’t believe it. He just wants me to stop crying. Hot tears spill down my cheeks as fast as I can wipe them away. I turn my face to the window and watch the trees pass. The pines along Highway 31 rise as straight and narrow as the path to Heaven.
Tyler says, “What about your professor that interviewed all those people? Maybe we can find the rest of his transcripts.”
“Frazier? Yeah, maybe.”
“Or … we could go back to Holly’s house.”
That makes me turn back to face him. “What? No way. What for?”
He shrugs. “Maybe we’ll see something we didn’t see last night.”
“And maybe Holly’s still there. Or else her neighbors see us and call the police. What do you think is there?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not quitting on Holly yet. Maybe Auntie Peake’s right and there isn’t anything we can do, but I’m not gonna just take her word for it and give up. I’ve got a whole list of bad ideas to try before I give up.”
That makes me snicker, less because it’s actually funny and more because I have to laugh at something.
Tyler says, “I’ll drop you off if you—”
“No, I’m in.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and pull myself together.
“It’s past lunchtime,” Tyler says. “Maybe if you had some food in you, you’d feel—”
“No. If we’re going to do this, we do it now.”
We head back to your house.
Tyler drives past it and around the block before pulling into the driveway. No police or anything. The front door stands wide open now, but the neighbors will ignore it—everyone hoping somebody else will handle it.
The swallows chatter in the pear tree, watching us pass. I throw stones into the branches to drive them away. Inside, the muggy heat sticks to my skin. “Holly?”