Come out come out, p.9
Come Out, Come Out, page 9
Her father gave her shoulder one last squeeze, and her mother flashed her an approving smile as they turned to leave.
Jaq didn’t know what to do. The muscles in her throat were pulled taut, constricting painfully until she wasn’t sure she could draw a single breath. Her fingers curled into fists, fingernails spearing her palms.
“Sorry, I—” She stood abruptly, unable to finish her sentence, and left the room.
She had no idea where she was going. Just out. Away. Not there.
She pushed through a set of doors, not really seeing them, and found herself in the reception area. On instinct, she turned right, into a small room, and shut the door behind her.
It was too much. She was sure that if she opened her mouth, she would tell her secret, and she would be the one everyone was talking about. Her existence the one everyone was mourning. Her parents the ones everyone pitied.
She needed to breathe. But she couldn’t. Not with the walls closing in around her. Not with her throat so tight.
Jaq squeezed her eyes shut. Pressed one hand flat against her chest, over her heart where the mold was seeping and creeping, chewing lightly through walls of muscle. Forcing her heart to beat too fast. Blood rushed and raged, rising like the tide, threatening to burst through her skin.
They were going to find out.
Her parents, her friends, her entire church was going to discover the truth about her, and they were going to push her away. She was incompatible with the teachings of the church. Her job was to bear fruit for the glory of God, but she was the blemish on its skin, the speck of decay that would destroy the entire crop.
She tried to count her breaths. In, one-two-three-four. Out, five-six-seven—
The walls pressed closer, tightening like her veins. Forcing her into a box that would be neatly labeled and stored on the shelf. Hardly worth saving. Hardly worth anything at all. Tainted and corrupted and wrongwrongwrong.
She sucked in a breath, cold air knifing down to her stomach, and coughed. Fell to her knees in the center of the room. When she looked up, she found a cross. The same one she’d sat beneath with Mallory over five years ago.
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Not here. Here it was a sign. A message from God that he was still here for her. This was the symbol that had brought her such comfort for so many years. Promising unconditional love and redemption for trespasses.
Except it was conditional. She’d just seen it in the community room. In the eyes of her parents. She’d heard it in the voices of her friends. The conditions may not exist in heaven, but here they were violent and biting. They were pitying and gleeful and they would toss her out and leave her to the wolves.
“Please,” she said, her voice a whimper. But she didn’t know what she was asking for. Help or forgiveness? A way out or a way back in?
Her eyes caught on a speck of cloudy gray nestled at the joint of the cross. A pinprick of a blemish on the otherwise-seamless wood. Before her eyes, it began to spread, spidering out in all directions. Jaq stood and stepped cautiously forward, blinking hard to clear her vision, but it continued. Creeping across, up, and down, covering every inch of wood in lacework mold. When she inhaled, earthy rot stuck in the back of her throat.
Jaq took another mincing step forward, and another, until she was close enough to reach out and touch the cross. She pressed shaking fingers to the center of the wood, and when she pulled them away, they were smeared in red.
She sucked in a breath, taking a step back as the red stain began to spread, liquid and viscous as blood, staining the pale mold crimson.
Jaq stared in horror as the beams of the cross expanded. Stretching and contracting.
Ba-dump.
The sound reverberated through the small room. Ba-dump. Pumping like a heart. Ba-dump. Growing louder as blood splashed against the carpet at Jaq’s feet, spattering her taupe ballet flats.
Jaq reached for the cross at her neck. Mind locked in a state of panic even as she told herself this wasn’t real, couldn’t be real.
Come back, a voice rumbled, vibrating in the floor beneath her feet.
Jaq squeezed her eyes shut. Willing it all to just go away.
A hand on her shoulder spurred a half-realized scream from her throat. She spun too fast, feet twisting beneath her and sending her to the floor in a tangled heap, too tangled to get away from whoever had touched her.
John.
Eyes wide with alarm, hands raised in surrender. “Hey, it’s me. Just me.”
She spun around, looking for the beating cross, the blood and mold and rot, but there was nothing wrong with the cross. Nothing at all.
“John,” she gasped. Voice stilted.
John knelt beside her in a soothing puff of spicy aftershave. He took her hand and stroked his thumb over the ridge of her knuckles, as he always did when she fell into spirals like this. He didn’t speak, but he inhaled so she could hear it and match her breathing to his.
She didn’t know how long it took—it felt like hours—but eventually Jaq threaded her fingers through his and squeezed.
“You’re okay,” John assured her, gently helping her to her feet. “I’ve got you.”
“Yeah,” Jaq answered, doing her best to brighten her voice.
John watched her for a second before he nodded. “Then let’s go. Preach said the blessing, and I made you a plate before all the good stuff was gone.”
“Cheesy potatoes and all?” Jaq asked, squeezing his hand, grateful.
“I even got you a scoop of that weird pink stuff you like.” John tugged her toward the door.
Jaq smiled weakly as she followed him. Before she left, she took one last look at the cross, searching for any evidence of the mold and blood that had marred its surface. But there was none.
The only rot here was inside of her.
Chapter
Eleven
Fern
Fern started texting Jaq at 6:37 p.m.
Can you talk?
I need to talk.
I just remembered you sometimes had that church thing Monday nights. Does that still happen? Let me know when you get this.
Please.
It was still strange to be texting someone she hadn’t spoken to in five years, but Jaq was the only person Fern could imagine talking to right now. A ghost had strangled her in the middle of the costume basement, and that wasn’t something she could say to just anyone.
It was after nine when Jaq finally answered: Can you come get me? Park at the end of the street.
The De Lucas were just as strict as they’d always been, so even though nine p.m. wasn’t considered late for most eighteen-year-olds Fern knew, Jaq wasn’t allowed out on a school night. Following Jaq’s instructions, Fern parked down the street and waited while Jaq snuck through her bedroom window, then shimmied down the maple tree. She did it so quickly that Fern suspected this was an established routine. That, at least, felt familiar. Like the Jaq she’d known was still in there. Beneath the good Christian veneer and muted color palette was the girl who preferred vivid jewel tones and whose fingers were always smeared with chalky pastels.
Then again, it was weird to feel like she knew Jaq at all. There were multiple Ferns living in her head: The one who’d known Jaq as a best friend. The one who didn’t know her at all. And the one who felt a surreal kind of connection to her now.
“Thanks for picking me up,” Jaq said, slightly out of breath from jogging down the street. She closed the door gently behind her and reached for her seat belt. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Fern admitted, pulling away from the curb. “Somewhere we can talk. In private. But the Dormouse just closed. Any ideas?”
Jaq thought for a moment. “What about Whisper Falls?”
She turned to Fern, their eyes locking. It was too dark to climb to the top and technically illegal after sundown, but they could park at the bottom and sit by the water. The chances of anyone else being there this late on a Monday were slim.
Without a word, Fern turned the car around and drove them there.
As expected, the parking lot was empty when they arrived. Fern picked a spot at the far end, and they walked in silence down the dark path, the falls roaring in the near distance. Fern hadn’t been here in years, and it felt strange to return but also right to be doing so with Jaq.
The last time she’d come to the falls, it had been the three of them. Standing at the top and shouting their secrets into the vortex of water and sound. When things were still good and their friendship made Fern feel safe. Bold, even.
“Oh, wow,” Jaq breathed as the path opened wide and the falls appeared before them. “I forgot how pretty it was.”
The falls vaulted over the cliff above and streamed with moonlight into the glittering pool below. A puff of spray churned at the base, covering the rocks in dew like starlight that glimmered and winked.
They continued around the pool until they came to a picnic table and sat next to each other facing the water. Fern slouched back against the table while Jaq tucked one leg up to her chest, curling in on herself.
“I haven’t been back either. I kind of keep my distance from the woods,” Fern said.
The forest tucked in close around the falls, reaching with shadowy fingers toward the place where they sat. They were just out of reach, but close enough to stir a memory in Fern. A wall of dark trees driving into the night sky. She remembered passing between them, taking that first step into the woods and then…nothing. When Jaq shuddered, she wondered if she was having the same memory.
“Me too.” Jaq reached for the small golden cross at her throat. She and Mal had been raised in the same church, and maybe because of that they were good at believing in things they couldn’t see. Fern had always needed more than that.
“Did anything weird happen to you today?” she asked.
Jaq didn’t speak, but the answer was written clearly in the widening of her eyes.
“Oh, good.” Fern breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Good?” Jaq’s voice was sharp. “Why is that good?”
“Because it means I’m not alone.”
A mix of relief and trepidation moved across Jaq’s face. “I—yeah,” she stammered. “Not alone.”
The way she said it made Fern feel a little more alone than she had a minute ago, and she realized that she’d been making assumptions about Jaq’s feelings. That just because she felt like a missing piece had been returned to her didn’t mean Jaq felt the same way.
“Do you want to know what happened to me?” Fern asked.
Jaq pursed her lips and nodded, still clutching the cross. “If you don’t mind.”
Fern dove into the story before she could stop herself. She told it quickly, not wanting to linger too long on any single moment. The memory of those icy fingers was still too close for comfort.
“And you’re sure it wasn’t Kaitlyn?” Jaq asked when she’d come to the end.
“Positive. She was halfway across the room when the lights came on. There’s no way it was her.”
Jaq gave a thoughtful nod and turned her eyes to the water, absently dragging the cross charm back and forth on her chain.
“What happened to you?” Fern asked, trying to mask the irritation in her voice with concern. “You said something happened to you today.”
“I—I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said after a long minute.
“But you think it’s connected, right?” Fern pressed.
“To what?”
“To…this!” Fern gestured at the air between them, disbelief making her louder than she’d intended to be. “To whatever happened to us on Friday night. Whatever it was, it’s obviously still happening, and I want to know why.”
The muscles in Jaq’s jaw flinched once, and Fern saw the first shimmer of tears building in her eyes. “But I don’t.”
Fern stared at her in shock. “Why?”
Jaq took a shuddering breath, hugging her knee against her chest with one arm. For a second, Fern thought she wasn’t going to answer. “Because maybe it will go back to the way things were,” she said.
“The way things were,” Fern repeated. “You mean, you want to forget? Again?”
“I think it would be better,” Jaq answered, voice tight and small. Maybe even a little sad. “Safer.”
That word. It sat so firmly between them that Fern couldn’t argue. She remembered what Jaq’s parents were like. What Mallory’s parents had been like. Safe hadn’t existed for them the way it did for other people. It was something they’d had to create together, something they found in each other and in the woods.
That sense of safety was one more piece of the past that had been taken from them. Before, Fern had never felt the odd fear she did now whenever she was near the woods. In fact, she and Jaq and Mal had spent every minute they could inside the woods all because they believed that the Patron would keep them safe.
Mal had been the instigator, because she always was, but the two of them had been more than willing to follow. Another memory clicked into place, a scene unfolding in Fern’s mind.
“If the Patron grants you a wish, what will you wish for?”
Mal had asked it one day as they’d walked through the woods. She turned her eyes on Jaq, whose cheeks had flushed as crimson as the darkest jewel in her necklace.
Fern was starting to sense the growing attraction between her two friends. Jaq had been terrible at hiding it, but even Mallory had her tells. The way she had always looked to Jaq first when she had a question, or the way she always put herself in the middle when the three of them were together. As though she didn’t want anyone else to be close to Jaq.
It hadn’t bothered Fern, but by then it was starting to make her anxious that soon there wouldn’t be room in their friendship for three.
“Oh, um, I don’t know,” Jaq had stammered.
“C’mon,” Mal teased. “Isn’t there someplace you’d like to be? Someone you’d like to kill? Or kiss?”
“Mallory!” Jaq sputtered. “Oh my god, okay. I guess I would wish for enough money that I never had to rely on my parents for anything again.”
“Riches. That’s a solid and very traditional wish,” Mal said, nodding sagely. “What about you, Fern?”
Fern had known it was coming, but it wasn’t an easy question, and she hadn’t had a ready answer. There were a lot of things she would have changed if she could, but not about herself.
“You know,” Fern started, intending to tell Mallory that the Patron wasn’t real. He wasn’t going to grant them any wishes. But she’d stopped herself. Arrested by the vulnerable desperation she’d seen in Mal’s eyes in that moment. Mal had needed it. She had needed to believe that someone out there—even a fake someone—wanted to help her when no other adult in her life did. And Fern hadn’t been able to be the one to take that away. She’d cleared her throat and said, “I would wish for my mom to accept me the way I am.”
“You would change her?” Mal asked. “Against her will? That’s dark.”
“No! That’s not what I meant!” Fern protested.
But Mal had flashed that wicked grin of hers and said, “I would.”
“Would what?” Fern asked.
“I would change my parents if I could. But I don’t want their love. I used to. Now I just want them to feel the way they’ve made me feel.” Mal’s expression went dark, her voice so low that Fern had shivered when she’d said, “If the Patron gave me one wish, I would wish for the power to hurt all the people who ever hurt me.”
Now Fern bit down on her bottom lip. Jaq was right—they’d been safer before their memories had been returned. But had they really been themselves? Was it better to be a fraction of their true selves? A version that fit neatly into the part of the world they’d been born into? Fern didn’t think so. Even knowing that it would upset her mother, she knew this was better.
What she didn’t understand was why Jaq didn’t feel the same way.
“I don’t think it’s going to go back to the way it was,” Fern said, trying to be gentle.
Jaq sniffled and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes for a minute. “Do you think that was Mallory today? The hands that grabbed you.”
“She told us herself that she would get revenge on the people who hurt her.” Fern thought for a minute, then shrugged. “I don’t know what else it could be. Do you?”
“No,” Jaq said, but she sounded less sure than Fern.
Fern desperately wanted to know what it was Jaq had seen today. She wanted to lay their experiences side by side and find the similarities. The differences. But Jaq was clamming up. Shutting down. Fern wasn’t going to get anything out of her by making demands. A distant part of Fern’s mind reminded her that Jaq had always been less sure of herself.
If Fern was good at faking confidence, and Mal had been a simmering pot of rage, then Jaq was the timid one. She’d always required a lighter touch.
“I feel like I’ve been split in two,” Fern said, changing tactics. “I know who I was before Friday and who I was before we forgot everything, but who I am now feels…amorphous. Not exactly a blend of the two.”
Fern paused, giving Jaq room to enter the conversation. When she didn’t, Fern continued.
“I can’t tell if the things I feel are real or if they’re left over from when I forgot.” An image of Kaitlyn appeared in her mind, bringing with it a conflicted maelstrom of emotion that was impossible to untangle. There was jealousy, sure, but Fern could no longer tell where it came from. Was it because Kaitlyn had always had an easier time of being gay? Because they’d been in competition for so many years? Because she had the role Fern wanted now?
“I don’t want to dismiss who I’ve been for the past five years, but I feel like…like—”
