Page 12 of Bound By Fury

If there is anything at all I could say to make things right between us—it dies on my tongue as I watch him turn and run, past the rosebushes and the towering sycamore, into the woods and across the creek, the path between our houses worn away summer after summer.

The farther he gets, the hollower I feel. Like he’s taken a part of me with him.

SIX

I STAND THERE, FROZEN IN the yard. Pain slicing through my chest like a sickled blade until my mother pokes her head out the back door and tells me the final guest has gone.

Numbly I amble up the porch steps and through the kitchen. I’m stiff. Weary. My head feels full of storm clouds, and the pressure radiates down the back of my neck and across my shoulders. My mother is no better. She grunts something unintelligible and leaves, presumably to smother today’s pain with Real Housewives.

When I’m finally, blessedly alone, I stand in the kitchen and turn in a slow circle, surveying the mess. Discarded flutes of half-drunk champagne, little ceramic plates littered with crumbs, balled-up napkins and trays of unfinished food. The cloying smell of nearly-rotting flowers shoved into cheap glass vases, cards filled with platitudes tucked between their wilting petals.

I prop my elbows on the island and pile my curls atop my head. Looking out into the night-darkened panes of the French doors, I sigh. My makeup is all smudged, and my right dress strap has slipped over my shoulder. My feet hurt from standing all day, and there’s a dull ache throbbing under each of my eyes.

And that throbbing is made all the worse when I remember tomorrow’s looming deadline to accept or reject the offer to attend BMA.

I pull a spoon out of the drawer and slide the half-finished dish of banana pudding toward me. I’ve barely eaten a thing all day, and several sneaky glasses of sparkling wine are making me feel a bit faint.

Shoving a heaping spoonful of the sweet dish into my mouth, I let the handle dangle from my lips as I slide onto the cracked vinyl seat of the barstool and pull out my phone.

The thing about Earnest and Black Mountain Academy is that, despite the rumors woven by the locals and the begrudging way they cross the threshold of its gates to attend church and town meetings in Lee Chapel, it’s always been for the people who really belong here—who spend their days in the village at the foot of the school, in and out of shops, their whole world cast in its shadow.

Never mind the legends that plague the woods: The whispers about bodies piled under the foundation of the church, or the vicious, hungry wildcats with strangely human eyes, or wolves of smoke and ash. Never mind the Indigenous lore we don’t even talk about for fear of bringing life to nightmares beyond our comprehension.

But that’s just Appalachia. That’s just what happens when you live on one of the most ancient mountain ranges in the world. That’s just a part of what it means to come from Earnest.

And despite all this—because of all this—I love it. And all I’ve ever wanted was for it to love me back. All I’ve ever wanted is to feel like I finally, really belong here too.

I scroll through BMA’s surprisingly robust social media profiles. I take my time, inspecting every photo and video and caption, staring into the vacant eyes of every prep-school teen deemed marketable enough to grace their feed. My heart squeezes when I come across pictures of the football team. I swipe quickly past Malachi’s photo, reddened face smudged with eye black, but I can’t seem to flick Lucas’s away quite so easily.

I try to convince myself that they have nothing to do with why I want to attend the school, but I can’t ignore the pang in my chest as I take in Lucas’s sun-darkened skin, deepened from its usual golden brown. The raven-black shade of his lashes, a striking contrast to his icy-blue eyes.

Before, Lucas was like a brother to me, ’cause we’re more alike than not. Opposites so opposite, we’re nearly the same. A Leo to my Cancer, he’s always made me feel safe in the way he’s just as passionate, just as loud, and just as crazy as me.

And Malachi—he was our constant. He was our Scorpio, our voice of reason. He was the sun, yanking us into his gravitational pull. Until last summer, there was no room for Lucas and me to see each other any other way.

Frustrated, I punch the X over Lucas’s photo with my finger and open a new window before tapping the school’s name into the search bar. To be honest, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m just desperate for a sign. Some flashing neon monstrosity that takes away the pressure in my chest. That lightens the load of this responsibility.

Dread fills me as I scan the search results.

Missing Student Reported at Local Boarding School

Teen Last Seen on Private School Campus, Nowhere to Be Found

Faculty Pleads with Local Community as Search for Missing Student Continues

I bite the inside of my cheek. The missing posters plastered all over downtown. My eyes unfocus as I read article after article about the girl who disappeared from campus last school year. Fiona. It’s been nine months, and there are still no leads. No witnesses.

No one knows a thing.

Apparently Fiona is from out of state and was awarded a merit-based scholarship and, according to faculty, appeared to be thriving prior to her disappearance. However, the articles contend, this disappearance follows a long history of gruesome accidents and mysterious missing persons cases that plague the small private academy hidden in the dense forests of the Blue Ridge.

I wrap my arms around my chest in a futile effort to alleviate the chill coursing through me.

When the articles lead me nowhere, I switch over to the only online forum I can find about the case. The comments are not encouraging.

QueenofDarkness69: i heard that the school is haunted

hellogoodbye: yeah i’ve heard the same. something abt the woods?