Page 30 of Bound By Fury

Daisy reaches over to put her hand on mine. “No! No way! Her feelings are not your responsibility! My therapist, Shannon, says that other people’s feelings are not our burden to bear—especially our parents’ feelings. Like, that’s your mom’s job, babe.”

Sam nods, and my smile is wobbly as I swipe the moisture from my eyes. “Yeah, I guess so… it’s just… I’m so much like my grandmother, and my mom hates that. Even though she loves me, she’ll always hate the parts of me that remind her of Gigi. Or maybe I remind her of my dad. I wouldn’t know.” I shrug. “He left us when I was little. But like you said, that was his choice. No one else’s.” I shake my head. “Anyway, now there’s this ginormous gap between us, and I have no idea how to fill it.”

It feels foreign, opening up to people like this. Being vulnerable for once. Back in Pine Grove I had school friends, people to chat to between classes. But my world was so eclipsed by my mom, by my art, by the anxiety of being away from Earnest, that I never really had friends like this. Except for in the summers.

We talk until lights out, and after Daisy and Sam leave, I watch the stars illuminating the sky outside my window. I hate that I can’t quite conjure the sound of Gigi’s voice telling me that they’re magic. Absently, I open the horoscope app on my phone.

Troubled waters ahead, Cancer. Not everything is as it seems. You’re a peacemaker, a balm for rough seas, so you’re inclined to ignore the signs. Now is not the time to suppress your suspicions. Remain on high alert, or risk surrendering your peace.

I roll my eyes. Whatever. I think this evening has been a good sign—finding new friends so quickly. Finding people who understand what it’s like to be other in a room full of same-same.

But still, through every moment since I left the chapel, something about that hidden door, about the feeling in my chest as I walked the narrow hall, is bothering me.

When Kate finishes her rounds and finally retires to her room, I swap my baby-pink cami for a black hoodie and grab some bobby pins. And then I put my plan into action.

TWELVE

ACCORDING TO WIKIHOW, I CAN use a bobby pin to Pick a Lock in Just Eleven Simple Steps (with pictures!). So I slip out of my room with my hood up and slink down the hall and into the stairwell. Earlier, Daisy unknowingly prepared me for this exact moment.

She explained that she used to sneak out every Thursday night to meet her girlfriend at a make out spot in the woods on the north side of campus. Apparently the emergency exit door at the bottom of the stairwell has a loose wire. If you pull it while you push the lever, it won’t trigger the alarm. Kids have been getting away with this for years, which has started a rumor that either the cameras don’t work, or no one gives a shit where the students go at night as long as they make it back alive. It’s risky, I know, but I can’t just sit around and wait for the answers to come to me. I need to go out and find them.

For as much as I like Daisy and Sam so far, and though the campus holds a particular kind of nostalgia for me, I didn’t come here to make friends or admire the scenery. I came here to figure out what the hell is going on with me and why the fuck I had a dream about a bunch of witches and some rude-ass old lady and crazy white dudes and my grandmother with her incredibly unspecific instructions to find some alleged “fated heir.”

Daisy’s trick works, and I silently slip out of the dorm. It’s late-summer cool and a comforting sort of loud. Night is when you can really hear how alive the mountains are. An entire nocturnal world awakens. And I listen to it now, toads and crickets and katydids and owls and the rustling of vermin through the bush. I pass the fountain and avoid the intermittent lamps, sticking to the shadows where I can.

When I reach the front of Lee Chapel, I pull back my hood and crane my neck to take in the entirety of the building. I close my eyes for only a second, but it’s enough to let in a wave of emotion, a flash of memories, the smell of freshly printed paper and rain-dampened pine, dusty Bibles and Mrs. Havensworth’s lemon squares, a little soggy around the edges from the plastic wrap.

Green eyes and blue ones, Kool-Aid-stained upper lips, and rough hands around our arms always pulling us apart. Seats on separate sides of the aisle. Terse words slipping between pursed lips.

Gigi used to say that the boys and I are star crossed. Only destined to burn one another out. But she didn’t hate us together the way Josiah Matsoukas did whenever he was in town. Maybe she didn’t like them too much. But she loved me. And I loved them. Star crossed at a crossroads, marred by a history we couldn’t relate to. Grievances that didn’t belong to us, even if our families acted like they did.

I only open the door wide enough to squeeze through, but once I’m inside, my feet carry me to the seventh pew on the left. I sit where Gigi always sat, the worn-in slope of the wood so familiar, it hurts. I don’t know why my heart is thundering in my chest. I don’t know why it suddenly feels like I can’t breathe.

Sliding forward, I press my knees into the kneeler, but I don’t pray. And I don’t weep. I do something wedged between the two. I rest my head against the back of the pew in front of me and let my tears fall, plinking against the leather of the Bible fitted into the holder.

“When did you start praying?” A deep voice slices through the silence of my reverie, and I startle, my fingers digging into the wood to prevent myself from falling.

Pulling my hood back, I take in a gulp of air before turning and confronting the bane of my existence.

“I—what are you doing here?” I ask Malachi as I stand, finding it much too difficult to look at his face. Instead I take in the way the long sleeves of his black shirt pull taut against his arms where they flex across his chest; the way tension rolls off him in waves as he attempts to mask it with the leisurely way he walks down the aisle and leans against the pew opposite me, even though we both know there’s nothing leisurely about him.

“I could ask you the same thing. First night here and you’re already breaking into the chapel? That’s not like you.” His voice is gruff, tinged with Southern twang. It needles under my skin, bringing sharp slices of pain where it once brought comfort.

I finally let myself meet his miserable green eyes, and it’s like I’ve been shot in the chest.

This isn’t the boy I know. Countenance full of loathing. He’s like a black hole, devouring all the air in the room.

I guess we’re a little too damaged for the pleasantries of a proper greeting.

I lift my chin. “It’s not breaking in if the door is unlocked. The lack of security around here is extremely concerning. No wonder that girl went missing.”

My stomach dips when his nostrils flare at my words, his expression hardening even further. “You don’t know anything about that.”

“And you do?”

Malachi’s gaze lingers on my face for just a second too long. Heat spreads up my chest.

I take a step forward, but he shakes his head, his fingers trailing along his bottom lip as he turns and walks deeper into the nave. Moonlight streams in through the stained glass in beams that cast him in a kaleidoscope of colors.