Page 71 of They Say a Girl Died Here

“You still sure of that?” Melissa asked, triumphant.

“Fuck,” the sheriff said, before exploding, frustrated. “Fuck!”

“It’s a sign from God. He’s chosen her.”

“Wait!” Anna said, holding her hands out, one bent and broken, one in supplication. “Wait. Please. I have an idea.” She focused entirely on Melissa. “The story of Abraham and Isaac?” At last the Bible stories Grandma had pumped her full of as a child were coming in handy. “Isaac didn’t die. At the last moment an angel brought a ram to sacrifice instead. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Melissa studied her, nodding cautiously.

“Let me be that ram,” Anna continued. “You might not like me, but you know I’ve grown to love this land. We’ve talked about it. You think Caroline will be better because she innocent. But I can beat that. I can be a willing sacrifice. Give myself up for the harvest. Let it be my body fed to the earth. My skin cut off. My flesh pressed into it. How much more powerful would that be for your god?”

“You’d do that?” Melissa came forward, curious. “A willing sacrifice?”

“If you let Caroline and Grandma go.” Grandma was rocking harder now, her eyes squeezed shut. “Caroline won’t remember any of this and you guys are clever enough to cover anything she does. Give her some more drugs, Doc, something that will leave her confused. But she doesn’t deserve to die and you know it. But me, I’ll go willingly.”

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement. Leviticus 17:11.” Melissa spoke softly, looking at Anna in wonder.

“Do we have a deal?” Anna looked across at the sheriff, needing his assurance. He nodded, relieved. So did the doc.

Melissa smiled. “We have a deal.”

“I can’t do it again, I can’t do it again.” Grandma spoke, louder this time, her eyes fixed on Anna, wide and afraid.

“It’s okay, Grandma. Really it is.” Anna wanted to hug her. She wanted to hug Caroline, drink in the smell of them both. Mom would be proud of her if she knew. At last. I love you, Mom, she thought. I love all of you. She carefully lowered herself to her knees. “Let’s get it over with.”

She took a deep breath and held herself tall. She looked at Caroline sleeping in the chair and then closed her eyes as Melissa walked around to the back of her. Anna thought of everything her own life had been and found that the good in it shone bright. Twenty-two years of life and love and energy. Gone so fast. She saw her mother’s face, laughing as they trimmed a Christmas tree. She felt Grandma holding her hand when she was small—always holding her hand—how had she forgotten that? Caroline leaping into her bed when she was little. The smell of her as she cuddled up. How lucky she’d been to have had them. So much love to surround her. What a precious thing. She wished they could know she was okay. She wished she could take their coming grief from them. She wished for a lot of things, but in the end, she took a deep breath of the musty basement air and readied herself for the nothingness.

She felt the slightest tremor of a breeze, Melissa starting to swing the bat down hard, and as Anna surrendered herself to whatever came after this last time, no more Annas, no more timelines, this time ready for the pain, she thought of Caroline and the life she would now have, and how brilliant it had been to have even existed, and how all that ever mattered when it came to the end, as every song had ever told her, was love.

85

It all happened fast, three things coming so hard on the heels of one another they were almost instantaneous.

First, there was the sudden gust of wind, the storm impossibly raging inside the house, followed by a wolf whistle, short and sharp, from up high to her right. She was glancing that way, as, no doubt, was Melissa, when the blast came. It was so loud that Anna’s skull shook with it, and as she fell forward, her back heavy with unexpected weight, blood splattering on her cheeks, she was surprised by the lack of pain. Melissa had hit her. That’s what it must have been. Her breath punched out of her lungs as she hit the filthy basement floor, the weight on her like lead, her ears momentarily deaf. The softball bat clattered, rolling away—no blood on it, so strange, where was her blood—and as Anna gasped, sucking in a breath of stinking air, the heaviness rolled away from her, and she realized, as she came face-to-face with Melissa, that what she’d felt had been the other girl falling with force onto her.

Melissa’s eyes were wide in shocked surprise, not laughing now, and she was covered in blood, an awful gaping wound in her shoulder. Her mouth was moving, but no words came. Anna looked up to her right, where Todd was coming through the narrow window. She stared at him. What was he doing here? And how was he doing that? She’d wedged the big hardback of Huckleberry Finn against the lock, solidly jamming the window shut. He couldn’t have opened it.

“You stupid boy!” Dr. Burdett turned, his own gun raised, ready to fire at Todd, not yet clear of the window, and before Anna could scrabble across Melissa to try to take the doc down herself, Grandma moved. From behind the book she was hugging—Huckleberry Finn, it was Huckleberry Finn, Grandma had moved it so Todd could save her, had he tried and failed to get in through the window before—she pulled out a knife, the knife Anna had been looking for upstairs, and stabbed her aged ex-beau deep in the thigh.

The doc’s shriek of pain did not last long, because another gunshot rang out, and half of Dr. Burdett’s face exploded into a red and ivory mess, the bullet fired from so close it spun his body with the impact, and though he did pull his own gun’s trigger as he fell to the floor, dead before he hit it, the only thing he blasted a hole through was a crate full of Grandma’s old books.

For a moment after that there was only stillness and Melissa’s struggling breaths beside her. Feet moved across the floor. A heavy tread. Sheriff Adams stood over Dr. Burdett’s body, shoulders slumped, pistol in hand. It was Sheriff Adams who’d shot him, who’d decided enough was enough.

“You okay, Anna?” Todd called out as he dropped from the window, and when she nodded, he moved fast to handcuff the sheriff, who put up no resistance.

“No need to read me my rights,” Sheriff Adams said. “I know them.” In the distance, sirens punctured the night. There was more help coming. Why Todd had come here, she had no idea, but he’d saved them. It was over.

She hauled herself to her feet, needing to get to Caroline, her Sleeping Beauty little sister, but as she stumbled forward, a hand grabbed her good ankle, tight. Melissa looked up at her, deathly pale now, fighting for every breath. She looked younger. The plastic bracelets and heavy makeup a little pathetic. Trying too hard to be someone. Rebellious. An outcast, but only because no one would let her in. She was made wrong. That’s all there was to it.

Anna crouched, pulling off her T-shirt and pressing it into Melissa’s chest. It sank into the warm, gaping depth of the wound that was pumping blood at an alarming rate, the bullet having gone right through her, and Anna realized that however fast the ambulance got here, Melissa wasn’t going to live.

“Strangle me.” Melissa spat the words out, blood tinting her lips. She too knew she was dying. Anna could see the fear. “Strangle me and wash me. Put me on the Millers’ farm. Where I would have put you. They need it most. Feed the land.”

Anna took Melissa’s cold hand from around her ankle and held it while the other girl coughed up some blood, time running out. Anna searched her memory for some words of comfort. For something Christian to say.

“Please,” Melissa whispered.

Anna looked at her for a long moment. She thought of Lila. Of Bonnie. Of Caroline. “Not a chance in the hell you’re going to,” she said eventually. “Goodbye, Melissa.”