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And on some nights, I thought of my parents.
I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t miss them. It was because of them we lived on the ranch. Because of them, morbid dreams and darker memories haunted me.If our hearts had been made of steel, would we be unscathed right now? Would this body be a weapon, no longer a plague? I am what you unleashed.
I closed my book and hopped off the headstone, closing my eyes tightly, pushing the violent and dark poetry away. I didn’t have my notebook; I didn’t have anywhere to go with the words.
I’d made a promise on the way here, scribbling in that notebook as Valerie drove. I wouldn’t let them get me here. I wouldn’t let their memories haunt me.
I wouldn’t be the little boy they abused.
Shoving the novel in my back pocket, I started walking toward the trailer, out of the cemetery.
I saw her then, for the first time, in flesh and red. She was sitting on a headstone just as I had been. How I hadn’t seen her before, I’d later know and understand. But that night, I thought she was a ghost, some waking nightmare.
The headstone she was perched upon wasn’t worn like the one I’d just left.
It was grand, beautiful; some would say it was an omen to touch something so lovely. It didn’t belong in the small clearing of those woods, tucked farther into the trees, but close enough to still be a part of it. One word was scrawled in the stone.Salina.
The girl before me believed in omens; she would tell me this later. But on that night, she told me nothing.
Her legs were crossed, her hands gripping the stone. She was wearing a sheer, black robe, untied. I was too far away to see what it barely hid, but she was naked beneath it. Her long red hair was swept behind her shoulder on one side, and on the other, the long strands covered her breast.
It was the woman from my dreams. The snake charmer.
The Devil.
I waved my hand in greeting. I don’t know why. It was absurd. As if my body was being moved by a puppeteer high in the night sky.
She didn’t wave back; she didn’t move. Not for a moment. I dropped my hand, but I didn’t leave the woods. We just stared at each other, and when I went to step toward her, I stopped short as she hopped off the headstone. I could see her body then, every pale inch. She took a couple steps forward before turning toward the treeline. Her robe billowed behind her, and her red hair blew in the hot summer breeze. I stood there like a frozen stone as she walked into the woods.
Wordless.
Soundless.
Through the trees, I could see a house, and it seemed to be her destination.
She hadn’t made a single sound. And all I could hear was my beating heart as she slipped from my view.
Sleep did not come for me that night.
TWO
The week leading up to my first day at Hart Hollow High flew by. Valerie dipped into our savings to buy me school supplies. She wanted me to get a haircut, but I refused, clinging to my defiance. I’d never been allowed to grow my hair out on the ranch. I couldn’t look likea girl. Long hair was for women. I disagreed, but they didn’t welcome my opinions and voice on the ranch. I was cattle.
Since the trailer park was across the road from the school, I walked to class that first day. And as I crested the hill, the yellow bricks of Hart Hollow coming into view, I smiled, thinking I could be whoever I wanted to be when I stepped into that building.
I was wrong, but my naivety was powerful, and I rode that high as I found my locker, as I walked to class, though I felt like every eye was on me.
I wasn’t paranoid. New kids were a delicacy at Hart Hollow High. And at the beginning of my first class—world history—a dozen sets of eyes ate me alive when my teacher, Mr. Pitts, asked me to go to the front of the class.
“Class, this is Nicholas, our new student from all the way on the West Coast in California. Everyone say hi to Nicholas.” The teacher said California, like Ca-li-for-nia. Like the word made no sense—as if it had never been said before.
The class repeated after the teacher, lackluster and bored.Hi, Nicholas’sechoed in the small classroom. I gave a wave and a hello, attempting to walk to my seat.
Unfortunately, the teacher wasn’t done with me.
“Nicholas, or Nick?” he asked, adopting a tone that told me he wanted to be myfriend.He was that kind of teacher. Though my experience in the classroom was woefully limited, I’d picked up a lot about the real world in the two years Valerie and I had traveled.
“Nicholas,” I said.
