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FOURTEEN
Valerie and I rode home from the Deacon’s place in silence. I stared out the window as we descended the hill, breathing out when the scent of Deacon Rex seemed to finally be gone. I was looking for something. Maybe the animal from the road. Or a flash of red—Sorina’s hair. I saw nothing but trees, dark and reaching.
When we returned to the trailer, Valerie went to her room after a monotone goodnight and a plea to get to the dance safely.
Kyrie was picking me up, and I was glad to avoid the awkwardness of her father’s protective gaze.
I sat on the front porch waiting, looking for Sorina again, but she never came. Eventually, I saw the headlights of Kyrie’s car. She rolled down the window and waved as she pulled into my driveway, and I jogged over, getting into the passenger seat.
The fall festival dance wasn’t formal. No fancy dresses expected as they would be for the winter formal, Homecoming, and Prom, or so I’d been told, but Kyrie loved dresses, and she couldn’t help herself. She had on a long floral number with a cardigan over it.
She wore Doc Martens with thick socks. Her black hair was in a casual updo thing girls did, and she wore deep red lipstick.
I told her she looked beautiful not just because I knew it would make her happy, but because it was true. She smiled as we drove up the hill to the school. After we parked, she reached for the door handle, but my words stopped her.
“Something weird happened at the Deacon’s house tonight.”
Kyrie pulled the door closed, turning to me. “What happened?”
I turned in the seat, leaning my head on the window. “Deacons … Priests … all that. They’re celibate, right? Like, that’s what they’re supposed to be, right?” I knew the way religion could sour a mind and make a person do awful things. But I hadn’t the slightest idea of the innerworkings of each religion, and I had no genuine desire to know. Not until that night.
“A Deacon that has the goal of becoming a Priest, yes. They’re celibate. Why?”
“I think he wants to fuck my aunt.” The thought that had been swirling in my head on the hill tumbled out. I’d smelled it, his want.
Kyrie flinched, then pulled her cardigan over herself. “Nicholas …”
“I don’t like him. Something is off about him. I mean, dinner—”
“It wasn’t a date, Nicholas. Friends have dinner. Look at us. And the Deacon doesn’t have many people who come up there. He’s all alone now without Father Dodson. And if your aunt is interested in joining the church, dinner doesn’t seem weird, right? He’s courting her, but not in that way.”
“Are you willfully naïve?” I asked, and the look on Kyrie’s face wounded me. Because I’d put it there by being a fucking asshole.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t retort, and I’d known she wouldn’t. I was a coward as well. Instead, my friend pulled the keys from the ignition, opening the door. “I’ll see you inside,” she said, slamming the door.
I sat in Kyrie’s car for quite some time, hating myself. I didn’t want to go to the dance anymore, but I didn’t want to go home. And after what I’d seen on the hill, I didn’t want to wander the town. So I was fucked. I needed to go inside, but I lingered in my misery, in dreams. I hoped I wouldn’t dream that night because of the smoke, not as I had the night before. I heard Sorina’s words from another dream.I can take her away, you know that, right?And with those words, unbidden, the image of Sorina devouring the snake emerged in my mind, like smoke. I stiffened in my seat in ways only she could release.
Before I could close my eyes, slipping back into the dream that felt like a memory, a car drove up the hill, tires squealing. I recognized it from the trailer park. Two girls from my school lived there in the park. Twins. One twin being the girl who’d spread her legs for me the first day of school. Jessica Clement.
The car flew around the parking lot in a circle and finally parked next to Kyrie’s car.
The windows were down, and music blared from the speakers. A puff of smoke slithered out of the driver’s window. Jessica was smoking, and her twin sister, Nicole, sat beside her, glaring ahead.
The two girls opened their car doors at the same time—mirrors—then slammed them in sync as well. Nicole walked ahead, yelling something at Jessica who threw her cigarette onto the ground, yelling back.
I remembered my first day of school then. The way her brazen teasing had elicited a feeling of embarrassment in me.
And, admittedly, arousal.
Fuck. This. Night.
I closed my eyes, wondering if Kyrie would care if I just sat in her car the entire night. She had Nathan Dolan to escort her for the crowning. The dinner with Deacon Rex had me off, itching to tear something apart or be patted on the head. I shook away the fog of her scent just as the hairs on my arms stood up. I opened my eyes to see someone walking across the parking lot to the car.
Sorina’s eyes were on me, and my own roved every inch of her. She wore a short skirt, too flimsy for the cool night air, and her legs were covered in her fishnet stockings again, feet in her black combat boots. She wore some sort of lace bra and an oversized flannel over it. It was definitely breaking the dress code, but no one ever reprimanded her. Gone was the thin black dress from before. I missed it and then quickly forgot it as she walked to the hood of Kyrie’s car, placing her palms on it, climbing slowly until she stared at me through the windshield. I watched back, a small smile taking over my face.
“What the fuck are you doing now?” I asked, reaching for the door.
When I shut the car door, she turned on the hood, sitting. I stood between her legs, far enough away that she couldn’t wrap them around me as she had in her tub.
