AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hi,” I say when I open the door. She’s sitting cross-legged on the carpet, facing the door.
“Hi,” she says, her gaze flitting between Rei and I. “Can you close the door? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Rei closes the door behind softly. It clicks behind him. I don’t miss the alarm in his eyes.
Trine takes a deep breath, her entire body shaking as she does. Her hair is down, messier than usual, creating a halo around her pretty face. She’s wearing a thin spaghetti strap blue shirt and gym shorts.
“Before I say anything,” she says. “Can I ask you two for something? It’s really important.”
“What do you need?” I ask her.
“Don’t tell the others,” she answers, her voice shaky. “Not…not yet. I don’t think I can talk to anyone else about this yet.”
My heart drops.
“Okay,” I say, even though this isn’t okay. I’m good at keeping secrets. If this is what she needs, for now, then I guess it’s what I’m going to have to give her. “I promise.”
“Rei?” she asks.
He nods, his jaw hardening. “Yes,” he says. “I promise.”
Trine picks up her head, her expression hardening as she does. “I need you both to let me finish what I’m about to say, too,” she says. “I know you’re…I think you’re going to try to talk to me out of it, but you can’t. So let me finish. Then we can talk about it.”
Rei and I look at each other.
“I can’t be here anymore,” she says.
We aren’t supposed to say anything, so we don’t. Neither one of us says a fucking thing, no matter how much we both clearly want to.
“And it doesn’t matter where I run to, you know, geographically. I keep leaving destruction behind me. I’m not going to do that again. I can’t do that again. If you do the exorcism, that’s going to hurt Malon, and I’m just not willing to have anyone else get hurt because of me. There’s been too many people hurt, too much blood spilled on my account.”
I want to tell her it’s not her fault, that she had no say in this. But she doesn’t want me to say anything. So I say nothing.
“So I need to die.”
“Trine…” Rei says.
“You don’t need to…”
She holds her hand up. “I’m not done,” she says. “I’m not even close to done. There are things I need to know before I die from both of you. I need to dot my ts and cross my is. You guys get that, right?”
We both nod.
“Luke,” she says. “If I kill myself, do I go to hell? I googled it and all I got was a helpline.”
“Suicide is contrary to the Fifth Commandement,” I tell her, though I really don’t want to talk about scripture right now. I want to grab her and shake her, tell her that she’s being ridiculous, that things don’t have to be like this. I want to hug her until she’s out of breath. But I don’t. I just keep answering her question.
“Which one is that one?” she asks. She sounds sincere.
“You’re not the owner of your life. You’re not honoring your parents when you decide to take a life that doesn’t belong to you.”
“My parents are dead,” she says.
“What about God?”
“I’ve never met him,” she replies plainly. “What does that matter? What is the Church’s official position on death by suicide?”
“Up until a few years ago, death by suicide meant you couldn’t be buried in consecrated grounds,” I tell her. “Now, it’s not like that. The Church isn’t the arbiter of who goes to hell. God is.”
