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“I’m not feeling well,” I say, my voice loud in the silence that meets Dylan’s dessert announcement. “I want to go home. ” I stand and put my plate down on the picnic table.
“Don’t you want some pie?” Meredith asks, her brow furrowed.
“No. ” I can barely meet her eyes. I know I should stay, for her sake, that Dylan will blame the party breaking up on her, but I can’t. If I stay, I will say something that will only make things a thousand times worse for her. Better to go now, before I do even more damage.
Bishop is behind me, making our apologies and saying good-bye, but I walk away, out the gate and through to our yard. Once inside, I lean against the kitchen counter, my hands shaking with rage.
“We have to do something,” I say as soon as Bishop is inside, the back door shut behind him.
“I know,” he says. “But you need to stay away from him. ”
I blow out an exasperated breath. “I can handle him. ”
“I have no doubt you could kick his ass from here to next Tuesday,” Bishop says, voice calm. “In a fair fight. But guys like him never fight fair. ” He pulls out a kitchen chair and straddles it, his hands resting on the back. “He’s unpredictable, and that makes him dangerous. ”
“He seems pretty predictable to me. He hits her whenever he wants. ”
“I’m serious, Ivy. Don’t try to deal with him on your own. ”
I stare down at the floor, still hearing the crack of Dylan’s palm against Meredith’s cheek. I hate President Lattimer all over again for putting girls like Meredith in a position they can never get out of, left with absolutely no power over their own lives.
“What was that, by the way?” Bishop asks. I look up and he’s staring at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sitting on my lap. ” He pauses. “Touching my hair. ”
I have no idea how to respond to his question. Which answer is the truth and which is a lie, which one will make things temporarily better and which will make things permanently worse?
“If you touch me, I want it to be because you want to, not because people are watching,” he says. “I don’t care what other people think. What does, or doesn’t, go on between us isn’t anyone’s business but ours. ”
I didn’t know he could read me so well. I don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s been watching me since the moment we met, learning me like he’s learned the river and woods. I want to tell him that I may have started out touching him because I was worried about other people, but that’s not what I was thinking about by the end. Everyone else in that backyard had ceased to exist for me.
I want to be honest with him. But I’ve already made so many mistakes today. I can’t afford to make another one.
We return to the fence a week after the barbecue, but this time, although we walk in tandem, we do not hold hands. There’s been a distance between us since that night in the kitchen, a tension that simmers on the surface of every painfully polite interaction. I hate it, but I tell myself it’s better this way. I pretend I don’t miss the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand.
The walk seems to take longer today, maybe because I’m not running after him like a crazed maniac, maybe because of the silence between us and the oppressive heat. The sun is high in an electric blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, the air so hot it practically sizzles on the inhale.
When we reach the tree line, I approach the fence warily, not wanting Mark Laird to surprise me. It would be foolish for him to have remained here, but that hasn’t stopped the girl, whose crumpled form still lies at the base of the fence. The spot where I last saw Mark is empty, and no one else is in sight. The only sound is the breeze sighing through the long grass beyond the fence.
But the breeze brings something besides sound. It brings the smell of death, burning the delicate lining of my nostrils and coating my throat so that I can barely swallow past its foulness.
“Oh, God,” I manage to choke out, my eyes watering.
Bishop is already crouching down beside the girl, one hand covering his nose and mouth. I take a cautious step closer and wish I hadn’t. Her face is a dark purple horror. She’s been strangled, her head lolling on a snapped neck. Her long skirt is hiked up around her waist and I turn my head away, press my cheek against the hot metal of the fence and close my eyes. I know I will never be able to unsee the livid bruises on the insides of her thighs, her milky, sightless eyes.
“He killed her,” I say. I’m breathing like I just ran a race, gulping down air contaminated with the remains of the dead. I dry heave, gritting my teeth until I gain control over my stomach.
I feel, rather than see, Bishop stand up beside me. I can hear him breathing hard, too, a harsh, ragged sound.
“What did she do?” I ask, although I don’t really want to know.
“Does it matter?” he asks. He sounds so tired. “Will it make it better if she deserved it?”
I shake my head, the fence pressing harder into my cheekbone. “No. I just want to know. ”
“She wouldn’t agree to an arranged marriage, refused to even take the personality tests,” he says. I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. She is the girl I heard Victoria talking about with Jack Stewart my first day at the courthouse, the girl whose family was making too much noise about her punishment. For the first time, it sinks in that the horrors beyond the fence are the same as those inside it.
People. And the brutal things we do to one another.
The fence shakes against my cheek and I turn, careful to keep my gaze lifted. I don’t have it in me to look at her again. Bishop is grasping the chain-link with both hands, knuckles white, his eyes closed. His whole body is wound tight as a spring, like if I reached for him he would simply break apart at the joints, splinter into a hundred pieces. I don’t try to touch him.
He lets out a yell and then another and another, loud and wild and out of control. He shakes the fence hard with both hands. His anger and frustration are more potent somehow because they are unexpected. When his scream fades into silence, he rests his forehead against the metal. “Sometimes,” he says, voice raw, “I hate this place. ” He twists his neck and looks at me, hands still hooked in the fence above his head.
“I know,” I say, barely a whisper. “Me, too. ”
It takes every ounce of energy I have to make the return walk home. The day has taken something from me that I know a shower or a nap or a good meal will never replace. I haven’t felt innocent in years, but maybe there was still some left down deep inside of me that is now forever gone. The space it left behind filled with the image of a dead girl I never even knew.
As we are dragging up the walk to our front door, Dylan appears from the side of his house. He has a tool belt around his waist that is threatening to pull down his pants, and he looks so ridiculous I want to laugh. “Hey,” he says, giving us a wave. “I was just looking for you, Bishop. ”
“Yeah?” Bishop asks. He runs a hand through his hair, exhaustion written on every inch of him.
“I’ve got some loose shingles. ” Dylan looks over his shoulder at their second-floor dormer. “Thought maybe you could give me a hand. ”
Bishop glances at me, then back to Dylan. “Sure. Give me a minute, okay?”