“What?” She looks at me self-consciously, angry and embarrassed at the silence that has greeted her. Wearing it is retribution for my calling her out earlier, but it has backfired. Even Mom and Dad are uncomfortable with what they see. “You’re wearing my clothes. What am I supposed to do?”
I watch Juniper walk across the kitchen confidently in my clothes, in the crop top that would reveal both my chest and spine brands, in flip-flops that would reveal my foot brand. Reminders, rubbing it in my face.
Today Juniper must get the bus to school. She was quite happy with the chauffeuring, but now that I can’t attend any longer, she’s back to getting the bus. I was worried for her, hoping she wouldn’t get into any trouble on the bus, but now I couldn’t care less.
“I need some air,” I say quietly, feeling dizzy.
“Hold on.” Mom holds me back at my shoulders as Juniper steps outside into the full glare of the media. There’s a small, amused smile on her lips. “They’ll think she’s you.”
I look outside to see Juniper being surrounded by the press. She can barely move forward they’re so much in her face. I bite my lip to hide a smile, then slip outside. Perhaps Mr. Murray was correct about being able to slip into the cracks.
FORTY-THREE
LOGAN’S HOUSE IS on the other side of town, in an equally leafy neighborhood in a nice part of the suburbs. I blare the music and lower the window to feel the wind in my face. I sing loudly, feeling free. As long as I have friends who will support me and be friends with me for who I am, I can do this, I can live this life. It’s not what I wanted, it’s not what I planned for in my carefully thought-out plans of yesteryear, but it’s the hand that I’ve been dealt, and I will make as much of it as I can. I sing along to the radio, feeling happy, feeling like maybe I don’t even need to worry about outing Crevan’s act in the chamber. I can live this life. I can be happy.
I’m nervous about arriving at a party with people I don’t know, but it’s more of an excitement. I’m ready to do something new. I’ll be there by 8:00 PM. Two hours of being young again ahead of me, because I don’t want to be home late. I want to be home well ahead of Mary May’s arrival, so there’s no doubt that I have not broken any rules. Two hours is perfect. New friends, new beginnings.
Despite my parents’ nerves about my going, they are both delighted that I’m doing something that a seventeen-year-old should be doing. That I’m not holed up in my bedroom crying as I have been the past few days. But mostly one of the reasons they were so open about my coming here was that they know Logan’s parents. Not personally, but they know of them. Everybody does. They are both pastors, a husband-and-wife team. Because of this, they get a fair amount of media attention, and they have been upstanding citizens. I feel this is probably why Logan reached out with the olive branch. He lives in a house that encourages understanding and forgiveness. He knows what it’s like to be perceived as being different, to be watched by others and analyzed and dissected until there’s nothing left of you but to feel raw and naked.
We follow the directions in Logan’s invitation to a modest white house with a pretty yard. They even have a picket fence. Mom and I embrace, and Mom holds on to me tight, too tight, afraid to let go, but she finally does, eyes teary.
“I’ll be here at ten. Call me if you need me to be here earlier. Or call about anything. Even if it’s small. If someone says something stupid or nasty or—”
“Mom!” I laugh. “I’ll be fine!”
“Okay, okay.” She grins, finally letting go.
She watches as I make my way to the front door, and it reminds me of when I first rode my bike without training wheels. I look at her in the car, terrified of letting me go, terrified I’m about to fall.
For a party, it is remarkably quiet, but perhaps that’s how the son of pastors has to party. There is a car in the driveway, and I recognize it as being Natasha’s car. This makes me nervous, and not in an excited way. I don’t get along with Natasha, not that we’ve ever spoken, but she has been vocal about my presence in the school, particularly in swim class on the first day I went back. She won’t be happy about my being here. I know Logan and she are close, so perhaps he can convince her to change her mind. It occurs to me that I may need to do more mind-changing tonight than I’d thought. Perhaps tonight won’t be fun. It will be an icebreaker, and the next night can be fun. Baby steps … I walk up the driveway, my legs wobbly in my sky-high heels. I ring the doorbell and wait. I turn around to Mom and wave at her to go. She gives in and takes off down the road, leaving me alone finally.
There is silence inside, and when I look through the side panel of glass, I see a single simple wall-mounted Jesus on the crucifix. His head is dipped, covered in a crown of thorns, his hands and feet nailed to the cross. It is a most vivid piece, stronger than I have ever seen before, and the hairs go up on my arms. My antennae suddenly up, I take a step back—right into a person standing behind me.
I yelp with fright. And then a bag comes down over my head and I can’t breathe.
FORTY-FOUR
“SOMEONE GET HER hands,” I hear Logan hiss as my fists land another blow to his face. I know it’s a face because I feel my finger poke an eyeball and land on a tongue to be quickly snapped at by teeth.
I don’t need anyone to grab my hands. I am genuinely still after I hear the sound of his voice. In the few seconds that I have been struggling, battling against the arms trying to restrain me, I had this crazy thought that if I screamed loud enough, Logan and his friends would hear me and save me. It hits me now that this is the act of Logan and his friends. My blood turns cold. I lose something and can’t figure out what it is until I realize my hands are tied tightly behind my back and pulled in one direction: It’s my faith, in absolutely everything and everyone. Desire to pick up my life and try to live as normally as possible is punched out of me right there. I surrender to my Flawed life; they have won, and I have lost.
It’s difficult to breathe in the bag over my head, which is tightened beneath my chin, around my neck. And panicking is sucking up all the oxygen I need, but I can’t stop gulping in air and screaming for help. I stop allowing them to pull me along and fall to the ground in protest, banging my knees on hard concrete. I cry out.
“What the hell?” Logan snarls again. He’s trying to keep his voice down; we’re in his neighborhood. If anyone sees this, they’ll know. I scream louder, wishing my mom had stayed, but a blow in the stomach knocks the wind out of me.
Somebody picks me up and carries me. I gasp for breath and can’t struggle any more.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her.” I hear a girl’s voice, and it chills me.
Colleen.
In retaliation for what? For not saying hi? For what happened to her mom’s fingers? Is that all my fault, too? A scapegoat for society and now a scapegoat for everyone else who knows me. All their problems are all my fault. Nothing to do with their own decisions, their own mistakes, their own doing. Sheep.
“What do you want me to do? She’s screaming the place down,” he says angrily, and I know now that Logan is the one carrying me.
I kick my legs as I’m carried along, and I hear laughter.
“She sounds like a pig.” I hear Natasha’s nasty laugh.
A car door opens. “Get her in, quick.” Another male voice I don’t recognize. How many of them are there? Fear engulfs me. What are they going to do to me?
“You didn’t say anything about killing her!” Colleen says suddenly, and I whimper.
Logan swears.
“She will die in there. She won’t be able to breathe.”
“Fine,” he snaps.
Colleen manages to talk Logan out of locking me in the trunk of the car. Not because she’s so convincing but because he seems eager to get inside, and he’s probably not sure it’s a good idea anyway. I’m thankful when I’m set down and shoved into the car. I whack my forehead on the frame of the car and I’m dizzy instantly.
“Oops.” Logan
chuckles.
I fall in, and somebody helps me into place more gently. Colleen. She sits beside me. Logan crushes in on the other side. Natasha is driving. The fourth person sits in the front. I think it’s Gavin, from my chemistry class. Never spoken to him in my life. I don’t know anything about him, but here he is all the same, ruining my life for his own enjoyment.
“Watch it, man,” Gavin says.
“Are you a killjoy, too?” Logan snaps.
“You can’t humiliate her if she’s knocked out,” comes the response. “What’s the point?”
Logan is quiet. My head pounds from where it hit the car, and it feels sticky. I’m hot under the bag, and as the sweat trickles, it stings my head. I think I must be cut. They want to humiliate me? My heart races.
“I can’t breathe,” I say, and it comes out a sob, a terrorized mumble beneath the sackcloth. The sweat tastes salty on my lips. My stomach aches from the punch or kick or whatever part of Logan’s body he used to knock the wind out of me.
They tell me to shut up, but the sack is loosened around my neck, and I can see down to my lap. The air rushes in, and I gulp it down, trying to calm myself. They won’t kill me; they can’t kill me. It will be something else, but what? I see that my dress has risen, revealing my full thighs, and I want to pull it down, but I can’t, my hands are tied behind me. This alone is humiliation enough for me. I don’t know if they’re looking at me right now, making faces, laughing, judging, who knows.
We drive for I don’t know how long. My head is racing with what-if scenarios. Whatever they do to me, I just hope they do it so I can be home by eleven. That is my main concern right now. The car stops at a gas station, and Colleen and Gavin get out. I’m terrified at what Natasha and Logan will do to me, but they just talk about some other students at school, a bitchfest that I can’t bear to listen to. I can smell smoke; they’re both smoking, and it drifts up the sack into my airspace. I cough.
“Bothering you, Flawed?” Logan says, close to my ear.
He holds the cigarette under the opening in my sack, and the smoke drifts up. I move my head to get it away. He laughs. Then he taps his ash on my thigh. It has cooled by the time it hits my skin, so doesn’t hurt, but the sight of it fills me with fear.
“This remind you of anything?” He brings the hot cigarette close to my thighs, and I’m taken back to the Branding Chamber.
It comes close to my skin, and tears are running down my face. I’m grateful when the doors open and Gavin and Colleen return.
“What did you do?” Colleen asks firmly.
“Honestly, you’re going to find yourself out on your ass if you don’t stop being such a killjoy,” he says. “It’s just ash. You get my beer?”
They busy themselves passing around drinks. I hear can rings open, the sounds of glugging. Logan is flying through them quicker than any of them.
I hear a burp close to my ear, and Gavin laughs. “Gross, man.”
“Let’s drive,” Natasha says, starting up the engine.
And that’s what we do. I sit in the middle of them all, the car filled with smoke and alcohol, music blaring so loud they can barely keep up a conversation. We go round and round roundabouts, we drive and drive for what feels like hours. I think they’re trying to put me off the scent as to where we are, but little do they know I lost direction as soon as I got in the car. I wasn’t clever enough to try to figure out where we were going. As I listen to them all, talking like I’m not here, I think back to how I felt a few hours ago, with my mom getting dressed, excited about the party, about my new beginnings. Now, as I see ash fall onto my thighs from Logan’s cigarette, some of it too hot, some of it cooled, I feel at an all-time low.
I don’t know what they have in store for me. If humiliation is their aim, then they have already succeeded. If there is more to come, if this is simply the precursor, then I know I won’t last one minute more. My legs tremble. I wish I’d worn more sensible shoes, sneakers so I could run, and not these strappy heels I can barely balance in.
I can’t help it, but I start to cry.
“Hold on,” Logan says, stalling the conversation. “Turn the music down.”
I go silent quickly.
“Are you crying in there, Flawed?”
He listens. I can feel his breath on my shoulder and neck.
They all start laughing.
“You didn’t actually think I’d invite you to my birthday, did you?” he asks, the coldness coming from him. “I mean, I can’t believe you fell for it. I’m nineteen, Flawed. I thought Pia almost ruined it for us when she printed that story about you partying, but she didn’t name me; and if you ever tell anyone about tonight, they won’t believe you. My dad’s a priest; my mom is, too. They’re talking about making her archbishop one day, maybe the first woman in this country. We’re a respectable family,” he says.
“Well, two of them are,” Gavin says, and he and Natasha laugh.
“Maybe we should just call you Jesus from now on,” Natasha says, and they laugh again.
I feel Logan stiffen beside me, and I dread to think what consequence his humiliation will bear on me. Colleen, beside me, is quiet the whole way. I’m grateful for her presence, which is more sensible than the others, but she is working her way through the cans. I know from the amount of times I’ve heard the can ring pulled. Liquid courage. But for what? That’s my concern. And not for one moment because she persuaded him not to put me in the trunk does it mean that I don’t hold her accountable for everything that is happening right now. I think about my handbag and wonder if they have it.
“Here, have a drink, Flawed,” Logan says, and I see the can of beer appear under the hood.
“She’s not allowed to drink alcohol,” Colleen says sharply.
“And Gavin’s parents would prefer he doesn’t sleep with boys, but he still does,” Logan says, and receives something from Gavin in return for the comment that sends the can spilling down my top and legs.
“Drink up, Flawed.”
He lifts the hood enough so he can put the can to my lips. I look away and purse them closed tightly. He laughs, a high-pitched sound, and uses his other hand, fingers that smell like smoke, to hold my chin in place and part my lips. He pours the beer in, and it goes down the wrong way. I start coughing it up.
He laughs but lowers the hood and drinks the remainder of his can himself.
“Left here,” Gavin says suddenly, and I know the precursor is over and whatever is about to begin is suddenly upon me.
I don’t know where we are. It feels like we have been in the car almost two hours, possibly more, but it could be one hour for all I know. I have no concept of time. We are driving up a steep hill. Could we have driven out of town and to the mountains? Are they going to leave me here? How am I going to get home from here? I am going to miss my curfew. I am doomed. My family is doomed. I have let everyone down again. All of a sudden, I wonder whether I will make it out of here at all. Do they have it in them to kill me? They’ve been drinking a lot. Whatever they have planned could go wrong.
I think of Art suddenly and long to be with him. He’s not like these guys; he was always my protector. Before … all this. I wish for him to rescue me right now, but on and on we drive, no one coming for me. Instead of staying and facing it with me, he ran away.
“Wake up.” Logan kicks me in the shin, and I cry out and move my legs closer to my body, away from him and closer to Colleen. I feel her inch away from me.
The car finally stops and the doors open. Finally, fresh air. The smoke and alcohol diminish, and I can breathe again. Logan pulls me out of the car, and I think of my dress, my hemline so short it must be around my waist now. I try to shake it down. The ground beneath me is uneven, pebbled stones, and I can’t keep up with them in my shoes. I go over on my ankle twice.
“Take the dumb things off,” Natasha says.
I feel my shoes come off, and my feet are on pebbles now. My Flawed scar is rooted to the ground to remind me how Fl
awed I am.
“Suit me?” Natasha says, and Gavin whistles.
I’m pulled farther up the hill. I gasp and curse as the soles of my feet land on sharp stones. I can’t see where I’m going through the sack, and even the light that shone through is now gone. It’s dark. It’s late. Mom was due to collect me from Logan’s house at ten. Is it close to that time? Has it passed? I may even have already missed my curfew.
“I have a curfew,” I finally say. “Please let me go home.”
They’re silent.
“What time is her curfew?” Natasha asks.
“Eleven,” Colleen replies.
“It’s ten fifteen now,” Natasha says.
“So?” Logan says, panting as he pulls me along.
“So we better hurry this along.”
“Or what?”
“Or … what happens, Colleen?” Natasha asks.
“Missing a curfew is a big deal. Anything could happen. She goes in front of the court again.”
Logan laughs.
“No, but it’s serious,” Colleen says. “It’s not just her that’s punished. It’s her family. My brothers were taken away for a week.” Her voice trembles.
“Never met her family,” he says. “Don’t care.”
“Right here,” Gavin says, and we all stop.
I hear them unlock a door.
“Step up,” Colleen says quietly, and I step up, onto timber. Splinters immediately pierce my skin. I smell soil, moss. We’re in a shed. Soil and dirt beneath my feet. We all pile in, and the door closes and locks. Logan pushes me suddenly, and I almost fall face-first but manage to keep my balance. I bump against a wall, and a spade or a rake digs into my arm.
“What was the Flawed’s problem in swim class?” Logan asks.
“Afraid to show her body,” Natasha says.