Everyone had gathered behind her, and I got the surreal feeling that it was happening to someone else, that if I pinched myself, I’d snap out of this living nightmare and realize that nothing from the last week had actually happened: Gray was still my boyfriend, Owen was still a friend I’d never kissed, and Michelle was still a friend I’d never betrayed.
And because I wasn’t prepared for this sort of attack, because I refused to believe that Michelle could have set me up like this, I just stood there, shocked into silence.
“What kind of person would do that to her best friend?” Elise said.
“A bitch,” said another.
“What a slut.”
The stream of epithets continued. When I’d finally summoned the strength to move, I descended the stairs and passed through the mob as they continued to taunt me and stare, then I set off toward the stables, hoping to find Michelle and Owen there.
About halfway down the path, the sky opened and a cold rain descended. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the hill that I remembered the stables had burned down and a sterile new equestrian center now stood in its place. The barn where Michelle and Owen and I had forged our friendship last year was gone.
Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Perversely I went to stand in the same spot where I’d been struck by lightning last year, wondering if God would be audacious enough to strike the same place, and person, twice.
But this was sheet lightning, the kind that lights up the entire sky rather than descending as a scary cloud-to-ground bolt. I walked past the equestrian center and toward the stream, feeling that strange compulsion again to cross over the log bridge and into the woods. Lightning flickered sporadically, illuminating the rosebush on the opposite bank, its red blooms still brilliant even in late October.
Before I knew it, I was over the bridge and running like my life depended on it. Branches and twigs snapped below me as I trudged through the brush, moving deeper into the woods with every step. The faster I ran, the more numb I became to the elements. The rain barely seemed to touch my skin, and the storm grew distant and muffled, like something from a dream. Some mysterious momentum kept moving me forward until I burst into a clearing and onto Braeburn’s playing fields.
Except the bleachers and the track and the white chalk outlines were all gone. And the sky was bright and clear, lit with a peach glow as if dawn was already approaching. The atmosphere around me seemed to change suddenly—the rain stopped, the air stilled. And while the rest of the world seemed to pause, my body hummed, like it was surging with electricity. Every one of my senses tingled.
I walked across the field, trancelike, until I reached the hill where the bleachers usually sat. From just beyond the hill came a murmuring, the sounds of many voices mingling and growing more animated. Curious, I clambered up the slick hillside, nearly toppling over when I reached the top.
Standing before me was a crowd of people all dressed in black and staring at something on the platform beyond them. Their faces were shrouded by white caps and broad-brimmed hats. It looked as though someone had assembled the cast of
The Crucible
here on the lawn. But their figures were blurry, as if I was viewing them through a piece of cloth.
“At the very least,” I heard a woman say, “they should have put the brand of a hot iron on her forehead to mark her. Little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown. She may cover it with a scarf, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!”
I flushed when I felt Michelle’s scarf around my neck, wondering if they were talking about me.
But then another voice said, “Let her cover the mark as she will. The pang of it will be always in her heart.”
I recognized the line. It was from
The Scarlet Letter
.
Surely this was some kind of joke. The cast of
The Crucible
had assembled here to play a practical joke, to teach me a lesson.
I scanned the crowd to see who had spoken those words—Elise? Michelle?—yet their forms were vague and shadowy, almost interchangeable. Like faces from a nightmare.
But if this was a nightmare, then that meant it was happening again, that I had somehow lapsed into sleep and been transported into a dream.
Trying to get a grip on things, I squeezed through the crowd toward the scaffold so I could get a better look. And there stood a woman I could only presume was Hester Prynne. While I couldn’t see the details of her face, her skin glowed beneath lustrous brown hair, and a scarlet letter embroidered with gold thread gleamed from her chest. Despite the fact that she stood on a scaffold holding an illegitimate baby in her arms, her expression was not humiliated at all, but proud and defiant. Almost regal.
I stood on my tiptoes trying to peer over the crowd when a voice behind me said, “I pray you, who is this woman, and why is she here set up to public shame?”
I almost answered until I saw who had asked the question. He was an older man, hunched over and wearing a multicolored Native American garment as a disguise. This was Chillingworth, Hester’s husband—thought dead at sea, now returned to find his wife a harlot. I also knew that in his zeal to uncover his wife’s lover, he would destroy three lives, one being his own.
I wanted to hit him in the chest, yell at him, warn him of the devastation he was going to cause if he insisted on taking revenge, but it was as if someone had lodged a wad of cotton in my throat. No matter how hard I tried to speak, nothing came out.
“You haven’t heard of Hester Prynne?” a woman said.
“I am a stranger,” Chillingworth lied, “and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. Will you tell me of Hester Prynne’s—of this woman’s offenses, and what has brought her to this scaffold?”
The woman told Chillingworth the story he already knew of a learned man who had married Hester, though she was half his age. He had sent her ahead to America while he tended to his business affairs in Europe, but after two years, everyone assumed he had drowned at sea. Hester, thinking the same, had taken a lover and conceived a child.
“And who may be the father?” Chillingworth asked.
“She refuses to say,” the woman said.
Chillingworth frowned. “It irks me that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known. He will be known.” A horror twisted across his features like a snake gliding across them.
I heard someone cough behind me and turned to see a young man whose face was shadowed by a pointed black hat. Though I couldn’t see him clearly, he was wearing the garments of a minister and could only be the Reverend Dimmesdale. The crowd parted for him as he approached the scaffold and stood beneath the spot where Hester and the baby were.
“Hester Prynne,” he said, his voice quavering. “Please speak out the name of your fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer. Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him, for believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place and stand there beside you on that pedestal of shame, better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can your silence do for him, except tempt him to add hypocrisy to sin?”
A few months ago I had read these lines, and they had not moved me. But hearing them spoken from Dimmesdale’s lips made my heart ache for him. I suddenly realized that Michelle had been right—Dimmesdale wanted to confess, but he didn’t have the strength. I almost wished I could do it for him and spare him all the years of torture and heartache that would follow this night. But again, my voice failed me.
Hester shook her head. “Never!” she said, looking straight into his eyes, defiant once more.
“She will not speak,” Dimmesdale said, turning to the crowd with his hand upon his heart. “Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman’s heart. She will not speak.”
The baby Hester was holding began to cry, and still the crowd stared on. I watched for some time as well, amazed that everyone could stand idly by while the baby wailed. Were they monsters, these Puritans?
While I couldn’t speak, I could move. I rushed up to the scaffold and took my place next to Hester. No one in the crowd seemed to see me. I knew Hester’s punishment was to stand here for three hours holding Pearl. If I couldn’t free her, at least I could lighten her load. I placed my arms underneath the baby, and while neither mother nor child registered my presence, Hester closed her eyes and seemed to fall into a sort of trance.
This was the moment that made the townspeople most livid. Instead of looking cowed and remorseful, Hester seemed to accept her punishment gracefully, and her face was utterly serene. I knew from reading the book that she was thinking of her childhood now, recalling simpler and happier times in order to get through this ordeal.
I tried to do the same myself, recalling pleasant moments from my past—Gray and me playing in the backyard as children, our mothers watching us from the deck. My father bouncing me on his knee at church, looking down at me with adoration. Gray’s hand around mine as we walked the beach this summer and promised to be there for each other always.
Shutting my eyes tightly, I imagined Gray and me out on the open sea, reunited under a star-flung sky. I wanted my reality back, not this horrible Puritan nightmare.
As I stood there channeling thoughts of Gray, my temples began to throb painfully. Lights danced before my closed eyelids, and a ringing in my ears drowned out the sounds of the townspeople. My body began to sway.
I doubled over, wishing I was free, wishing I was anywhere but here—wishing until the pain and ringing subsided, until the lights stopped dancing and the world before my eyelids went suddenly black.
C
HAPTER
7
V
ague memories trickled over me. I tried to ignore them, reluctant to wake and face the terror of what had happened to me. But I couldn’t ignore the ache in my back.
As I sat up, pain ripped through my body, and the events of the previous night came back in a jarring wave: the cast party, the kiss with Owen, all of those accusing stares and spiteful judgments out in the garden. And then of course, the run through the woods and the nightmare that followed with Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. But where was I now?
I whipped my head around and studied the terrain. Oh God. I was lying on the soccer field of Braeburn’s campus by the bleachers, my clothes soaked from last night’s rain. Thankfully, it was too early for runners to be out on the track, but I knew I needed to get out of there and back on campus soon. I thought about calling Owen to see if he could drive me back to Lockwood, but a plausible explanation for why I was there seemed to require more strength and creativity than I was feeling at the moment. Feeling achy and disoriented, I stood up and stretched, then jogged across the field and back into the woods.
The air was frigid, so I broke into a run, thankful to feel the blood pumping through my limbs. It was November first, not yet winter, but cold enough to freeze the edges of the stream. When I reached the log bridge, I had the sensation that I was crossing from one world into another, from my unsettling dreams to an even more frightening reality.
I continued up the hill to the Commons garden where everything had gone wrong last night. Signs of the cast party lay strewn about—empty soda cans, paper plates, crumpled napkins. I braved my way past the scene of my public shaming and came to the path that led back to Easty Hall and the dorms.
Fortunately, the campus was dead; I didn’t spot another soul on my walk. I let myself into the dorm and walked upstairs, temporarily relishing the warm blast of heat from the ancient radiators. I was so relieved when I entered my room and saw Michelle in her bed. She began stirring when she heard the door close.
“Michelle,” I whispered, terrified of what she might say.
She was rubbing sleep out of her eyes, trying to sit up. “Emma, I don’t want to talk to you right now. Just leave it.”
“I know, but Michelle, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me last night.” I sounded as pathetic as Owen had.
“I can’t trust a word you say,” she said. “I’m only here because the sofa in the lounge was giving me a crick in my neck. But I’d rather sleep in the parking lot than listen to your excuses right now.”
She turned toward the wall and slunk down into her covers, effectively shutting me up. I sat on my bed feeling useless and awful until I heard Michelle’s breathing slow down, signaling that she’d fallen back asleep. I took a quick shower and changed, then went out to the lounge to call Owen.
He answered a little groggily.
“Owen, it’s me. Sorry to call so early, but I had to know if you were okay.”
“Me? I’m fine. Are you okay? I couldn’t find you last night.”
“I’ve been better,” I said. “What happened with Michelle?”
He sighed, and I could tell he was sitting up in his bed. “It was awful. I followed her back to the dorm, and we got into a huge fight. Then she started crying and ranting, and I could barely understand a word she was saying. It took me forever to get her to calm down enough to talk to me. She’s really hurt, Emma.”
“I know,” I said.
“I tried to explain that, you know, the kiss—it didn’t mean anything. That you were just feeling sad about Gray, and I was trying to comfort you.”
“Did it work?”
“Does that ever work?” he said. “We decided we need some time away from each other. Shit, Emma, this has all gotten so screwed up.”
“I’m so sorry, Owen.”
He was quiet for a long time, then he said softly, “That is the reason you kissed me, right? Because you missed Gray?”
Words froze in my throat.
Why did I kiss Owen?
My emotions had been so raw and unpredictable lately. I felt like there was someone else inside me making me do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. “Yeah,” I said, finally. “I was just upset. I’m sorry I put you in the middle of it.”
Silence radiated across the phone lines as I waited for him to go on, to say something comforting. As always, Owen didn’t disappoint. “You’re going to get over him,” he said. “I know it feels like you won’t, but you will. You’re stronger than this. You’re going to be okay.”