The Wicked We Have Done (14 page)

And he’s only nineteen.

“I feel like a cougar,” I say.

“You’re only three years older than me.”

“It makes a difference, though, at our age. I was a different person when I first started college.”

“Yeah, but . . .” He trails off. I know he was going to say that I was a different person before my crime. I’m sure we all were. He shakes his head—he’s decided he doesn’t want to mention it. Instead, he swings an even tougher subject. “Did you have a boyfriend?”

“I—I did.”

“You love him?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just a question.”

“I did. And then he abandoned me.”

He stalls in his response. “Sorry.”

“It’s—fine. It’s fine.”

He blinks and glances away. His freckles make him look so young. I don’t know why I didn’t assume he was nineteen in the first place.

“And you, a girlfriend?”

He stretches out the arm beneath his head. “A couple. None that stuck.”

“Why not?”

“Got issues with people being too close to me.”

“Is that what some therapist told you?”

“Nah. I just didn’t want to be with someone if I ended up like my dad. Saw how it made my mom. Loved him so much, she took all the shit he threw at her. No one should go through that.”

“You’re not him. What about me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you afraid to get too close to me?”

He thinks for a long moment. “Think I already fucked myself over with that one.”

“Not necessarily.” I casually run my finger down the center of his chest. “Even if we both make it out of here, we could shake hands, part ways. Never see each other again.”

He chuckles at this and loops a lock of my hair around his finger, tugging gently. “That’s very funny.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not just some girl, Ev. You’re this gorgeous catastrophe. You’re unreal.”

“That isn’t a compliment. You know that, right?”

He shoots me this devilish smirk that’s somehow perfect on him. Then, as his next thought arises in his mind, he sobers up.

“You know what it’s like to love so hard you’re willing to kill for it.”

A thought dawns on me, so I speak it out loud. “You believe that what I told the jury was true.”

“I believe what I saw when we were down in the cave. That girl was the one who was your friend, right?” He must see the way I flinch up when he mentions Meghan. “I’m sorry, Ev. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologize.” I see her. Reminds me of when I used to pretend she was with me in my cell, during the most desperate time of my trial. “I had to relive that day over and over. I’ve become numb to it.”

“You’re a liar. You told me so yourself. You don’t become numb to tragedy.”

I realize why I’ve moved so fast with Casey, even though we wanted to rip each other’s heads off when we first met. Casey and I—we’re passionate enough to kill for someone we love. I’m sure many would say they’d do the same. But they’re liars.

I tilt my head until my lips brush his earlobe. “Take me again,” I whisper.

He rolls on top of me, kissing me until he’s hard, his tongue gliding across my lower lip. He whispers my name the second he has a chance to breathe, and I wonder if it’s even possible to be in love after a handful of days. Or if the circumstances are only fooling me.

It isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair he feels so perfect in this moment.

***

Quiet fills the rest of the day. With our clothes folded, we eat and wash again in the basin. I fall asleep in Casey’s arms, his lips on the back of my neck. I remember trying to match my breathing with his when I awake hours later in the dark.

A dark shadow lurks over our bed.

July 13, Last Year

Mom’s House

Todd had taken his afternoon nap right on top of me while I was babysitting for Mom. She didn’t deserve any help from me, but I missed the little rascal. It wasn’t fair that I was avoiding him because of her.

I reclined in front of the television for hours. When I knew Todd was asleep, I changed the program to something more suitable to my tastes—the sitcom Meghan and I couldn’t get enough of. It was nearing dusk and I was starting to get antsy. Meghan and I had our wrap-up meeting tonight, where we would touch base on the projects to make sure that most of them were almost complete. I’d told Mom I could only babysit Todd until six.

It was six ten.

She wasn’t picking up her phone, and I couldn’t leave Todd here alone.

Todd stirred when Mom came home at six thirty.

It was hard to leave him when the moan he made was so needy, like he was desperate for my warmth, as though I was the only touch he’d had in months. This made me feel powerful—like I could be this affectionate mother without ever experiencing motherhood at all.

I slowly lowered him onto the couch, tugging the fleece throw up to his chin as he squirmed in discomfort. I tucked the edges in around him, waiting through every dry second that she huffed and flung her belongings all over the dining room table. I knew she was only trying to be as dramatic as possible.

And still, she continued to let her actions speak for what she was trying to convey, refusing to utter a word. So I spoke for her.

“You’re late,” I said.

She plucked the bobby pins from her hair slowly, like she had all the time in the world. I knew she was doing it on purpose. Her endless nagging to get me to babysit Todd was only a ploy to make me miserable. Not that I thought she
enjoyed
making me miserable. It was a power play, one I knew well. Impatience was my weakness and she knew how to wield the pace she gave.

“I’m going,” I said, slinging my coat and purse over my shoulder.

“Don’t show me attitude because I was a few minutes late.”

I had done her a favor, and there wasn’t a thank-you in sight. “I have a gallery opening next month.
My
gallery opening. And now I’m going to be late to our most important meeting.”

I was almost out the door before she said, “You didn’t tell me that.”

I paused. “I didn’t think I had to. I thought you’d respect the fact that I drove up here and told you I needed to leave at a specific time.”

“That’s not what I meant, Ev. I’d like to go.”

The second the scoff left my mouth I knew it sounded mean, but there was no taking it back now. “It’s really okay, Mom. You don’t have to pretend that you want to be interested in my sad excuse for a major.”

I was fired up, fueled by the wrath I felt for her the moment I slammed the door. When I sat in the car, I hoped Todd would forgive me for my momentary lapse in judgment—my desire to storm out on Mom stronger than my need to say good-bye to him. I’d have to make it up to him—maybe take him out for ice cream or something.

The next time I saw Todd—or Mom—was in the prison visiting room.

10

This has to be a test.

One can hit us at any time—of course I wouldn’t be safe here. Valerie had been dragged right from our campsite.

The shadow yelps and stumbles back. “Jeez, Evalyn, cover your tits!”

Startled, I yank the sheet up to my neck.

“Tanner?” Casey’s awake. “Tanner?”

My vision has adjusted, and I can see him now, one hand covering his chest. “Had no idea you guys were here. Scared me shitless.”

Casey wraps a blanket around his waist. I tie a makeshift dress out of my sheet and stand. I want to run forward and hug him, but I don’t think he’d like that too much in the state I’m in. “How did you get here? Are you all right? Where are Valerie and Jace?”

“Slow down,” he gasps. “Gimme a sec, let my heart restart itself.”

I wait anxiously for Tanner to catch his breath, sitting back down on the bed as I wring my sheet in my hands. Casey leaves the bed and pats Tanner roughly on the shoulder. “We were worried about you guys.”

“
Guys
is just me,” he says.

I turn ice-cold. Jace and Valerie. If he’s alone, then—

“I lost Jace and Valerie the same day I lost the two of you.”

I blow a sigh of relief through my lips.

They could still be alive. They could be okay.

“Curiosity got the best of me,” Tanner continues. “I figured the mailbox was the beginning of the test, and the more I thought about it, the more I had the sick desire to see what was beyond it. Valerie and Jace didn’t want to, for obvious reasons. The tunnel led me straight to the bottom of the hill, and the hedges began to fold in on themselves.”

“Like the Compass Room didn’t want you to go back.” I rummage the cupboards and scrounge up the rest of the crackers and canned fish, thrusting it into his hands. “Eat.”

“I’m fine. I’m not that hungry.”

“Dammit, Tanner. Eat before I
make
you eat.”

He sighs and sits on the bed, laying the food out in front of him. “That’s what I thought too—that the Compass Room didn’t want me to go back. Anyway, been wandering by myself since I lost everyone. I . . . uhh . . .” He crinkles the cracker package in his fist. “I was tested.”

“How’d it go?” The way Casey says it sounds like he’s asking about a ball game, and some sick part of me wants to laugh. I backhand him in the shoulder instead.

“Not too bad,” Tanner says. “Not dead, am I?”

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” I say.

He spreads fish paste on a grainy cracker. “Had been walking for quite a while. Was trying to resituate myself, searching for the lake so I could get water. I ended up finding my trigger object out in the woods.”

“Trigger object?” I ask.

“A fishing pole. The thing that triggered my test. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and after your stories, and Valerie’s test with the baby doll, I thought back even further, to our first night here.”

“When Salem and Erity died,” Casey cuts in.

“Yeah. And although vague, I remember Salem saying something about a particular liquor bottle in the cabinet, how it brought back ‘good times and bad karma.’ Obviously it reminded him of his crime.”

“And Erity?” Casey asks.

“The knife,” I answer. “Remember? Jace said she recognized it as her own.”

“Anyway, I had two tests.”

“Two?”

Tanner nods. “Same trigger object. I was an idiot and ran into it a second time. The illusion was slightly different—just as terrifying, though. But I made it. I survived.”

Casey hands me my clothes, and Tanner looks away as I put them on, although I don’t really care. I think out loud. “So these tests, these—uhh, experiences of our—crimes, I guess, start off with an object. An object linked to our crime. And they trigger the illusions?”

“How would they trigger them?” Casey asks.

“How should I know?” I say bluntly. “Why do dead people show up who can’t really be with us?”

“Illusions,” Tanner says.

“Illusions that can hurl a shovel around,” adds Casey.

Illusions that can kill.

“But these things can’t be in our minds,” I say. “If we were hallucinating, then others wouldn’t be able to see them.”

Tanner pushes up his glasses. “I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you. So, long story short, I’m alive. Barely—thought I was going to pass out from hunger before a backpack full of dry food
literally
fell from the trees.”

It’s only then do I notice the straps on his shoulders. Casey and I happened to stumble upon shelter right when we were feeling hopeless.

It’s like this place knows.

“How’d you find this cottage?” Casey asks.

“My best friend led me here. Crazy, huh?”

“It was Casey’s mom for us,” I say. “This prison isn’t so heartless.”

“At least it shows you where to go when it doesn’t want you dead.”

“Or when it’s done with you,” Casey says.

Which reminds me. “Stella’s dead.”

Tanner’s expression is similar to when we told him about Blaise.

“I guess she wasn’t so innocent after all,” I add, because saying anything else will remind me of too much that I’m desperate to forget.

He shakes his head, but says nothing. He’s thinking hard about what I’ve told him.

We leave the conversation at that. Light peeks over the horizon, so Casey and I give up our bed and let Tanner sleep. We curl up on the porch, a blanket around our shoulders. The rolling hills illuminate.

It isn’t some trick of my mind that I saw Meghan dying in front of me. Or that Casey’s father came back to life. Are these tests essentially some form of punishment?

It’s fair that each one of us is put through this torture.

Even those of us who are morally good at heart need to be reminded that what we’ve done is still, at its core, unforgivable. The only people who could ever forgive me completely are those here, in the Compass Room, because they are asking for the same forgiveness.

I rest my head on Casey’s shoulder, and he kisses my hair. Then, after a few moments, he says, “I’m seeing things again.”

“Aren’t we all,” I say.

He straightens. “Oh shit.”

Dancing on the hills, at the very crest, is a strange shimmer. A rippling reflection of the sun. When I squint, I notice all the trees on the hill bending forward with weight.

Water. Water flowing over the hills.

Not rain water. Not storm water that causes a mudslide after several hours. This is an immediate flood, a lethargic tsunami. I curse under my breath as it glides to the bottom of the hills and collects at the base, stretching toward us and our small cottage, refusing to slow.

I jump to my feet. “Where is it coming from?”

“The lake?” He stands. “That’s the largest water source we’ve seen and it’s in that direction. But how?”

It’s like the entire lake has taken a life of its own—the water within it suddenly crawling toward us.

We’re in a basin, and a narrow one at that, though the hills behind us aren’t as high. The water won’t keep moving down into the valley.

It’ll fill up right over the cottage.

Sheets flow in steady layers, water collecting dirt and grass and twigs as it rolls toward us. Within seconds, it’s washing over my feet. Smacking the porch steps. The entire cottage groans with a warning. I turn back and hobble toward Casey, who grabs my hand.

“We need to get out of here,
now!
” Casey yells.

I hurl myself toward the door. Tanner’s standing by the bed and staring deliriously at the window, as though he isn’t sure if this is a nightmare or not.

“Water,” I explain. “It’s going to flood the whole basin!”

We’re going to have to swim out.

He doesn’t need any more explanation, grabbing his glasses and backpack from the bed.

Water splashes the porch when we race back outside, slipping over the land mutely. It’s as if I’ve been here before when I was asleep, the pressure of danger coming from somewhere, even though it’s so beautiful, gliding toward us so softly. I link my arm through Tanner’s and grab Casey’s hand, boots sloshing through two feet of cold as I trudge off the porch. Casey drags me on.

The flow is slow. The immediate danger never reaches us, like this is scripted. We go as fast as our burdened legs will carry us, the water never rising past our knees. We haul ourselves through the field and to the northern hills, and when we ascend, the water stays right on our heels, even when Tanner becomes tangled in underbrush and we have to stop and tear him free.

Like the flood is slowing for us.

We reach the top. I fall to my knees. The water has stopped trickling from the adjacent hills, and the new lake sits tranquil, cottage completely submerged. As if it had never been there.

“Illusion or real?” Casey gasps.

“I don’t know,” Tanner wheezes. “The water. Didn’t seem. Real.”

Tanner is right. The way the water glided toward us was surreal and dreamlike, as though the entire lake decided to slide over to the basin because of us. The water
felt
cold and wet, but still unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Like it was trying to scare us, and not kill us.

Afraid the flood will continue to rise, we hurry down the hill, the air occupied only by the sound of our trampling feet. We’re nearing our destroyed camp. We called it home for a handful of days, but at least I felt like I belonged somewhere.

Now I’m not sure if Valerie and Jace are alive.

The pine thickens around us, and I squeeze my arm tighter to my side, pinning Tanner’s elbow.

Every one of my muscles shudders on its own, begging me to stop, but I can’t—the boys keep me on my feet, keep me moving. Tanner is wheezing and gasping, and I pray to God that he isn’t about to keel over.

Casey skids to a halt, and I soon follow.

A shovel.

That
shovel, propped up against a tree.

“Fuck,” Casey gasps.

Keep running!
I want to scream at him.
Why are you stopping?
But I can’t. I’m chained by fear.

One moment, the space between two silhouetted trees is vacant, and the next, it’s filled by the shadow of a man. Denim shirt and scruffy face. Casey’s father is back.

All I can think about is that shovel in his hands, the way he heaved it over his shoulder and down as Casey lay there. Maybe he’s out for revenge, because he wasn’t supposed to fail in the first place.

He was supposed to kill.

He takes one step forward, stretching out his hand and grasping the shovel’s handle.

“Thought you finished me off, didn’t you?” He takes another step forward, head cocked.

“Please,” I beg. “We need to get out of here.”

“He’ll only chase us,” Casey responds. “You know that.”

I turn to Tanner, but he is entranced by Casey’s dad. I want to shake him, to get him to help me convince Casey that we’re insane to wait, but there’s no time.

From the grove behind Casey’s father, Meghan appears.

“What the hell?” Casey cries.

She stuns me. I can’t say anything, even when Tanner whispers, “Who’s that?”

Blood from the bullet wound drips down her temple. How can she be here if my desk is nowhere in sight?

“What would we do, Ev?” she asks. “We’d sink that son of a bitch if he weren’t such a pussy and killed himself. Look what he did to me. Look!”

Casey’s father lifts the shovel and lunges at Meghan, bringing it down on top of her head. She falls. He beats her to a pulp, sprays of blood showering the grass.

I can’t help it. I know it’s not real, but I can’t handle her dying all over again right in front of me. My knees, even with all of the strength I will into them, give out.

I scream so loudly, I hear nothing but myself.

Casey scoops me up and I fight against him, even though I know I can’t save her.

Her corpse is a mess, skull crushed, eyes soaked in crimson.

The sky flashes green. The whole sky, like a sheet of green lightning. A voice booms.

Module seventeen, disengaging.

Meghan and Casey’s dad evaporate.

In their place floats a little silver sphere. Can’t be more than the size of a softball. It hovers in the air for a moment, and then soundlessly zips away from us, through the trees, and out of sight.

“What,” Tanner gasps, “was that?”

I sniff and wipe my nose with my hand. “I don’t know.”

“Half a test for me, and half a test for you?” Casey asks me.

“Pieces of both of your pasts?” Tanner says.

“The girl . . . The girl was Evalyn’s. The man was mine. But what was that ball thing?”

“I think it glitched,” Tanner says. “The light, the voice from the sky. What did it say?”

“Module seventeen, disengaging.”

“Evalyn.” Tanner’s fingers find my wrist. He squeezes tight, but he isn’t staring at me. He’s staring at the space where Meghan and Casey’s dad evaporated. “When was the first time you saw that green light?”

“When the little girl who Jace killed walked into camp.”

“The girl who magically appeared out of nowhere.”

“Don’t they all appear out of nowhere?” Casey asks.

“No, usually there’s an object that seems to trigger them. Did you see the light any other time, Evalyn?”

Slowly, I understand where Tanner is going with this. What he’s suggesting doesn’t have to do with the fear of watching my own best friend die over and over.

“Stella,” I whisper. “Green flashed through the house, and Stella began to burn. You can’t possibly think . . .”

I can’t finish my thought. I bend at the waist and rest my palms on my knees as the ground wavers beneath me, like it’s still covered in water. We saw a green light flash through the sky the first night we were here too.

Around the time Blaise probably died.

“Evalyn,” Casey rests his hand on my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

I swallow the thick spit in my mouth before responding. “If the Compass Room has been glitching, you don’t think that the glitches are substantial enough to affect the outcome of who lives and dies, do you?”

Tanner sits on a nearby log rubs his temples. “I don’t know. Any speculation is just guessing. We have to remember that. Maybe what we saw wasn’t a glitch. Maybe the green light means something completely different.”