Page 53 of A Killing Cold

“Institutionalized?” I echo, confused.

“Locked up for your own good, he said,” Connor clarifies, and I give a choked sound of amusement.

“That’s one way to put it.”

“I told Granddad and Grandma Louise that I would talk to you,” he says. “I told them that there would be an explanation. And I’m really hoping that’s true.”

“Trevor’s right,” I say, still staring at that photograph, at that foolish, broken girl. “My adoptive parents are still alive. And when I lived with them, I lied and I stole. And they did lock me up, Connor, but it wasn’t what you think.”

It was worse.

24

Peter’s parents arrived without him. His part in this drama was done, after all, and his sin was so much less than mine. They came to the door. Grim faces, low voices. I watched from the top of the stairs. Emily Frey turned her pale moon face up toward me and I swear she looked afraid.

The Scotts’ church didn’t have a name. Preferred to call itself a fellowship or a group rather than a church most of the time. They came from a stew of fundamentalist backgrounds crossed heavily and perhaps inevitably with a strong anti-government, anti-establishment ethos. They did things their own way, and so there was no official name for what happened to me next: prayers for deliverance—from evil, from wicked forces. I’d been brought up before the congregation for prayers like these more times than I could count, but this time was different. This time was going to be private and it was meant to be permanent, because someone had to step in, and it was clear that there were evil forces resident within my soul.

Years ago, Joseph had turned the attic into a play space for me. I’d outgrown it long since, and now between the dollhouse and the toy chest, cardboard boxes were stacked, and dust had infiltrated every surface. It was there that Pastor Frey and Joseph brought me. Beth stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped together so tightly her fingers were white. The expression on her face terrified me.

It looked like triumph.

I turned to flee, but the stairway was full, Pastor Frey and Joseph blocking my way.

“This is for your own good,” Pastor Frey said in the baritone voicethat filled the room of the meeting hall where we held our services. He didn’t touch me, but pointed, and it was like a punch to the solar plexus. It took the breath out of me entirely.

Pastor Frey had good intentions, I think; his faith was genuine, as was his belief that there was something in me that could be corrected with prayer and with divine mercy. He never intended violence.

They sat and prayed and put their hands on me. They asked me to explain the things I’d done. To confess to them and to the influences that I had allowed to creep into my life and my heart.

I clamped my lips shut and refused to speak. I stared at Beth the whole time, hate burning in my gut. I thought of every time she’d struck me, called me a little demon, told me it was no wonder my parents had wanted to get rid of me.

And as far as she was concerned, Iwasa demon. What else do you call a child who flies into rages, who steals, who lies, who tempts good young boys into sin? That’s not a normal girl. That’s something else.

Something that has to be gotten rid of.

I could feel their frustration building as I refused to speak, refused to cooperate, refused to fight. Beth stalked back and forth in front of me, reciting a litany of the horrible things I’d done. The bite marks I’d left on their arms when I was four years old, the closet door I’d broken trying to get out when she had to lock me in there to protect her from my wild rages.

The sun set and I hadn’t spoken a word. I thought they would give up.

Instead, they left me there. Locked in that attic room, alone, with nothing to sleep on but the hard floor.

And in the morning, we started again.

The hours blurred together. As their frustration grew, so did their ardor—Pastor Frey’s and Beth’s, most of all. While Joseph and Emily Frey lingered at the edges, the other two gripped my shoulders and spoke directly to the evil inside me, as if it was a thing that might be ordered to leave.

I kept my mouth shut. I said nothing.

I don’t remember every detail of how it ended. It was like something came over me. Like maybe I was truly possessed. I couldn’t stand the feeling of their hands on me, the sound of their voices. It was too loud, too hot, toomuch. And then they were leaving—Pastor Frey and Joseph. Emily had left by then, had gone home to her poor misled boy, and this left me alone with Beth, who lingered after the men had gone downstairs.

Beth grabbed me by the face. Tenderness in her eyes and enough force in her grip to hurt.

“This is for your own good,” she said, and I spoke my first words since I’d stepped foot in that attic.

I called her a cunt.

I don’t even know where I’d heard that word, only that I knew it was the worst thing I could think of. I stepped toward her and maybe I did mean to hit her, to hurt her, I don’t know, but she reached out and hit me hard across the face before I could.

Beth called me a demon. A slut. She called me a curse sent to taunt her. And something broke in me, too. I threw back every abuse. Bared my teeth at her. And each time, she slapped me across the face, until that whole side was lit up with throbbing pain, until her hand was bright red.

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