Page 5 of Of Angels & Absolution

If it wasn’t them, then her killer is still out there.

Is that who’s been following me, warning me, watching me? I shiver at the thought of a stranger, a killer, entering my room when I wasn’t there, touching my things, leaving it trashed. Is he playing with me like a cat plays with a mouse before she devours it?

Or is that wishful thinking, ignoring the obvious, when the three boys who like to toy with their food are right in front of me, and they’d like nothing more than to scare me into leaving campus by pinning a bloody, severed human tongue to my door to remind me of my betrayal?

I talked, after all. When Eternity disappeared, I had nothing to hide, so I told the truth.

They wouldn’t tell the police anything. That refusal tells its own truth. Only a guilty person won’t speak. If they didn’t know anything, they’d have nothing to hide, either.

I shudder, relieved for the distraction when the three people who always sit in front of me take their usual places. Even though we’re in a big lecture hall, most people find a spot in the first few weeks and remain there out of habit. Sometimes their chatter bothers me, but today I welcome it. As long as Annabel Lee doesn’t remember me, the way I remembered her the first time I saw her face instead of just the back of her head or her cheek, I’ll keep sitting in the spot I picked the first day of school too. So far, she’s been too busy gossiping with her two friends to look closely at the people in the row behind her.

“What are we doing for Halloween?” the goth girl asks Ronique. “My parents are having a party, but I’d rather just go to one on campus, if there is one. My family is… Intense, shall we say?”

“You don’t say,” deadpans the boy with white hair who sits with them every day. Since the lecture is so impersonal, I still don’t know his name.

“Let me guess, they’re all as weird as you?” Ronique asks.

“Hey,” Annabel Lee protests, adjusting the bejeweled spider she’s wearing in her hair. “Just because I’m a freak doesn’t mean my whole family has to be.”

“But they are,” the boy says, then turns to Ronique. “Don’t believe her if she says otherwise. She just said so, and she can’t take it back.”

“I’ve seen your cousin around campus,” Ronique says, then sighs. “With Saint Soules.”

“Oh, he’s not intense,” Annabel Lee says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’s just a whore.”

I wince, ducking my head and lining up my pens by color, clipping each one to the top of my notebook.

“Then why won’t you introduce us?” asks the boy, pushing his shoulder into hers.

“Do you really want to be more involved in my family than you already are?”

“Basically, what you’re saying is that you’re part of the Addams family,” Ronique says. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Annabel Lee says. “For all you know, my family is full of sparkly unicorn rainbows and sunshine.”

“And that’s how you became a storm cloud,” the boy says, putting an arm around her. “My favorite little raindrop.”

“Are you going to let him talk to you like that?” Ronique asks. “Y’all are sick.”

“What, a girl with a morbid imagination can’t have a cute nickname?” Annabel Lee asks. “Besides, look at the gorgeous day outside. Who likes the sun? Gross.”

“Um, lots of people,” Ronique says, “Who aren’tvampires.”

“It’s too bright,” Annabel Lee says. “You don’t need that much light. It’s like it’s trying to blind you. Plus, hello, sunburns?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t get burned if you left your cave once in a while.”

They go on bantering, but I stop listening and color code my notes as the professor talks for the rest of the class. I try not to think about my next class—Finding God in Science. The class itself is fine, though I can’t say I’m able to focus on the topic like I can here. But the fact that Father Salvatore teaches it makes my heart gallop, my palms sweat, and my knees threaten to buckle at the mere thought of attending again.

I’m brought back to the confessional, the dirty thing he made me do. What would he do if he knew I wasn’t alone? That not only was I touching myself while sitting on my brother’s lap, but that I was rubbing his sticky release into me, as if could absorb it, suck it up into me, keep those tiny seeds of him inside me forever. Just the idea has me squirming, my core throbbing with need.

What if Heath recorded that one too?

I will expire.

I tug at my necklace, thumbing the back of the cross, where the word SHAME is etched. It doesn’t begin to describe how I feel after my confession. The things that have gone through my mind warrant more than one further confession, but if I do that, will Father Salvatore order me to try again? If I fail again, will he want to try something else?

My knees clench together, and I have to close my eyes and steady my breathing so I don’t start panting at the images whirling through my mind. I scold myself and slip the cross between my lips, clenching them around the metal beforeyanking it out. The cross tears the skin inside my lip, and the sweet tang of my coppery blood spreads over my tongue, soothing me.

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