Page 12 of Of Saints & Savagery
“Hey, Dr. D,” I say, tipping my chin at her. She was my first crush too, before I knew who her family was or what they’d do to my sister.
“Mrs. Delacroix,” she corrects. “Nice to see you, Heath.”
Even though she’s a doctor, she’d rather be called by her husband’s name than the title she earned. I wonder what a man could do to make a woman that proud to be his wife. It’s one of her mysteries, though, not his. Mr. Delacroix is boring, a stuffy old lawyer who shakes Dad’s hand and says obvious things about the weather before turning to Mom.
“Rob Ambrose,” she says, smiling her TV station smile at him. “Good to see ya.”
“Hey, Jackie. How was your holiday?”
She doesn’t correct him, tell him to call her Mrs. Stone.
They make small talk while I stand there with their son, a carbon copy of the boring dad.
“Hey,” Gideon says, giving me a slight nod.
“What’s up, little man?” I ask, tipping my chin at him. He’s not so little anymore, but he’s still in high school, so he’s a kid to me. “Where’s your brother?”
If his Mom was everyone’s first female crush, his brother was our first male crush. Older and wilder than any of us dared to be, Walker Delacroix was a town legend to us and a cautionary tale to our parents.
“He went to seminary school,” Gideon says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
I just about choke on my tongue. Before I even made it to high school, I’d lost count of the number of times I heard about Walker Delacroix being arrested for infractions that seemed glamorous and forbidden—gambling, drinking, fighting; street racing, partying too hard, breaking into our school topaint our rival team’s mascot on the walls. Even in juvie, he was legendary… For never ending up there.
Then again, the rich kids never did.
Still, he’s the very last person I can imagine as a priest.
“We’re very proud of him,” Mrs. Delacroix says, her kind eyes soft, an inky dark you could slip into like a warm, velvet fairytale lake that can only be found by starlight by those who wander off the path and never find their way back.
Even though she has a son older than us, she was never like our moms with their low-maintenance bob haircuts, who slouched around the house in worn out Wampus Cat t-shirts and yoga pants all weekend and snapped at us when we were late to get our shoes on and get in the minivan for basketball practice carpool.
Mrs. Delacroix is always patient, always put together, her full lips glossy and smiling at a secret only they know when Mr. Delacroix opens the door for her and she climbs from the vintage Lamborghini they take out for a drive every Sunday before church. She always wears her raven hair wound into a modest updo, so only her husband knows how long it really is, and a fine gold band bisects one nostril, a little taboo and therefore tantalizing in a woman our mothers’ age.
Having shuffled through the bottleneck at the entrance, we split off from the Delacroixs. They sit with the other rich white-collar folks like Saint’s family, while those who got rich from more creative means—mostly Angel’s family—fills the pews across the aisle. The other high-level members of the Skull and Crossbones aren’t Catholic, if they attend church at all. All fourteen Norths are in attendance today, already seated, seven to a pew. Father Collins greets us on the way in, but I quickly pull my hand away. He’s the kind of priest that gave the church a bad reputation.
As we make our way down a side aisle, my parents search for seats while I search the crowd for Mercy. Despite the rain, the place is fuller than usual, packed with everyone fresh off New Year’s resolutions to attend Mass more often. One Mass a week is mandatory for students, but I never see Mercy at the same one that her family attends. I don’t blame her for avoiding them.
My cock twitches at the memory of the last time I saw her in person, bent over the railing, waiting to be, well, railed.
I chuckle to myself as we find seats behind the rich families, where the Sincero family normally sits. They’re absent today, so we get the spot behind the doctors and lawyers. The rest of the pew is filled with our quarterback Royal Dolce and his brother and his sister who came back from the dead.
The girls who vanish from Faulkner usually don’t come back.
They’re swallowed by the river, gone in the dead of night. The darkness swallows them, teeth and all. Sometimes it leaves crumbs—a woven friendship bracelet, torn in the struggle; a pile of bloody clothes on the bank.
I can feel the presence of my parents at my back, watching her over my shoulder. I glance at her from the corner of my eye as we settle in, sing our first hymn. I want to talk to her, but what could I say—some cheesy platitude like, “You give us hope”?
She doesn’t give me hope. She’s not from here. She doesn’t know about the other girls who disappeared, doesn’t care. She’ll never belong here, no matter how many times she comes back.
Eternity belongs here. She should be the one beside me in the pew, not the surly youngest Dolce brother.
He glances at me when I slide onto the pew when we sit. “Oh,” he says, scowling at me. “It’s you.”
I flash him a grin. “It’s me.”
He pouts and scrunches down in his seat, manspreading and crowding me in the process, like the dickbag he is. I refuse to move my knee, which means our legs are pressed together for the entire sermon, thigh to thigh. I can feel the warmth of his body creeping through the fabric of his expensively tailored slacks, and it makes me antsy and unsettled. Finally, I relent and adjust my position, breaking the contact. I catch him watching me as I toy with my lip piercing, fiddle with the hymnal, kneel for the Lord’s Prayer. He knocks my elbow off the pew in front of us with his. I set it on top of his, but he shoves it off again, wrestling for the spot. The asshole is goading me, but even with my Irish temper and short fuse, I won’t throw a punch in church.
Royal watches us, frowning.
