Page 25 of Together We Rot

“So, can you tell me what’s really going on? Aside from the... erm, bug thing, what’s up with your family?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Why would a Goody Two-shoes like you run away?” Her voice is as sharp as the branches in the forest. Maybe she’ll draw blood, too.

I can’t bring myself to admit it. Not out loud.

The silence that hangs between us is enough to make her curse. “I’m going to start charging you extra for wasting my time.”

“Charging?” I parrot.

“Yes, Elwood. Charging. You don’t get to waste my time for free. Of course, I also have to factor in room service”—she points at the steaming cup beside me—“emergency care, staying in the luxury suite.”

This? The luxury suite?

“I don’t have money,” I blurt, and for the first time in my life, it’s true. Without my parents, I’m alone. No money. No belongings. Nothing at all. Nothing but the fear brewing in my gut.

“Of course you do, Clarke.” She draws out my last name like it’s a scathing insult. “Your family has enough money to buy our motel and demolish it for fun.”

I’ve never liked being called Clarke. The name doesn’t fit. It’s too large for someone so small. I clear my throat and taste the tang of blood. “Fine. You’re right. I ran away from home.” There. It’s out now. The words take shape in the air and I fear they might lace their fingers across my throat and throttle me. There’s a sharp finality to them. Nothing I can take back or fix. I ran away from home and now the sin of it will brand itself on my skin.

“My dad caught me. The one time in my life I sneak out and he catches me. He catches me and he—” Stalks toward me, his rage spitting off him like embers, lips pulled back in a snarl as he shatters everything I love. “He called the rest of the church over. They were talking about me like I didn’t mean anything... I’m sorry. I don’t know. Sheriff Vrees was there and my dad said he didn’t love me and—” My voice cracks, hitching up like in puberty.

Silence spills like lake-born fog. It hangs over us, heavy and thick and unyielding. “What?” Wil asks, breathless.

“They were talking about making sure I don’t escape again before Prudence gives birth.” I hiccup and burrow deeper beneath the covers. “Wil... I swear I didn’t know my dad was buying your place. I had no clue. Believe me.”

Muted, dull moonlight pushes across the room. It can only do so much, though. “Prudence? Vrees’s wife?”

“Yes.” I breathe in—deep and full—and I feel the swell and rise of my chest. “They want me dead. They talked about cutting something out of me and putting it in the baby and—I’m sorry, this is too much.”

“It was all so obvious,” Wil whispers, and it’s unlike her to be soft. “The Garden of Adam is some fucked-up cult. And this whole time with Vrees I thought he was inept or bribed, but I never stopped to think he and his wife were in on it. Holy hell, Elwood, Vrees is in on it! This is big. This is incredibly big.”

Outside, the snow rages onward. Wil’s words whip across my bare skin as cold as the wind rushing beyond the windowpane. Father always said the cold makes you feel alive in all the worst possible ways. It sparks an energy in you, a desperation that you didn’t even know you had. The cold shows you who you truly are.

I’m afraid of what it says about me. “Did they say anything about my mom?”

I shake my head. “Nothing that I heard.” My fingernails carve into the flesh of my arm, sparking the comforting bloom of pain. I am alive. I am very, very alive.

Beyond the curtains, the woods have crept closer. They hum and murmur among themselves, and I worry my words will carry back to the church. I want to bite each word back.

I tuck myself smaller and throw my arms over my knees.

Wil’s eyes burn in my peripheral vision, but I don’t turn to look. I can’t.

“I’ll help you,” she says, her tone shifting. “I won’t let your parents find you, I promise. You help me get dirt on your family and find my mom, and I’ll hide you as long as you need. Free of charge or whatever. Then when your parents get fitted in orange jumpsuits, we’ll both be happy.”

Betrayal is a family of scars on my skin. Every time I made the mistake of uttering Wil’s name aloud under my parents’ roof. “I can’t incriminate my family.”

She looks exactly as I expected her to: massively frustrated. “You said they were going to kill you.” It’s so black-and-white coming from her, but in my mind, it’s as muddled as the snow, one indistinguishable blur of right and wrong.

“I’ve never gone against my parents.”

“There’s a first for everything, isn’t there?” She doesn’t miss a beat. “Besides, you don’t have much of a choice here, do you?”

I hate it, but she’s right. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have run and when I got here, my first instinct wouldn’t have been to burrow under a bed and pray it all away.

Home is a knife slash across my throat and a collection of shattered, torn wings. “Okay.” One little word weighs more than everything. “I’ll help you.”

---