The Wicked We Have Done

9

I can’t take enough air into my body. Stella’s stench is too much.

“Deep breaths,” Casey urges as he cradles me. “Deep breaths. In and out.”

I’m trying. I’m opening my mouth but my lungs refuse to cooperate. Finally my throat relaxes, and I suck in a ragged gulp of oxygen.

My voice bursts to life, my sob scraping through the silence. I make fists around the fabric of his T-shirt and cry into his chest. I shriek and choke and cough and he doesn’t shush me. He doesn’t tell me that everything’s going to be all right. He holds me until I’ve expended myself, until the only muscles still working are the ones in my fingers that cling to his clothes.

Every thought rolling through my mind is an unconnected fragment.

Casey helps me to my feet and guides me away from the meadow. Nothing is familiar, and I know it isn’t because I’m disoriented from Stella’s death. I had been led to the house via hedges, and whether those hedges were an illusion or not, they’re no longer here.

We head up the hill in the hopes of finding Valerie, Jace, and Tanner, but the sun is at the wrong place in the sky. This isn’t the hill they’ll be on.

We’re turned around.

“This is wrong,” I tell Casey.

“I know,” he says. “The ground levels out over there. We can start heading west.”

Casey picks up his pace and I follow suit. When the ground flattens and the trees clear, we’re released into an unfamiliar meadow.

At the center, a desk with a red cracked seat rests, vines entwined around its legs, as if it’s been sitting here for years.

Bury it, burn it, break it into pieces. It always comes back.

One thing after another. No downtime. No mercy. The Compass Room is fed up with us today. It’s been too easy on us. Now it wants to see us writhe.

And I’m next.

“Casey.”

I’m already in his arms as he drags me back, away from the meadow and into the darkness of the forest.

“It will only chase us!” I cry.

He knows there’s no escaping, and yet he’s still trying to protect me.

I muster up enough strength to wriggle away from him and run back down to the meadow.

Objects trigger illusions—objects scattered within the woods that we can’t escape. They will bring back our crime. Our black mark.

It will just be Meghan. Meghan with a bullet through her brain, lying out in the woods somewhere.

I feel Casey’s presence behind me. I know he wants to reach out, to grab me and throw me over his shoulder and make a run for it.

I walk to the desk. There’s a break within the trees, where the light shines through, right upon the peeled plywood, the chunk taken out of the red seat.

It can’t be a replica. It’s too flawless to be a replica.

“A good psychopath gets off on knowing he’s unbreakable.”

Oh God.

I’m so dizzy, I don’t know if I can manage to look up at him before I pass out. But I do. He waits at the edge of the clearing, dark hair catching in the unscathed sunshine. Bomber jacket, tight jeans. Even in the most angelic light I’ve seen in these woods, he is surrounded in darkness.

I could face a dying Meghan. I could face Casey’s father.

But now I run.

It isn’t in Nick’s nature to chase me. He isn’t like that. He’s the kind of person to appear and take part of your soul away from you like he’s playing chess.

So when he rematerializes in front of me, I know I can’t do this. Not after Stella.

Even though I want to hide my thought from the chip that’s reading me, it blossoms right at the front of my mind.

I’m glad he’s dead.

I sink to my knees.

He cocks his head slowly. Maybe he’s concerned I’m not willing to put up a fight this time, that I’m not willing to play into his game.

The light halos him. I shut my eyes.

His footsteps are slow and carefully placed, but I can hear every one of them. There’s a lapse of silence between his last step and the moment he presses the cold mouth of a handgun to my temple.

“I bet you’re enjoying this, dying just like her. Like you think you’re some fucking martyr,” he spits.

I open my mouth to respond, to release my biting last words. I choke on them.

“You don’t deserve that, though. You deserve to wait.”

Footsteps scramble behind me. The pressure of the gun evaporates, and I open my eyes.

He’s gone.

Casey sweeps me into his arms and releases a shuddering breath. We don’t have to speak. The way he combs his fingers through my hair says, You’re still with me.

I turn and crush my lips against his.

We finally find the spot where we left the rest of our group. The trees have unwound themselves from the vines, and the wall is no longer here.

But neither are Jace, Valerie, and Tanner. We call their names with no response.

“They could have gone searching for us.”

“We can’t stay here waiting.”

He places a hand on my waist. “We don’t have to.”

We know we’re close to the lake, so Casey and I make for that direction in order to ground ourselves. Reaching the shore is a relief, even if this place reminds me of the first trick the Compass Room played on me. We fill up on water, and then make for the only direction we haven’t gone yet.

East, toward the mountains.

Panic inches its way through me as the sun sets. We’ll be stuck in the cold, in the darkness, with only each other. At least the moon rises full, shedding enough light across the ground that we can find a path.

Casey and I don’t speak—the only thing I want to talk about is how lost I feel, how big this place is, how hungry I am.

I am starting to understand Valerie. Giving up, curling into a ball with this boy in my arms, sounds deliciously tempting.

“I think I’m starting to see things,” Casey says when we have to backtrack after running into too much brush.

“What kind of things?”

“My mom.”

“Your mom.”

He nods. I follow the direction he’s staring and spot her a handful of yards away. Jeans and a T-shirt, hair twisted into a bun. There isn’t enough light to see the similarities between her features and Casey’s.

“Follow me,” she urges.

“It could be a trap,” Casey says.

“We die if we’re supposed to die, right?”

“Okay, okay.”

Casey holds my hand tightly. He’s nervous. “This way.”

An actual path cuts through the trees in the direction she leads us before she disappears. We follow it for a couple hundred feet before entering a clearing occupied by a lone cottage.

From the outside it’s nothing more than a shack. Warmth spreads through me at the thought of what could be waiting for us.

“We need to be careful,” Casey warns.

I’m over being careful, and to prove it, I let go of his hand and race up the rickety steps. I trace the doorknob, grip, and turn.

“It’s open.”

The air inside the cottage is stale. There’s no electricity and no sink.

One room with a furnished bed and a stack of cabinets. Behind their doors we find provisions—some dry food and canned fish. Not in a million years would I have been caught dead eating anything like this, but now I could eat wet cardboard and enjoy it.

We find some soap, toothpaste, and brushes. I check outside and spot a water pump I missed upon entering.

We stuff ourselves with everything we can find, not bothering to ration.

“What were you thinking . . .” We sit cross-legged on the bed across from each other. “. . . when the gun was to my head?”

The moonlight reflects in his irises. “That either of us might die in the next several days. And I’ve been a selfish ass for the past two.”

“You have not. You’ve handled shit quite well, given the circumstances.”

“I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, Evalyn. I’ve been so busy feeling sorry for myself, and you could have died today.”

“I should have.”

“What?”

“I should have died today.”

He frowns.

“I’ll be like Stella. They’ll have their way with me before finishing me off.”

He cups the back of my neck and kisses me. His lips are rough and chapped and perfectly warm. We part, but he doesn’t let go.

“You will not be like Stella.”

“If I had died today, it would have been better for you,” I say. “For us to not get too involved.”

His lip twitches, and the light waltzes in his eyes, across mottled green and brown, mottled like his bruises but somehow much more beautiful. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

“You smell like fish.”

He laughs. Oh, does he laugh. I forgot what that noise sounded like.

When sunlight first starts to filter through the windows, I go outside and fill the basin with water from the pump. It’s still so cold, but I want nothing more than to be clean.

He joins me to brush his teeth, and when he leaves, I strip off my sweatshirt and hang it on the porch and then remove the rest of my clothes and toss them into the filled basin.

I know he’s watching me while I wash my clothes completely naked. Using soap from the cabinet, I take my time scrubbing down each garment and rinsing it, even though I’m shaking. As I hang them up near my sweatshirt, I spot him staring at me through the window. His gaze flickers down to my breasts for a split second. I turn away from him and step into the water.

Casey walks outside. “I think you like washing in front of me.”

I bite my lip. “I think you might be right.”

“Do you want help with the pump?”

“That would be nice,” I say nonchalantly.

I can tell he’s trying not to stare as he stoops near me and pumps water into the basin. I cup my hands beneath the stream, dump the water over my shoulders, and soap up as quickly as possible. There’s no way this can be sexy. I’m more than likely like a shivering, wet dog. I splash him in attempt to lessen the awkwardness.

“If a water fight is what you want, Ibarra, I can bring it.”

“I’d rather you take your clothes off and join me.”

I don’t have to ask twice. Still hunched over, he takes off his shirt. Then he reaches out, cups the back of my thigh, and plants a kiss on my hipbone.

I whisper his name and suddenly he’s in the basin with me, his pants still on. His mouth crushes mine. I fumble with the button of his pants and slide them off.

“Why are we doing this out here again?” he asks.

I grin and pick up the bar of soap from the water, rubbing it over his chest. When he’s rinsed off, we run inside. There are no towels, so we rub ourselves dry with one of the blankets from the bed. I tie my hair up.

He pulls me onto his lap. I trace my finger across his forehead, swiping the hair from his face.

“I don’t mind my last memories being you,” I say.

I wish I knew him better. I wish we had the opportunity of a coffee date without the threat of our lives hanging over us, and I could hear him laugh when I crack stupid jokes. We’d talk about the places we’ve traveled and the college classes we’ve taken so far. Maybe we’d decide that the other person is nice, but not quite right, and we’d never get to this part. He closes the distance between us and presses his lips to my bare shoulder.

No matter what, it wouldn’t be like this.

It would be without some pervert engineer watching us, if this were happening after a hot bath at my apartment or a nice hotel. I’d smell like lavender, not sweat and laundry soap.

We’ll never have that.

This will be the only Casey I’ll ever know.

His tongue glides over my throat, and he falls back onto the bed. When I lie on him, he rolls me over until he’s on top, his fingers tracing the inside of my thigh.

He rests his forehead on mine, our rapid breaths dancing with each other. Boldly meeting my eyes, he says, “We’re making it out of here,” and then he pushes himself inside me.

It’s like we’ve been lovers forever. I arch my back as he drags his fingers down my spine. With every thrust I feel him weaken, becoming malleable, like he was after his test when he was bruised and bloody and broken. But this surrender is different. He isn’t surrendering his life. He’s surrendering to me.

We roll over, and I sit up. I trace his lips, and he opens his mouth and drags his teeth across my finger.

I move on top of him and his eyes flutter shut, his breaths shortening to match mine. He grips my hips, begging me to slow down before he loses it. With the pads of his thumbs, he draws light circles on my skin.

I haven’t been this vulnerable with a person in a year. No one has wanted me to feel this vulnerable with them.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I slide off of him and lie on my back, trying to disengage the feeling of him inside me. “I . . . uhh . . .”

“It’s been a while,” he says. It’s kind of cute that he thinks he’s the one at fault here, like he isn’t good in bed. I actually wish he were bad, because this, this familiarity, as if we know each other’s bodies so well, isn’t right.

“I’m not adjusted to being with someone is all. It’s . . . It’s too much.”

He turns on his side, fingers finding my inner thigh. “How about this?”

The energy from his hand is fire and ice at once. “Okay,” I whisper.

He lowers his head until his lips barely brush mine, his hand creeping higher up my leg. I say his name, and he slides his fingers inside of me, his face above my own and just out of reach.

He watches me the whole time, as his hand keeps the perfect rhythm, and before long I’m unraveling beneath him, every muscle clenching. He covers my mouth with his, like he’s trying to feel my orgasm himself.

The way he relaxes afterward tells me it might have worked.

He leaves the bed once to wash his clothes and hang them like mine, and for the rest of the day we lie in our new bed naked, facing each other as we talk about our childhood, high school, and college.

I like it. I like pretending that, for a morning and afternoon, we’re normal.

He grew up in Tennessee, but moved to Illinois with his parents when he was thirteen. He’s an only child, and experienced half a semester of college, where he planned to major in construction management.

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.