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The summer passes by sticky and slow.
When Grace was a kid, she loved the humidity of it all—of buzzing bugs and the way sweat would stick to her skin, lying in dewy grass and coming home with pale skin stained green. Her tiny fingers would carve into the fleshy stems of wild flowers, weaving the delicate little things into crowns and bracelets; decorating her parents' wrists and heads with a rainbow collection of eclectic weaved petals. Glowbugs in the dark at her window, of pink lemonade at the kitchen table and picnics with the other kids in youth group. Or the weeks at camp, getting her hands dirty and spending each day proving how deep her devotion run—proving it dirtied her blood the same as the mud on her fingers, she’d hike as many miles, make as many wallets, lead as many bible readings as it took to make sure everyone knew.
Summer’s aren’t as sweet as they used to be. Grace feels nothing like an adult beyond the technicality of her age, but this summer has proven something about her has changed with age.
She spends the warm months—a heavy, swath of a blanket over Hatchetfield, clinging and hot and suffocating—in her room. It’s a gilded cage. Her hands tremble at the very idea of leaving the house, even to go grocery shopping with her mom—like they always do, and yet Grace cannot even bring herself to pull on her shoes, or a fresh pair of clothes; or attend church. The piles of clothes decorating her room in a way they never have before, and the general mess filling the space and making her feel uneasy, the fluffy pink blankets she kicks to the foot of her bed in the night.
She thrashes with night terrors. Fanged teeth and torn wounds, an apparition of Grace’s worse horrors and even worse desires taunting and violent and vicious and tantalizing. Of blood and guts and everything she did that night to make it out. Of soft cheeks and a bloody covered face, shaking hands in her own and trail of dead bodies in her wake. Waking with her clothes drenched in sweat, and it doesn’t feel so delightful as it sticks to her slick skin—completely twisted and horrific, unlike the joy that would come with sweat and hard work on camp hikes.
Tonight is no different
The bathroom light is white. It flickers in the dark, it buzzes too like those bugs at her window. The sound isn’t as melodic as she once thought buzzing to be. Once she’d thought of bees—of honey, licking it from the tips of her fingers as it dripped from between bread, having a whole summer where she refused to eat anything but white bread with honey crushed between the thin slices, the crusts cut off by her mother. Of those fireflies, how her desperate palms would attempt to cup and capture them, wanting to feel the delightful honey glow against her skin. This buzzing isn’t sweet, isn’t kind, it irritates her like a rash. Like the poison ivy she stumbled into once when at camp, panicked as the angry red spread across her soft skin furious and burning like an inferno. No, the light buzzes and Grace’s ears twinge and her eyebrow twitches.
Her fingers fumble and she flicks the light back off, her other hand wrestling to find the countertop of the sink in the darkness. Grace shudders and she tears her shirt over her head, letting the damp fabric sink to the tile and fold over the tops of her feet—any worries about indecency, even in the bathroom of her own home, now a minor flutter in the back of her cramped mind. It doesn’t seem important now, she’s stopped wearing her bathing suits too, even walks around the house without her socks. Her mom says nothing, and Grace wonders—a shallow thought, the kind she never dares dip her toes into too deeply, knowing the pool will swallow her whole—why she ever did any of it at all. Did any of it matter?
There are no answers to the questions swarming Grace; swarm her like the heat, clinging to her back and squeezing her neck. It crushes her, and she feels stuffed to the brim with secrets and whispers and a biting reminder of what she did that night. Her toes curl against the cool tiles, smothered under her sleep shirt and she thinks the blue nail polish on her toes might have chipped away now.
Her reflection is hardly visible in the darkness, the only light dim and wispy as it spills in through the slip of a window on the opposing wall. It’s moonlight, refracting off the slightly dirty mirror, and Grace realises it’s still deep in the night and her mother is asleep across the house, alone in her bedroom. That’s new too, just her and her mom. Grace hadn’t understood why her dad needed to move out after the divorce; nothing else changed, except they stopped wearing their rings, and Grace was a lot more confused about everything.
Though, she keeps most of her confusion to herself for a reason she can’t place.
Grace still wonders if it was her fault. She came back from that night too messed up for her parents to bare, it rotted their family from the inside out, just the same as how Grace feels most days—as if there’s decay spreading through her, eating away at her insides, leaving nothing but a fragile shell of the girl she’s supposed to be.
They promise it’s not her fault.
She wishes it was as easy to believe them as it had been in those childish summers.
In the mirror she blinks at herself, face flushed and eyes glassy. It’s like staring at a stranger. Her hair is getting too long—neglected, forgotten about, in this summer of nothing. Her fingers itch to fix it. To cut it short like it’s always supposed to be, always has been. For hair clips and a pretty summer dress and a porcelain smile for the adults to swoon and praise her for at church. For a cross necklace and her WWJD bracelet and—
She shudders, hit with a chill as the heat and sweat from her night terror slip away into the night, and she lets out a rattling breath. Her lungs ache in her chest as they swell and expand, and shrink and push, her ribcage rickety as her heart hammers hard and fast—kicking with a vengeance, like her own body is at war with itself—even now. The short, bitten down nails curl deeper into the wooden countertop, the side of her thumb brushing against the cool tile of the sink at the slight movement.
Another part of her wants to remain changed. Her eyes dart down to the scar she traces with her fingers more often than she’s sure is healthy. It was gnarly and jagged and went untreated far too long. Another memory of that night; of what it took to survive. Now, her fingers trace it once more, following the pattern even in the dark because it’s as memorable as a well-worn path in the Witchwoods she would march through in those better summers. From the top of her shoulder, winding down her side and dipping just below the waistband of her sleep shorts—and Grace knows if she were to look, or to trail her hand further, she’d find the clipped end of the scar appear on the other side of those shorts, stopping short right at the middle of her thigh.
It’s ugly and it’s horrible and Grace hates that she doesn’t hate it.
The same way she somehow would be happy never wearing one of those summer dresses ever again. The same way she’s locked her bloody WWJD bracelet and the cross necklace her parents bought her for her fourteenth birthday away in her bedside drawer. How her hair doesn’t feel so important now—because once it had meant everything, and she’d find herself exhilarated at the way her mom’s gentle hands clipped it back with hair clips or braided it with some struggle due to the shortness, or wearing it in tiny pig-tails with bows and ribbons.
Grace wonders if this is what getting older means. If it means being okay with the changes. If it’s why she’s so ready to discard the past like a used napkin or a shattered mug, pretend it had never been there at all—insignificant and forgettable.
Isn’t change supposed to be a good thing? 2 Corinthians 5:17; should Grace just leave the past where it belongs, behind her and never looking back. Though, she doesn’t feel she’s emerged as anything new, as anything impressive, as anything worth being called God’s creation.
God does not change, but Grace is just the feeble man built to worship the divine. Was what happened on October 9th an act of God? What about what happened before? None of it is rational—Grace doesn't understand why she did things, why she still makes choices she knows will do nothing but seer an endless agony across her consciousness. Her body, too, at times.
Perhaps the issue is she does not think things through. Where God and Jesus and everything holy is set on a divine path, with everything planned, everything made, everything purposeful—Grace is anything but. Though sometimes cursed with a penchant for overthinking, all the thinking she does is never enough to truly consider her actions before she takes them.
Everything that went down—everything that went wrong —at the Waylon place was proof enough of that. Everything that happened after, as well.
Maybe that’s why she does it. Or maybe it’s because change is scary. Everything is changing so quickly, and Grace is finding it impossible to pretend that could ever be a good thing. Bible verses filter through her head—none of them giving her the answer she seeks. It’s becoming too easy to forget all the good in the past, letting it be overtaken and gorged by the bad and the foul.
Grace isn’t quite ready to let the good go just yet.
So, it probably isn’t a good thing that she finds an old pair of scissors at the bottom of a plastic tub, hidden among old bottles and cleaning supplies beneath the counter. Grace doesn’t wet her hair before she cuts it—she cuts it mad and frenzied, washing the strands tumbling into the sink away with a thrashing stream of water. She rummages through those discarded piles of dirty clothes and picks out anything she thinks might be worth taking—her favorite sweaters and softest t-shirts, two pairs of pants and a skirt she hasn’t worn in two years, her fluffiest pair of socks and a handful of hair clips.
They don’t fit right in her school bag. It’s too small and Grace goes searching in every cupboard and closet she can find in the house—creeping through the hallway, mindful of her mom still sleeping in her bed—and finds an old ratty backpack. It must have been her dad’s—it is, she finds a tag on the inside marked with a Mark.C —and she shoves everything inside it.
Grace fills the pockets of her jacket with coins and dollar bills from the swear jar in the kitchen—only feeling half guilty about it—and scribbles down a note, sticking it to the fridge with a bright pink flower magnet.
Mommy,
I’ll be gone for a while. I’m not sure for how long, but don’t worry about me. I’m glad you’re happy now, and maybe you can be happy without me for a bit too.
Don’t tell the police I’m missing, I’ll be fine. I’ll find a way to contact you soon, promise.
And don’t look for me. I will come back.
Love, Grace.
It’s a struggle, wrestling her bike out of the garage and careful not to scratch the minivan; but she pedals off down the street outside her house, only one destination in mind.
The elevator hums and creaks as it moves through the floors, and Grace hopes no one will steal her bike from the lobby. She watches, hands shaking as they grip the hem of her sleep shorts, as the floor number ticks up above the door. 3, 4, 5—
Ding.
Grace doesn’t remember the last time she was here. Just before the summer started probably; in the weird limbo between graduation and the summer, ignoring the rest of their lives just on the horizon. Steph said she would come call, said she’d visit, but she never did. And Grace doesn’t even blame her.
Still, it’s been a while but not long enough to forget her door number. 09. One of the nails has come loose, and if she reached out and poked the painted gold, shiny numbers on the door, the number nine would swing back and forth with a squeak.
She knocks three times.
There’s a thud from inside the apartment, and Grace rocks back on her heels as she waits—hand nervously fidgeting with the strap of her bag, and she wonders if this was a bad idea.
Well, it is a bad idea.
More accurately, Grace wonders if Steph will laugh in her face and slam the door.
Except, she knows Steph won’t do that—because she’s not as mean as Grace once thought her to be, and she’s something closer to a friend than a stranger now. Even if she never called like she promised. Grace understands the space, she thinks it might be why she’s spent the summer hiding in her bedroom with no plan of what comes next. She also knows Steph isn’t sure what’s next either, and it’s why despite all reason, she waits at her door.
After two more knocks the door swings back, and Steph is there looking no different to the last time Grace saw her.
She’s wearing pajama pants with Donald Duck faces in various extreme expressions decorating the pale blue fabric, the fabric frayed and torn around her ankles. Per usual she wears one of her cropped—by hand, likely cut similarly to how Grace had cut her hair not long ago—band tees, it’s beige with a splash of pink design on the chest. Grace couldn’t name the band even if she tried, but she assumes it might have been one of the bands Steph got her to listen to in those days between graduation and summer. They would lie on the grey carpet of Grace’s tiny bedroom, rotting away the days in a haze with songs playing from Steph’s phone. Her hair is a little messy and hangs loose down her back, and her nails are black—and Grace watches with an apt gaze as she wipes away sleep from one of her eyes with her thumb, something akin to a frown but not quite pulling at her lips. Maybe a grimace, except the word also feels too negative a descriptor for the look on her friend's tired face.
“Grace?” she gets out, voice slightly raspy from sleep and the cigarettes she started smoking after Grace accidently got her hooked on them towards the end of senior year. Grace has the decency to feel bad about it, even if she likes watching Steph smoke her brand of cigarettes. “It’s 3 am, what the fuck are you doing here?”
It’s a good question. One that would make any normal, rational, not-falling-apart person take pause and reconsider this ludicrous series of bad decisions.
Grace isn’t a person like that, and she simply smiles. Nothing like her toothy grins or sickly sweet church smiles. It’s close lipped—hiding her tooth gap behind chapped lips and a wobble—and small, tight on her face and Grace knows her eyes don't reflect anything similar to it. She’s tired too, as tired as Steph looks.
“I want to get out of Hatchetfield,” is what she says, as confident and sure as ever. It’s humid and hot in the hallway—and Grace’s leg hairs prick up on goosebumps at the cool swash of air blowing out through Steph’s door, and she wishes her home had AC like Steph’s apartment does. “I need to get out,” she corrects, pulling at both the straps of her backpack, better sitting them on her shoulders. “Come with me?”
For a long while Steph stares at her. Not with judgement, not like Grace is mad—which she probably should, because Grace is sure the both of them are broken and that’s why this moment doesn’t feel as weird as it should. Steph sucks in her bottom lip, leans against her front door as her eyes blink slow and tired, something Grace can’t read in her eyes.
“Alright,” is her answer. Short and sweet. “For how long?”
Grace shrugs, and follows Steph into her apartment as she steps back; leaving the door ajar, not even watching as Grace pushes it closed with a gentle click. And, yeah, Grace wishes her dad had sprung for an AC unit before he moved out. It would have been a better idea than the abandoned pool project in the backyard.
It’s as quiet in Steph’s apartment as it is at home. The same buzz of bugs at the window, of cars outside passing at odd and uneven intervals, and the hum of AC is similar to the general noise coming from Grace’s aging house. She finds she doesn’t like it one bit.
“Play some music?” she asks as she sits down at the foot of Steph’s bed, letting her backpack fall back onto the grey bed sheets. They’re completely different to Grace’s—covered in colourful rainbows, abandoned now on her bedroom floor after her nightmare.
Without answer Steph plucks a CD from her shelf and shoves it into the sleek, white CD player. A song, quiet but enough to fill the space, crooning from the speakers. She doesn’t recognise it. Her parents didn’t let her listen to much music—not much beyond church, and Christian rock, and camp songs about virginity and purity. There’s no way she could recognise it.
Steph is less frantic, less cautious, than Grace as she packs her bag. It’s not any neater—the clothes rolled into balls rather than folded—but still has an air of organization to it Grace knows she lacked. She can feel it, the way the lumpy backpack digs into her thigh where it sits waiting beside her on the bed. Steph throws in some of her makeup, a couple of CDs, a phone charger and her laptop.
So many things Grace has never had. She thinks she might be too tired to be too jealous about it, though.
“So, a road trip,” Steph says, zipping up her bag and turning to look at Grace. The looks she gives her is disarming, oddly soft and Grace is sure she’s made the right decision coming here. “I have to say Chasity, you keep surprising me.”
She shrugs, picking up her backpack and pulling it over her shoulders once more—her sneakers scuffing against Steph’s floor.
“Can your car fit a bike?”
Steph sighs, but she smiles, shooting Grace a look. Grace’s skin tingles down to her feet. “You brought your bike?” she asks, and when she tears her shirt over her head like it’s nothing—it should be nothing, they changed in front of one another for years in changing rooms, for a few months in Grace’s bedroom, that night at the pool—and Grace turns away on instinct.
She pretends she doesn’t hear the little scoff from Steph at the action.
“How else was I supposed to get here?” She doesn’t want an answer. Grace runs a hand through her choppy hair, glancing out into the darkness outside of Steph’s window. It’s brighter than the backyard Grace usually peers out into in her own bedroom. The street filled with lights and the orange glow of lights in other Highrise buildings scattered around the heart of Hatchetfield.
Her hand jumps from her hair to the wall, following the smooth white of the paint. It’s nothing like Steph. Too quiet, too boring, and Grace thinks she feels this way about the whole apartment. The day she first showed up, helping Steph unpack everything she owned into the neat little space, it sat at the tip of her tongue.
This isn’t a place meant for Stephanie Lauter. Someone made to live on the road, or in a place more interesting than this. Than Hatchetfield, maybe. Grace drags her fingers over the glossy front of a poster—she peers up at it, recognises it as one of the movies Steph planned for them to watch together but they never did. Steph never called, and the movie nights stopped like they’d never happened.
“Did you read the article?” Steph asks, and Grace’s heart jumps to her throat. She swears she can feel blood well in her mouth, something hollow and sweet and metallic, but as her tongue darts out against her lip she realises it was a figment of her imagination. Grace wishes it was real, wishes she could feel it drip from her lips and onto Steph’s too perfect bedroom floor.
She huffs out something of a laugh, maybe more of a breath than anything, and shrugs. Grace can’t bring herself to look back at Steph, lets her fingers drag further across the wall with a schhhhh and brushes the pads of her fingers against the next poster an equal distance away from the last. Another movie they never watched—her tongue still begs for blood.
“I did. It was well written.” It wasn’t that well written, but Grace doesn’t have much else to say about it. Or maybe she has too much to say, and she worries she’ll throw up on Steph’s floor if she starts.
Steph gives her own laugh at that, heartier and actually amused unlike Grace’s, and her bare feet shuffle against the floor. There’s a heat to her body as she stands behind Grace, watching her study the poster like there’s anything interesting about the bitterness Grace is sure flickers ugly and mangled in her eyes.
“You would say that.” She can hear the smile in Steph’s voice, it makes her feel something sick in her gut; something that rolls over like an animal, like a struggle. “It was bullshit, though.”
It wasn’t. In fact, the article had gotten a lot right. Even if it came to the wrong conclusion, and Grace couldn’t even blame them. She knew how it looked—both of them did. Despite the mess of the divorce, Grace had sobbed into her moms shoulder in the bathroom the day it was published. Maybe that was why she retreated to her bedroom this summer. Or, more likely, was just one of the many reasons.
Her hand falls from the poster, and Grace’s shoulders sag under her backpack. She dips her chin, lets it press into the harsh curve of her collarbone—her sleep shirt is still a little damp, she thinks it might be covered in some hair that fell to the floor as she cut it.
“Wait—did you cut your hair?”
~~~
Teen Slasher Come To Life: Truth Revealed
[A photo of two young girls sits beside the article. The first is identified as Grace Chasity, smiling at the camera in a pale blue dress outside the Hatchetfield Baptist Church. The second is Stephanie Lauter, daughter of deceased Mayor Lauter, middle finger pointed to the camera—the background is illegible from the posing of the shot. Over the top sits a flashy red star, bold white text inside reading: The True Killers?]
…truth is revealed about gruesome teen deaths last October.
Dear God! Last October our tiny town of Hatchetfield was struck with devastating news. Four teenagers ended up dead (Maxwell Jägerman, Richard Lipschitz, Ruth Flemming, and Peter Spankoffski) alongside our beloved Mayor Solomon Lauter and his secretary (Miranda Tessburger). These murders were left a cold case by the HFPD, the investigation headed and closed by new-in-town Detective Elise Shapiro. Questions remained on the truth about this slasher massacre, seeming right out of a horror movie—and though our small town is no stranger to the weird and the missing, even this was too much for the Hatchetfield populous to handle.
With the New Year and months since the case was officially closed, following the final murder of Peter Spankoffski, it seems we have some new answers to the questions hanging around this gory mystery! Police reports detail the events of the night of the final murder, and reveal that there were two survivors of the October Massacre; this name was coined by Barry Swift at the Hatchetfield Gazette following the third murder. Today the names of those two survivors have emerged.
The first is nineteen year old Grace Chasity, set to graduate Hatchetfield High this summer. Photographed (on the top) here outside a local church, it’s been said the young girl is at the very heart of the Hatchetfield Baptist community, and it leaves questions as to how her fellow church goers will respond to these new revelations.
The second is eighteen year old Stephanie Lauter—daughter of priorly mentioned Solomon Lauter, mayor and beloved government official. Photographed (on the bottom) her flippant, violent and rebellious nature has been reported in the past; not to mention police reports for: underage drinking, assault of an officer, theft and reckless driving.
This leaves us with the true question. What role did these two girls’ play in the murders, and why does the story listed in the leaked police report not add up? Though official documents refuse to name the two as suspects in this investigation, it’s undeniable the death of Mayor Lauter and their connections to the other deceased students make them seem anything but innocent.
Are these two our true culprits? It’s likely, with speculation even suggesting Lauter has used money from her deceased fathers will to bribe the HFPD to falsify reports and cover up their role in the October Massacre.
~~~
It turns out Steph’s car can fit Grace’s bike.
The basket and handle bars poke up a little too high and slightly block the back window, but Steph says it’s fine. She shoves one of the CDs she’s brought with her into the car before they pull out the parking lot—tossing her backpack blindly into the back seat, fingers wiggling in an incessant back and forth motion that Grace can’t tear her eyes away from.
Grace hugs her bag to her stomach, keeping the lumpy monstrosity in her lap and resting her chin on the leather handle on the top. They don’t talk as they pass over the bridge into Clivesdale; unable to even break the silence to express their hatred for their rival town as they pass right through. She’s done it many times herself, for family vacations and spelling bees in places bigger and more important than Hatchetfield.
Though, achieving either of those things isn’t too hard. Grace doesn’t despise her hometown, but existing there is growing itchy and annoying—like the way moss spreads across bark, near impossible to scrape away and leaving her feeling green and queasy. The way everyone manages to push things under the rug.
She can’t help but wonder how much of it is things like the ghost—things beyond human comprehension, impossible to fight and terrifying to know. How much of it isn’t that? No one cared when Max followed her home in grade 11, no one cared when they buried Max under that rotting old house, and now no one cares that Grace Chasity and Stephanie Lauter have left Hatchetfield with no plan on when they’ll be coming back.
It hurts that her own parents are included in that. Grace didn’t want them to ask. To share how terrified she’d been, hiding in a bush as Max Jägerman and his friends lost track of her—whistling and laughing, words like slut and two-bagger being tossed around, her entire body shaking in the canopy of leaves. To recount how she’d hacked and chopped and crunched his body into neatly folded pieces, bagged and wrapped and buried hands, feet, and a torso. To tell them what she did in October to survive the wrath of something she still isn’t sure was entirely human—something that osculates and shimmers, ugly and dirty, in her memories.
But also, she did want them to ask, because at least then she could deny them those answers too brittle to share—could pretend they cared about her in the way she needed them to. They care, Grace knows that, but they don’t care right. Not enough, not about the right things, not about who she is beneath what they made her to be.
“I don’t think I’ve played any Nirvana for you yet,” Steph says, breaking the silence as she fidgets with the volume dial. Grace hadn’t even noticed any music had been playing—head pressed against the window, the song too quiet for her to hear maybe. Or maybe she’s gotten too good at ignoring things. “What d’you think?”
“It’s good,” she lies with a small smile, and she can’t help but wonder when lying became so easy. When it became God's plan for her to lie—about the boy under the floorboards, about the lust thrumming under her skin, about the well of shame eating her from the inside like cordyceps; turning her into a puppet of her most selfish desires.
She glances over at Steph, who seems pleased by the answer—small crinkles under her eyes as she smiles, blue gaze glistening in the morning sunlight. The music is loud, not in the way of volume but pure noise. Grace doesn’t think it actually sounds good at all—but it’s the type of thing she could imagine Steph listening so easily.
Noise spilling from a chunky pair of headphones on her head, or crackly and shrieking from her phone, thudding from that CD player in her bedroom. Grace’s smile widens, imagining Steph jumping and thrashing around her room to a song like this, and she thinks if she ever got to witness something like that again she’d be the luckiest person in Hatchetfield.
Except, they're not in Hatchetfield anymore.
“So…” she starts again, because Steph has always been antsy about the lack of conversation. Where Grace despises silence in general, Steph can never resist talking, even if the words she speaks mean very little. Though, Grace knows she has her own tendency to ramble under stress as well. She wonders if she’s always been like that, or if she and Steph have grown too similar with how much time they’ve spent with one another. She wouldn’t mind that. “Your hair,” Steph wiggles her fingers, gesturing loosely to her own hair where it’s stuffed under a grey beanie on her head. “What happened there?”
It’s a fair question. Grace still wasn’t all too sure why she did it, really. Fear of change, desire for change, it was all muddled and messy in her head. She’s never known what she wants, but she feels that way all the time now. Where once it had been a vague thrumming in the back of her mind, the type of thing easy to push aside or pretend wasn’t there, now it swims through her thoughts like those dirty creeks in the Witchwoods.
She shrugs, her own fingers curving and folding around the messy strands by her jawline. There’s only one answer she can think of. “It was getting too long.”
There’s a sweet smile on Steph’s lips as she hums, nodding her head at the answer as she squints back out to the road ahead of them. It’s still dark outside; but dawn must be approaching, because it’s getting lighter. Too soon, like it always does in the Summer.
The songs on the CD fade from one to another, Steph providing context and comment—always asking Grace her opinion with a look that keeps Grace lying that she’s having a good time. She even guides Grace in putting a new CD into the player when the album finishes, and Grace struggles more than anyone else probably ever has with a CD. In between songs, in between albums, Steph grumbles about the sun in her eyes and how she forgot to bring sunglasses—complains that she’s hungry, waxes something oddly poetic about her desire for breakfast cereal.
Steph never can stop talking.
“This one is Stevie Nicks,” she says, a new CD shoved into place, and she says it like Grace would know who that is. “She was in my favorite band—I showed you a few of their albums a few months ago, remember?”
“I remember.”
For the first time in a while, Grace isn’t lying, she sort of remembers that. A little bit. Maybe more than a little. It was a Thursday, they both had the same final class of the day—the only class they shared in senior year, the class where Steph cheating and Grace snitching started all of this. Steph didn’t have her car yet—Grace walked her bike home, Steph walked Grace home. Like always—so often just the two of them, Grace’s parents absent from the home, somewhere she doesn’t want to think about—they rotted into the furniture in Grace’s bedroom. Only a little more than walking, talking corpses—barely more.
Stephanie Lauter on her bed. Long hair falling over the edge, feet pressed into the wall, and an easy sort of smile on her face. She hadn’t smiled in a while, but she was showing Grace her favorite band, and that must have seemed like something worth breaking their mutual grief for. She always looked odd—gritty and real on Grace’s fluffy bed, flannel shirt spread out across rainbow sheets.
“Do you like it?” she’d asked, desperate for Grace’s opinion on music even back then. “Do you?”
Grace doesn’t remember what her answer had been. She doesn’t remember any of the songs, she remembers the name of the band— Fleetwood Mac, it’s on Steph’s most-worn shirt—but did she like it? Did she lie? She doesn’t know.
She did remember the album name. Grace thinks she might remember.
It’s getting hard to tell which are memories and which are fabrications. Nightmares or reality. Something real, someone real, or… Or…
“Rumours, right?” she asks, truly unsure, trying to picture the CD in her mind. It laid on her desk, where Grace worked on some homework that day. Steph may not have cared about graduating—and maybe Grace didn’t care either—but Grace did care about having something to work towards.
“Yeah!” The way Steph’s pretty face splits into a grin makes it worth it—skin looking golden in the morning sun. She wonders if she’ll ever get to touch her face again, touch her like she did on that night in October. “She’s really fucking cool—I know you’ll like this one.”
“Uh-huh.” It feels easy to agree.
They stop at a gas station at 9 AM when Grace can’t stand Steph complaining about breakfast anymore, and she points at a tiny little place shooting off the main road.
“What’s new in the life of Grace Chastiy?” Steph says, maybe only half-serious, and she’d swiped a pair of sunglasses on the way in. The lenses are a pretty pink—cheap, plastic, but the circle shape of them actually suits Steph really well. The price tag dangles around one of the temples, the writing is too small for Grace to read. They browse the snack aisle, the basket already full of things Grace wouldn’t really consider breakfast. It’s too early to argue, though, and so Grace says nothing.
“Not much,” she sighs, frowning as Steph swipes a couple chocolate bars into the basket. “Boring summer.”
At that Steph glances back at her, and Grace thinks she might have the same answer. Boring summer. Instead of replying she rounds the corner to the next line of shelves. Grace swallows down what might be another sigh—nearly walking right into the back of Steph, who stops in the middle of the aisle.
“Hey, I didn’t think they had this guy outside of Hatchetfield,” she says, plucking a can off the shelf and twisting it around for Grace to see. It’s a can of beans—and Grace’s stomach twinges at the sight of the smiling bean mascot. “They have the huge stand-ups in all the stores back home.”
She hums, averting her gaze from the can and to the collection of other baked bean brands on the shelf. “It’s not all that special.”
“Henry’s Hearty’s?” Steph questions with a smile veering on sly, but at least she pushes the can back onto the shelf, moving further down the aisle past bags of pasta and boxes of rice. “I don’t know—my dad’s a fan.”
They reach the cereal aisle—what Steph’s been looking for this whole time. She swipes a box of Lucky Charms off the shelf, lets them fall into the basket on Grace’s arm with the chocolate bars and polo mints. As a kid the only cereal Grace got to eat were the healthy kind—Bran Flakes, with fruit and a glass of orange juice. Grace peers down at the grinning mascot on the box, wonders when she’ll start grieving the childhood she never had. If that will ever happen.
Before she can contemplate the strange look the Leprechaun is giving her—all wooden and disconcerting—Steph drags her along towards the fridges at the very back of the store. There in front of the wide selection of milk, soda, water and fruit juice, Steph slaps her hands on her hips. Her face pulls into a critical, deeply serious stare as she considers their choices. And Grace’s head swims at the sight of so many options.
“Any preference?”
“I don’t drink soda.”
“Ah, right. For a second I forgot I was talking to a Chasity .” She’s just teasing, Grace knows that. It’s what they do—it’s what Steph does—but Grace tends to be overly sensitive in the mornings, and she frowns.
She rolls her shoulders, eyes darting across the windows into the fridge. It’s hard to see with the way the light bounces off the glass, her own annoyed—hurt?—reflection staring back at her.
“Fine,” she pushes past Steph, pulling open a door and picking out the bright purple bottle. Too bright, really. Looking nothing like a bruise, dirty and painful and nothing close to nice—and Grace thinks that might be her favorite kind of purple. Or maybe that light, glinting type of purple Steph dyed the tips of her hair last year—it’d been gone by the end of the summer, though. The soda sloshes back and forth against the plastic, and she huffs as it drops into the basket, the weight already starting to hurt her arm. “We’ll get this one.”
She doesn’t drink soda, but she did drink a grape soda at a Hatchetfield High volleyball game freshman year. It was… sweet. Or maybe the fact Alice Woodward gifted it to her was—scandalous and something secret, the first of many secrets about Alice that Grace kept to herself.
“Good choice.”
It’s stupid that Grace preens under such a nothing compliment—but she does. Steph pays for their breakfast and her new sunglasses using her card— ”dead dad money,” she jokes with a wink, glasses pushed up and sitting on her hat, and it doesn’t help the stupid look Grace is sure has taken over her face—and they, Steph, designate Grace’s lap as their ‘snack-storage location.’ It’s fine.
It’s even more fine when Steph manages to coax Grace into feeding her the Lucky Charms.
“Come on, I can’t eat them and drive!”
“Well maybe you shouldn’t eat them, then.”
“Grace… Please?”
The idea of eating cereal dry to begin with is a foreign concept to Grace; makes her feel as if there’s gravel in her mouth, like the time she fell over when she was little and chipped her already wonky front teeth. Her mouth welled with blood, gravel and dirt clinging to her lips. Still, she complies, piling a dusty collection of cereal and marshmallows in her palm.
Steph doesn’t say anything when she takes her seatbelt off to get a better angle, shovelling a palmful of lumps of sugar into her open, waiting mouth. The whole box of Lucky Charms is finished way quicker than what was probably reasonable—but Grace didn’t even want any, so that’s also fine. There’s no plan for when they’ll stop, for where they're going at all, and Grace wishes it could stay that way.
But they’ll have to figure it out soon.
“Motel?” Steph suggests, admitting, “the dead dad money doesn’t go that far.”
Grace has never stayed in a motel before. She’s heard things. The sinful type of things she’d likely have an aneurysm over a year ago. The type of things her church, and her parents, and even camp used to scare her—to keep her a good girl, a submissive girl, a sinless girl. She’s sure she wouldn’t count as any of those things anymore—maybe good least of all.
“Sure,” she agrees, sweaty palm of her hand pressed to her mouth—voice coming out muffled, but there’s nowhere for the timid affirmation to hide in Steph’s too-small car. Yeah, Grace believes the ‘dead dad’ money didn’t go too far at all. “Sounds like a plan.”
~~~
The motel room is damp, the smell reminds Grace of the cabins they’d sleep in at camp. A place where it’s hard to be shocked when you wake up to a floor covered in slugs.
The pop song playing in the lobby as Steph paid for their room is gone now; as is the weird squeaking of the open window behind the desk, the attendant handing over a key seeming not to notice the way the cracked pane rattled and thrashed in the afternoon breeze.
Her hands shake where they curl into the scratchy blanket of the bed furthest from the door. Grace knows that Steph prefers sleeping closest to an exit, she’d taken the further bed without thought—dropped her backpack onto the pillow, sunk down into the softness.
It’s a horrible tremor, the type that’s become too common in the passing months—the quiet sort of panic in High School that Grace managed to keep private becoming louder, forcing itself to the forefront of her life like everything else that seems to cloud her brain now. They shake, and Grace sighs, eyes closed as she presses the back of her head harder into the tough mattress.
It’s quiet.
Grace doesn’t like quiet. Today has been so loud—from the car, to the music, to Steph’s incessant chatter and the whistle of the wind outside. The air filled with something sharp and electric and exciting as they left Hatchetfield behind and headed to a destination they haven’t decided on just yet.
Grace can’t help but notice it—can’t help but notice the sounds that cut through the quiet, but don’t smother it with the type of pure noise she finds herself craving. Steph’s boots thud against the dirty carpet—a series of thud, thud, thud, as she explores their tiny room for the night. A crinkle of a wrapper, one of the chocolate bars they’d swept into their basket as road trip snacks, the light flicks on with an amber, artificial glow awash across the room. It’s deathly quiet, and Grace bites down on her bottom lip, hard and sharp and ugly, and the quiet does nothing to comfort her.
It’s a different sort of quiet from home. Where Hatchetfield was sticky summers and whistling winters, the creaks and cracks of her old house and the hummings of her mother—a few doors down but feeling a world away. Or the sleek and clean silence of Steph’s apartment, as if there’s no one living there at all. A ghost, creeping through the place like it doesn’t belong, like it mustn't be too loud.
Grace finds she wants to scream. To yell and kick and cry, just to fill the noise with anything—no matter how unpleasant, no matter how exhausting. She doesn’t though, because she thinks she was drained of that ability a while ago, and instead a disconcerting emptiness settles in her chest—hands squeezing tighter, and she presses the heels of her sneakers down into the floor—and it seems impossible to remain grounded in a silence like this.
Her ears buzz with words she knows aren’t there. She flinches at them anyway, her face hurts from how she strains, eyes shut so tight she’s sure if she opened them her eyeballs would pop out. A part of her wants them to. At least she’d feel something truly painful, something enough to distract from all of this.
“Grace…” It’s the call of a voice she wishes she didn’t remember. Grace shudders, swallows and curls her lip into something sort of like a snarl. “Dirty girl…”
Thud, thud, thud. Steph’s shoes cut through the words, closer and Grace can still feel the heat rolling off her—and she wonders if Steph was this warm when they stayed in Grace’s room, or if maybe Grace had neglected to notice the warmth for what it was. She hovers in front of her, knee brushing against Grace’s where it bends over the side of the bed, and Grace’s fingers twitch into the blankets with something of a desire. To touch, to feel, to take and taste and hold.
“Any more ideas on where we’re going?” Steph asks, voice too quiet and too soft and—
Grace opens her eyes, peers at the girl standing over her. It’s hard to see her face in the darkness of the motel room. The afternoon light spills in through the half-broken blinds covering the dirty window, and Steph is more a silhouette than a person. Hazy around the edges, flickering in Grace’s vision like a flame dancing across the tip of a wick. She wonders if she were to reach out and touch, if it’d burn her.
She wishes it would.
She can hear Steph’s breaths—gentle and steady, somewhat of a grounding rhythm—even from down here. Grace almost laughs at how different they are. When she breathes she feels as if the air scrapes against her lungs, like nails against a chalkboard or a fork on a plate, and it’s never even, never pretty, never helpful in keeping her alive and yet Grace seems to keep living in spite of that.
“My parents have a cabin we go to during the holidays sometimes,” she says, closing one eye. It doesn’t make Steph look any clearer. She wonders if she should have brought her glasses with her, but shakes away the idea, because she hardly wears them when she should. “We didn’t go this year because…” Grace grimaces, pushing the memory of last year's Thanksgiving and Christmas from her mind. “There’s a spare key. We could go there.”
A silence splits between them. Not an unusual one. It hits her the same way soil feels between her fingers, that gentle spill and tumble, watching the dirt slip between the cracks and fall away into rubble. If she imagined hard enough, she could smell it in a silence like this. Grace often finds herself lacking for words when looking at Steph, unsure what to say.
She thinks Steph feels the same.
“Well—okay. We can’t motel hop forever,” she agrees with a shrug, so easy and so pliable.
Grace imagines how hard she’d need to press her hand into Steph’s skin to leave behind a mark. Would she bruise that pretty purple Grace can’t help but be drawn to?
“Now…” her voice trails off, and Grace watches with furrowed brows as Steph moves closer. Her jeans cling to her legs; awkward and uncooperative as she kneels down on the bed beside Grace, breath fanning across the bare skin of Grace’s arm. She reaches forward, a finger stroking through the choppy cut of Grace’s hair, swiping a strand across the blanket and picking it up—soft and smooth between her thumb and forefinger. “How about I fix this?”
It’s awkward—the positioning of it. Grace sits on the edge of the motel bathtub, and the weird curve of it really hurts the backs of her legs and her butt, but she keeps her mouth shut about it. Steph stands shoeless in the bath tub. She still has her socks on—the bottom of the white fabric already dirty from the motel room floor, and Grace idly wonders how many pairs of socks Steph packed.
Grace packed four. She thinks that might not be enough, depending how long they keep up this dream of running away.
It’s lucky that Steph finds scissors in the bathroom cabinet. Or maybe it’s not luck at all, maybe motels normally have scissors in their bathrooms and Grace hasn’t been in enough motels to know. Does Steph have a lot of experience with motels?
As she stares at herself in the mirror, she realises she still hasn’t changed out of her blue pajamas from last night. Steph wears actual clothes—and it hadn’t felt too weird, especially since they’ve spent most of today in Steph’s car, but now she’s a little insecure about it. Grace shifts where she sits on the edge of the bathtub, tugging down the hem of her shorts a little—the fabric coming to a stop above her knees.
If her parents could see her right now…
She’s truly not sure if they’d even care. They don’t really seem to notice her much at all these days—preoccupied with things that must be more important, in one way or another.
“I didn’t think it was that bad,” she says, eyes a little unfocused as Steph takes a look at the state of her hair. It’s messy and a little uneven, but Grace really doesn’t think it’s bad at all. Close enough to her usual hair that her fight or flight instincts don’t kick in, and she tenses at Steph’s fingers running through her hair, knowing that’s going to change. Still, she doesn’t want to argue. “Is it?”
A hum comes from Steph’s throat, and Grace shudders—she decides to blame it on the chill of the bathroom. The bathroom isn’t cold at all.
Steph doesn’t answer her—but gets busy with ‘fixing.’ Grace thought it might be nice—feeling Steph’s fingers in her hair, blunt black nails scratching against her scalp. It’s not as nice as she expected it to be, not as nice as she wants it to be.
As a kid her mom wasn’t allowed to cut her hair. A bowl cut when she was four led to a loud disagreement between her parents, and ever since she always got it cut professionally in town—her dad would take her, always making a whole day of it, with ice cream and a special lunch. It was one of the few times Grace would get to eat a burger. Nothing like the greasy ones on TV, the ones other kids begged for. Always expensive and sleek and the sauce made her fingers sticky. Still, her mom never cut her hair, no, but she always did Grace’s hair. Much like Steph, her mom’s nails were blunt—scraping and itching against her scalp as she pulled them into braids or little pony tails. It’d been soothing, and it was the only real time she got alone with her mom.
Grace spends so much time alone with Steph that this doesn’t feel special. She wonders why she so badly wants it to feel special.
“Why’d you go short?” Steph asks, tongue poking out between her lips as she stares at Grace in the mirror; except not Grace, Grace’s hair, less uneven now but hardly anything good. A part of her doesn’t want it to end up good. Grace is so sick of good, she’d be content being bad. At least whilst Hatchetfield sits behind them.
“It’s easier,” she answers, honestly with a small shrug—a shrug that has Steph’s hands dropping to her shoulders, forcing them straight. That feels good. Her body being pushed and forced into a position dictated by Steph. She continues, pushing the strange feeling bubbling in her stomach to the back of her mind, “I liked that it was different. All the other girls,” Stephanie included, she realises, “had long hair. I think I like being…”
Different.
It remains unsaid.
Steph doesn’t jump to finish the sentence for her. She never does, she lets the silence hang, cutting it with a snip of the scissors.
The hair remains bad. Grace isn’t mad at it. Steph seems a little dissatisfied.
“I think this might be the best we’ll get,” she admits with a sigh, brows scrunched up and a funny looking crease at the centre of her forehead. “Hm…”
Steph plucks the gray beanie from her head. Her hair sticks up, frizzed and wet from sweat, dancing spangly shadows against the tile behind the both of them. She plops the hat down onto Grace’s hair, yanks it into place. Not careful and certainly not gentle, and Grace’s ears stick out with the hat on, and it looks weird. The way it covers her forehead; pushing against her brows, hair swooping out either side like an ugly wig rather than hair on a human's head.
“Better.” Steph is grinning—and Grace can tell she is serious—and her hands pat Grace’s shoulders again, encouraging and excited. “I think we’ve found your new look, Chastity.”
Chastity.
It’s been a while since Steph used that one.
Ten months, a week and two days to be exact.
Not that Grace is keeping count.
Bang.
Steph’s sock covered foot smacks against the side of the bathtub as she clambers out, and she falls forward with a yelp. She lacks any elegance at all as her jaw smacks into the sharp, jutting corner of the sink. Steph’s never had any elegance to begin with though, so maybe it’s to be expected.
“Shit,” she grits out, cupping her already bloody face. It pours from her mouth, and Grace thinks she’s lucky she didn’t lose a tooth doing that. “Help?” she urges, and Grace blinks—having just been watching this whole time—and she launches up from the bathtub.
There’s a pair of patterned towels in a wooden cupboard by the door, and the blood pools into the soft fabric. Steph groans and moans in pain. She didn’t lose a tooth though. Grace isn’t sure why she’s so fixated on that detail.
They sit in silence for a while. Curled up in the corner of the bathroom—the tile is still wet and slippy for a reason Grace can’t place. There must have been other people in here recently, and that idea makes her shiver. She holds the towels up to Steph’s lips, the pale gray patterns soaking crimson. They grow sticky and heavy in Grace’s hands, and Steph’s quiet groans fade into her usual pretty little breaths. The kind that makes Grace understand why Steph is the way she is—the kind that makes Grace want to cut her open and see if her lungs are any different to her own, if her asthma is the true cause or if there’s just something fundamentally different about Grace Chasity and Stephanie Lauter.
Grace still isn’t sure how to talk to Steph, but she ends up talking first anyway. “Do you…” She swallows, throat dry because all she’s drank today is grape soda. “Do you ever think about it?”
There’s no need to say what it is.
“No.” It’s a lie and they both know it, and still Steph mumbles the words into the cloth as if there’s a shred of truth in them. Bold-faced as she stares right back at Grace, something almost like a challenge in her eyes as their gazes meet. “We promised we wouldn’t talk about it.”
“I know.” They did promise that. It was in the back of Officer Bailey’s car—he was still searching for Shapiro, it gave the two of them a moment alone. Steph’s hair was drenched in blood, remnants of the red stuck to Grace’s hands and shirt. They promised. Grace has changed her mind since then. “But—”
“No.” She’s serious—tearing the towels away, her lips still red and bloody and veering close to something beautiful. Grace thinks about licking her lips, unable to help the way her eyes dip to stare at the blood, but she thinks better of it. “You promised, Grace. We’re leaving it there, we’re leaving everything in that night and we’re never going back,” Steph says, and her hand shakes as it takes the bloody towels, scrunching them around her fingers and at last wiping away the rest of the blood. “You promised,” she adds, close to a whisper, and…
And she promised. Grace agreed. It’s another thing she regrets from that night.
Once more she isn’t sure what to say to the girl sitting in this dirty bathroom with her, and so she says nothing. It’s easy to find her cigarettes in the front pocket of her backpack, easier to slip out the front door of the motel room and wander across the slim sidewalk rounding the entire parking lot outside.
They burn—as she sucks in the smoke, likes the way they tear her up inside. At least then there’s something to blame that feeling on. Grace thinks an asthma attack might be coming on. Hopes it doesn’t, so she won’t have to retreat back into the motel room and risk seeing Steph again.
She wonders if she should pray. Now seems like the perfect time. Grace is alone for the first time since they left, and it’s nice and quiet, and her hands are shaking around the lit cigarette for something to do. She really needs to stop smoking. Even if the burn is too good to give up, if it’s one of the few things that make her feel like a normal teenager for a couple minutes. The type of teenager to feel the thrill of rebellion, to smoke and break rules and not care about prayer at all.
The orange flicker of her lit cigarette stares up at her, and she decides now wouldn’t be a good time to pray. It’s been three months since she last did it. Grace hadn’t even realized she’d stopped at first—the compulsion to do it each night falling to the wayside as she rotted into a stinking, decaying mess in her bed sheets. It’s eating her up inside. Everything seems to be doing that these days.
“Those stink.” It’s always the same. Same voices, same person—three voices, only one person dares show their face. Grace could never figure out why it was him, out of the four of them. She hardly remembers him, is glad she doesn’t remember, and yet… Always, without fail, it’s him. “Smoking is not cool.”
Grace spares a sideway glance to Richard Lipschitz standing beside her. His hair is dripping wet—she’s sure the wounds he suffered the night he died are hidden under his soggy clothes, and Grace is glad her mind always conjures an image of him where she can’t see them. He’s a little blurry around the edges, it hurts when she stares at him too long.
There’s no one but the two of them in the parking lot. She figures it must be okay to speak aloud this time.
“It makes me feel better,” she gets out, sounding so much like a petulant child that she forces the cigarette back between her dry lips. The smoke curls around her, it fades right through Richie. Not real, she reminds herself. He’s nothing more than guilt, or regret, or whatever else it was that kept Grace wanting to talk about that night; and keeps Steph from talking about it at all. “You wouldn’t know, you’re dead. You’re lucky, you know.”
“How do you figure?” Richie asks, like he doesn’t already know the answer. Per usual he stands there, unmoving and completely uninteresting. She thinks her brain might be too weak to actually let this ghost exist in the space. It proves that whatever Max was had been real—that she and Steph didn’t just lose their minds along the way. Except, she supposes they did, just not when it came to the Jägerman boy.
“You don’t have to deal with anything that comes after.”
Sometimes Grace wonders if it would have been better to die that day. In a way, that had been the intention. A sacrificial lamb—so pliant and submissive, everything Grace was raised to be. Ready to be torn apart—by blades or claws or a ghost, in this case. It was perfectly matched to Stephanie’s boyish heroism—her hands shook around the gun, but you wouldn’t know it by the set of her jaw—and of course Peter’s soft damsel, waiting for his saving grace.
Grace imagined becoming the perfect martyr—something akin to Jesus, a crucifixion of her own making. To be buried with a pretty coffin and a prettier headstone. Tears would flow, and maybe Steph and Pete would find something nice to say at her funeral. Something beyond the religious pleasantries of a daughter, the loss of one of God’s children, the death of an innocent child.
What happened after was nothing close, and now here she is eleven months later, failing to pick up the pieces of her life. Sort of like a puzzle with pieces missing. Soon enough that frustration boils over, and you're left with nothing but an ugly kinda destruction.
“You died and everyone was sad,” she points out, thinking of all those funerals she attended on the lead up to Thanksgiving. Richie’s blurs in with the rest of them—and Grace is almost disgusted with the envy that uncoils at the faded memories. “I’m more of a ghost than you are—my parents act like I’m not here anymore, like what I want and what I need don’t matter. I… I feel like a shell, and I’m waiting for someone to step on me with a boot and crush me into the dust I deserve to be.”
A scoff comes from her ghost, and Richie’s hazy apparition paces—and Grace averts her gaze, and she stares down at the cracks in the pavement. A single wild flower grows between the concrete, its petals are crushed under the pink sole of her sneaker. Her lips twitch.
“Enough with the self-pity,” he says, his voice grating to her ears and her whole body shudders at the sound. Shut up, she wants to say. It wouldn’t even work, if she did say it. “You suck. I hate haunting you.”
“You’re not real.”
“Hm.”
“You’re not.”
Thud, thud, thud.
It’s Steph. She huffs in another puff of her smoke, blinks to find the space in front of her empty once more. As it should be, as it really is. A part of why she wants to talk to Steph so badly about that night is to know if this happens to Steph too—if she sees Ruth standing in her bedroom some nights, if words Peter said to her when they were alone seem to call out in the quiet. Grace worries if she does ask and Steph says no, that this will become the issue it’s always been.
“Can I bum a cig?” she asks, expertly side-stepping the tension lingering around them from the bathroom. Without waiting she takes the cigarette from between Grace’s fingers—skin brushing her own, dry and rough—and huffs it without pause.
She coughs like she always does—Grace never coughs, but Steph can’t help it. She thinks of Steph’s lungs again, her gaze drifting down to the swell of her chest under the buttoned up pink-ish flannel, imagining how it’d look with an axe planted deep into the breastbone. Would Steph be prettier that way? Probably not.
“I want dinner.” Steph seems to have this fixation on food. It’s something Grace never thinks about much. She never contemplated the ham sandwiches in her school lunch, the casseroles they ate for dinner, not even the Chasity Chili her dad had always been so proud of. Steph loved to eat—was always thinking about their next meal, and it’s a good thing. Without Steph, Grace is sure she’d have forgotten to eat on this road trip. “There’s a McDonalds down the road with a drive-through. Thoughts?”
Grace has no thoughts on McDonalds. Another one of those things she wasn’t allowed as a kid. Not forbidden— it was never the word her mom used, no it was too harsh and too permanent. They just didn’t eat fast food. She thinks again of those greaseless burgers with her dad at the mall food court—wonders if her mom even knew about that.
The cigarette tumbles from between Steph’s slightly curved middle and forefinger, drops to the concrete and is snuffed out before the clunky boot on her foot crushes the stub into dust. Never before has Grace envied a cigarette on the ground.
“Sure.”
It turns out McDonalds doesn’t taste as good as the other kids at church made it out to be. Steph recommends the ‘McNuggets’ and gets them both huge chocolate milkshakes. They sit in the parking lot of the restaurant, on the hood of Steph’s ugly car—and Steph complains about her lip still hurting from where she bit down earlier, it doesn’t stop her from eating, though.
Grace grimaces as she chews on the fries. Soggy and too salty. She’s mostly craving another cigarette—Steph had tossed the other one away too soon, and her lips are dry again. The thick milkshake isn’t helping, either.
“My dad used to bribe me with this as a kid, you know?” Steph says, mouth full and it’s disgusting, but Grace nods, not wanting her to stop talking. Steph takes a sip of her drink, then struggles to claw the plastic lid off. “I was bratty as fuck as a kid—worse than I am now, which, I know, is hard to believe,” it’s really not. Grace remembers the Stephanie Lauter she first met Freshman year—thinks Steph seems so much more mature now than she did back then. “I just wouldn’t listen—and so if I behaved myself at one of Solmon’s rallies, or did super well on a interview on the morning news,” she continues, laughing as she gives up on the cup and shoves another nugget in her mouth, “then my dad’s secretary would come home with McDonalds. I’d— Fuck I’d eat it all so quick I would always feel sick after, worried he might take it away if I breathed wrong, and I—”
Steph’s crying now. She’s not wearing any makeup, but she still wipes at her face with her sleeves like she is. It’s a struggle to swallow the last of her food, a sob wracking through her throat along with the laughs that fail to subside with the onslaught of tears.
“Hey,” Grace’s wobbling voice lingers with the sobs, and her hand finds the curve of Steph’s knee. Her hand closes around it, thumb brushing against the skin there between the rips in her jeans. “It’s okay. I—”
What does she even say?
She’s never been the best at comforting other people… Grace doesn’t think she’ll ever get any better.
“It’s okay,” she repeats, blinking as Steph leans into her—a little drool on her chin from her incessant chewing and sobbing, but Grace doesn’t point it out—and her head rests against Grace’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”
It probably is okay. They’re sitting in a McDonald's parking lot in the Middle-Of-Nowhere Michigan. Solomon Lauter is dead, and Steph got her McDonalds anyway.
Steph swallows, still curled into Grace and not seeming to intend to pull away any time soon. At last her blunt nails slip right under the plastic lid and pop it off—it makes no noise, and Steph doesn’t even blink as it rolls off the hood of the car and slides across the concrete. She pulls out a single, soggy fry—one of Grace’s, actually, from the still almost entirely full box sitting on her bare thigh—and dips it into the milkshake. It scoops up the brown, icy sludge with ease and she crams it into her mouth—like it’s a spoon. Her lips smack and she swallows quick, like that fear it might be taken away still lingers years later.
“You're disgusting,” Grace says, unable to help the grimace twisting on her lips, and Steph laughs—another handful of fries in hand, eating more of her strange concoction. It might have more effect, if Grace’s voice wasn’t so soft—edging between amused and endeared. “I can’t believe everyone thought you were…”
“I was?” she questions with a smile, dipping her head to look at Grace.
There are many things Grace could answer with. A lot of them are far more incriminating than others. Instead, she goes with their usual route, and lets the silence linger. She watches as Steph finishes both boxes of fries, takes Grace’s milkshake for herself on the way back to the motel, and they change in silence; and Grace at last sheds her blue pajamas for another set.
A striped pair she got for Christmas two years ago now. She hurries with the buttons—conscious of Steph’s presence behind her in the room—and when they settle into their separate beds, Grace can’t help but feel a little overdressed. Steph in some other graphic tee and some shorts, legs crossed as she scrolls on her phone.
Tomorrow they’ll be setting off again on another multi-hour car journey, and Grace finds she as excited for it as she had been when she first showed up at Steph’s apartment. The cabin they’ll be heading to—the one belonging to her parents—was actually her grandparents first. Grace has never met either set, and she hadn’t know it was weird to have such little knowledge of her extended family until she finally graduated from home school to high school.
Her dad’s parents owned the cabin—and her Chasity grandpa passed away a year after she was born, and her dad never liked talking about him much. Her mother discussed her own family even yes—and Grace always thought she should have pushed more, she ought to ask more equations or even try looking into her family for herself.
A part of her, illogical and irrational, thinks it might be a good thing she didn’t dare.
Grace leaves a lamp on, because she’s never been good at sleeping in total darkness. Still, that silence creeps back in, and it’s like a compulsive kick—one of them has to break it, sooner or later, because Grace is sure it’ll be quite a while still before they fall asleep.
“Do you miss your dad?” she asks, the side of her face pressed into her pillow and staring at Steph’s back.
For a long while Steph says nothing, and she can’t tell whether Steph is thinking or has decided to ignore the question. But then…
“I think I do,” Steph answers—voice muffled and hard to make out, as she still faces the door, away from Grace staring and staring at her back. “But… I’m also glad he’s gone—and I think that makes me a terrible person.”
Grace is glad Max Jägerman is dead. She’s as glad as the day they buried him—as glad as the day they put him down a second time, as glad as the day she attended his funeral and had to resist the urge to spit on his too-pretty grave.
“You can’t be a terrible person,” Grace says, voice quiet and fragile in the night air—and her eyelashes flutter against the off-white of her pillow, hand curled close to her mouth. Stephanie probably can’t hear her very well either. “If you’re a terrible person, then I must be a terrible person too—and I don’t want to be terrible.”
Bad. Sometimes. Not-good. Always. Sinful, dominant, rebellious, guilty. Maybe.
Terrible? For some reason, Grace doesn’t think she could bear it.
“Okay.” She agrees with a soft laugh, the dark tendrils of her hair lit by Grace’s bedside lamp—and her baggy shirt is smooth and wrinkle-less over the stretch of her spine and curve of her hips. “Okay—maybe we’re not so terrible after all.”
And that might be it. It should be it.
But Grace cannot resist speaking one more time before the day is at its end.
“Steph?”
There’s something of a sigh. Grace is being annoying again, she knows it, but she simply can’t help it.
“Yes, Grace?”
Her hand smooths out across the blanket covering her body, too hot and too heavy but Grace doesn’t think she could move much more to get rid of it. Her fingers follow the ridges and the buttons lining the top—and she realises it's been laying on the bed upside down, but she still doesn’t care enough to fix it.
“Do you think there’s spunk on the bed sheets?”
“There probably is, Grace,” Steph answers, laughing again—clearly trying to keep quiet by the squeak of her voice, a creak in her lungs that Grace can even hear here. “There probably is.”
Grace drifts off to the sound of Steph laughing at her ludicrous question, and that hadn’t been the intention, to make Steph laugh, but it’s a nice bonus. She’s asleep long before the room goes quiet again.
She doesn’t even think about how much spunk must cover every inch of the motel room.
~~~
STATE OF MICHIGAN
DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SERVICES
HATCHETFIELD POLICE
Adult and Juvenile Missing Person Certification
Date Report Filed: 08/10/21
Name of Missing Person: Grace Chasity
Birth Date of Missing Person: 12/20/02
Medical / Dental Information Release Authorised by: Karen Chasity
Complainant's Name: (Last, First, Middle) Chastity Karen Maryann
Complainant's Address: 12 Calico Street, Hatchetfield, 49781
Date of Birth: 02/14/83
Sex: F
Race: Caucasian
Home Phone: +1 2319950140
Work Phone: N/A
I confirm that the information that I provided to the police officer concerning the person I am reporting as missing is true.
Police Officer’s Name: Det. Elise Shapiro
Police Department Name: Hatchetfield Police Department
Police Department Case Number: 192649205275
~~~
There’s a dew in the early morning. A strange dampness in the air, the smell of soggy wood creeping into the room—and Grace sniffs as she wakes, actually not hating the smell as she rubs away sleep from her eyes. It’s still warm, not as hot as her own bedroom, but not as cool as the AC of Steph’s apartment that Grace still finds herself craving. Her eyes scan the dimly lit room, and the way her gaze sticks to Steph could be chalked up to a few things. She’s still tired, and hungry too, and it could very much be a trick of the light—or another hallucination.
Though, Grace isn’t sure she could really justify it. She curls up in her— yeah, maybe these are spunk covered— blankets and watches Steph as she gets ready for the day ahead. It’s a little strange that Steph is such an early rise. Unexpected, unlikely, especially considering how often she’d been late to classes, late to school in general.
It does make sense though. The time it takes to do her make-up, the complicated layers of her outfits, the intricate laces on her boots and the increasingly growing collection of jewellery she wears all add up. Grace once thought she might be the most put together person in Hatchetfield—but she’d be happy to pass that crown off to Steph, who it turns out is far less grit and spontaneous than she appears to be.
Steph balances as best she can only the little grey ottoman; the only chair in the whole motel room. Her legs bend awkwardly, chin resting against her knee as she applies mascara using the reflection from her phone camera. Natural light spills in from the half open curtains, and Grace wonders if they’re half open because Steph thinks Grace is still asleep.
She’s humming a song. Not one Grace knows, it’s never a song Grace knows, but it sounds pretty. Steph isn’t a brilliant singer, but she isn’t bad either. Better than Grace. Pleasant to listen to—even the voice cracks and breaks are oddly pretty. Only Stephanie Lauter could pull that off.
“You got an idea for our plans today?” Steph says—to no one, except not to no one.
Grace’s face flushes, realizing she’s been caught watching Steph. It’s creepy, undeniably so… But if Steph knew the whole time… If she sat there, happy and humming, as Grace stared at her… Well, it can’t be so bad, can it?
She wishes the heat raging across her face would agree with that.
“Breakfast first,” she says, pretending that this scenario they’ve found themselves in is normal. “Someone ate all the cereal yesterday so…” she jokes, her own face splitting into a smile.
“Hey! That was a two-man job,” Steph argues—her smile tiny where Grace can see it on the phone screen—and she waves around the mascara wand for emphasis. “You have to accept your responsibility as my spoon, Grace,” she continues with a tut, and then she turns. A little twirl on the ottoman, facing Grace—dressed for the day, already looking so put together when Grace hasn’t even moved from the position she awoke in. “We could get McDonalds again?”
“I never want to eat there again.” She stands at last, her bones popping as she stretches—busying herself with finding clothes for the day ahead, because looking at Steph is growing too unbearable for a warm, Wednesday morning. “Too greasy…”
The solution ends up being the vending machine.
Not much better in terms of grease, Grace would argue, but there aren’t many options around here.
Steph bangs her fist against the glass with a grunt, the bag of chips she was trying to buy with one of Grace’s crumpled dollars refusing to budge. “It’s as close to a healthy breakfast as we’re gonna get,” Steph says with a shrug, cheering when the chips crunch at the bottom of the machine, and she bends to fish them out. She shoves the blue bag into Grace’s hands.
“Doritos?” Grace questions, squinting at the front, her stomach growling as she pulls the bag open.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had Doritos.” The look Grace gives her leads to a gasp, and Steph slaps her shoulder—harder than necessary, and Grace frowns at the contact. “Shut up. Never?”
They’re salty, she can tell as she pulls one from the bag. A triangle—seems like a pretty novel shape for a chip. Not that Grace has much experience with chips in general. That no junk food rule reigned her whole life, she’s starting to realise, and at each step Steph seems more and more appalled by her lack of knowledge.
“I don’t even know what these are.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Steph coos—and Grace can tell she’s joking, but the babying still makes her bristle. Her hand finds Grace’s shoulder, rubbing something soothing against the spot she’d slapped moments prior. “You’re gonna be so enlightened on this vacation, my sweet.” She’s joking. Grace knows that, but she still trips over the doorway at the pet name—following Steph back into the motel room. “Also, next stop we should splurge for a hotel—I want the fancy complimentary breakfast. Ugh, and some coffee.”
“Can we afford that?”
“Hm.” Steph narrows her eyes, thinking for a moment. “Well, how much cash did you bring?”
“Uh, fifty dollars,” she answers, adding, “or forty-nine. You just spent a dollar on the chips.”
“I’ll figure it out.” For some reason, Grace believes her. Steph watches with wide eyes as Grace bites the Dorito she’s been holding this whole time, licking her lips for the salt left behind. “So, what do you think?”
“I…” What her mom had been so scared of, Grace isn’t sure. These taste good. She understands now why someone could eat a whole bag in one-sitting. “I like them.”
“Knew you would, you can eat them on the way.” She scoops up both their bags, dropping Grace’s in her free hand and dragging her out the door. “We need to check out, I don’t wanna get fined. Let’s go.”
~~~
The right arm had been the hardest. It took a couple swings.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Crunch. Schnch.
It was oddly vindicating that Grace hadn’t expected. This was the best solution objectively, the best outcome of this prank, but Grace hadn’t expected her own satisfaction to factor in as much as it did. It was something close to justice, even if the rest of them hadn’t seen it that way.
The way Max made her feel… Each part of her he looked at, that he sexualised, that he touched—Grace had wanted to dismemberer herself in response. To cut away each slip of skin he leered at. The soft skin on the back of her hands, where he’d reached for her. Or the hair poking out at her ankles were her favorite pair of jeans stopped, to peel off the skin so he’d have nothing to salivate and mock her for.
To chop off each limb, each part of her that no longer felt solely her own.
It was only fair that it happened to him instead. Only fair that Grace peeled away the skin of his arm, that she packed each part of him down into nothing more than stinking, rotting flesh under a house no one even cared about anymore. His pretty face reduced to gore; his chest bent and wrapped and crushed under floorboards.
Thwack. Crunch. Schnch.
It was only fair.
“Come on, Grace. Give me a smile.”
Crunch. Crunch. Thwack.
“Show ‘em you're not a two-bagger, dirty girl.”
Only.
Schnch. Schnch. Crunch. Snap. Crack. Thwack. Thwack.
“Please? I’m being so nice.”
Fair.
“Your bags, ma'am?”
Grace blinks, blindly handing off her bag to the attendant as she follows after Steph. The hotel she’d picked out for them ended up being far fancier that Grace expected—fancier than any place Grace has ever been. She feels like a sore thumb, the way she stands out in the lobby, but she supposes Steph doesn’t fit in all that much either.
It has complimentary free breakfast. Steph seems satisfied, so Grace agrees that this is where they should stay for the night. Even if she finds herself questioning what money Steph’s used for this place.
“Credit card,” she answers, before Grace even asks it aloud, a wry smile on her face as they stand opposite one another in the elevator. “Dead dad money may be running out—but he did one good thing before he died.” Steph waves around a sleek black card between her fingers, parts of it glimmer in the bright light of the elevator cab. “The maximum credit on this thing is ridiculous.”
Grace won’t pretend she knows too much about finances, but she knows this is a bad idea.
She doesn’t say anything.
This new hotel room is incredible compared to where they stayed last night. The floors are covered in some black, shiny floorboards—floor to ceiling windows along the back wall, lights in the floors, a huge bathroom shooting off in the main hall, and…
And a giant queen sized bed in the centre of the room. Just the one.
“So, about sleeping arrangements,” Steph begins, voice a little tentative as she drops down to sit on the bed. Their backpacks both sit neatly on the desk, and Grace swallows, deciding she’ll hear Steph out before she starts to panic. Just this once. “I could only swing for one bed, so…”
“Nothing we haven’t done before,” she says so easily, as if there isn’t this steady growing panic in her chest.
Because, yes, they’ve done it before. They shared Grace’s bed when Steph was still crashing at her house. They never spoke about it—never discussed those times Steph gave up on the pile of pillows and blankets on the floor, never discussed when Grace stopped bothering with the façade of the floor. It’d stopped as soon as Steph moved. It stopped the same way everything stopped. The movies, the phone calls, seeing each other every day. No longer did they have all the excuses that kept them together.
Excuses like school and trauma and sharing a house.
That leaves the question of what’s the excuse this time?
That Steph couldn’t afford another bed, apparently. The logical part of Grace’s brain argues surely getting two beds in a smaller room would be cheaper, but she doesn’t want to listen to that part of her brain. Maybe there was a deal for cheaper, better rooms. Or maybe this hotel simply prices things in a way Grace cannot comprehend.
Or maybe Steph misses sharing a bed as much as Grace does.
And that would take Grace admitting she missed it at all.
The panic doesn’t subside—but she finds it easy to pretend it’s not there, as she sits down next to Steph on the bed. Their bed. It’s pretty spacious, far bigger than the twin they shared in Grace’s bedroom, and it shouldn’t even be that intimidating.
It is though. It really is.
“You're sure?” Steph asks, and she’s serious—because though she schemed to make this happen, Grace can read her friend easily at times like this. Guilt spills across her pretty features like oil, thick and heavy and it weighs her whole face down. Grace has to fight the urge to wipe it away, to cup Steph’s cheeks and force her painted red lips into something closer to a smile. “I can always just—”
“It’s fine.” It’s better than fine. She stands, moves to grab her bag from the corner, and she decides to drag Steph’s along with her back to the bed. “We should do something. There are places to go now—better places than McDonalds.”
“Who are you and what have you done with Grace Chasity?” Steph’s grinning now—brows furrowed with an edge of confusion, eyes observing as Grace digs through her backpack. “Since when do you want to go places?”
“Since I decided to stop rotting in my bedroom like a dead person,” she answers, being totally honest about what this road trip is about for the first time. The admission is easy when Hatchetfield and that night feel so far behind them. They’re in a fancy hotel room with complimentary breakfast and a queen sized bed, and they’re in a town full of places to eat and drink and, “I want dance,” she says, finding her skirt rolled into a ball at the bottom of her bag and yanking it out, “I want to do something fun.”
Despite the confusion and the shock, Steph seems excited. She nods, pulling her phone out her back pocket.
“It’ll be hard to find somewhere,” she says, “we’re both eighteen.”
“I’m nineteen— and we’ll find somewhere,” Grace argues—because there has to be somewhere. “Will you look?”
It’s a silly question, because Steph is already looking, tapping away on her phone.
“And will you do my make up?”
That gets Steph to look up; the confusion is gone, and she laughs.
“Fuck yes.”
The last time Grace wore a skirt…
It was a long time ago. It didn’t start with the skirt.
Grace was young. Much younger than the nineteen she is now. It started with the inappropriate questions from boys—it started with her mother pinning her skirt tighter with bobby-pins and hairclips, because it was harder for the boys to yank it down her legs at school that way. She was sixteen when she finally made the switch—pretty skirts and summer dresses hidden in the darkness of her closet, replaced with dress pants and jeans. Grace didn’t even prefer one over the other—but it felt shameful, that she had to retire the only things letting her keep hold of that safe title of girl.
Good girl. Submissive girl. Sinless girl.
Those words—and worse words , the ones she could never repeat herself—would play on a loop in her head in the quiet of her perfect pink bedroom. It always seemed to come back to that. To the quietness. To her bedroom. To pink and skirts and dresses, and being a girl. The people who said those words—the boys that said them—faded easy with time, faces and voices forgotten.
From fourteen to sixteen to nineteen. It was hard to remember who said what, it hardly mattered at all. The words were what stuck with her.
“You look really pretty,” Steph says from where she’s sitting on the bed—not dressed too differently than usual. Traded a flannel shirt for a leather jacket, gray beanie retrieved from Grace’s backpack, and her gaze is hidden behind those brand new pink sunglasses as she watches Grace twirls in the baby blue skirt.
Those words. Really pretty. They don’t fix everything. In fact, they don’t fix much of anything. She thinks she might be too far gone for anything to ever fix—but some things soothe, some days are better than others, some nights easier, and those words are pretty close. Grace is sure they’ll join the roster—be some of the kinder words in that rolling index of words that seem to do nothing but haunt her.
Really pretty.
Dirty girl.
Good girl.
Prude.
Really. Pretty.
“Thanks.” She smooths down the front of her shirt—simple and white and flowy around the arms. A part of her feels over dressed, looking at Steph, but another part of her can’t find the effort to even care. Grace feels pretty. She wants to dance and forget and just be happy for the first time in eleven months.
Because doesn’t she deserve that, at least?
For one night? Because homecoming had been ruined—Steph couldn’t even step foot back in the gym—and the gym was flooded by the time senior prom came around, and graduation was more of a sombre affair, and there was nothing else. So let them have this, Grace thinks. Because she wants to be happy, and she wants Steph to be happy as well.
Steph cups her face gently. Thumb, middle and forefinger folded around her chin and jaw, keeping Grace perfectly in place as she… Does whatever it is that Steph does. Grace doesn’t know much about make-up—had never been allowed to, and had never wanted to, attempt to learn about it herself.
“You’re in a good mood,” Steph comments, her breath—sweet, smelling of polo mints—fans across Grace’s face. She talks soft and quiet, the two of them being so close, and still her voice rattles though Grace’s bones. A steady tremble she finds leaning closer to pleasant than jarring. “I didn’t know you liked hotels that much.”
She laughs light and loud at that—withstanding the way Steph clutches her face a little harder to keep her in place. Not hard enough to hurt. Grace thinks she wishes Steph would grab her harder, maybe they could have matching bruises.
“I told you I wanted to get out of Hatchetfield,” Grace says, breathy and more a mumble with the way Steph holds her jaw. “I wasn’t lying.”
“Do you hate it?” Steph asks, pulling back slightly as her eyes flicker across Grace’s face; assessing her work, maybe, but Grace’s face flushes raging hot nonetheless. “Hatchetfield,” she adds, as if the clarification is necessary. As if there was anywhere else they could be talking about.
Grace hums—not quite an affirmation, and she has to resist the urge to tilt her head as she thinks. If she did move, Steph would wrestle her face back into the right position… And that nearly has Grace reconsidering the resistance.
“I don’t,” she admits, because she doesn’t. Hatchetfield is… It’s complicated. It’s home, it’s hardly anything special, it’s the only place Grace has ever known. It feels like everyone hates her—and even those that don’t hate her don’t care, they don’t want to know. The words fold over muddled and itch between her lips, tumbling across her tongue, and all she says in the end is, “it’s home.”
“Yeah…” Grace doesn’t expect Steph to agree, blinks at the admission given back to her. “It is, isn’t it?”
Once she’s done, Steph leads Grace towards the bathroom—hands clasped over her eyes, and they nearly fall over the small step down into the room. Steph blames it on the fanciness, grumbling something about rich people that only makes Grace laugh—and she forces herself not to mention that Steph probably counts as one of those rich people.
Unlike the motel room, the floor is completely dry at her feet. Lavender and vanilla waft through the air—it reminds her of Steph’s shampoo she used whilst living at the Chasity house, but she’s changed it since then. It smells closer to apples now, but anything Steph is smothered—despite how close they are—by the overwhelming cleanliness of the bathroom.
Rich people, huh…
“So,” her voice is breathy, and Grace can tell she’s nervous. It’s there in the little tremble as she exhales, palms pressing harder against the curves of Grace’s cheekbones than necessary. “If you hate it, we can just wipe it off.”
“I won’t hate it.” She’s sure of it, without logic and without proof. Faith isn’t anything Grace hasn’t clung to before.
“It’s nothing crazy,” Steph continues, slowly pulling her hands back and—
Grace has to blink a couple times, adjusting to the bright lights of the bathroom. Their reflections in the mirror remain hazy and blurred for a few moments, and she learns forward, pressing her hands into the sleek counter—with two sinks! She swallows, focusing now on herself, at the face staring right back at her.
A small gasp pushes its way from her lungs—those imperfect, useless lungs that feel as much like home as Hatchetfield—and it stutters out her mouth, and Steph stares too. Her face lingers over Grace’s shoulder—worried.
It’s nothing crazy at all. Simple and light—but certainly different. Grace can’t help but reach up, pressing her forefinger to the sticky gloss of the pale pink lipstick covering her bottom lip. As if on instinct Steph pulls her hand away with an eye roll, shooting her a look.
“You’ll mess it up,” she says, quiet but smiling now. The fact Grace isn’t having one of her usual meltdowns about change might help. That Grace doesn’t reach for a cloth to rub it away, or tear at her hair in a panic. “Do you hate it?”
“No,” Grace says right away, shaking her head; messy hair, still choppy, still not-good, falling from where it’s tucked behind her ears. “No, I like it. I really like it, Steph.”
“Good, because…” Her hands find Grace’s shoulders and she leans forward, her face in better focus in the mirror—grinning at her in the glass, wiggling her brows silly and playful. “We have quite the night ahead of us.”
“You found a place?”
~~~
Steph found a place.
“It’s a gay bar,” she says tentatively as they walk there, and Grace wonders if it's a mistake. “I’m pretty confident they won’t ID us.”
Grace isn’t homophobic.
Well, not anymore, she’s not. It’d been complicated. Still is complicated, actually. And Grace thinks maybe she’s still a little homophobic—but she feels bad about that, so maybe that makes it okay. When Steph makes jokes about Jesus being bisexual she doesn’t freeze up any more, and when she and Steph watched a movie where two gay people kissed she hadn’t even looked away!
But it still makes her a little uncomfortable.
Thinking about it—the idea of being gay—makes her stomach churn with an uneasy, sinking feeling. It reminds her of the time she went to Watcher World on a field trip in grade 10. A boy—it might have been Max Jägerman, actually, but it's so hard to remember the details now—tricked her into getting on the Tear Jerker. By the time Grace had realised her mistake it was too late, and no amount of panicked flaying got her out the ride. That pure terror, the wave of sickness, but also of some strange euphoria… That’s what it feels like.
That’s how Grace feels about the bisexual joke, about watching those girls kiss in that movie she pretends not to remember the name of. Grace had pretended not to hear the jokes—let them roll off her back, buried herself in the softness of Steph’s laughs at her own wise cracks. She’d pretended she was far more interested in the brutal murders of the movie than those two girls—even if she really wanted them to make it out, so maybe, maybe, they could kiss again.
Plus Steph is gay. Or… What was the word? Pansexual. Grace has known that for a while—it’s hard to have anything but open secrets in Hatchetfield—and it had never bothered her. So, she couldn’t be that homophobic, could she? The least she can do is let Steph have this.
After all, Steph lets Grace have pretty much everything else.
Maybe it is a mistake, but Grace doesn’t object. She lets Steph take her hand and leads her into the bar—where there is dancing, and where, like predicted, no one IDs them. It’s thumping and thrumming, something bright and tangible tingling in the air—the hairs on the back of her neck stick up with each beat of the music, at the way it rattles the whole building, pulling cheers from the sizable crowd spread all across the space. Steph never lets go of her. Her hand is in a vice grip as she’s dragged through the crowd, towards the bar and it’s only setting in now what they’re doing.
They’re here. Grace said she wanted to go out and once, and here Steph is taking her to a place where she can do that. It seems so simple. Ask and you shall receive. Matthew 7:7, and with Steph all Grace seems to find are open doors waiting for her to step through.
It’s hard to figure out if something is really a mistake when in the moment. Grace is really trying to stop doing that. Because, even if she regrets this tomorrow, she might as well enjoy it now. Right? It won’t matter if she regrets it by dawn, it won’t mean anything at all because at least the night is sweet while it lasts. Grace needs to make it last.
And Steph is far more responsible than she lets on. She gets them both a drink; assures Grace it’s nothing crazy, that they’ll go slow and well… They’re here to dance, aren’t they?
“I don’t actually know how to dance,” Grace admits, having taken the lead—her hand closed tight around Steph’s sweaty wrist, or maybe it's her hand that's sweaty—and pulling them both towards the crowded dance floor.
The noise is so good. Grace can hardly think straight and she wants to stop thinking entirely, she gulps down more of her drink in hopes it will help, slides past warm bodied and the erratic flow of dancing. It’s overwhelming in the right way, and she wants to take advantage of it before the inevitable panic begins to seep in.
“Just follow the music,” Steph suggests, unhelpfully—and it’s hard to move in such a crowded place, but Grace doesn’t really mind how close they are because of that. “I’m not a great dancer either, just have fun.”
Grace knows she probably looks ridiculous, but her drink is so sweet that her head spins and it's getting really hard to care what she looks like. It’s a strange sort of euphoria—like glitter or water or something warm like a blanket crashing over her. The odd square glass that sits awkward and cutting in her left hand, the liquid looks almost purple washed in the spill of flashing lights. It’s not purple, but she likes pretending it is because purple , and likes smacking her lips after every sip—it's a little sour along with the sweet, and the pink of her lipstick sticks and smudges on the edge of the glass.
This time when Steph’s breath fans across her face—down her neck too, warm and pricking under the curve of her flowy white collar—it’s sweet in a different way. Any of the mint from before has been replaced by the taste still stuck to Grace’s tongue. Citrus, maybe. Her free hand clutches at the lapel of Steph’s jacket, and she tightens her grip out of worry the ever-moving crowd might drag them apart. In turn Steph clutches for her elbow—hand warm and soft and intoxicating even though the fabric of Grace’s shirt—and they’re pulled closer together, skin to skin, clothes brushing and breath mingling.
How could this be a mistake? A delightful tremble shivers its way down her spine, and she never wants Steph to stop smiling at her and this is a lot of things but it’s certainly not a mistake.
The night marches onward; more drinks, more dancing, and they crash into a table once it's free.
Even in the wonderful noise, his occasionally manages to slip through.
“Dirty girl.” And it has Grace flinching at the echo as it mingles with the music, falling against Steph’s shoulder—Steph is too busy gulping down the rest of her third drink to notice. Grace finds she's thankful for that. “Be a good girl…”
Her hands fist around the glass on the table—the drink sticky and thick spilling across her thumb and index finger and flesh in between, dripping down the curves and dips of her palm. It goes down smoother now, deeper into the night, and her throat tingles with the taste. Grace shivers from the sweat and the slick and the heat. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but only makes the slight ringing in her ears worse.
“Steph…” she starts, voice shaking but pushing to be loud enough to be heard over the music. Grace shuffles closer—thighs pressed together, the denim of Steph’s jeans rough and a little chafing against her skin. “Are… I…”
“What’s up?” Steph asks, so happy and grinning and talking right into Grace’s ear. It’s an odd feeling. A feeling Grace thinks wouldn’t be so nice if it were anyone but Steph. The plush curve of her bottom lip drags slightly against her lobe of her ear, and Grace wonders if she’ll find a red lipstick stain there later. “Wanna go home?”
“No—no, I don’t.”
That’s not it at all, but Grace isn’t sure what it is she’s trying to say. Being back in her skirt is incredible. The way the fabric swashes against her legs, the perfect baby blue, and it’s soft as she wraps her shaking knuckles around the flowing hem. But it’s bringing back a voice she’d hoped to forget tonight. That taunting of dirty girl, dirty girl, dirty girl.
Good girl.
Pretty girl
Church girl.
Prude.
Dirty girl, dirty girl, dirty girl—
“I don’t wanna be a good girl anymore,” Grace gets out in a slur, mouth feeling clammy and sticky and like something is blocking her true words. “I don’t think I wanna be a girl at all.”
It’s an admission she expects to shatter this silly little allusion they’ve been living under. The idea that Grace Chasity could ever escape the monikers that make her, that force her into the boxes she’s been stuck living in her whole life. A life of gilded cages and categories and words she wants to forget but can never let go. There are worse things than being a girl.
A slut or a whore. Something even worse.
A murderer.
Sinner.
Except no glass rains down on them to ruin the moment. Steph doesn’t laugh or gawk or roll her eyes. She just smiles, arm wrapping around Grace’s shoulder like it’s always supposed to be there. It’s warm and it’s heavy and she thinks it’s the only thing keeping her from floating up into the ceiling and popping.
“Then don’t be a girl,” she says, like it’s something simple. Maybe it is that simple. Her fingers curl and tug at the fabric of Grace’s shirt stretching across her shoulder. “You can be a boy for tonight, if you wanted.”
“Just for tonight?” Grace wonders aloud, watching close and intense as those black fingernails slide across white.
“However long you want.” Steph nods like her head is barely hanging on to her body, swinging around a little lifeless and yet also deeply lively all at once. Her teeth dig into her bottom lip—not in a way that's coy or flirty but a hard bite, and Grace thinks about how she bit her lip falling over yesterday. It must hurt. Grace wants to feel that hurt too. “Grace, you’re incredible. I really mean that—m’not just saying it ‘cause I’m drunk.” She breaks out into a fit of giggles, pointing a finger; jabbing it into Grace’s collarbone all painful and brilliant. “ Okay, maybe a little bit because I’m drunk, but— Look at you. You’re so weird and the most interesting person I’ve ever known. No one else in Hatchetfield, no one else anywhere, is like you,” she shakes her head now—wild and her hair flying, the sunglasses pushed up to her hairline very nearly flying away with the movement. “No one else looks at me like I’m something more than a hot girl to be chased after or a mistake to be shunned. Look at you. You're a pretty boy in a pretty skirt and I always used to hate how much I wanted to kiss you when we slept in the same bed, but man…”
“You wanted to kiss me?” Grace interrupts, eyes wide and her voice coming out like a punched breath.
Her eyes drop back to Steph’s injured lip. She thinks again of the blood that had dripped. Would it taste as sweet as the drink they’ve been drinking tonight? Sweeter? Grace is no stranger to blood—that tangy iron taste—and she wouldn’t be happy resigning herself to purely feasting on the corpse of Max Jägerman. Not when there’s Stephanie Lauter with her plush lips and bright blue eyes and silly jokes and a singing voice nowhere near perfect but delightful.
Not when there’s Steph. The closest thing Grace has ever had to a friend; maybe they are friends. Her eyes flutter and she pictures how Steph looked that night—bloody handprints smeared on her soft, acne-freckled cheeks, and eyes wild and trembling with terror. The way she looked at Grace like she knew what to do.
Grace liked being the one in charge. Wiping the blood from Steph’s face with her sleeve—eleven months later soaking of blood from her lip with motel room towels.
“Hm,” Steph hums, oblivious to the inferno of something sweet raging and swirling across Grace’s chest like a wildfire. “I did. I really did. I never would though—because that’s not fair. You’re so…” Her voice trails off, hand flailing as she gestures to Grace still pressed against her in their booth. “You’re confused, and you’re hurting, and when I look at you I feel so sad. I steal your cigarettes and pretend I don’t notice you staring at me, because I know you wanna kiss me too and you don’t know it.”
If Grace was homophobic, an accusation like that would have her flying off the handle. If Grace were sober, a thing like that would have her panicking and questioning. If Grace were still a girl tonight, she might consider why the statement doesn’t phase her.
It’s because Steph is right—and Grace really wants to stop lying to the one person that might be her friend. Do friends kiss one another? Grace wouldn’t know.
She lets out a breath, so steady and so sure that it might even surprise Steph. “Why have you never told me any of this before?”
“Usually I’d say I’m scared,” Steph shrugs, eyelids twitching, more violent than a flutter. “But I’m not scared of anything—not even you. I think I never said anything because I wanted you to figure it out for yourself.”
“I think I’m figuring it out now.”
“Yeah?” Voice sweet like those honey gilded summers, sweet like their drinks, sweet like her breath and her eyes and her lips. “Good. That’s good ‘cause… Because you know what I wanted more than to kiss you?”
“I don’t know. McDonalds?” Grace suggests, gaze flicking back up to look at Steph. Really look at her. She says it just to make Steph laugh mostly.
It works—her smile grows wider, her teeth glinting in the glittering light and the sound trembles through Grace’s shoulders. “Psh, no.” Steph rolls her eyes. “A Big Mac is good, don’t get me wrong—but not as good as you. I’d give up, like, fifty Big Mac’s to have you looking at me. Sixty even.”
“Gee, thanks…”
“But, no.” Steph clutches her harder, seeming desperate for Grace’s undivided attention. She shakes her by the shoulder—arm still wrapped around her, holding her somehow even closer. “No, I want you to kiss me.”
For a long moment Grace is silent—the music spilling back in, it’d never really been gone at all—and she swallows, tilting her head slightly as she stares up at Steph. “Isn’t that just the same thing?”
“No!” The sound makes her jump, and Steph’s eyes flutter in what Grace takes as an apology; clearing her throat. “No, it’s not— Because if I was kissing you, I’d do this.” She pauses, hands sliding up to hold Grace’s face in her hands—palms pressed to her cheeks, tilting her head back. Gosh, her face must be flushing really bad right now. “But if you’re the boy now, you should be kissing me.” As quickly as they’re there, Steph’s hands fall away, moving to clutch Grace’s hands where they’re folded awkwardly and shy in her lap. Their palms drag against one another—and Grace grimaces, realizing truly how sweaty her own hands are right now. “I know, not very progressive of me—but I want you to make the choice. Do you wanna kiss me, Grace?”
It’s an unfair question. There’s no scenario where Grace would want to say no. Grace doesn’t want to kiss Steph—doesn’t just want to kiss Steph. She wants to curl her fingers into Steph’s ribcage and tear her apart, to taste her from the inside out and tear out her own insides just so they’d be feeling the same thing. A mirror of agony and confusion; dripping blood and gore and everything that haunts Grace’s nightmares and day terrors.
“I…”
“You can say no,” Steph adds, quick and rambling now. “I’ll buy you another drink if you say no. In fact, I’ll buy you whatever you want if you say no—a fucking castle, if you wanted. We can just go back to the hotel room and watch a movie—”
“Steph,” Grace interrupts, words overlapping with Steph’s as she pushes onward in the middle of her free falling ramble. “I…”
“—I’ve still gotta show you High School Musical, actually. We could even order room service—”
“Stephanie.”
“—I’m sure the credit card can take a couple more dollars and I— Mpfh!”
It’s more a clash than a kiss. Grace grips her by her jacket, tugs her so hard the two of them nearly fall backwards on the booth seat. Her own teeth hurt from the way they come together—and Grace is sure Steph’s lip must still hurt from yesterday. It’s short but hardly sweet.
Steph is the first to pull away, saying with a breath, “you kissed me.”
“You told me too!”
“No, I’m glad,” Steph reassures, blinking and grinning and looking a little crazed. It looks good on her. “I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t ready, do it again.”
“Again?”
“Kiss me again,” she insists, excited and shuffling closer once again. Her hands find Grace’s once more—pulls them away from the dark leather of her jacket and brings them up to her face. Grace cups her cheeks like Steph had to her moments prior. She imagines blood spilling from beneath her thumbs, smearing across golden flesh and gentle features. “Come on,” Steph encourages, leaning in and their lips meet again. It’s softer, sweeter, slower and longer. Heat swells in Grace’s chess, scorching under her skin and she grins against Steph’s lips “ Better. ”
Praise is a dangerous thing for Grace. It makes me feel far more drunk than any amount of alcohol could. She tugs Steph closer, licks into her mouth—savours how she tastes of all the sweetness Grace has been pining after all day. Drinks and polo mints and just Steph Lauter.
“You think so?” she asks, breathless, as they part for a moment; fishing for more, pressing back in before Steph even gets a chance to really answer. “I’m good?”
“Uh-huh.” It’s mumbled and broken against Grace’s lips, and something like a groan catches Grace's throat. “Shit.”
“Sorry—”
“Shh. You’re fine. We should—”
“Hotel?”
“Yep. Hotel.”
~~~
If you told Grace yesterday she’d be kissing Steph on a queen size bed in a fancy hotel room, she might have believed you. But, that doesn’t have it make any more sense in the rush of questions swarming her like those bugs she’s sure haven’t stopped buzzing at her bedroom window back home.
Perhaps kissing is too light a word. Is this what other kids meant when they talked about making out? This doesn’t feel like what Grace would imagine that to be like. This feels like devouring. Her hands shake hungry and desperate; fingers threading through the darkness of Steph’s hair and those silly pink glasses fall beneath them in the mess of it all.
That’s the word. It’s messy. The stickiness of Grace’s chin could be down to a myriad of things. Her lipstick, the drinks, sweat or spit or something else. This summer has been so sticky. Grace is realizing it’s not too much worse than those of her childhood—she’s had so much fun, the final days of summer among them now and it’s hot.
“Oh, you’re a biter,” Steph gets out, and Grace still hasn’t opened her eyes but that’s maybe a grin on her lips as she speaks. “Good to know.”
“Bad?”
“Good,” she reassures Grace, voice a little deeper and gravely—tugging her back in, and Grace wonders if it would be too hard to bite down hard enough to finally taste Steph’s blood. It’s all she’s been thinking about, but even Grace can tell unhinged that might seem.
Still, she vibrates at all the words Steph chooses to use with her praise. Once good felt too dangerous—something Grace would never be, could never be. Except when Steph Lauter says it, it doesn’t come with the expectations that have her falling to her knees trembling and praying and shameful. No, the good that Steph speaks of is simply a descriptor.
Grace is good for Steph—and nothing has ever felt so true.
Other words are good too. Pretty, weird, interesting.
Steph doesn’t call her a girl. Never has Grace felt so thankful.
A boy for tonight, Grace reminds herself; eyes twitching open, breaths passing between them hurried and open. Don’t think about it.
Except now Grace is considering those other girls and it’s the perfect moment for Jägerman to slip in with dirty girl.
“Grace?”
He never shows his face and Grace thinks him a coward for it. It’s just his voice—not the echoing fuzziness from when he’d been the ghost. Somehow he wasn’t at his most terrifying then—blood crazed and trying to kill them, having succeeded five times before. Max Jägerman was more terrifying when he’d been a boy. The tangible boy who’s teasing, humiliating voice just couldn’t seem to leave Grace alone.
“Stop it,” Grace mumbles out, not to Steph—never to Steph, but of course Steph listens anyway. She’s pulling away and it’s suddenly cold. Grace wants to protest—bring her back and say not you and don’t stop and I’m sorry. Usually she’s better about talking to the voices that aren’t there. It might be the alcohol or the heat or the fact he’s ruining this that makes her speak aloud this time. “No, I—”
It's an asthma attack. The pain of her constricting chest and the wheeze that comes out after her words are signs Grace knows well—they at least push the voice away, the veins on her forehead feeling as if they’re bulging and her face is swelling. Steph slides out from under Grace—letting her fall back into the circle of soft pillows, and the fabric of her skirt brushes her thighs as it flips up from her hurried movements.
Grace smacks the palm of her hand against the mattress—unable to open her eyes but she can tell Steph’s eyes are still on her.
“Inhaler,” she gets out, hand smacking down again with another wheeze. “Front pocket…”
The bright blue apparatus is shoved into her slapping waiting palm and she huffs it—another reason to stop smoking, and Grace knows if her mother knew that she’d be furious. That makes it sweeter, and she takes another huff—sighing as her lungs start to relax under her ribs. She considers the idea of being kept alive by machines. If it was God’s plan for her to be born with defected lungs, wonders if she should pray tonight that Steph is competent enough to find her inhaler.
She knows she won’t.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Steph murmurs, hand on her bare thigh and she’s warm. It slips back in between the cold—soothing against the painful, breathless heat in her head. “You’re okay,” she repeats, like a mantra, eyes following the steady ups and downs of Grace’s heaving chest. That seems like their word now. Okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re okay. “I’m sorry,” she says then, voice trembling and afraid and Grace’s heart squeezes knowing she scared Steph. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It wasn’t you,” she cuts through, hand closing around the back of Steph’s hand on her thigh. Grace squeezes, presses Steph’s palm harder down against her skin. “It was never you.”
Steph pulls Grace’s skirt back into place—the sort of thing that makes her smile, so small and thoughtless, and it helps keep the voice of a ghost away. She kisses Grace again; softer and smaller and, “do you wanna watch a movie?”
They change in silence—and Steph even lets Grace borrow one of her band tees, for a band Grace obviously doesn’t know but she likes the smell of Steph’s laundry detergent and accepts it without question. Steph picks the movie High School Musical, pulling it up on— “my special website” she’d said the first time with a wink, and Grace hadn’t known much about piracy back then; still doesn’t know much —her laptop. It makes Grace laugh, because this is nothing like high school but it’s fun. She thinks the quiet girl might be her favourite character.
“Is it weird I liked it when you pretended I was a boy?” she asks, curled into Steph on the bed and her chin resting against Steph’s shoulder.
“Who said I was pretending?” Steph replies with a laugh, eyes still stuck on the screen—the light of the movie dancing across her gaze. “And, no… It’s pretty normal I think. Or as normal as someone like you could be.”
“You’re so mean.”
“And you love it.” It’s true—even more so when Steph does a weird playful bite with her teeth. It might be embarrassing that Grace wants Steph to do that to her, and she keeps it to herself. “I sometimes don’t feel like a girl either, you know? It’s… You’re normal for that Grace.”
“Wait…” she starts, sitting up slightly to get a better look at Steph. She wonders if Steph gets as flustered as Grace does when her breath fans along Steph’s neck, resting on her shoulder and gazing up at her. “If you’re a boy and I’m a boy, and we kissed, does that make us gay?”
“Well… I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think—” Grace blinks slowly and she drops her head—pressing her cheek into the fabric of Stpeh’s shirt, eyes fluttering closed as she turns to look at the screen again. It’s not a question she’s interested in answering herself. All she knows is it felt nice to be a boy tonight, and that’s the memory Grace wants to be left with. Not with scary questions not worth answering. “I think I’m really tired.”
“Okay,” Steph chuckles, finger tapping the laptop to turn down the volume of the movie—and… And she’s really nice, Grace thinks, snuggling closer. “G’night Grace.”
~~~
It’s 9 AM when they hold the first press conference. It covers every significant channel that airs in the Hatchetfield area—goes further than that. At the bottom of the screen the same message runs. Missing teenagers, Karen Chasity pleads for them to be found or to come home.
It’s 9 AM and Karen Chasity looks like she hasn’t slept in a while—eyes wide and heavy bags underneath them, her hands shake on the podium and she speaks right to the camera.
“Gracie, if you’re out there,” she says, voice shaking more than her hands and her ex-husband's hand at her shoulder. “We just want to know you’re safe. We want you to come home. Just call your mother, Grace. Please.”
It’s 9 AM, and it’s been three days since Grace Chasity and Steph Lauter left Hatchetfield.
There are more people who miss them than they realise.
~~~
The hotel breakfast isn’t even that good, but Steph seems satisfied and that’s enough for Grace to feel they got their money worth. She could gorge on the look Steph gives her across their camped table in the corner, and she still thinks she could never have too much of Steph. Never enough, always wanting more and more and more.
They arrive at the cabin in the afternoon the next day. Steph holds her hand over the console as they drive—Grace still wearing the t-shirt Steph borrowed her the night before. As expected the spare key is hidden in the plant plot near the door, and Grace can’t help but find it strange being here in the summer. She’s so used to a snowy cabin in the winter, and her sweaty hands slick nervously against the key as she opens the door for Steph.
“It’s pretty,” is what Steph says as she explores the rustic wooden place, and Grace trails after her like a lost puppy with nothing better to do. There really is nothing better to do. “Is this you?”
She points to a photo sitting on the top of the fireplace. There’s a lot of photos around the place—Grace’s family frozen in time across the years—and she nods as she peers at her tiny face next to where Steph’s finger gestures.
“I was eight,” she says, picking it up by the black and frame so they can get a closer look. Grace, hair in two plaits either side of her head and her smile as toothy as ever, sits on her mothers lap on the sofa in this very room; it's covered in a sheet right now, to keep off the dust. Behind them stands her father, hands on her mother’s shoulder and smiling at the camera too. For the first time Grace notices her mom isn’t smiling in the photo, and she returns it to the mantle with a sigh. “I don’t look very different, do I?”
“Nah. Just as small and cute.”
Steph’s only saying to fluster Grace—she can tell, by the way Steph grins as she says it, wandering off to look at other things
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work…
Realising following Steph around might be not just pathetic but also useless, Grace gets started on removing the dusty sheets covering the furniture. They’ll have to remember to put them back before they leave, because her dad hates it when the cabin is dusty in the winter when they come here.
There isn’t much to do at the cabin. Usually Grace passed the winters reading—whenever she wasn’t with her family. Steph isn’t the type for reading; Grace knows that, and so what they’re going to do to pass the time she’s not sure. The cabin is pretty isolated and Steph’s already complained about the poor phone service twice.
So, they end up outside.
Because what better to do than to show off for Steph?
“Woodcutting?” Steph questions with a wry smile, sitting down on the porch as Grace retrieves the axe from the shed—struggling with the key in the rusty lock—and is happy to find they still have some wood stocked from last they were here.
It’d been her mom’s job to cut the wood, which Grace thinks most people would be surprised by. But her family wasn’t necessarily what people expected it to be on the outside. The fact her mom handled the finances and was the only one of them with a college degree was proof of that—so was the divorce too. It’s the same reason her dad handled child care when Grace was young, why he cooked more than half their dishes—and why her mom always drove them to church.
“It’s therapeutic,” Grace answers with a shrug, placing a wooden log down on the waiting stump and swinging the axe back over her shoulder.
Like always her hands shake around the axe—but for different reasons this time. The image of cutting apart the body of Max flashes in her head, the axe cutting through each of his limbs with the same smoothness as a decent woodcutter's swing. Except, that hadn’t been an axe. That was a hatchet, and they’re not in Hatchetfield anymore. It’s heavy and the momentum of the swing pulls Grace’s body forward—the vibration of the hit tingling and exhilarating as it bounces up her arms. Crunch. Grace had never been able to perfect it, not the way her mother had with even slices and zero splinters. Her teeth grit together and she moves aside the two slices with the toe of her shoe, glancing up to look at Steph—and her eyes haven’t left Grace.
“And pretty cool,” she admits with a small smile, placing down a second log and lining up another swing. Crunch. The wood shattering in two, be destroyed and cut apart… It’s almost as good as that tangy taste of blood—nearly as fulfilling as the slice of flesh and bone under a hatchet.
Quickly her arms ache with the heavy end of the axe—and Grace sits down beside Steph, leaving the axe and slices of wood behind. She pants, smiling at Steph because that awe-sorta look on her face is for Grace.
Don’t stop looking at me like that, Grace wants to say. I never want you to stop.
But Grace doesn’t think she needs to say it, because Steph is cupping her chin and kissing her. It’s as soft as the final kiss they shared last night—and she tastes a little like the pancakes she ate for breakfast, and Grace finds she likes the sweetness of the syrup too.
“I didn’t know you were butch, Chasity,” Steph says, and she laughs like it’s a joke—and Grace has no idea what that means, but she laughs anyway because everything Steph says is funny. “You gotta teach me how to do that. I mean—I’ve already got the flannel aspect of the roguish woodcutter down, don’t I?”
“And the ‘roguish’ part too.”
“Hah, you know it.”
There still isn’t much to do after that, and it’s too warm for them to stay inside. And because Steph is Steph she suggests, “dinner?” and who is Grace to decline? Plus, she sees it as another chance to show off—suggesting they cook together, that they make the Chasity Chili.
“So, what’s the Chasity Chili?” Steph asks as they wander the aisles of the small convenience store in the town a twenty minute walk away from the cabin.
Grace glances back at her and raises a brow, list of ingredients—memorised from countless teaching moments her dad bestowed on her throughout the years—in hand. The paper is a little wrinkled from where it’d been shoved into Steph’s jean pocket. “It’s a chili that my dad makes,” she says with a shrug, because… It makes sense Steph doesn’t have much experience with family recipes. “It’s one of the only things I know how to cook.”
“And it has no beans?”
She thinks again of that Hearty Henry’s bean can Steph showed off a few days ago at the gas station and shivers.
“No beans,” she says, gravely serious, “my mom hates them.”
It turns out Steph isn’t great at cooking. Or existing in a kitchen for an extended period of time.
“Steph! You need to keep stirring.”
“I think it’s been stirred enough.”
“No, keep stirring.”
How she manages to live alone, Grace isn’t sure. Her stomach churns at the idea of Steph surviving only on junk food and frozen meals, wonders if she should ask her mom to start cooking extra so she can give it to Steph—once they go home. When they’re done pretending they’re any good at running away.
It feels a little like playing house. Pretending to be grown-ups who have any idea what they’re doing.
In reality they’re adults who have zero clue what they’re doing.
It’s also nice to teach Steph things. Reminds Grace of that evening at the Waylon Place—as she guides Steph’s hand to keep stirring or slaps her away when she attempts to interfere with Grace plating their food.
“Is it plating when you’re using bowls?”
“I’m not going to call it bowling, Steph.”
“Well, you could—”
They eat in silence at the too big dining room, and Grace can’t stop watching Steph. There’s an odd desire in her for Steph to enjoy the chili. Because it has the Chasity name on it, and Grace had handled most of the cooking… And impressing Steph feels far too good for Grace to simply stop.
Instead of complimenting the meal, or even complaining, Steph brings up something unexpected—her spoon digging through the chili, mouth full as she talks like usual.
“I do think about it,” is what she says, and there’s no need to clarify what it is—and Grace is still shocked when Steph finally says it. “I don’t like thinking about it, and talking about it even less. But I’ve realised that making you promise wasn’t fair. A lot of what happened that night was unfair.”
This doesn’t feel like the kind of conversation Grace wants to have eating chili, but she’s not going to spoil maybe the one chance Steph is giving her to finally understand. For eleven months all she's had is her own perspective—and half of it she’s not sure is even truly how it happened. A haze of horror and death and… And worse.
“I’ve wanted to talk about it for a long time,” Grace admits, releasing her spoon and folding her hands in her lap. It reminds her of church, sitting like this, and it brings a weird sort of comfort. “Just to know I’m not…”
“Crazy?” Steph offers with something of a laugh, and… She gets it, doesn’t she? Sometimes Grace looks at Steph and thinks she might have figured it all out. But she’s starting to realise Steph is better at hiding it. With jokes about her dad, and with cutting Grace out her life, and agreeing to ideas stupid and dangerous and not thought out. “I haven’t seen any more ghosts.”
“Me neither.” Grace wouldn’t count the voices—wouldn’t count Richie, and his sparse appearances—as ghosts. Hallucinations, definitely, and Grace doesn’t live under the delusion they might be anything real. The first few times she spoke aloud and no one else could see them confirmed that. The fact Steph can’t see or hear them. She swallows, stares down at the wooden grain of the table because looking at Steph might be too much. “Do you feel guilty about what we did?”
There’s no need to say what they did.
Grace doesn’t think she could bring herself to say the words again. At least, not to Steph.
“Sometimes,” she says, and she shrugs, takes another bite of the chili. “But we lived and they didn’t, and…” There’s a pause, Grace has to force herself to look just because the short silence is too much to bear without looking. “I’m seeing a therapist. And I think you should too.”
She’s probably right.
Grace won’t admit that.
“Can I borrow your phone?”
The only place with enough service to make a phone call is on the roof of the cabin. Steph helps Grace climb through the windows—promises she’ll sit waiting in the attic, dusty and dark, until Grace is done.
And Grace finds her own faith is nothing compared to the faith Steph has in her.
The phone rings twice before it’s picked up—and Grace’s hand shakes around the bright green of Steph’s ugly phone case, and she stares out into the sprawling wilderness around them. Miles and miles of trees, of deep woods, surrounds them. It’s so easy to see up here how isolated they are. The powerlines of the local town are barely visible through the foliage, and Grace shivers in just her t-shirt and jeans in the cool night air.
“Grace?” It’s her mother—voice trembling and sounding wet. “Is that you?”
“Hi mom,” she greets with a swallow, her throat tightens—and she thinks her voice is sounding a little wet too, and she blinks away a sting in her eyes. Unsure why the urge to cry even protrudes ugly and intrusive in the tangle of feelings in her chest. “I told you not to worry.”
“And I told you to never leave the house without telling me,” her mom responds, and Grace thinks she’s trying to sound furious but it’s not working. Grace smiles at the sound of her voice— really misses home for the first time since she left, and longs to see a face that looks so much like her own once again. “Where are you?”
“I’ll be home soon,” Grace dodges the question. She knows if she dares tell her mom that she’s at the cabin that her parents will both pile into the minivan and be here in the morning. They don’t need to do that. Grace wants them to wait for her. “I missed you.”
“Missed me?” The fact she sounds so scandalized at that makes Grace grin wider—holding a laugh, knowing her mom could never really understand but being okay with it. “I was so worried, Gracie. I called officer Shapiro!”
“I told you not to do that.” The note had been clear. Grace rolls her eyes. “And she’s a detective mom, not an officer.”
“They all do the same thing, I’m sure. How soon is soon?”
It’s a good question; Grace glances back to the open window. Her lips twist to the side, hoping it might hide the crazed smile threatening her lips—hide the sound of it from her voice. “I’m not sure… But I’m with Steph—she’s looking after me. You trust Steph, mom.”
“I do… I do, I just—” she pauses, and the creak and groans of the house in the background pulls a profound longing from the pit of Grace’s stomach. “You’re safe?”
“I’m safe.”
“And Stephanie is safe as well?”
“She’s fine, mom,” she says, her fingers gripping around the phone a little tighter. “You’ll see me soon. Really soon. I promise, mom. I promise.”
“You scared me.”
“I know.”
“You're still my baby girl, you know that?”
The word girl twinges low and ugly in her gut. Grace bites down at the feeling.
“I know, mommy.”
The silence doesn’t feel so scary when her mom is breathing on the other end of the phone. For a long while they sit there—the same way they watch TV, and eat most meals, and drive to church, and clean the bathroom. Once the sun sets on the horizon; behind the spread of green, crickets and bugs buzzing out there in the night, Grace says goodbye. It feels definitive.
Grace will be home soon. It’s a promise.
Steph offers to remove the dusty sheets covering Grace’s room in the cabin—the bed is bigger here than her one at home, but still tiny compared to the queen size one from last night. It’s sparsely decorated, but Grace finds her usual pale blue bed sheets in the cupboard in the hall and makes the bed.
Sharing seems obvious—and Grace curls up beside Steph, dragging a thumb back and forth across the freckles on her arm.
“I think I wanna go to college,” she says, for the first time seeing herself with a future in Hatchetfield. “The community college is still accepting late applications.”
“That’s great!” Steph’s really excited, even saying when Grace worries it might be silly to pick Religious Studies, “it’s not stupid if you like it. It’s important that the choice is yours, nobody else's.”
“And what about you?” Grace asks, sitting up slightly to look Steph in the face—admiring the dips and curves of her face, running her thumb along the swell of her cheekbone. She licks her lips, focused and curious. “What’s next for Steph?”
There’s a really small smile on Steph’s lips. It’s so small that Grace thinks not many people besides her would be able to tell that Steph is smiling at her.
“I should probably get a job. The dead dad money is running out.”
The dead dad money joke isn’t even that funny. Not once has Grace laughed at it—and still, this time as Steph makes it, Grace kisses her. Harsh and rushed, because when Steph kisses Grace slow and soft, Grace cannot resist kissing Steph reckless and abandoned. It leaves them breathless, because the future is for tomorrow, and Grace is getting better at living in the moment.
“I want more,” she admits against Steph’s ear, breathy and serious and clutching Steph’s arms.
“You're sure?” It’s such a Steph question that it has her grinning, nodding mad and she thinks she doesn’t mind the way she still feels a little broken. “We don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
Grace doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anything more than she wants Steph Lauter right now.
She doesn’t see how that could be anything but good.
~~~
To Steph,
Hi. I don’t know if you think it’s weird that I’m writing you a letter after we had sex, but I’m not sure what else to do. For a long time I used to journal. I stopped doing that along with many other things after the night we don’t like talking about. I’m starting to remember why writing down my thoughts was helpful.
Will I even give you this letter? I don’t know. It just makes me feel better, and that has to be enough of a reason to do it.
Every time I look up I can see you lying in the bedsheets. You’re so beautiful, and I think I’ve always been too afraid to tell you that aloud. Maybe I never will and the first time I finally say it is when I give you this letter. We’ll see. I thought the idea of seeing someone else naked would be more scary than it is. I can see the skin of your thigh poking out beneath the pale blue bedsheets of my bed, and the only word that comes to mind is good.
You’ve shown me that sex doesn’t have to be this big thing. Or even a sacred thing. It was fun. No one ever told me it could be fun before. Something fun and something sweet and nothing shameful. Even now I find myself lacking with the shame I would usually be filled with to the brim. Is it you? I can’t help but wonder. Is it because it’s you?
I prayed for the first time in nearly four months tonight. When I went to the bathroom. I sat in the bathtub and just did it. It felt too hard to start up again after I stopped. What was there to pray about? Today I find myself grateful for you.
Thank you for taking me with you. For agreeing to drive me across the state just because I asked you to. You're much kinder than I ever thought you could be. It makes you seem less cool, I hope you know that. You’re such a softie Steph Lauter, and I’d be happy keeping that a secret so you don’t sacrifice your cool reputation back home.
Jeremiah 31:3. You might have to look that up. Please do.
I’m ready to go back home. I miss my mom and my bedroom and the weirdness of Hatchetfield. Just promise me this won’t change? Promise me when we go back you’ll call me and we’ll still watch movies and I’m still allowed to kiss you whenever I want. I don’t want this to be a thing that stays outside of Hatchetfield, even if it’s been wonderful.
I don’t think you could ever understand how grateful I am that you survived with me. I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. You should know that.
Love, Grace.
~~~
The first thing Grace does when they arrive back in Hatchetfield is warn Steph.
“My mom is going to freak out.”
“I’m ready.”
She sighs, pushing open the front gate and staring up at her house—Steph trailing after her with both their bags. “I don’t think you are.”
It takes about twenty minutes of her mom fussing over her before they can actually step into the house beyond the front hallway—which is hardly big enough for one person, never mind three. Her mom kisses her head and slaps her shoulder and tells the both of them how “stupid and irresponsible and dangerous and—” they are.
Grace doesn’t mind being in trouble much, as she looks over her mom’s shoulder as she squeezes Grace into a hug and finds Steph grinning at her. Can’t help but grin right back.
“I’ll call,” Steph promises as she’s ready to leave—after Grace’s mom forces her to stay for dinner, continues to reprimand the both of them for running away and leaving a silly note. She kisses Grace’s cheek by the door, and Grace wonders if her mom is watching them from the kitchen. If she is, Grace doesn’t mind. “We still need to watch High School Musical 2.”
She didn’t even know that there was a second one—but she doesn’t ask, instead shoving her folded up letter in Steph’s hand.
“What’s this?”
“Just take it.”
That night the phone rings, at 11 PM to be exact, and it’s for Grace.
“You don’t have to thank me,” is what Steph says, “besides, it felt a lot more like you taking me.”
“Shut up.”
“Eh, you love me!”
Grace thinks she really might, and it feels too soon and too sudden, and she just smiles into the phone—happy to listen to Steph ramble until her mom complains about the noise and about the phone bill.
And she’s ready for everything to start feeling normal again. The way things were before October, when life felt like something worth living. When Grace actually had plans for the future— her future. Dreams of college and friends and being an adult finally feeling like something Grace might be able to have.
Even summer is starting to feel normal, and it’s almost over.
Just as sticky as always.