The Quarry Girls(19)
There it was. Not only the horror of what we’d seen, but what it’d cost Maureen if others found out. I heard Father Adolph like he was standing over us, smiling sadly that he even needed to say it: A good reputation is more valuable than costly perfume.
I squeezed Brenda’s hand, then coughed, my throat tender from throwing up. “I swear.”
The memory returned, Brenda, Maureen, and me at the Muni, three Musketeers against the world. That would never be again. In that handshake, a piece of Brenda closed off to me and me to her, and we both turned away from Maureen.
BETH
The first time, Beth thought she’d lose her mind.
The next time, she went numb.
In the unending hours since she’d been kidnapped, she kept returning to that place. The Emptiness. The Not Here.
She wasn’t a virgin. Mark was her first, had been her only. She’d punched his V-card, too. He’d wanted to wait until after their wedding, but she knew matrimony wasn’t in their future. When she’d convinced him that she was never going to get married—to anyone—he’d finally agreed to do the deed. The first time had been fumbling, dry and painful, but since then they’d figured out each other’s bodies. Now it was one of the few things she looked forward to with him. She wished she’d had the courage to break up with him cleanly. He deserved that.
But she couldn’t think about Mark, not now, or her brain would snap loose and float away like a knobby pink balloon. She tried to think about college instead. She was good at school but exceptional at sports, had been offered a track scholarship to several state colleges as well as Berkeley. Her parents said it would be a disservice to her God-given gifts to choose any career other than law or medicine.
In other words, any job that didn’t come with prestige and money.
She adored kids, though, loved their grubby little faces and their ridiculous giggles and the perfect precious light they brought into this world. She wanted to be their teacher, that person they could count on no matter what, the one who saw their specialness, whether it was being good at reading or listening or drawing hand turkeys with color crayons. Was there any higher calling than teaching children?
A gurgling moan of a noise startled the lantern-lit room.
Beth realized it was her.
He’d entered her room moments earlier, had been standing over her, undoing his belt.
He stopped at her noise. “What?” he asked.
She stared up at him, at this man-she-knew-who-was-a-stranger, this person who’d risked everything in his world to kidnap another human so he could thrust away like a zoo monkey whenever he wanted. This loser had made a biological act so imperative that he was willing to go to prison to feel the same relief he could get with his own hand.
She made a strange noise again, but this time it was a giggle.
The giggle turned to laughter.
And once unleashed, she couldn’t stop. He might kill her for it, she knew that, but who the hell cared? He’d trapped her in a dungeon. All bets were off.
“What?” he asked again, his face twisting.
Looking at him, she realized he could have his pick of women, at least in Saint Cloud. This only made her laugh harder, a shrill cackle mixed with sobbing. Did he not even know what real love, good love, felt like? Had no one told him that the embarrassingly animal act was the doorway, not the destination, that the fun part, the magic, the whole point was letting your guard down completely with another person? That it was the connection and vulnerability that elevated what was essentially an extended sneeze to something worth fighting wars over? He’d stolen a Maserati to get at its keychain. He was an Olympic-level idiot. The King of Dumbasses.
She laugh-wept even harder.
“Stupid bitch,” he muttered angrily, shoving his belt back into place. The lighting turned his eyes into sockets, but his shaking hands told the whole story.
“You won’t be laughing next time,” he said, his voice thick. “Believe that.”
He marched out of the room.
She heard the sound of locks scraping tight.
And she began to plan.
She wasn’t going back to the Emptiness.
Not now that she’d remembered who she was.
CHAPTER 11
I woke up feeling headachy and sad. It took me a few disorienting moments to remember why. I didn’t want to think about Maureen and what she’d been doing. It was none of my business. If she wanted to tell me about it, she would. Otherwise, me and Brenda had made the right choice, putting it out of our heads.
Except it kept crawling back on razored knees. So rather than get out of bed, I yanked my notebook from beneath my mattress. It had distracted me from things even worse than what I’d witnessed last night. I used it like a regular diary, writing my dreams and what I was mad about and who was cute. I also wrote songs in it, words to go with the beats that kept coming to me. But I didn’t feel like doing any of that, couldn’t find a lick of the creative juices, so I shoved it back into its hiding spot and headed downstairs.
I hadn’t heard Dad come home the night before. I listened for his morning sounds. Nothing. He must have already left for work. The bathroom door was partially open. Normally, I’d knock to be sure it was empty, but I was in a mood so I just barged in.
Junie was leaning toward the mirror. She jumped back.