Gods & Monsters(4)

I frown at him, too. Is he judging me? Because if he is then I don’t like him and I like everyone.

In the dying sunlight, I can’t see the minor details of his face but I swear I see him… melt. Not like ice-cream but, sort of go loose. His frown has completely disappeared and his lips kinda move. Twitching into a crooked smile.

“Evangeline Elizabeth Hart, get back here right now,” my mom calls out again.

“Darn it,” I mutter under my breath. My mom is really, really mad. Full name is reserved for emergencies.

With one last look at the new boy, who I still think is sort of smiling at me for some reason, I turn back and start running. Sky is already at my porch, standing away from my mom. They are not big fans of each other.

As my mom is dragging me inside the house, I turn back and find him standing at the same spot. He’s only an outline from here.

An outline with golden hair and black t-shirt, and a backpack against the orange sky.





We live in a place called Prophetstown in Iowa. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone, with open, lush corn fields and broad skies. It’s the sort of place where you’ll want to walk around barefoot and be outside all the time with loose, uncombed hair. That’s how I justify not wanting to wear shoes and not wanting to braid my hair.

There are two things that define this town: our church, the tallest and oldest building, and the legend. The legend of David Adams and Delilah Evans. Well, people don’t call it that but that’s what I’ve named it.

Years back, David and Delilah loved each other. No one knew about their affair until Delilah turned up pregnant, and then all hell broke loose. They locked up Delilah because she was such a bad girl. I’ve heard the word slut associated with her. They were going to put David in jail, too. But somehow, they both got away before that could happen. I’m not sure how it all went down but since then people hate them, like, a lot. They are probably the most hated people after the devil.

I’ve heard my mom say that after they skipped town, Mr. Adams, David’s dad sort of wasted away and then died a couple of years later. It was such a shock to an upstanding citizen of the town, who had raised his kids all alone after his wife passed away from cancer. My mom says he was really well-liked and look what those monsters did to him. After Mr. Adams died, Peter Adams, David’s brother and Mr. Adams’s other son, sort of became withdrawn and started keeping to himself.

See, David and Delilah were never supposed to fall in love with each other, let alone have a baby together. Delilah was David and Peter’s first cousin. She came to live with them when she was only a child and her parents had died. Basically, she grew up with David and Peter, and everyone treated them as real siblings as opposed to cousins. It horrified everyone when they found out about the affair. It was wrong and immoral and sick. And that baby? People called it an abomination. The devil’s spawn. They said only monsters could be created from a love like David and Delilah’s.

Some say they went to New York, the big, bad city. But some say they left the country. I bet my mom knows. She knows everything but obviously, she’s not going to tell me. According to my mom, they both were monsters and they should’ve been committed to a mental asylum. Or maybe a camp where people get electric shocks to get their brain chemistry right. Yeah, that’s my mom’s solution to everything.

I’ve heard countless stories where mothers kept their daughters under a strict watch after the scandal. They wouldn’t let them stay out too late. Curfews were insane. Every boy in the town was suspected of wrongdoing. Every love story was thwarted and stomped upon. Mrs. Weatherby, the town’s gossip and my mom’s best friend, calls it the dark times, when love had died and the purity of it was stained.

“All because of those sinners: David and Delilah,” she said. “God only knows what happened to that baby. It couldn’t have survived, you know. There’s no way it could have. Babies like that never come out normal. They die before their time comes.”

So David and Delilah are our own Adam and Eve, and fourteen years ago, they gave birth to a boy. His name is Abel.

He’s very much alive, though. He’s the boy with golden hair and a black t-shirt. He’s the one who kind-of sort-of smiled at my dirty feet and grass-stained dress.

He’s my new neighbor. Abel Adams.

Last night was the worst yet. I’ve never seen my mom so mad. Sky was intimidated too, and she’s never afraid of my mother. We waited in tense silence until Mrs. Davis, Sky’s mom, came to pick her up. Mrs. Davis is the sweetest lady ever, with the same dark hair and gray eyes as Sky. I love her; she’s way more fun than my mom.

Once they both left, with Sky giving me a sympathetic look over her shoulder, the screaming started. My mom yelled about how dirty and savage and uncouth and uncivilized and unrefined I was. Well, not in all those fancy words but still. Then she sent me straight to the bathroom where she blasted cold water on me while I was still wearing clothes, and scrubbed my feet and legs for hours. It was a good thing the shower was on, actually. My mom couldn’t see my tears.

“And what were you doing staring at that new boy?” Her dark eyes were so harsh, I actually had to take a step back. “You’re not to associate with him, do you hear me, Evie? That boy shouldn’t even come close to you. If he does something, you tell me, you understand?”