The King (The Original Sinners: White Years, #2)(82)

“Drugs?”

“They’d give us campers vomit-inducing drugs and make us watch lesbian porn. Cunts on the screen. Puke on the f loor. We campers called it ‘movie night at Caligula’s.’”

Kingsley tried to take Sam’s hand in his, but she’d curled up her fingers so tightly he could do nothing but place his hand on top of hers.

“Even though we were so busy with all these delightful and wholesome camping activities,” Sam continued, her voice dripping with sarcasm and barely restrained fury, “me and Faith did what we could to keep each other strong and sane. Whenever we’d see each other we’d whisper our code words— More weight.”

“More weight? What did that mean?”

“Some fundies consider lesbianism a kind of witchcraft. I’m not kidding. Just ask Pat Robertson. So when I heard that, I decided to learn about witchcraft like your typical disaffected queer teenager.”

“I was a disaffected queer teenager.”

“What did you do?”

“Slept with another disaffected queer teenager.”

“Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, wait, I did.” Sam laughed and it was good to hear it. Then she spoke again, and neither of them laughed anymore. “I read this book about the witch hunts in colonial times. The law said a person couldn’t be put on trial until they’d entered a guilty or not-guilty plea. This man, Giles Corey, was accused of witchcraft, but he refused to put in a plea. The court had a method for getting people to enter pleas. They’d lay them on a board, put a board on top of them, and they’d pile on weight, slowly crushing the person. They did this to Giles Corey. On went the weight, they’d stop, ask for his plea—guilty or not guilty. And his response was ‘More weight.’ He said it again and again and then finally ‘More weight’ were his last words. They killed him, but they never got him to say ‘Guilty.’ When me and Faith said ‘more weight’ that meant ‘Bring it on. The pain. The tortures. We don’t care. They’ll never make us plead guilty. We didn’t do anything wrong. They were the guilty ones.’”

Kingsley wanted to speak, wanted to stay something. But Sam’s strength had humbled him into silence.

“After a month at the camp, they told us our progress was ‘unsatisfactory,’ and we would have to stay another month. Faith had an idea, and I thought it was a good one. We broke into the clinic and found all the pills we could find…”

Kingsley gave up on Sam’s hand and instead pulled her to him, dragging her bodily against him. She rested her head against the center of his chest, and Kingsley put an arm around her shoulders. They were trembling.

“We held each other until morning,” Sam said. “Just like you and I are right now. I don’t know why we decided to wait until dawn. Maybe we wanted to see a sunrise one last time. But at dawn we swallowed the pills and washed them down with mineral water—like you do. Ten…twenty…thirty pills. And we shivered and burned and it felt like our skin was on fire. And then we slept. Two girls fell asleep. One girl woke up.”

“You woke up,” Kingsley said.

“The cops came,” Sam continued. “They were the first people I spoke to when I woke up in the hospital. To this day it pisses me off when I hear people talking shit about cops. Those cops were the first noncrazy adults I’d talked to in weeks. This detective, Detective Feldman, said this camp sounded like it was run by Josef Mengele. I didn’t know at the time what he meant by that, but I knew he was on our side.”

“What happened to you? Were there charges filed?”

Sam took a heavy breath.

“Faith Spencer’s family blamed me for her death. She’d taken more pills than I had, so they said I’d tricked her into killing herself. The truth was we took whatever we could find. We didn’t count the pills. We just swallowed.”

“What happened after?”

“Nothing much. I got sent to a state-run psychiatric facility for thirty days. Faith Spencer got buried. WTL paid for Faith’s funeral expenses as a ‘gesture of Christian charity.’ Leave it to Fuller to turn a suicide pact into a public relations win for WTL. The church closed that camp, but they still have others. There are kids there now, right now at those camps. More weight… They’re all getting crushed.”

“Sam…” Kingsley rubbed her shoulders trying to get her to relax. Instead of relaxing, she pushed back from him and sat up in bed.

“This is why you have to make the club happen,” Sam said. “The kingdom you want to build—you have to do it. You have to stop Fuller and WTL from building a church in our town. Faith Spencer is dead because of him and his camps, and he’s a hero to his congregation because he threw some bills at her family to upgrade her coffin.”

Kingsley stretched out his arm and touched her hair. She leaned her face into his hand and closed her eyes.

“I will build my kingdom,” Kingsley said, “and the gates of Fuller’s church will not prevail against it.”

Sam grinned broadly, and tears lined her eyes. She had never looked so beautiful to him.

“You’re going to hell for that,” she said.

“I’m taking you with me.”

“I go where you go,” Sam said. “Someone has to take care of your boots.”