How to Save a Life(30)

“She was gone,” he said, his words dropping like stones between us.

“What do you mean?” This is it. This is where the truth lives…

“She moved out of Planerville.”

“Because…?”

“Because her dad died in the shooting. Shot in the head. Just like I’d seen in my dream.”

“Oh Christ…”

“There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t help her dad, or anyone else at that factory. I couldn’t stop it. I told you the kids ragged on me about predicting the future…lottery tickets and all that shit, but it doesn’t work like that. No premonitions. Whatever these dreams are, they come back to me in the moment, not before. I don’t wake up with them. They hover just out of sight, until the time comes for me to remember.”

Evan shifted on the log so he could look at me. “But that doesn’t keep me from feeling that there is some purpose to what I can do. I just can’t see it yet. But I’m tired of feeling like it’s unnatural or wrong or that it makes me a freak. I told the doctors at Woodside the truth, Jo. It’s in my dreams. Or from my dreams. I don’t know how or why. I’ve moved beyond hows and whys. I just want to be.” He held my face in his hands, his eyes begging me silently. “Can I, Jo? With you? Or is it too much?”

“It’s not too much,” I whispered. “I’m here, Evan. I’m not going anywhere.”

He pulled me to him then, and held me for a long time, breathing deeply, like one long sigh of relief.

“But I’m scared,” he whispered into my hair. “I’m scared it’s ruined my future. I’m scared I’ll never be free of what happened here. That it will dog me forever.”

“Do you still have those dreams?” I asked quietly.

“Not often,” he said, pulling away to look at me. “When I do, I’ve learned to keep them to myself. Until now.” His eyes held mine, unblinking. “Now I just dream about you.”

“About my scar.”

“Yes.”

“I told you it wasn’t a car accident and you said that you already knew. You had a dream?”

“Yes, Jo. I knew. Like a flash of something once forgotten and now remembered.”

“Once forgotten and now remembered,” I repeated.

I touched my fingers to my scar and it seemed I really felt the texture of it, the little interruption of smooth skin. All the lies of how it got there began to loosen their grip and fall away. The truth I’d buried for so long, unspoken and unacknowledged—even in my poetry—cried out to be heard. He’d told me his truth, and now it was my turn. I leaned in to him and he put his arms around me at once.

“I did it. I did this to myself.”

“I know. Tell me why.”

“To make him stop.”

The circle of his arms flinched, then settled. I rose and fell against his chest as he pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “Your uncle.”

“He called me his pretty girl. Who’s my pretty girl? I wanted to puke when I heard it. It meant that later that night he’d come…”

Evan held me tighter as my breath hitched.

“I didn’t want to be his pretty girl anymore. I thought if I made myself ugly, if I stopped being pretty he would stop. So I took a screw…” I gripped Evan’s hands hard.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m right here.”

“I took a screw and carved a path down my cheek. The skin tore open and the blood came out. The pain was like nothing I’d ever known but mostly I felt relieved, Evan. Because whatever he wanted from me came pouring out too and it was the end. I wasn’t his pretty girl anymore. It was over.”

“Was it?” Over my head he sniffed and whispered, “God, please say yes.”

“I went to bed that night, bleeding all over my pillow and nightgown. I waited for him to come and see. I was ready. I had it all planned out. He’d come in and see what I did. How I’d cut him out of me. He’d say, ‘My pretty girl is gone forever.’ He’d leave, close the door behind him and never come back. Ever. And I could go to sleep. I was so tired. So f*cking exhausted. Finally, I could have one night to sleep without fear.”

Evan’s grip on my hands was just short of painful. But I wanted it. I needed the solidity of him.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I fell asleep. I don’t know how. I was in so much pain. Maybe the shock… Anyway, I woke up and I had a burning fever and my mother was screaming. She came in to wake me, saw the blood and the gash, and she screamed and screamed. She thought someone had broken into the house and attacked me. God, I wish that were true, because the truth destroyed her…

“You told her,” Evan said.

“I told her everything. Jasper tried to deny it, but even the family members who thought my mother was crazy took one look at my ripped-up face and knew I wasn’t lying. Who would do something like that to themselves? And my mother… She couldn’t take it. She cried and cried, shut up in her dark bedroom for days crying…”

The light’s off, Josie. Go away and let Mama be…

I shuddered. “It was too much for her. She couldn’t handle the guilt of what happened to me, and so she… She killed herself.”