The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

“We had no choice.” His eyes were hard. “We did what we had to do.”

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Maybe it’s better for it to finally come out,” I murmured. “Be done with it.”

“No.” He leaned forward and took me by the shoulders. “You’re not sending us to jail.”

I squinted hard at him. What else hadn’t he told me? “I should speak with Jackson—”

“No.”

“But—”

“He can’t know you know.” He squatted next to me, his gaze flinty. “Do you understand? It would only make things worse.”

Again I nodded. “And how can you be sure he won’t talk, after we’ve finished the movie?”

“I’ll make sure of it by whatever means necessary.” I didn’t like the edge to his voice.

“Cole,” I protested.

“He won’t talk.”

Felicity

Seven Years Ago

It’s snowing again.

Everyone around here talks about how beautiful the snow is, but I hate it. Sure, it’s pretty coming down, but it traps you inside for days at a time unless you want to completely freeze your ass off, and then it gets dirty and melts and makes a horrible muddy mess.

But the snow is the least of what I hate about this place. I hate the one stoplight that flashes yellow at night (completely unnecessary), I hate the school (full of small-minded bitches who whisper behind my back every time I turn around), I hate the Walmart (where we go for absolutely everything, and I know all the checkers because they go to our warehouse of a church, which I hate most of all). Strike me dead, but God I hate that church.

Every single person in a twenty-mile radius who has been saved by their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (and that’s literally everyone) shows up on Sunday morning and Wednesday night and whatever prayer group in between to sing and pray and gossip and pass judgment on one another and come up with new ways to hate anyone who doesn’t hold the same beliefs they do. Like my beautiful mother, who, according to their rules, consorted with the devil and is currently burning in the fires of hell.

I tried with the church at first. I really did; I was lost, badly depressed. I’d hoped it would be like the church Jewel’s foster parents took her to, where everyone was kind and she made friendship bracelets and learned to sing. I wanted something to believe in and naively thought a church full of people who called themselves Christians would, I don’t know, love thy brother and do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but no such luck. Apparently, all churches are not created equal. Still, I kept going in hopes of meeting that one Sunday school teacher or friend who would be a life raft instead of a hypocrite who whispered behind my back and judged me for the “mistakes” of my mother.

The last straw came when I finally admitted to the church group that I was struggling to have faith in a God that would take away the single mother of a ten-year-old. After lots of hemming and hawing, they finally came up with the explanation that He had taken away my mother so that I would come to live with my grandparents and be brought back to the church. So basically they wanted me to put my trust in a God that murders mothers to get their daughters to worship Him. No thanks.

Iris was right to take the first bus to Miami. Good thing she got knocked up with me and her parents kicked her out (a claim they deny), or she might have wound up stuck here forever. Of course then she might still be alive, so there’s no use playing the coulda-shoulda-woulda game. It’s a game I play far too often, and it’s holy shit depressing.

I have a lot of time to think because I don’t have any friends.

Like right now, there’s a study group going on at Ellie’s house, and anyone who’s not playing in or cheering at the varsity basketball game over in New Bethlehem is there cheating off one another’s homework while Ellie’s mom cooks spaghetti with meatballs for them. I know because I used to be invited. But now I’m here in my cold little room by myself doing my trigonometry homework under the quilt that hardly keeps me warm. Whatever. Their loss. I’m the one whose work they’d be copying. I’m smarter than any of them.

The first year I was a novelty, the only new girl in a class of townies who had known one another since kindergarten. But these kids didn’t like novelty, and I was too shell-shocked to attempt to fit in. The second year I tried. That was the year I went to church and even joined the basketball team. I had a few friends for a while, but they all turned their backs on me around the time my waist slimmed down and my boobs showed up. For better or worse, I turned out looking exactly like my curvy, blond mother, save my nose, which I still haven’t quite grown into. And now all the girls hate me because all the guys want to screw me. Yeah, that’s right. Being a member of the Holy Cross Evangelist Church doesn’t stop you from being a spiteful bitch or a rapey asshole.

But I’m not gonna make the same mistakes Iris made. Not that I’m into any of those meatheads anyway.

So I quarantine myself in the bedroom that used to be hers and stalk Cole, Stella, and Jackson on the internet. Jackson’s pretty hard because he’s my age and stays out of the public eye—even all his social accounts are locked—though every now and then I’ll see a picture of him with his dad at an awards show or a charity event. Cole, of course, pops up on the internet all the time, but most of it’s PR bullshit. Red carpet pictures, puff pieces, movie star smiles. But Stella…she’s