The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

Stella did not.

They were back out on the beach, roasting marshmallows. Cynthia roasted two on her stick, a thin, pale scar on her thin arm.

Dianne on the log with her banjo. Isaiah and Stella, who didn’t talk and didn’t remember but who stored things away, in her mind shells.

Sorcha there with her fiddle.

Dianne and Cynthia sang now, filled up her head:

I know dark clouds will gather ’round me

I know my way is hard and steep.

But beauteous fields arise before me

Where God’s redeemed, their vigils keep.

I’m going there to see my Mother

She said she’d meet me when I come.

Roasting marshmallows. Cynthia, sitting on a log, taking the photo that’s on Stella’s bookshelf at the Jericho Centre, that time they gathered by the sea and laughed, a gathering of poor wayfaring strangers together one last time as the sun slipped into the horizon and a darkness came high over the bay except at the line where the water meets the sky, where an extraordinary eye of lavender and red deepened slowly into the night and sank into the ocean.

What Comes Forth from

the Water.

Then

Stella weeps on the dock in the dark. She can’t find her hands. Her body is numb. When she does find her cold hands she claps them together to warm them but they won’t fit, too stiff. The moon is covered by clouds. Her head is fuzzy from the drugged punch. She is wet. She fell in the water — she slipped and fell in the lake. The lake water was warm but she crawled out and onto the breezy dock. She wanted to find Cynthia. Cynthia had said she needed to get something. Cans? Is that what she said? Stella can’t remember. Then steps on the dock, the dock swaying, heavy steps. Frank and Tommy. Where is her father? The clouds blow away from the moon and the light beams down. A stocky shadow falls on the dock. A shadow from her memory. Tommy takes her by an arm and hauls her to her feet, Frank grabbing her other arm, at first saying they’re so sorry, whatever could have happened to poor Stella Sprague. She must be on drugs the way city kids are these days. Stella squirms and they shake her. We will not have you ruining everything, young lady. You will do as you’re told. They snigger. Stella wonders how they can be so heartless but she knows now that theirs is a heartless world, a world of owning and buying and selling, a society once bound in religion and now just bound in perversion, the vestiges of their strange cult used to justify whatever they want, empty rituals. That there is no god they believe in — there is nothing but power and personality, jesting and vying. That they’ll prey on each other as fast as they’ll prey on young things.

The wind has picked up and it blows through the hemlocks and brushes over the water, rippling the surface, water cresting, splashing against the dock, a briny smell rising off the water as it licks at the dock. The men holding her by the arms, bracing themselves, and the clouds blow over the moon and the light shines down on the lake and there are dark shapes in the swelling water, and Frank and Tommy push her. Stella is on her knees, the splintering wood piercing her skin, a sharp burning, and she grabs the oar out of the rowboat heaving up and down at the end of the dock. It’s so heavy. She clenches her fingers. Her arm tingles and then her whole body. She can move. She stands up. Stella smashes the oar into Frank’s knees and he crashes onto the floor of the rowboat that rocks and tosses him into the lake and Tommy grabs her by the hair, no different than a fish he’s hauled out of the water, and he shakes her, holding her by her neck over the water, the wind howling, and strange sounds, whistling sounds from the lake. She swings the oar and whacks Tommy in the neck. He drops her in the lake and falls in on top of her.

Silence under here and darkness, waterwaterwater. Stella sees her mother swimming towards her but then there is nothing but bubbles as Stella lets out the air in her lungs. There are shapes in the lake, moving quickly, grasping Tommy, swimming away as Stella is crashing up from the water, propelled upward, smashing down onto the hard wooden dock, the lake water streaming from her hair, the wind cold now on her rippling skin, the lake surging. She looks over and sees the men far away from shore now, splashing and screaming, a flash of moonlight on their waving arms, and then darkness, shrieks, and they go under.

That Bright Land.

Now

Stella sat upright. She was covered in sweat, wet all over, and her hand was a swollen, scorching club. Her mouth a shrivelled leather pouch. At Periwinkle. She knew this. But when? Summer? Yes. What year? Dianne over there on the sofa, still sleeping. Old lady Dianne. Middle-aged troll of a Stella who must get water. She didn’t want to wake Dianne but she needed help. She called her name. Stella spoke her name: DianneDianneDianneDianne.

Stella felt the name leap off her tongue. It filled her ears with warmth. No answer from Dianne. Stella clenched her muscles, willing herself to sit up. She took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet. “Dianne?” No reply. Stella lurched over and gasped as a short old woman watched her. Stella put her hand to her mouth and the lady did as well. It was Stella, in a mirror, Stella whose hair was now pearl white. Stella dropped down on the sofa beside Dianne. Stella touched her wrinkled hand. Cold, so cold against Stella’s hot fingers. Dianne still.

Stella recalled a dream. Or was it a conversation? Dianne telling her to