—J
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The front door is already open when I get there. Heat licks the back of me as I stare outside. It's a misty, humid evening, today's earlier rain evaporating and disappearing into the trees. Freedom. It's right there, as Lisa said it would be. What she said she'd make happen. Turn around. Turn back. Go get her.
But I swore I wouldn't, and so I don't. I take a step forward in the direction of freedom. But then something hard slams against the back of my head. Searing pain erupts, rattling my skull. With a scream, I fall forward onto the porch with a thud.
"Where do you think you're going?" Turning with a gasp, my heart stops dead when I see none other than Father Aaron towering over me, bloodied face scrunched with evil. Throwing aside a plank of wood he's just hit me with, he grabs me by the hair and yanks me.
"No!" I kick and flail, but he keeps his grip on me.
"You can die in the fire you created devil bitch!"
Jerking me to my feet by my hair, his hands wrap around my throat.
"Stop!" I choke, seeing thick, black smoke billowing from the door he's dragging me back to. Oh no, Lisa. Where is she? Is she dead?
"You thought you could fool me? Turning my own daughter against me?"
"You turned my grandmother against me!" I scream at him. "You are not a lord or godly. You're a monster! You'll always be one!"
Drawing back his hand, he hits me across the face, far harder than he's ever done before. I fly back, landing with a horrendous crash on the porch steps that crack beneath me. Tumbling to the ground, I can't breathe or think about anything other than the throbbing pain as Father Aaron's deep husk of laughter sounds in the air around me. "Both your attempts of killing me were pathetic. You will never defeat me."
Grabbing my arm, he pulls me, and it feels like it might tear from my socket. Just before the devil drags me back to the fiery pits of hell, Lisa comes out of nowhere. She slams into Father Aaron's side, knocking him off balance. Letting go of me, he howls out in pain when he lands against the knife still in his back. It buys us enough time for Lisa to yell, "Go, Jennie!"
She's alive, and I've never felt relief like it as she helps me stand. Though the moment she does, something explodes inside the house, and I scream from the loud, deafening boom. Broken glass and splinters of wood hit me as the force from the explosion knocks us forward.
"Fuck," Lisa rasps after landing on top of me. Reaching behind her, she pulls a shard of glass out of her arm.
"L-Lisa," I whimper, seeing Father Aaron rise and running straight at us. "Look out!"
Father Aaron catapults himself at Lisa. Flipping over, I claw at the ground to get away from them as they fight and thrash on the floor. When I hear a yell, I turn back, relieved that Lisa has gained the upper hand. With her hands around her father's throat, Lisa leans over him and squeezes his neck. From inside the house is a scream. Penny.
"Wh—where's Penny?" Father Aaron gasps. "What did you do?"
"Shut up."
Father Aaron grins cruelly. "You're…really going to leave…your own mother to burn?"
"She is not my mother!" she yells at him as Penny's screams for help wail from the house. Lisa squeezes her eyes shut, sweat dripping from her forehead. "She…she was going to. I just wanted to get her to stop. She tried to kill me!"
"And now you're killing her." Father Aaron laughs. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
"I'm nothing like you!"
"Lisa, no!" I scream when she lets go of Father Aaron and runs back to the house where Penny's screams have gotten worse. Fire licks the doorway now, and when I glance up, the whole house is covered in flames.
It's impossible. There's no way she can go in there to get her. That's why she stops on the porch because she knows it too. But her lapse in judgment gives enough time for Father Aaron to get up. With a devilish glint in his eye, he charges Lisa, who hasn't realized.
Father Aaron's going to push her inside. There's no time to yell or warn her. Grabbing a long shard of glass from the ground beside me, I run after Father Aaron just as he grabs Lisa's shoulder. Attempting to use his weight to push her into the fire waiting inside the house. Lisa captures the door frame just in time, and I let out a scream as I drive the glass into the back of Father Aaron's neck. He grunts. The glass slices my own hand as I push it in further, and he gurgles. It allows Lisa to grab and whirl him around, flinging him inside where the inferno happily engulfs him. And just like that, he's gone.
Father Aaron is dead.
Grabbing my wrist, Lisa drags me down the steps, and we run. The cool, smoky breeze hits me as our feet pound the dirt until we can't anymore and collapse on the grass a little away from the fire.
Breathing heavily, Lisa rolls onto her back, black hair clinging to her forehead from blood and sweat. A sheen of moisture gathers in her eyes as she stares up at the sky, and my bottom lip shakes.
"Lisa." I crawl to her and grab the sides of her face, smearing some of my blood on her skin. "Are you okay?"
"She wouldn't stop," she whispers, wisps of smoke coming from her breath. "I-I lost it. I pushed her, and she fell down the stairs. I just wanted to get to you. I didn't mean—"
She's talking about Penny.
"She deserved it," I say, surprised by the ferocity in my voice. I don't sound like me. Am I callous now? Penny was her mother and a victim in her own right. But I won't forget her helping Father Aaron to rape Rosé and me. "She deserved to die in that house with him." Lisa turns her head away, but I drag her back. "Look at me." She does, eyes locking with mine for the first time. "It wasn't your fault. You saved my life."
"With consequences. You can't come with me, Jennie. We can't have a life together."
"Wh—what do you mean?" Tears tumble down my face from her words. "You're…breaking up with me?" I wince from the stupidity of how it sounds, knowing I shouldn't even call it that.
"There are things I had to do, things you don't know about, to get you out. And you'll hate me for what I've done."
"What are you talking about?" I never imagined, after listening to her plan about murdering her father and escaping, would involve losing her in the process. She nearly died, and now she's saying we can't be together? My chest tightens, and I suddenly can't breathe. I have no one else but her.
"There was a problem with our plan, and that was John. I knew it all along; I just didn't tell you because it'd distract what you needed to do. I couldn't take them both on if it came to it." My head shakes, and I'm confused at what she's trying to say. "I went to his room. Rosé was there. He saw the knife in my hand and asked if I was going to kill him. I told him only if he got in my way. He said that he was bored, bored of serving my father who had promised so much but failed to give, and knew I'd eventually snap and kill them all. He bargained with me. Promised if I let him live, he'd leave, and I wouldn't see him again. He'd give me money and leave the door and gate open so we could get out if we succeeded, and he wouldn't tell the Brotherhood. He wouldn't tell them about you, under the condition that I leave Rosé with him."
Eyes widening, I let go of her to put my hand over my mouth.
Oh God.
"Y-you—"
"I left her there." Clenching her teeth, she sits up so I can no longer see her face. "I understand if you hate me, but my loyalty was to you, and I couldn't save her. Not when you're all I care about."
"John murdered her. In the worst way. You knew he would, didn't you?"
"Yes. I told you about him, remember? He's a psychopath, Jennie."
"And you left her. You let him live!"
"I let him live so I could save you!" She turns to me and grabs my arms. "How else did you think we'd get out? He was the only way."
"And you're going to take his word for it?"
She pushes her hands through her hair. "I had no choice."
"You did have a choice. For all I know, you left her because you hated her!"
"I hated her," she agrees. "But that doesn't mean I wanted her dead. I tried to reason with him, but he refused. It was either you or her, and I chose you. Hate me all you want, but I'd always choose you."
"And now you're tossing me away."
"There's nothing I can give you. I'll be the omen that will remind you of everything that happened here. The nightmare you can't shake. And if John does break his promise, if you stay with me, you'll be dead anyway, and all of this would've been for nothing."
My bottom lip shakes, and I feel like I'm going crazy. A part of me disagrees with her, even hates that she turned her back on Rosé and subjected her to a violent death at the hands of someone she shouldn't have let live. But then, she never said she was going to save Rosé when we spoke about the plan. That's the other part, a dark piece of me that doesn't seem to care about the wrong. My little black heart craving hers. Even now, after her confession, I want her to stay with me forever.
How can I move on with my life without her? What life would I even live?
"Where will you go?"
"I haven't thought that far ahead." I wipe my dripping nose with the back of my hand, my heart splitting into two. "I'll just drive away. You won't see me again, I swear."
Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out keys to her father's black Mercedes. "You can drive?"
"He taught me, and I watched him a few times. Can't be that hard." My head hurts too much to worry about licenses and the cops pulling her over. And why Father Aaron would teach Lisa to drive when he hated her. "And there's something else."
Reaching into her back pocket, she pulls out a folded chunk of paper. Her ruined sketchbook. The only thing, aside from the clothes on her that she took from the house. Taped back together. "I know what you saw, and I know you probably never want to look in it again. But I want you to see that it's not what it looks like. To see that it was always you."
Dropping the journal on my lap, she gets up, expression scrunching with pain as she stands. Whether it's from her injuries or walking away from me, I can't be sure. Either way, it looks too easy for her to do it.
Without saying another word, not even a goodbye, she limps over to her father's car parked nearby. My heart pounds as I flick through the pages, once again laying my eyes on the beautifully sketched imagery of Lisa's world.
The pages that follow have me choking up and sobbing. They're vivid, detailed, and it's like looking at an old movie reel. Some drawings are a pretty young girl, often lost and scared as she witnesses things that a child never should. Young Lisa, I realize, living a life of absolute torture. Lonely and sad. My heart connects with the lead that's created her.
Turning to the next page, my stomach twists. A pair of wrists slit open and gushing with blood. Even though it's just a drawing, it still pains me, knowing that she did this to herself. Knowing it's from memory. But then it changes. First, there's Jisoo, only two, one the picture I saw when Rosé showed me. But then Jisoo's face changes to mine, and every page I turn, there's me.
In the room together. Me asleep, awake, smiling, crying, and angry. As if she watched me when I wasn't looking, studied me as much as I did her in secret. Compared to the other drawings, these are lighter, happier. Glassy eyed me with flushed cheeks. My face, my hair, and my hands her favorite to sketch. Touching her, holding her. I'm fully naked in one, and I can hardly believe my eyes at the transformation I never noticed in myself. For the first time, I consider myself beautiful and womanly. Page, after page, after page. It's obsession and darkness. Those times she ignored me. When she was silent. She still drew me, thought of me, wanted me.
I am different to her.
With my heart in my throat, I tear my eyes from her book. She's nearly at the car, and my head spins. What will my life be like without her? Nothing would be the same because I'm not the same.
Gran's dead. My parents might as well be. I'll be on my own, living a lie and holding onto a secret nobody would ever understand. And if I did tell anyone, I'd get unwanted attention for all the wrong reasons. The girl that was kidnapped and raped by the local priest. That's if I'm even believed.
My body shakes as I stand, knowing I can't let her drive away from me. Not like this. "Wait!"
She stops, and I start running. She turns around, and I jump into her arms, making her fall back against the car.
"Don't leave me," I plead, kissing her face, her parted, shocked lips. She stares at me like she can't quite believe that I'm here. That I ran after her. Always thinking she doesn't deserve it. "Don't leave me, please. Don't drive away and leave me here."
"The Brotherhood—"
"Will never find us," I say with determination. "We can change our identities and move away. I'll sell my grandparents' house, and you can get your inheritance. We can run. Go wherever we want. Don't do this to me—don't leave me. Not after everything."
"You'll be running for the rest of your life." She grabs the back of my neck and leans her forehead against mine. "I can't do that to you—I love you too much."
"I'll run until I can't if it means I stay with you.
"Jennie…" Her lips crush against mine, stealing my breath and giving me my answer. Wrong or right, it doesn't matter as long as we're together. In the end, we're just silhouettes against a house on fire. Inside burns the soul of a girl who lost everything, only to gain so much more from the ashes.
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