I tiptoed down the steps and found Mom at the kitchen table. She was reading the paperwork that came with my medicine. She shouldn’t have been so concerned—it was currently swimming with the sewage.

“Mom,” I said, but she kept staring at the paper, like I hadn’t said anything.

“Mother,” I said again.

She held up her hand. “Not right now, Delaney.”

“I wanted to ask you about . . . your parents. And—”

She swung her face to me and yelled, “I said not now!” And I could tell she’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She laughed, a sad, mean laugh. “Apparently, you.” I staggered backward, bumping into the door behind me. And for the first time I understood the idea in physics that sound is a transferable energy. Because her words transferred right into my gut.

I ran out of the kitchen, up the steps, into my room, and slammed the door. I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn’t a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire—smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while I got dressed for the play, I swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold.

Chapter 12

Decker showed up looking all prepped out. I would’ve teased him about his V-neck sweater and khaki pants, asked if he was late for a round of golf or maybe on the debate team, but we were barely speaking. Every sentence between us was pained and forced. Silence was easier.

We traveled the long expanse of barren road between our town and the city, bare trees creeping toward the edges, evergreens filling in the background. “What’s this show even about?” Decker asked after we’d been driving for twenty minutes in silence.

I had read the back blurb of the book. “Something about a fugitive ex-con who changes his life and becomes a mayor and takes in a dead prostitute’s kid during some French uprising. Oh, and the cop who chases him and commits suicide.”

Decker almost smiled. “For real? Sounds like a blast. Can’t wait.”

I ignored his sarcasm, because I really couldn’t wait. An ex-con who becomes something more than who he was destined to be. He was greater than his fate. He saved people.

Decker had bought us seats in the balcony. He stretched his legs in the aisle and slumped in his seat, resting his head on his hand on the far armrest. I kept my hands in my lap. At the movies, we’d usually share popcorn and a soda with one straw and bump hands and fight over the center armrest. Now, we were making sure we never touched each other.

We sat there, pressed against the opposite sides of our seats, unmoving for nearly three hours. I was riveted. So riveted I didn’t check to see what Decker thought. Until the end, the final act, when the ghost of the prostitute comes back for the soul of the ex-con, with the daughter hovering over the death bed, and they sing:

Take my hand and lead me to salvationTake my love for love is everlastingAnd remember the truth that once was spokenTo love another person is to see the face of God.

And I got that lump in my throat when something is so surprising and so perfect and I’m caught off guard by it. And everything kind of makes sense in a whole new light. I turned my head away from Decker and dabbed at my eyes with my sleeve. And while I was facing away, I felt Decker’s hand on my shoulder, his fingers falling through my hair. But by the time the crowd started applauding, his hand—and the moment—was gone.

Somehow the play had started to fix us. In the car, Decker started talking like he used to. Like there wasn’t some unspoken heaviness surrounding us. “No wonder the book was so long,” he said. “It’s his whole freaking life.”

“It’s, like, twenty people’s whole freaking lives.”

“It was good, D. I’m glad I came. I’m glad you made me start reading it anyway.”

“Wow, Decker, are you gonna start doing assigned reading now?”

“God no, what could top that?”

I opened my mouth to answer but I never got the chance because the minivan hit a patch of black ice and we started spinning. I braced myself with one arm on the dashboard and one arm on the window and looked out at the headlights dancing off the spinning blackness ahead. I heard Decker curse and the squeal of brakes finally catching traction again, and I felt the roughness of unpaved ground beneath us.