I pulled Cade’s jacket around my shoulders, pushing my arms into the sleeves, smiling as I remembered how Isaiah had pulled the hood over my head as we dashed through the grounds of St. Mary’s just hours prior. I tip-toed to my door in bare feet, slowly opened it, and slipped into the darkened hallway.
It was the same eerily silent corridor that greeted me each morning when I snuck out to head to the art room. Thankfully, I’d never run into anyone, but now that I knew someone was “covering” me, I’d made a quick mental note to make sure my back wasn’t to the door when I sketched again. No one needed to see what was on my canvas.
It didn’t take me long to roam down the stairs or to make it to the art room. I was usually already dressed for class on the weekdays when I’d come here, so the cool floor was jarring on my bare feet as I stepped through the threshold and headed straight for the supply closet.
The door thudded as I pulled it open, and it creaked so loudly I paused for a moment, looking over my shoulder. I half-expected Isaiah to be standing there, but instead, the only thing that moved in the distance were the dust particles as they danced through the air.
After walking a few steps into the supply closet, letting the smell of musty paintbrushes and mildew curve under my nose, I pulled on the tattered string and let the swinging lightbulb bathe the room in a faint glow.
The shake of my hand didn’t stop me from pulling down my sketches from the past week, along with my art journal that I’d sketch in when I had any down time during the day. I now replaced most of my down time with the game that Cade had downloaded onto my phone, but that wasn’t the point at the moment. With each piece of thick paper in my fingers, my stomach tightened at the things I found beautiful but also horrific.
The first was the sketch I’d done just two days ago, the charcoal still somewhat fresh on the paper. It was almost a blur if you were to look at it too quickly, but I knew by heart what it was even as I pushed it away. The spine of the girl, who I knew was me, was at the center of the sketch. Each vertebra was like a thick knot going down in a straight line with protruding ribs spreading to black smudges. Her head was bent down low with a messy bun of hair in fine detail on top, and the word mine was carved into the back of her neck as a thick hand laid on her bony shoulder.
I shuddered a breath as I pulled the next sketch out, which was the one that I’d drawn the first time I’d stepped foot in this art room as the sun still laid behind a blanket of night. It was half my face and the words Good Girls Don’t Break Rules over and over again, line by line, floating down the other side of the paper.
I didn’t even want to pull the last sketch out, so I didn’t. Instead, I grabbed the leather binding of my notebook and flipped through sloppy pencil sketches until my throat tightened so quickly I lost my breath.
I knew it.
There, staring back at me, from just a few weeks ago when I’d first started at St. Mary’s, was something I’d created in a lull of past trauma. I didn’t remember precisely the moment that I’d drawn it, or why, because that was how it was when I took pencil to paper. My mind went to a dark place, and everything else disappeared except for the shunned-away memories that were hidden behind a thick wall in the present. My finger traced over the curved lines of the building, focusing solely on the smeared lead-written words that read The Covenant Psychiatric Hospital.
It seemed I was right to feel the sting of familiarity as Isaiah and I pulled up to the chilling ivy-covered stone building just hours ago…but why?
Chapter Forty-One
Isaiah
“Who is this?” I slammed my phone down onto my uncle’s desk early Monday morning before anyone was up—well, anyone but Gemma. I already knew she was in the art room, drawing something with that adorable smudge of charcoal that was probably smeared across her soft skin by now.
My uncle sat at his desk and had no intention of moving as I stormed to the front and tossed my phone down.
“Did you wreck my car?” The crease in his brow was deep, but I knew it would lessen eventually.
“Not technically. Who is this man?” I asked again, nodding my head to the photo from Saturday night of Bain handing off a black duffel of guns at the Covens. “Do you recognize him?”
My uncle made no move to look at the phone. Instead, he continued staring up at me with distaste in his eyes. Jesus Christ. Fine. I pulled back, leaving my phone on the desk and sitting in the leather chair in front of him. “I didn’t wreck your car. Gemma did.”
His eyes grew wide. “What?!”
Shame filled me as I glanced at the books on the shelves, too guilty to even look him in the eye. I wasn’t afraid of what he had to say about that. But I did feel shame and guilt rock through my body like an avalanche. Cade’s, “I told you so,” echoed in the back of my skull like my own personal cadence after I’d filled the rest of the Rebels in on Sunday morning.
I glanced back at my uncle. “She recognized the Covens.”
His eyes grew even wider. “Wait, you took her to the Covens?” His face was a shade of red that sent a mild line of concern through me.
“Let me explain before you start throwing shit.”
&nb
sp; His teeth clanked so hard I heard the clink from across his desk. Impressive. “Bain had left during a party. So…we followed him. I took your car.” I gave him a pointed look. “And don’t act surprised. You know I take it when he leaves randomly through the night. Anyway, we followed him.”
My uncle's brows were still crowding his face, his jaw molded of marble as he continued to clench it. “And he went to the Covens?”
I pointed a finger at him. “Bingo. But why does Gemma know of the Covens?” An uncomfortable feeling split my chest open, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that I was more concerned with how Gemma knew of the Covens versus Bain selling guns in my father’s area, but the shock was still there. “If she knows about the Covens…”
“What did she say about it?” He paused, pulling my phone toward him. And we were past the wrecked car...just like that.
“She said that it looked familiar to her. But she didn’t know why.”