When you wake is everyone dreamingHe's so good at reverse psychology. He told me I wasn't safe with him and so I set out to prove him wrong.
When you wake you waste away
Heaven says that you are a sinner
So go back down you can't come in
No, I said, as I tried to limber up my stiff fingers and aching joints. I'm fine. You won't hurt me.
He didn't say anything. It was as if we had chosen to ignore the glaringly obvious in favor of embracing my defiance like the sun emerging from the clouds after a week of rain, stubbornness burning our flesh into cinders and ash when it was so very simple to nod and turn around and run.
A clear memory smacks me across the brain just then of a day when I was nine and Caleb held out a huge bouquet of wildflowers at the ball field.
For the little princess, he said, and he took a drag from his cigarette. Player's Light. He was almost seventeen and so cool we had freezer burn.
Thanks, I said as I took the flowers from him. I spun with them in my sundress and as I turned I saw Lochlan hurrying across the field to us.
Bridgie, come here! He called.
I dropped the flowers and ran to him. My nine-year-old self knew better than to be close to the Devil. Not like anything has changed.
Except everything has changed. Cole is dead. The boys are divided into loyalty camps, set to deploy at any moment. Jacob and Ben have since come and gone and now I am here trying to maintain an existence for us without any marketable skills.
Marketable skills, I said. Know there is a difference.
I didn't say it would be pretty and I know it's against Lochlan's bombproof judgement but it needs to be done and if it takes fifty percent of me then there's still fifty percent of me that might make it.
No one is happy but I'm stubborn and ready to prove everyone wrong. I can handle this, I think. I'm a professional at difficult lives and frightening moments with the Devil. I almost believe him now when he promises not to kill me, because he smiles when he says it, crossing his heart, hoping to die. And sometimes, in the dark, far from home, when my hands are clenched into knots I hope so too.