I drag the windbreaker over my head so I don’t get the inside of his coat wet, and then slide my arms into the sleeves. They’re about six inches too long, but the coat is heavy and warm from his body. I want to snuggle down into it and revel in this feeling.
“Better?” he says.
“Yes.” I’m still blushing. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then we lapse into silence, almost by accident. The rain forms a rhythmic lull, cocooning us with white noise, making this courtyard feel very private.
I study his hands where they rest in his lap. He has long fingers, the nails short and even. On his right wrist, the edge of a scar peeks from below his sleeve, almost pointing toward his thumb. The tiniest line of black ink sits above it.
A tattoo? I can’t tell. It could be a pen, but it seems embedded in the skin.
My eyes lift, and I find him watching me.
I swallow. I don’t know what to say.
He shifts, just a bit, but enough that his sleeves cover the scar and the mark. The movement seems very deliberate. “Any new e-mails from that guy in the game?”
“Yes.” I force my voice to remain light, but the mention of Nightmare is enough to make me tense. “Any more e-mails from your father?”
His eyes level with mine. “Yes.”
I slide my phone out of my pocket and unlock the screen, then tap a few times to pull up Nightmare’s latest message. I almost don’t want to share, but he’s the only one who knows how bad the e-mails have gotten, and I’ve been desperate to tell someone all day.
I hold the phone up to face him. “Want to swap?”
He looks like I just asked if he wanted to rob a bank, but he pulls out his phone anyway, presses the obligatory icons, and hands it over.
I read. His dad sounds like a real winner.
Then Rev says, “Emma.”
I look up. He’s staring at me over my phone. His eyes are shadowed, his expression tense.
“What?” I say.
“Why would someone send you a picture like this?”
The image Nightmare sent is practically burned onto the insides of my eyelids. “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s not even a picture of a real person—”
“This image—this is your character in a game?”
All of a sudden, I regret swapping phones, as if I’ve shown him a picture of myself bound and naked. My cheeks feel hot. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have shown you.”
“Have you told your parents?”
I glare at him. “Your e-mail is from someone you know. Someone who obviously hurt you. Have you told your parents?”
We glare at each other for a long minute. Then he makes an aggravated sound and looks away. “I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.”
“Not good at what?”
He gestures between us. “This. I’m not—I’m not good with people.”
“I’m not either.” I take a deep breath and blow it out. “I am so much better with a screen and a keyboard.”
“My best friend met his girlfriend by exchanging letters for a month. Right now I am so envious of that.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay,” I say. “Turn around. Look the other way.”
He gives me a look, like, Seriously?
But I’m already scooting to turn around. He’s completely silent, so I have no idea whether he’s moving.
Then his back is a warm weight against mine, and I catch my breath. I didn’t mean to sit against each other, but now that he’s doing it, I can’t imagine moving away.
“Now,” I say, and my voice is a little breathless, “give me your number.”
He does.
I quickly tap out a text.
Emma: Better?
Rev: Much. If I’m too close, I can move away.
I flush, and I’m glad he’s looking the other way. I can feel each breath he takes. Despite the fact that we’re texting, this suddenly feels more intimate than it was a minute ago.
Emma: You’re not too close.
I’m blushing again. I need to get over myself. It’s his back.
Rev: You’re right about my father’s e-mail. I haven’t told anyone. It’s complicated.
Emma: So is that e-mail from Nightmare.
Rev: I don’t understand why. Especially if you don’t know him.
Emma: Do you play any kind of video games?
Rev: Sometimes I kill zombies on Xbox with Declan.
Emma: You ever play online? With other people?
Rev: Sometimes.
Emma: You ever play with a girl?
Rev: I’ve never really paid attention. But I would never send someone a message like that, even if I was a hard-core gamer.
Emma: A lot of guys feel like it’s a male space. They get angry if a girl comes in and beats them.
Rev: The same thing happens in jiu-jitsu. Usually the guys just need to get over themselves.
My eyebrows go up.
Emma: You know jiu-jitsu?
Rev: Yes.
I swear to god, I almost type, No wonder you have an amazing body.
But seriously. No wonder.
Emma: So if a girl came in and kicked your ass, you wouldn’t get all bent out of shape about it?
Rev: No. I’d probably ask her to do it again so I could study her technique. But jiu-jitsu is face-to-face. This is not.
Emma: I think that’s part of the problem. I read once about how fighting in a game releases the same brain chemicals as fighting in real life—but fighting online removes any humanity from it. It’s all in your head. Even with a headset and a voice, no one feels real. It’s easy to drop your guard and make friends. And it’s just as easy to tear someone down. I don’t just mean from my side. If I win a mission, I’m happy—but to someone on the other side, do they feel even worse because they were defeated by someone who their brain doesn’t think exists? And when they pair that anonymous defeat with a woman’s real voice/likeness, is that somehow emasculating? Like, where does the rage come from?
After I send the message, he’s very still. I can still feel each breath as it enters his lungs. Rain pours down around the atrium.
“I’m thinking,” he whispers.
I smile. “Okay.”
Finally, his upper arm brushes mine as he writes back.
Rev: I think rage comes from a lot of places. I worry about my father sometimes, that I inherited his violence, that it will somehow find its way out of me. When I was young, when I was taken away from him, I was afraid of anyone else hurting me. Geoff and Kristin offered to sign me up for Tae Kwon Do, but when we went to register, I saw a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class, and I wanted to do that. It’s all grappling. Very physical. They almost refused to let me do it. But the instructor convinced them to let me give it a try. I loved it.
“There’s more,” he says.
“I’ll wait.”
Rev: I see a lot of people come through the gym. I think a lot about what they bring to the mats. When I was young, I brought a lot of fear. Sometimes, people bring a lot of anger. They just want to fight—and that’s okay, too, because they quickly learn that there’s no place for rage on the mats. There’s really no place for fear, either. It helps teach control. I think that’s what I like so much about it. But if someone on the mats gets into trouble, it’s easy for someone to see and step in. How can someone step in here, if you don’t ask for help?
Emma: But that’s the thing—do people on the mats ask for help? Or do you just step in? Do they want help?
Rev: I think it would depend on the situation.
Emma: What if a woman said she didn’t want help?
Rev: Then I wouldn’t help.
Emma: What if I tell you, right now, that I don’t want help?
His back rises and falls as he takes a long breath. I’m tense, expecting him to push.
But then he doesn’t.
Rev: OK.
Emma: Thank you.
Rev: Th
is was a good idea. The back-to-back.
That makes me smile. “I do what I can,” I whisper.
“Shh,” he says. “I’m texting with someone.”
I grin and slide my fingers across the screen. I don’t want to talk about Nightmare anymore.
Emma: I didn’t expect you to be some kind of martial arts junkie.
Rev: What did you expect?
Emma: I have no idea. I didn’t expect you to be a sports junkie, either, but then you look like *that.*
Rev: It’s not just jiu-jitsu. I also do Muay Thai and yoga.
I laugh and turn my head. “You do not do yoga. My mother does yoga and she does not look like you.”
His arm brushes mine again as he texts a response.
Rev: It helps with flexibility.
Emma: What’s Muay Thai?
Rev: Kickboxing. And *you* didn’t strike me as a gaming junkie.
Emma: Inherited. My father is a game designer.
Rev: You and your dad are close?
Emma: Yeah. He’s busy all the time, but … yeah.
He doesn’t respond for a moment, and I realize that maybe this is a painful line of conversation for him. For the first time, his back is tense against mine.
I slide my fingers across the screen.
Emma: I saw the scar. At the edge of your sleeve. Your father?
Rev: Yes.
Lightning flashes in the sky, followed by a loud crack of thunder. I jump and catch my breath. Texy whines and crawls under the bench. The light reflects off the rain, closing us into this space.
Rev turns his head, and I can see just the edge of his profile. “Are you all right?”
I laugh a little, but nothing is funny. “I just don’t like thunder. Are you all right?”
“No.” The side of his hand brushes mine where it hangs by the bench. Sparks travel up my arm, and I have to remind my heart that it’s just a casual motion.
But then his hand closes on mine. I freeze.
“Is this okay?” he whispers.
This would be so mawkish and unbelievable if I tried to explain this moment later. The rainstorm, the bench, the darkness. But his breath is fractured and his manner is uncertain and this feels as significant for him as it is for me.
“Yes,” I say. “Do you want me to let go so you can text?”
He inhales—and his breathing steadies. He turns his head, and his breath brushes my neck. “I don’t want you to let go.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve never told anyone about this,” he says. “My parents know. My best friend. That’s it.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
His fingers grip mine just a little more tightly. “I want to. I want you to understand why—why it’s so hard for me to tell anyone.”
“I’m listening.”
“My father ran his own church,” he says. “I don’t know how many people followed him, because I was very young, but to me, it seemed like there were a lot. He would ask for blessings every week—money, in other words. He would tell me that God was providing for us, and I believed him. Now, I’m aware he was a skilled con man—but maybe not. Maybe he really did believe that they gave him money because he was blessed by God.
“Whichever, it was enough to keep us in a big house, in what I now know was a fairly nice neighborhood. At the time, he told me we were surrounded by sinners. He said the devil lived in those houses. If kids were playing in the yard, the devil had lured them there. If people were jogging, the devil was chasing them. I was afraid to go outside without my father, because it seemed the devil was everywhere.” A pause. “Now, when I think back, I think the devil was in the house with me.”
His fingers are wound through mine, his grip firm. Not too tight—just enough that I know he’s not letting go anytime soon. I wonder if he needs the anchor.
“My father would set up these tests,” Rev says. “He would say that if God wanted me to succeed, I would succeed. If I wasn’t devout enough, or holy enough, or whatever enough, it was my father’s duty to solve the problem.” His voice tightens, and I’m not sure if it’s anger or fear or shame. “When I was six, he wanted me to copy an entire page from the Bible. My hand started to cramp, and he decided the devil had taken control of my arm. He took a knife, and he started cutting, and he said my screaming was the devil fighting to stay inside—”
“Rev.” Emotion grips my throat, and I feel like I’m a heartbeat away from crying. “Oh, Rev.”
He turns his head again and I can see his profile. “Sorry.” He sounds abashed. His fingers grip mine. “I didn’t mean to get so graphic.”
I turn on the bench, then wrap my free hand around his. My little finger brushes the scars under the edge of his sleeve, and his breath stops.
But he doesn’t pull away.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
“Always.”
“Did your mother—I mean, your birth mother—do anything to stop him?”
A breath. “She died when I was born. He used to tell me that she died fighting off the devil. Once I got away from him and started learning how to be normal, I wondered if he’d lied about her death. I had this moment where I was sure he’d made it up, that she was out there somewhere missing me. But Kristin—Mom—has a huge file on me, and my mother’s death certificate is in there. Cause of death: uterine hemorrhage. So that much is true.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“That’s why his e-mails have me so rattled. Even after all this time—it’s like he still has this hold on me. I’m afraid to disobey. It’s getting harder and harder to not answer.” He swallows.
“Is he in prison?”
“No. He surrendered parental rights as part of a plea bargain. He served one hundred and eighty days. I have no idea where he is now.”
One hundred and eighty days, after torturing Rev for years. It feels like a joke.
“Are you worried he’ll come after you?”
“Yes. I worry about it every day.” A long breath. “I’ve been afraid to leave for too long, like he might show up at the house or something. I worry that all of this is a test. I worry that I’m failing.”
“And you don’t want to tell your parents?”
His breathing is fractured again. “I don’t know what they’ll do, Emma. I’ve never hidden something from them.”
“Do you trust them?”
He sniffs, and I realize he’s crying. Not full out. Just a tear. He might not even be aware of it. He doesn’t answer.
I turn on the bench to look at him. “Rev,” I say. “This is a big deal.”
“I know.”
Nightmare is anonymous. His e-mails suck, but I can close my computer and pretend he doesn’t exist. Rev’s father is real. A true threat. “Do you want to tell them? I can go with you if you want.”
For the longest moment, I feel like a total fool. Rev’s going to scoff. He’s going to tell me I don’t understand.
He’s going to do exactly what I did to him, when he pushed about the Nightmare e-mails.
He doesn’t.
Rev stands up. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”
SIXTEEN
Rev
Saturday, March 17 9:06:16 p.m.
FROM: Robert Ellis
TO: Rev Fletcher
SUBJECT: Question
Do you ever think of me at all? Or have you been tempted away so thoroughly?
I’m having the most bizarre emotional experience.
There is another e-mail from my father on my phone.
There is a girl walking next to me.
I’m taking her to my house.
It’s pouring rain and we’re holding hands and I’m soaking wet. I’m freezing on the outside and warm on the inside, and I both want this moment to end and go on forever.
I shove my phone into the sodden pocket of my hoodie. I only checked because I thought it might be Geoff or Kristin.
?
??What just happened?” says Emma.
My movement must have been a little too forceful. “My father sent me another e-mail.”
“Do you write back to any of them?” She looks up at me. Her hair is plastered back from the rain, and her eyes are huge.
“Only the first.” I wince. “I told him to leave me alone.”
She doesn’t respond to that. We walk in silence for a while.
“Do you think there’s a part of you that wanted to talk to him?”
“Yes.” No mystery there. “And I know that sounds weird.”
“No, I think I get it.” She shrugs. “I don’t like my mother, but she’s still my mother.”
“You don’t like her?”
“She doesn’t like anything about me either. She thinks I’m a slacker wasting all my time playing games on the Internet. It’s basically the same way she feels about my father, but she knows she can control me.”
“Your parents don’t get along?”
She snorts. “They must have gotten along at some point, but not now. Mom is all about eating healthy, working out, and spending seventy hours a week at her job. Dad is all about eating nachos, staying up all night, and also spending seventy hours a week at his job.”
“So they’re never home.”
“Not a lot, no. But really, that’s better. When they’re home they snipe at each other. When he’s not home, Mom snipes at me.”
No wonder she doesn’t feel like she has anyone she can tell about the guy sending her those hateful messages.
“So you think your mother is disappointed that you’re doing what your father does?”
“I know she is. And it sucks. I’m good at game design. I love the creativity of it. I write out whole storyboards. I have my own game, and a whole community! But she—”
“Wait.” I use our joined hands to pull her to a stop. “You have your own game?”
Her cheeks turn pink, even in the rain. “It’s nothing. It’s small.”
I stare at her. “Your own game. Like—you built a computer game?”
“It’s nothing. Really.”
It’s literally the most fascinating thing in the world and she says this like it’s nothing. “Emma—I don’t know anyone who can write a computer game. Are you kidding me? Can I play it?”