She was walking past what she called the “monastery room,” then froze as her father’s words echoed from behind closed doors.
“…You only wanted Shawna because of that…thing, that hallucination. You acted like she was some sort of sign.” He barked a laugh. “We should’ve just left her where we found her.”
“John,” her mother gasped. “Don’t say that. It wasn’t a hallucination. You saw it too.”
Tara laid on her car horn again, and Shawna hurried outside to tell her she wasn’t coming. She didn’t wait for Tara’s reply as she turned and quietly snuck back in to hear the strange argument. Her heart was pounding as she heard her mother’s voice.
“…You wanted to have children.”
“My children, not our children,” he snapped back. “I only agreed to stay sixteen miserable years with you and keep Shawna because I was desperate, we both were, and I thought that…thing was real.” There was a chilling silence. “You tricked me.” His voice was low, an angry growl, and she almost didn’t hear his next words. “Somehow, you made me see things. You made me hallucinate. What did you do to me, you witch?!”
“No. No! It was real! It was an angel!”
She heard scuffling on the floor.
“John, we’ll take her out to that place where we first found her, like we promised, tonight, and…and those things, they’ll come for her. You’ll see. We must do as we were asked. We were promised, when she turns sixteen, that we would get everything we ever—”
“If they don’t…” His voice sounded dangerous, threatening. “If they don’t, Mary, I swear, I’ll make you both regret it.”
The room spun, and Shawna covered her mouth in fear of being sick. Her mother and father had always been kind of, well, insane, but a somewhat manageable-insane. This was just total madness. What was going on? Had they both finally lost it? What they were saying made absolutely no sense, but they sounded serious, and those last words made her heart stop. Regret it?
Her mother’s obnoxious parrot started squawking from the living room, “Holy! Holy! Pretty bird! Shut-tha-hellup!” It had learned that last one from John.
Her parents thought she had left for school with Tara almost twenty minutes ago, so she snuck out the back and raced into the woods behind their house. At first, she wasn’t going to go to school but then decided it’d be better if her parents didn’t get an automated tardy phone call. What if they sent whomever it was after her? She figured ‘things’ meant people in either white or black suits. But why? Was Mary trying to send her away somewhere? And what had John meant when he said ‘regret it’?
She kept running along the road even though her side hurt, and wished she hadn’t told Tara to drive on without her. She finally flagged down a passing truck and made it to school after the last bell. Rushing down the hall to her first class, she nearly smacked into the man of her dreams.
“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled, looking down and trying to edge past him.
Jarred, the most popular senior at Bozeman High, just looked at her like she was a cheaply made knock-off of a human being. He smirked and stepped past her. She watched the back of his perfect dark-hair, and even more perfect physique walk away. Without knowing why, she called out to him.
“Jarred.”
He stopped, looked around, and raised his eyebrows like it was an inconvenience to answer her. “What?”
She just whirled around and speed-walked in the other direction. After a few steps, she glanced over her shoulder. He was gone. The knots in her stomach tightened.