Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (19 page)

64. What Comes Around Goes Around

“Do you know of any places around Solitary that are, like, holy places?”

Mr. Meiners glances at the doorway to the empty class, then looks back at me. “Holy?”

“You know—something opposite of haunted?”

He raises his eyebrows as he starts collecting the tests on his desk. “There’s nothing around here that seems to fit that description.”

“Anything. Like an old church or maybe an old house. Somewhere that you know good was done.”

He thinks for a minute, sticking the tests in his faded leather briefcase. “Well, they say Marsh Falls has a magical quality about it.”

Yeah, I know that. Come on.

“Okay. But anywhere else?”

“You want more than one place?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

I don’t know what I want.

Yeah, you do. You want the opposite of that Indian Bridge. Or what’s underneath it.

Even though he’s wearing glasses, I can see the dark rings under Mr. Meiners’s eyes. As if he hasn’t been getting enough sleep.

He’s got his bag ready, and for a second I think he’s not even going to answer me.

Which is pretty typical of what he’s done the last year or so.

“The Corner Nook.”

I don’t expect to hear this. I might have thought of many places, but the bookstore and café on the main strip of stores in downtown Solitary?

“Really? The bookstore?”

“Used to be an old general store. One of those you might see in a movie or a television show.”

I shake my head. I don’t get it.

“I know—sounds crazy, huh? But that place—the owners of that store helped more people out than probably the entire town of Solitary.”

“Let me guess,” I say, thinking I got this. “They were an elderly couple. Kind of like a Mr. and Mrs. Mother Teresa?”

“Um, no,” Mr. Meiners replied. “They were actually a couple named Joe and Sara Evans.”

Everything suddenly stops.

There’s no way.

I blink and remember the field where Jocelyn showed me her parents’ gravestones.

Joseph Charles Evans.

It can’t be the same, can it?

“They came to this town and did some great things and really made that general store almost a safe haven. They were a godly couple.”

I shake my head, and all of a sudden these things seem to pop up in my eyes, making my vision all blurry. I wipe them away quickly.

“Did Jocelyn ever tell you about them?” he asks.

And of course it’s them.

Of course.

What comes around goes around. The circle of life. The gift that keeps on giving.

All the circular clichés my silly little mind can think of go off like fireworks.

Like the fireworks I was never able to see with Jocelyn.

“She didn’t, did she?”

I shake my head. “Her parents owned that place, right?”

Mr. Meiners nods, again looking at the doorway. “The place was bought and sold—gutted, more like—after they died. About ten years ago.”

“She never told me.”

“I can understand. She didn’t know how to grieve them when she was six. So she ended up spending the rest of her life trying to find a way.”

I want to say more to him, tell him how I miss her and ask how he helped her. But as I go to say something, he shakes his head.

“Check it out sometime,” Mr. Meiners says. “Let me know what you find.”

He leads me out of the room, and I know our brief conversation is over.

For now.

65. A Brief Lull

I don’t know how these things go, these guy-girl things. ’Cause honestly I haven’t the best of luck with them.

But the apocalyptic snow doesn’t come, at least not this year. Warmer weather comes to thaw the ground, and Kelsey is there to thaw my heart.

And she continues to make me believe.

Believe there is hope in today and tomorrow.

Not in anything grand she says, but in the small things she does.

Waiting at my locker in the morning as I come to this grave of a school. Kelsey can raise the dead, because I feel alive every time I see her.

Sometimes she’ll hold my hand at the oddest and most wonderful times. For no reason except that I have a hand and she wants to take it.

This little girl that I considered a mouse in my art class is now a roaring tiger who leads me around on a leash.

March arrives, and with it comes something bigger and heavier and harder and more real.

Is this love? Is it strong enough?

I don’t know. I think so, but I don’t know and I’m not going to say it.

I don’t want to ruin this.

I don’t want to overshadow the times I make her laugh for stupid reasons. I’m not that funny, but she laughs easily and blushes even easier.

She comes to my track meets even though I tell her I’m not that into them.

But I’m into her.

And yeah, she’s into me.

And sometimes when I think of it all, I think that we’re going to make it out of here okay.

That’s when I don’t think of anything else.

The storms aren’t always raging.

Yet when they come back you realize you’ve been lulled by the warmth and the softness and the smiles.

When they come back, they seem to hurt you even more.

66. Bummer

I finally get an invitation the first week in March. It reminds me of the bad old days when I was first here and kept finding random thing after random thing in my locker. The notes. The gun. The clipping from the magazine that was once in Jocelyn’s locker, with the Robert Frost poem underneath it.

Still don’t know where that came from.

Maybe my long-lost son will show up saying he sent it to me from the future.

This time it’s a yellow note with a day, time, and directions in handwriting:

Sunday 10 a.m.

North on Sable ten minutes. Look for logging trail on left by tree cut in half. Head down it until you reach the barn.

The last word gives me goose bumps.

Barn.

I think of the place Jocelyn led me to, where she was hiding Midnight.

Did she tell them about this place? Or is it commonly known?

I know—well, I’m about 99 percent sure—that this is from Mr. Meiners.

This is the group he’s meeting with.

I crumple up the note. I know how to get to that barn without directions.

“I have some bad news,” Kelsey tells me.

This is one of the rare days she’s wearing her glasses. They’re a different pair than when I first met her, a stylish pair, and I love them on her. She wears them when she doesn’t have time to put in her contacts or the lenses are bothering her for some reason.

“You failed a test?”

I’m joking, because Kelsey is a straight-A student. She gives a mild laugh.

“We’re going to see my brother next week.”

Next week is spring break, and Kelsey had said that they might be visiting her brother at the University of South Carolina. Making a family trip out of it. She even asked if I wanted to come along, but I said no.

I mean, even if things are okay, there’s the reality of everything. Like Mom. And, well, yeah, everything else.

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m heading to Cancun, so I’ll be busy.”

“Could you take me?”

“I’d love to. I’m riding my bike there.”

“Is that even possible?” she asks.

“Well, maybe technically, but I don’t know. Either the bike or my butt would give out before we’d make it.”

This gets a pretty big laugh out of her.

“The week will go by fast. I’m going to try and get my license. Can you believe it?”

“I can’t believe you’ve been driving your motorcycle all this time without getting a ticket.”

“Do they give tickets around here?”

She shrugs, and I know she’s the last person around who’d ever get a ticket.

“I’m bummed.”

I put an arm around her and squeeze her tight. Kelsey is tall and still growing, it seems, but she has such a slender waist. Sometimes she seems so easy to break, like a long, thin glass vase sitting at the edge of a kitchen counter.

“I’m really going to miss you,” she says.

“I know. It will be tragic for everybody.”

“You’re in a weird mood today.”

“No, this is the real me. I’m just not freaking out about anything.”

“Any more word on college?”

The warning bell rings for class, so we start heading toward the classrooms. I usually walk Kelsey to her class after lunch.

“Not really,” I say, giving her a soft nudge. “And you’re not my mom.”

“Well, you need someone responsible taking care of things for you.”

“Is that a proposal?”

She smiles and says she’ll see me later, then heads into her classroom.

The thought of spring break actually bums me out now too. I didn’t want to tell her because I want her to have a fun time. But I wanted Kelsey around.

Now I’ll just have—well—

Don’t think about it.

Yeah. I don’t want to break my mood.

I know something’s going to do that for me any day now.

Any day now.

67. Action

Ever since Jocelyn showed me the group of people meeting in the woods under Marsh Falls that one day, I’ve been curious about them. I’ve thought they were some kind of weird cult that meets and passes around a bowl and mutters strange things to each other.

But that’s when I let my imagination run wild. Because the group meeting is nothing like that. They’re just people getting together to sing and share and listen to somebody give a message. Just like any other church.

Church isn’t about the building, Chris.

Dad once told me that. I’m sure I heard it from someone else too.

I do my best that morning to make sure nobody is watching me when I’m in downtown Solitary. I park my bike and then go into the Corner Nook as I’ve been doing lately to see if there’s anything different or weird that I can spot. Just like always, there’s nothing strange about the bookstore and coffee shop. I order an iced tea, since I’m not a coffee fan, and then casually walk across the street.

Nobody sees me, and nobody follows.

I’m walking down the tracks, remembering that this is where I saw that haunted creepy boxcar. But it’s not there.

Did I ever see it to begin with?

I don’t know how this works. I really don’t. Seeing something one minute and not seeing it the next.

What are the rules and logic to how this “gift” works?

Rules? Logic? Yeah right.

I get to the point where I stop and go into the woods, still checking behind me every few minutes to see if anybody is watching. The barn is there like always, an old and abandoned building at the end of a dirt road.

Just a few cars are parked there. Maybe the people carpool to this hidden church in the woods.

Mr. Meiners greets me when I enter the barn. It’s light enough outside that there’s no need for lights inside the barn. It’s shadowy, but we can see decently enough.

Over the next ten or fifteen minutes, I’m introduced to half a dozen people.

There’s an elderly couple with the last name of Franklin, who supposedly have lived here for years. I wonder what kind of stories they could tell. Then there’s a woman named Tracy who’s older and heavyset and very nervous-looking.

Then someone calls me by name.

“Hi, Chris.”

The dark-haired guy looks familiar and says his name is Jim, but that doesn’t mean anything.

“Mr. Charleton,” he says, adding, “from summer school.”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “
Breakfast Club
guy.”

He laughs. He seems the same—upbeat and friendly and totally positive.

Of course someone like that is going to show up here. Instead of, say, Mr. Taggart.

“Glad to see you here.”

The last couple I meet turn out to be Oli’s parents.

Oli, or as Sheriff Wells told me last summer, Oliver Mateja. His father is Hispanic and greets me with an accent, but his mother doesn’t appear to be. She’s dark-haired but looks more Italian. They both seem to know me and even seem to be expecting me. Mrs. Mateja gives me a hug and leaves me smelling like her perfume.

I suddenly wish I hadn’t come.

I feel guilty being around Oli’s parents. I know I didn’t cause his death, but still I feel somehow like it had something to do with me.

We meet in the open area at the back of the barn. There are some folding chairs in a circle. Mr. Meiners starts off with a prayer, and then we sing some songs. It’s very casual—a bit too much so. I feel stupid during the singing since I don’t know any of the songs.

“I want to thank Chris for coming today,” Mr. Meiners says after the singing is over. “Chris—this is usually the time we share what’s going on with our lives and things we can be praying about.”

“Okay,” I say in a hushed voice.

They wait to hear what my prayer requests are.

It’s odd to think that I can share concerns or whatever with complete strangers.

Will the prayers even be heard? Will they carry more weight? Are they going to make me pray for them?

“I guess just, uh, prayer for my mom. She’s had a rough time since coming back here. And yeah—prayer for me. Just cause, uh, I can sure use it.”

Understatement of the century.

During the prayer something happens. These strangers all share something that is going on in their lives. But when Mr. Mateja prays, in his thick accent where it’s hard to make out the words, something inside me just snaps.

I feel tears coming to my eyes. But it’s not because of the grief that he’s sharing, about their sad days of missing their son.

No.

It’s because Mr. Mateja is praising Jesus and thanking Him for life and for breath and for health. He’s thankful.

He’s not asking for anything; he’s thanking God for all He’s done.

And it makes me feel awful and joyous at the same time.

Awful because I’m so not that way, but joyous because someone is like that.

Someone who lost his son.

But doesn’t God get that? Doesn’t He understand that?

I wipe my tears and stare at the ground below me to try and comprehend what’s happening inside of me.

I feel better. Safer.

I feel like I belong.

And for the first time since praying to God on that train and giving my life over to Him in the flawed way that I probably did, I feel like I get it.

These people around me seem to get it, and they’re showing me.

After prayers, Mr. Meiners starts talking again.

He talks about the prodigal son. He reads a bit of the Bible and then talks about a father loving and wanting the best for his son, even when he does dumb things.

I’m listening, but then I seem to jerk when Mr. Meiners says my name.

“And, Chris, this is something that we know, but that I thought I’d share since you’re here. I hope you don’t mind.”

I shake my head.

Is he going to use me as an example?

“I got to know Oli during his sophomore year. I was his guidance counselor, and that was the year when he was getting into a lot of trouble. His parents know all of this, but I wanted to share it with you. There were some run-ins with the law. He got busted for having drugs. He was involved in a fight and arrested after he beat up a kid.”

Beat up a kid.

That kid could have been me.

“I started to get to know him, and God worked in his heart that year. He was much like that son we were just talking about. He gave his life to Christ and began to mend his ways. I was fortunate to help him, and to help the Matejas, too, in their faith.”

I still remember Oli sticking up for Kelsey and me when Gus confronted us in the art room.

“He was trying to learn what to do with that faith and how to live by it,” Mr. Meiners said. “It wasn’t always easy for him. He still had his friends, and he couldn’t figure out how to tell them. At least at first. But eventually he did.”

I wait for more, but Mr. Meiners doesn’t say anything more about Oli.

So is that why he died? He found faith, and Gus and his father didn’t like it?

“Real, authentic faith isn’t welcome around here, Chris. But it is alive. It is real. And Jesus said, ‘For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.’ God is with us, right here in this barn. It doesn’t matter what point you’re at in life. God wants you to serve Him no matter what. Oliver did this—he was starting to do it before he died. But as we all know—even though we have grieved his loss—he is in a better place right now.”

I can’t help thinking of Jocelyn.

Same could be said of her, too. Right?

“Faith isn’t just believing in something, but it’s putting that faith in action.”

I nod and get what he’s saying.

Never in a million years did I ever imagine myself nodding at something like this in a deserted barn in the middle of a creepy Southern town.

I guess God had to bring me here in order for me to finally believe.

Now I wonder how exactly I’m supposed to show that faith in action.

Maybe I can do so with a sword and a spear. A
literal
sword and spear.

Because something tells me that Marsh and the others aren’t going to be happy knowing about this faith thing of mine. It’s real and it’s there and I can do something with it.