The Sacrificial Daughter (37 page)

Jesse was speechless. Her body swayed, dancing, but her mind seemed to have gone blank. "Then how can you say they are good?"

"If you look at this from their point of view, you might understand. If someone has to die, who would you rather it be? A cherished friend? A loved one, a neighbor, the man who sells you fish at the supermarket...or a stranger...maybe someone who doesn't try too hard to fit in...maybe someone who gets in fights and looks different."

"I would say none of them," Jesse replied, knowing that she was a liar.

"You don't get that choice and neither do they. If someone had to die, here in this gym. Who would you choose?"

John Osterman's face jumped into her head before she had a chance to think twice. No! Wrong. You don't get to pick a person to die in your place! Jesse berated herself, but John's face remained. Finally, she shrugged at the question and then sighed and then hung her head. "It's still not right."

"No, it's not. Sometimes there isn't a right or wrong, sometimes there is simply human nature. And to pretend that it's something that it isn't is a waste of time," Ky said.

"What about you," Jesse asked "Do you picture a face when you think about the next death?"

"Yes...I picture your face."

"What?" Jesse cried in disbelief.

"I picture your face everywhere I go and in everything I do," he explained. "You're always on my mind and every moment I'm not with you I spend thinking of you."

Jesse melted into him, but then pulled back. "You picture me even when you're thinking of the killer? That's just bizarre!"

"No, you goof!" Ky exclaimed. "I was trying to be romantic and change the subject at the same time. Our time is almost up and I don't want to spend it talking about things we can't change."

"Oh, sorry," Jesse said, feeling a blush in her cheeks at her silliness...or was it over what he had said? "Do you really picture my face all the time?"

"Yes."

"I think about you as well..."

The two high school seniors looked into each other's eyes. The music slowed and they began swaying so deeply in each other's arms that the gym fell away and they might as well have been alone.

They were so close that their breath mixed hot with each other. His hands were in her hair and hers were on his back. They drew closer still, until...

Their lips only brushed when a hand clapped Jesse on the back, stealing her moment.

"It's time!" someone squealed. Before Jesse knew what was happening, hands spun her about, and she came face to face with Amanda.

"What's time?" Jesse asked, breathlessly. She turned her head to find Ky, but like a ghost he had disappeared into the surging crowd. People were pushing forward to the end of the gym that doubled as a small stage and Jesse and Amanda were carried along with them.

"It's time to judge the costumes," Amanda yelled over the din. "Though I don't know why anyone would even bother. You are so totally a shoe-in for first prize."

"It wouldn't be fair, I shouldn't..." Jesse saw a hole in the crowd, she darted through it. The contest was out of the question. If she won, they would demand that she reveal herself. It was the last thing she wanted. Just then a boy in a bear costume knocked into her, making her broken ribs shriek in protest.

"Watch where you're going, Dil!" Amanda said, not noticing that Jesse had been trying to lose her. Shoving the bear out of the way she grabbed Jesse's hand and pulled the gasping girl around the side of the stage. "Don't worry. We rounded up some people in joke costumes just to make it more fun. Go right up there and stand next to Sandra. And listen, if that's you under there, Helly I'm going to pop you right in the nose for being so secretive." She said this with a smile.

Jesse was pushed from behind and found herself mounting the steps up to the stage. She desperately looked for Ky. What she saw instead were over four-hundred faces gazing up at her.

"Crap!" she whispered and turned back to Sandra. The girl's costume stopped Jesse in her place. Sandra was supposed to be a ladybug. She didn't look much like a bug, instead she looked hugely pregnant and splotchy; it was terribly unflattering. Sandra was so uncomfortable up there in front of her school that she seemed ready to puke.

"Is there a way out, behind the stage?" Jesse had to yell over the crowd noise.

Sandra looked at Jesse as if she were seeing a movie star. "Why?" she asked.

"I just need a way out of here! It's me Jesse Clarke! If they catch me..." Jesse couldn't finished her sentence.

The girl's eyes went wide realizing what could happen. She indicated the back of the stage. "Go through there and then head left. It will let you out behind all of them. I...I...will try to buy you some time."

"Thanks," Jesse said, pushing her way through the thick curtain. It was as far as she got in her escape. Sitting on stacks of folding chairs in the back stage area were Tina and the boy dressed as Zorro. Running through Zorro's fingers like a live thing was a long brown whip. It wasn't part of a costume; it was for real.

Turning her back on the whip was a hard thing to do. It made her skin crawl up and down her spine while her stomach turned to knots. She faced to her left, ignoring a question thrown at her by Tina and started hurrying to the exit, only to be brought up short at the sight of Ronny running at her.

"Guys! You'll never guess who I got to go up on..." he stopped short when he saw Jesse in her snow-white angel gown. "Hey, watcha doing?"

The way around Ronny was too narrow for her to get past him. Jesse turned back to the stage and saw Tina sliding off the stacks with an odd look on her face. Quickly Jesse thought up a reason for leaving. "I-I wanted to get my cell phone and call Helly. No one's seen her all night and I was getting nervous."

"I've been with Helly all night," Ronny replied. "Who are you? You don't sound familiar."

"I...I..." Jesse spluttered, edging away from Ronnie.

Just then the curtains parted briefly and Amanda came charging in, her face lit in a gigantic smile. "There you are! You guys are missing it. Sandra is rolling around on stage it's the funniest thing! Come on."

"Wait," Ronny called. "Who the hell is this?"

"It's...it's, I don't know. Does it matter?" Amanda asked. At the moment Amanda seemed the least frightening to Jesse and so she moved toward her. However, she was unable to keep her eyes off Zorro, whom she strongly suspected of being John Osterman.

"It wouldn't matter to me," Tina said. "Except she refuses to tell anyone who she is."

Suddenly a loud crack sounded. Zorro had come off the stacks of chairs and had snapped the whip. The end of it slithered back along the floor toward him.

"Hey, cut that out!" Amanda yelled at him. She then turned and whispered to Jesse. "John's been drinking. It might be best if you take off the mask for a moment. It'll be ok, I promise."

It wasn't going to be ok. Ronny stood a bare three feet to her right, while Amanda had her by the elbow. She was caught. Her words to Ky from earlier came back to her:
I'll gladly suffer any pain that they can throw at me
. This proclamation hadn't included a drunk boy wielding a whip. Jesse was literally petrified with fear and could do nothing as Amanda slowly slid off her mask.

"Who is it," Tina asked.

With her hair back to its natural blonde and all the make-up covering her bruises Amanda could only stare. "I...don't know," she said slowly, but then it hit her. "You...why? Why would you come back here?" Her tone was that of amazement. Jesse clung to it. Anything had to be better than the hate that she had expected.

"Save me," she begged in a soft voice as she felt her eyes fill with tears.

"Who is it?" demanded Tina a second time.

Amanda opened her mouth but no words came out. She only stared into Jesse's eyes in confusion until Jesse was turned about.

Ronny took a moment as well to figure out who she was. "It's that Jesse girl. Holy crap!"

"No way!" Tina cawed. Beyond the curtain a great bout of laughter assaulted them. Tina turned to it for half a second and then saw the mask in Amanda's hands. "I call this," she said and snatched it from the big blonde.

Ronny rounded on her quick. "You can't just call it, we'll flip for it."

"Helly has a mask already. You don't need..." Tina began, but John in his Zorro costume broke in.

"Forget the stupid mask," he ordered. "Get away from her." His whip was drawn partially back.

"No," Jesse screamed as Ronny leapt away and Amanda flinched back. John let the whip fly at Jesse, who at the last second turned. The end of the whip parted the silk and satin of Jesse's white costume as cleanly as if a knife had been taken to it, and then it lashed into her skin with a ferocity that paralyzed Jesse. It turned her into a horrible statue. Her beautiful face twisted by the pain.

A second later someone screamed, "No! Don't!"

By this, Jesse knew the whip was coming a second time and she tried to escape. She could only manage two faltering steps before the whip came again with its fury of pain. Again her body spasmed into a contortion of agony and she twisted in place trying to relieve the pain in some small way. Nothing helped. It seared relentlessly into her back and after a second her legs buckled and she fell to her hands and knees, gasping.

"Stop! Damn it!" Amanda was screaming. "This isn't right..." Jesse felt something pulling at her, but her left hand seemed stuck to the floor. "Run!" Amanda yelled in her ear. On some distant level, Jesse wanted to run, only she couldn't, her hand wouldn't budge.

In a storm of pain, Jesse turned her head and saw the problem. A nail stuck out of the center of her left hand. It was so painless that the hand didn't even seem attached to Jesse's wrist. Pulling her hand straight up off the thin metal freed her and then she was up dragged to her feet by Amanda.

The two girls threw themselves into the heavy stage curtain and fought their way to front of the stage, both falling to their knees the moment they had cleared it. For a span of seconds all sound seemed to stop as four hundred faces stared at the spectacle of the bloody angel.

Jesse could only look up for a few seconds, the pain was still too new, too fresh for her to hold her head up for any longer. Next to her Amanda began spluttering, "Jesse...please. He didn't know what he was doing. He's drunk out of his mind and... and he's been under so much pressure."

"Who is that?" someone screamed. Just like that the auditorium erupted in sound. Over it Jesse still heard Amanda pleading for John, the boy who had just whipped her.

With her face streaming tears and pain racking her body, Jesse yelled at Amanda, "Don't apologize for him! If you want to apologize, then apologize for what you've done."

The words were equivalent to a slap. Amanda's eyes went wide and her mouth worked a moment, soundlessly, before she could speak. Unbelievably she said, "I am sorry...for the other night. I don't know what I was thinking. I...I thought we were just going to fight and then John came and told me what he wanted to do...I shouldn't have listened to him. It was stupid. Really, really stupid and I'm sorry. Ok? I'm sorry."

Jesse stared in astonishment at the girl who had tried to kill her. Was this also the girl that had just saved her from John? And the girl who had been so sweet at the dance? Were they the same girl? How was it possible? And was it possible that Amanda was actually sorry?

If so...

The angel in white astonished herself. Through quivering lips Jesse said, "I forgive you." For the second time that day she forgave someone who seemed beyond forgiving.

Amanda dropped her eyes and just then the lights went out in the school. A dozen hands had been on her, trying to help Jesse up. But suddenly they seemed to disappear. Everything disappeared all save the screams that erupted all about. Someone fell across Jesse and the pain in her back and ribs had her screaming as well until the person scrambled up and away. Then there was nothing, not even vibrations on the wood beneath her cheek.

With a hand that shook, Jesse reached for Amanda, but like everyone else, she seemed to have evaporated with the light. Jesse was all alone on the stage. Alone, until a shadow crept from behind the curtains.

When the lights had first gone down, Jesse thought the dark complete, yet there was a shadow of deepest black moving toward her. She froze in place, hoping to go unnoticed. It didn't work. The killer came right at her; it was her white gown. It practically glowed like a beacon for him.

"Jesse Clarke?" he asked over the din. With the coming dark, kids had gone berserk with fear. Many had run to and fro shouting and screaming, while the parents charging in from the hallway only added to the chaos.

Jesse didn't want to die. She shook in pain and shock and dread, but she didn't say a word. If he was going to kill her, he would have to do all the work himself. He bent down over her, running his hands over her body, until he felt the wings on her back...and the blood.

"Oh, no!" he cried, unexpectedly. "Jesse? Are you ok? Jesse?"

"Ky?"

"Yes it's me. What happened to you?"

"They...they..." Jesse couldn't spit out the truth. There was a barrier within her that wouldn't allow her to say that she had been whipped. It was too degrading. The way that she had been treated made her feel like a mangy dog and the most that she could say was, "They hurt me."

"Can you stand?"

She searched for his hand in the dark and gripped it fiercely when she found it. "I think so...please get me out of here." He pulled her up. She screamed. Pain ran up the skin of her back, it was so intense that the dark gym floated around her for a moment and she worried that she would faint, but then Ky held her. He was like a rock; steady and strong.

With her back still on fire, she turned down his offer to carry her and only hung on him. She hurt. Everything hurt and she staggered in misery out of a side door. The night was crowded with the hysterical babbling of hundreds of students. They milled about in a belt around the school, afraid to leave the scant protection that it offered.

"Where's your car?" Ky asked, heading toward the parking lot. Jesse pulled back slightly.

"No, we can't go out there. It's exactly what Harold is looking for."

Ky smiled grimly at this. "Harold didn't mess with the fuse box, I did."

"But someone could've gotten hurt."

"Someone did...you got hurt." They were at the parking lot and Ky spotted the white Mustang. "I was afraid what the kids would do. All together like that kids can be scary. They develop a mob mentality, which to me is sort of a funny word seeing as that they don't actually think. It's all about emotion and whoever controls that emotion controls the mob. I didn't know what they would do to you."

"I don't think they would have hurt me any more than I was," Jesse said. "I saw a lot of compassion in their eyes before it got dark."

At the car, Ky stopped and looked at her wounds. His face went hard at the sight and his voice shook. "You don't get it. In a mob, compassion and love are the weak forces. It's hate, fear, and envy that rule. I was so afraid what they'd do to you, but I never thought that they would..." Ky glared back at the school.

He never thought that she would be whipped. She didn't either. "It was just one boy...and he was drunk," Jesse said. He dismissed this with a little shake of his head. She grabbed Ky and turned his face toward her. "Others helped me, ok? You were the one who told me there was good in these kids. You were right; it's just deeper than I thought."

With a long breath Ky said, "Maybe...let me get you home."

It was impossible for her to sit properly and so Ky drove, while she lay on her stomach in the back seat. They used the garage entrance to keep from being seen by Harold, just in case he was about.

Thirty minutes later, Ky asked, "Does that hurt?" He poured peroxide into the hole in Jesse's hand and watched as blood and foam dripped out the other side. He had already cleaned the wounds on her back. These weren't deep, yet burned worse than anything Jesse could remember. She had cried a great deal, but her hand was another story.

"Not really," she said. "Though it's kind of scary." Jesse began working her hand, slowly making a fist and then flattening it out again. In the car, her hand had felt paralyzed. The most she could do was make a bit of a claw out of it. The pain meds had helped. She had taken three times the recommended dose and was now more than just a little groggy and had trouble keeping up right.

When Ky was done bandaging her hand he laid her on her left side and just before she passed out asked her, "Was your night worth it?"

Those moments behind the curtain had been the most horrible time in her hard life. "Yes," she answered truthfully, forcing a little smile onto her lips. Her back would hurt for a while, but her memory of her night with Ky would last until she died. And maybe even longer than that.

Her night went in fits and starts and twice she had to get up for more meds. They made her dull and slow-witted when she woke up and she was too slow to catch a ride into town with her mother. This was a blessing in disguise since Jesse wasn't sure that she could actually sit in a car without crying.

Despite her pain her plan for the day was to go to the protest in
support
of her father and then head to Ashton medical clinic. Of all her injuries, her left hand bothered her the most; she could only make the weakest fist with it, barely able to even grip a pencil. She was afraid there would be permanent damage if she waited too long to have it looked at.

Now her first obstacle of the morning was the forest and the berm after it. She took them both in stride. Jesse carried her pepper spray in the front right pocket of a white coat that she had borrowed from her mom. The little black container gave her piece of mind, even more than her lock and chain would have, since physically she had use of only one of her arms and this she could barely raise above her head without crying out.

The day was brisk and the sky was low hung by thick grey clouds. Jesse wrapped herself twice in the scarf she had on loan from Tricia and set out. It was an uneventful walk; the only person that she saw was the solitary ice fisherman that had been on the ice the day before. He sat on his crate about thirty yards from the shore and as she passed he extended a hand in greeting. She waved and smiled, inside however she said a silent prayer for him. If he went under the ice, all alone as he was, there would be no coming out again.

Jesse's next obstacle was a daunting one. She would have to bypass the four-hundred-person student body of Ashton high ringing the town hall building. Along with the canister of pepper spray, she carried a handful of paper towels. The forecast called for a ninety percent chance of spit.

The crowds of students were there as expected; it was a mandatory school function after all. Yet there was one student that nobody had counted on to actually show up. Ky Mendel stood in the exact center of the walkway. Like the other kids he had drawn on his section of the sidewalk, unlike the other kids he hadn't drawn anything resembling a protest sign. He had drawn an arrow pointing toward the main doors of the town hall and below that was the word: Welcome.

His very presence seemed to guarantee that the protest would fail to keep out the council members. He had a ten-foot bubble surrounding him and Jesse remained spit free because of it.

"Morning," she said under her breath as she passed him by. True to his protective nature, Ky didn't acknowledge her presence other than to clear his throat briefly. This was enough to get her beaming.

"Hi Dad," Jesse said a minute later, poking her head into his office door. "Is this a bad time?"

James Clarke was as dapper as ever and looked in peak condition...except around the eyes. These held a sadness that didn't bode well. "Hi, Honey. Come in."

Jesse heard the anguish in his voice as well. "What's wrong? Did we lose the vote already?"

This actually made him smile. "Did
we
lose the vote? Are you on my side now?"

She nodded her head at his meaning. "I'm always on your side, Dad. When it comes down to it. I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like it."

"That's ok. You have your life to lead. I understand." James turned to the window and looked out. "It's Harold's disappearance that's causing the problem this time. It's making the police look bad and someone has started a rumor that after my first round of budget cuts that I'm going to start laying off some of the police officers."

"With Harold running around loose?" Jesse asked. "Who would believe such a thing of you?"

"You'd be surprised," James answered and then sighed in a way Jesse had never heard. "I actually want to increase police presence but because of my past, not too many believe me. I afraid I'm beaten. I've tried everything, but they won't listen to reason."

"Do you really need the council?" Jesse asked, coming over to stand by her father at the window. "I thought you had...what's the word? Consolidated your power. Can't you just force the laws down their throats? Make them obey?"

"That's not the way I work," James replied. "You know that. Yes I put pressure on them, but they have to want this for themselves."

Silence lay between them as they both watched the same boy. A small group of teachers were talking to Ky, but they might as well have been talking to the breeze. He clearly wasn't listening. Jesse wondered what sort of enticements they were offering him to get him to move.

"I know the secret about Kyle," she said. "How the killer fixates on him."

"Yeah, you were bound to hear about it sooner or later," James sighed again. "It's a messed up story and he's a messed up kid."

"Since I got here he's saved my life twice."

James shot her a glance before returning his gaze to Kyle. "I've always liked that boy," he said. This got them both to chuckling. "You'll have to tell me what happened one of these days. What's he doing down there?"

"He's holding the way open for the council members."

Again James looked at her, this time closely. "He must really...'love our cause' to stand up to the school that way."

A smile that she couldn't have stopped if she tried crept onto her face. "I think he does...I hope he does."

"And you?"

"I love him, too," Jesse said. "I'm glad that you didn't tell me about him. I probably would never have given him a chance."

"Now I'm wishing I had," James said, rubbing his head. "Loving that boy is so dangerous. You have no..." he stopped in mid-sentence.

"I have no idea?" Jesse said with a smile. "I think I do." Her smile then turned down. "But I don't think you have anything to worry about. Ky won't even look at me when anyone's around. He's got such focus..."

James interrupted, "You're wrong. I have everything to worry about. Ky is still just a kid. He may be able to hide his feeling better than most but if his feelings are strong enough they'll show through. Look at his little drawing for instance. Would he have done that if it weren't for you?"

"No."

"That's my point," James said. He then turned and gently hugged his daughter. Her back seared, but she didn't make a sound. "You can't hide love no matter how hard you try. Not even you. Whenever you are stomping around here glowering at me, I know you still love me."

"I do love you." She hugged him back.

"And I love you," James said. "This is nice. We should hug more often."

Jesse agreed. Though her back was burning she kept her father close. "Oh, by the way," she said. "I stole your car and drove to Barton to buy a dress for the dance I wasn't supposed to go to."

"I know. You got blood all over the back seat of the car. The good news is that your mom thinks that she can save the dress. She will have to cut away the back panels and have them replaced."

Jesse stepped back, amazed. "You knew? How?"

James laughed. "I watched you drive away yesterday. You weren't at all slick. Is your back really bad?"

Before she could answer a whistle blew outside. It was nearly nine o'clock. The teachers began to shepherd the students into a double line around the building.

"My back will be okay. Don't worry," Jesse said. "Look, I should get down there. They wanted me to protest so I will...I'm going to protest them."

Just then a cheer went up from the crowd. A man in a dark suit walked up and down the lines of students speaking in a loud voice. Little snippets could be heard through the glass. What he said outraged Jesse. He claimed that James Clarke was as big a danger to Ashton as Harold Brownly. He said that Ashton was turning into a Nazi concentration camp. He made dire predictions of work camps and bread lines. The crowd ate it up.

James watched with a look of sadness on his face. "No," James said. "You can't go down there, it's too dangerous. They are little more than a mob."

Jesse's mind flashed to that one second after she and Amanda had crashed through the curtain. The students had seen her and knew her. They saw the blood, and the pain she had suffered, and not a few of them had shame in their eyes. Jesse's gut told her it would be ok, at least as far as the students were concerned, it was their masters that had her going numb in the hands.

"I'm not afraid of the mob," Jesse said, with a deep breath. "Ky says that it's emotions that rule a mob. It's..."

Her father grabbed her by the shoulders, "Listen to him on this. He right, that's why I don't want you to go out there."