Dead girl, p.1
Dead Girl, page 1
Dead Girl
L.J. Stapleton
Copyright © 2022 L.J. Stapleton
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Amazon paperback ISBN: 979-8-841408-37-6
Cover design: Saint Staple
Editing: Book Puma Editorial Services
BookPumaEdit.com
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Savior
Sinner
Judgment Day
Unholy
Baptism
The girl in 304
The stacks
The missing girl
Atonement
Warm communion
How to save a life
Sanctuary
Confessions
The day of the dead
Belief
Obedience
Ashes to ashes
Gone girl
Raindrops on roses
Hazel
The cure
The kiss of God
The night nurse
Pretend
The white room
Drip
The girl who lived
The sun
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the author
To all the ones who ever wished for the end, but instead found their beginning, this is for you.
“Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us;”
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Savior
The world ended on the California coast. Well, my world did at least.
My sister slips past, outrunning me once again. Always ahead of me. I watch her kick up sand as she races off toward the ocean. Her stained red hair ripples effortlessly like silk strands behind her. Always flawless, even her run.
“Hey!” I yell after her as she darts straight into the lapping waves without a care. Her arms are extended out in each direction as she braces for the loud smack of the swell collapsing onto itself. The vast ocean is too much for me to grasp, the way the depths conceal so much of the unknown. A flat blue expanse reaches into the horizon beneath a red sunset. The colors in the sky are one big colorful mess, like a five-year-old smeared orange and pink ice cream all over the clouds.
“Hurry up, Lydia!” she yells back as she strokes her arms out away from the shore. She already knows where she wants to go and how to get there. So sure of herself. So sure of everything.
“Is it cold?” I ask, eyeing the water rushing to my feet.
“Not at all!” Her voice wavers in and out from the waves lapping over her.
She’s a liar, I think as a bite of cold nibbles my toes, sending me flinching away.
“Mom said not to go too far!” my voice shakes, watching her get smaller and smaller.
“What Mom can’t see won’t kill her!” she yells back, paddling herself farther out.
I glance behind to where Mom is off in the distance chatting up a tall woman with dark hair. Whether it was someone she knows or some random person, I could never tell. Mom’s always making friends, and I’ve lost count.
“Come on! There’s a cave around the cliff over here,” my sister urges.
I suck in a deep breath, hoping to suck in courage at the same time. “Come on, just do it,” I tell myself, suddenly wondering how deep the water is.
Despite my reluctance, I pinch my nose shut and dive into the next wave. The shock of the cold debilitates me for a moment. My sister always says the only way to get warm is to move, so I wiggle my arms and paddle out towards her. I try to keep my head from going under, though it’s more of a struggle than I thought. My tired arms pause while I take a moment to see where my sister went, but my eyes are burning and blurring everything around me. My hands scratch the salt from my eyes, but I still don’t see her.
I yell her name between breaths.
This was a mistake. I feel myself sinking despite my arms fighting it. There’s no longer an ocean floor, just a gaping empty void that holds no support for my feet. My ears are pounding with what I now realize is my pulse. At that moment, I decide I need to go back. What was I thinking? I shouldn’t be here—we shouldn’t. I can’t tell if the freezing water is beginning to numb my body or my muscles are tensing up from shaking so much. What’s that thing you get when you freeze to death? Oh yeah, hypothermia.
My arms try to paddle my way back to shore, but I stop again to find my sister. I can’t leave her. I need to go back. Knowing full well I won’t let her get sucked away, I start to paddle out further away from the safety of the shore.
Suddenly, a force beyond me is sucking me in. A surge of water now has me within its grasp and I’m paralyzed. My head keeps bobbing up and down. Each time my lungs gasp for air, I swallow in a mouthful of the sea.
It feels as though the ocean is trying to bury me alive. My arms start to lose their strength as I feel myself sinking farther and farther from the surface. Shadows begin to darken my body. I want to fight, but my body won’t let me anymore.
Just then, a pale hand latches around my wrist and pulls me up. I gasp for air once I break through the surface. My sister’s yellow bathing suit is so bright, I almost mistake it for the sun.
“Kick!” she says, holding on to me as tightly as she can.
I use whatever strength is left in my legs and do as she says.
When she glances behind, I realize she isn’t my sister. Black sunken eyes and pale gray skin look back at me. Her dark pupils glare through me like staring down the barrel of a gun.
In a wave of panic, I wiggle free from her grasp until once again I sink, down, down, down into the dark.
Sinner
Five years later
Ihear my alarm ringing, but I ignore it. I hate that stupid sound. Lying in bed, tangled within my sheets, my head pulsates in a fit of rage. I turn over to give myself a few more minutes until the noise becomes unbearable. God, just give me a minute.
Without opening my eyes, I reach for it. My vision is foggy as I tap the screen to silence the ringing. Before I let go of my phone, I catch a glimpse of the six missed calls from Tess.
Shit.
My heart pounds as I tear off the covers. Still in last night’s clothes, I rip off my stained jeans, hopping on one leg to steady my balance. My phone buzzes once again over my night stand.
“Hello?” I answer, bracing myself for the reply.
“Where the hell are you? I’ve been calling and calling!” Tess screams from the other end.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry, I’m on my way right now.” I struggle to pull up my slacks with the phone sandwiched between my ear and shoulder.
“You were out drinking again, weren’t you?” she asks.
I can’t bring myself to answer.
“Damn it, Lydia. I knew it. Did it ever cross your mind that you have court today? Not to mention starting in ten minutes?”
“Look, I’m fine. I’ll be there,” my voice wavers. “They always start late anyway.”
“Fine? You think it’s fine to show up to court with a hangover? Do you want to go to jail?”
I can’t help but sigh. “It will be out of my system by the time I get there, promise.” At this point, I’ll say anything to get her to stop yelling and making my headache worse.
“This is the last time I help you Lydia, just because I’m your attorney,” she groans. “And court-appointed or not, you can’t keep wasting my time.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” my voice squeaks. The words don’t feel like enough to convince her, but that’s all I can think to say. I’m not even sure I mean it.
“Hurry up and get here. You’re already late,” she says, ignoring me.
Before I can plead my case, the call ends.
What does she know anyway? Shrugging it off, I race to grab the rest of my clothes from a pile of black. Life goes on, and I’m already late.
Heading downstairs, I can tell the other girls in the house are still sleeping. All their coats hanging near the door are all crowded and layered over each other, giving them away. Girls like me who’ve committed some crime are living out their sentence here at Primrose, a halfway house on the end of some nameless street.
I fight through my exhaustion as I tunnel my arms into the sleeves of my jacket. Just another morning barely awake, another rude force hitting me like a fist. I manage to find the smallest ounce of strength within myself and keep moving. Muscle memory, I guess. Tess keeps saying this is the last straw, and maybe she’s right, and perhaps I don’t deserve a second chance. I’m not even sure I care anymore.
I brace for the cold as I open the front door. A loud squeak erupts as the rusted hinges swing open. The door is so old, you have to lift it to open or latch closed. Before the Primrose was converted into a halfway house, I was told it used to be a church back in the ’70s. One of the ones with the steeples and those little crosses skewered on a long iron rod. Ours is still attached because the workers were too scared to remove it, which probably means it’s haunted or someth
A bite of winter greets me as I make my way down the wooden steps toward my old black Chevy Cavalier. My boots crunch and squeak over the compacted snow. Our street is lined with tattered, neglected houses and bare trees. Located in a little forgotten corner of downtown, all the seasons have eaten through wood and paint around the neighborhood. A white sheet of frost now covers most of its flaws. It’s as if the entire place turned into a magical winter wonderland overnight. A winter land concealing the dry bones beneath.
I pull the car door shut. My body cringes at the stark sound of metal clicking into the frozen door frame. My heart accelerates with the engine roaring to life as I remember how much I hate driving. My sister was always the one who took us around when she got her license. But that was years ago and now that I’m sober, I’m suddenly aware of how terrifying it is. Anything can happen on these streets, a slip on ice, road rage, and of course drunk drivers like myself. Mindless chaos that never sleeps.
I swallow a deep breath and wait until I’m certain there are no cars to make the turn onto the main street. Maybe there won’t be any traffic, I tell myself. My confidence dissolves when out of nowhere a truck speeds up beside me, pulling my attention from the road. He’s close, too close. My knuckles clench white over the steering wheel. Almost there, I tell myself. Just one more turn. The truck finally breaks away to turn as the entrance to the courthouse comes into view. Another large gray building among dozens. I mindlessly pull into the garage and find the closest parking spot.
Outside, a cascade of wide cement steps leads me to the blacked-out doors of the entrance. The gateway to my doom. Tess will no doubt be waiting on the other side of security, but I don’t want to face her. Instead, I contemplate leaving. I could just turn around and walk out, run far away. I could start over in a new town where no one knows what sins I’ve committed. It would be like it never happened. No one would care anyway. The thoughts pull me back toward the exit until the sound of my name stops me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tess says, gripping my arm to turn me around. A tumble of limp dirty blond hair floats into view as I face her. Her face is sunken and makeup-free. It’s part of her earthy rebellion of unnatural beauty, a look she pulls off well. Her green eyes narrow over me in disapproval.
“I ... I was just going to step out for a smoke really quick,” my voice shakes.
“You think I’m an idiot? You don’t smoke. Said you’re scared of the idea of tar in your lungs, remember?”
“I’m over that,” I lie.
Tess rolls her eyes. “You’re not getting out of this, Lydia. I’ve worked too hard with the courts to grant you leniency since it’s your first offense, and you’re not going to screw this up,” Tess hisses, stabbing the elevator button. We ascend to the top floor in silence until the elevator chimes and the doors part.
“Ready to meet your fate?” Tess smirks, leading the way forward.
Judgment Day
Inside the courtroom, there are rows and rows of benches, all filled with people waiting their turn for sentencing. Blurs of blues and grays filling the space remind me of a watercolor painting I saw in school once. A painting of the past like all of them were, filled with lost hopes and dreams. I’m just another case among thousands. Another file in a box. Another life gone terribly wrong.
Tess and I quietly make our way to the nearest empty seats in the back. My eyes dart around the room, taking it all in. The judge is draped within folds of black at the front. A glossy plaque sits atop the bench highlighting the name Strauss. He deals out sentence after sentence from an elevated seat, with a wooden gavel at his side collecting dust. I suppose it’s just for looks, the kind of thing you’d find in a movie. He has bags under his eyes and overgrown salt and pepper hair, as if he missed a few haircuts. Tired and worn, he signals for the next group to approach.
“Lydia Sterling case, please proceed to the front,” a voice calls from up ahead. My entire body tenses up. I stand reluctantly and follow Tess over to the bench.
“Okay, so just to make sure, you still agree to these terms?” Judge Strauss says, sliding a paper in our direction.
I don’t need to read it; I already know what my fate is. Tess flashes a look in my direction, and I nod dutifully, just as she wants.
“Okay then,” Judge Strauss says, putting on his glasses as he reads off the sentence. “Miss Lydia Sterling, you are charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving, and property damage, and ... It looks like that girl dropped the charges of battery?” His eyes shift to Tess.
“Yes, your honor. She agreed to drop charges on the condition that my client would receive behavioral correction by means of community service.”
Judge Strauss glances over the documents in front of him, then peers up to meet my eyes with a look of condemnation. “How do you plead?”
“Guilty, your honor,” I say robotically as I was taught. Just need to get this over with. Just need to put this all behind once and for all. That’s how it’s done, right? Where it all gets sponged out if I just say the words. I confess and my sins are forgiven?
“By the power invested in me by the state of Colorado, I hereby sentence you to the plea agreed upon as follows: You are to finish your rehabilitation at the Primrose halfway home with random drug tests, surrender your driver’s license, attend weekly group therapy and fulfill community service of the court’s choice.”
Picking up trash or something, I guess to myself.
“You will volunteer at Sunny Days Hospital for the hours given,” he announces.
My heart drops. “Wait, what? You mean the mental hospital? Like with crazy people?”
“Young lady,” he interrupts, “you are very lucky. Most people like you receive hard jail time.”
He leans over the bench. “And trust me when I say, you don’t want that.”
I swallow the lump in my throat as Tess nudges me to shut up.
“Think of it as character building. Perhaps it might just shape you up into a proper young lady.” His gaze narrows on me.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
“You are obligated to appear for community service at nine sharp tomorrow morning,” he orders, then picks up the gavel. “Case dismissed.”
When the gavel pounds, my whole body flinches. Guess they do still use it.
~~~
Outside of the courthouse, Tess follows me to my car.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Your license is suspended, remember?” she says, holding out her empty hand in front of my face.
I hand over my keys. It’s not like I care; I hate driving. There’s nowhere I can go anyway.
We drive back to the Primrose house in silence, with every noise filling the space between us. I zone out watching all the same stupid houses I pass every day—same trees, same worn-out places—until Tess abruptly turns onto an unfamiliar road. I watch helplessly as she continues to deviate from the main street until we turn down a shadowy alleyway. My senses tingle when I realize she’s definitely not taking me home.
“Where the hell are we?” My voice spills out while my hands grip the door.
Tess keeps her eyes on the road. “Thought you could use a little motivation. Just something to remind you what will happen if you screw up again.”
“Are you kidding? Look at this place. Are you trying to get us killed?”
“You need to see this,” she insists, her eyes fixed ahead.
Tess pulls up to the end, then puts the car into park. Off in the distance, people are crowding over a round metal bin where tiny flames peek over the edge. Men and women huddle over the fire in layers of ragged clothes that looked cinched and worn. Trash litters the ground like confetti, next to grocery carts chock full of random belongings. Some carry loads of plastic bottles, others carry blankets and some other things I can’t even identify.
“Again, where the hell are we?” I bark at her. My fingers are shaking as I press down on the door lock.
“Recognize anyone?” Tess asks, focusing past the group around the fire.
