Fear Her (Complete)

Episode 18

She ducked behind the last shower stall and crouched down to see if she’d been noticed and if anybody was following her. Call it a habit. At Wyoming Juvenile Corrections she was never unsupervised, not in the shower, not on the toilet, not in the kitchen where they seemed to expect her to brew a feast fit for the Last Supper every day of the week. When it came to the guards, she’d thought about it. Some of them were the worst, too cold and distant to oversee children, too warm and grasping to trust.

People like that sought out places like WyJuCo where oversight was distant, made lax with disgust because children were supposed to be pure and their taint could be catching. Those children were rarely safe, not from the correctional officers with keys to every door and the codes to shut off security cameras. The children, the inmates weren’t any safer from each other. They learned from the adults, some in the hellholes they’d come from and some from WyJuCo where they’d ended up. Eyes were everywhere; the only people to survive a place like that were the ones that remembered that.

Nobody had followed Virgo. She dipped out of the emergency exit. The alarm blared as warned on the engraved red plaque on the door. She slammed it shut behind her a couple of second later and darted across the sparse green to the side of the gymnasium. There were a bunch of ratty soccer goals back here, some deflated footballs and broken hockey sticks littering the alleyway between the gym and the next brick building where freshmen attended introductory language classes. Soy asesina. Soy de Wyoming, Virgo intoned as the students droned their status and origins in a bored cacophony that could put the most dedicated student to sleep at their desk.

Virgo avoided the campus cops again, strode through the courtyard, past the football pitch that had seen better days, circumvented the bleachers where the stoners were toking and the out of class jocks were loitering hoping to get a secondhand high without wrecking their mandatory pre-game drug screening. They were as embarrassing as they were predictable, and she didn’t have the focus to care. Everyone at Nevada Lights had ulterior motives. This place made Game of Thrones seem like a dangerous game of Uno. Who knew high school was low-octane Risk on the popularity scale?

Everyone, according to the answers she’d picked up from Yahoo! Answers. Everybody knew high school was hell and nobody would live it over given the chance. Nobody but her. ‘Get out and get your GED,’ no less than five people had said. ‘Do yourself a favor and burn that bitch to the ground on your way out. The students will thank you for it.’

Virgo had a bit of know-how when it came to burning a place to ashes. Nevada didn’t rate that yet, but she was watching and waiting for the first sign of rot from within. All she ever did was wait.

Virgo hopped the rod-iron fence enclosing the campus at its farthest reaches. She had a bit too much chest and butt to be squeezing in between so she made do with a slow shimmy over the barbs at the top. Her hoodie took the brunt of the snagging except where her side got a scrape on the comedown. She could patch it at the house.

She made it as far down the desolate street as the local burger joint before somebody got on her case. A purple-brown Volkswagen slowed down in the middle of the left hand lane to come even with her and followed along at a steady pace. Virgo reached into her back pocket for her handy dandy butterfly knife that she absolutely didn’t carry around school for protection because that was prohibited. Totally. She plastered a friendly smile on her face and didn’t stop moving. There was an intersection ahead, surely somebody would see if the freak in the VW came at her. But would they help? Black girls didn’t exactly merit protective mobs rioting in their favor. Not even in the era of #SayHerName.

The driver side window burred downward. Virgo clutched her knife all the tighter. A scent wafted from inside the car, like pine and something expensive, new car smelling, and black castor oil on second-day hair. Virgo froze in place. The car stopped when she did.

A lean arm in a striped cardigan braced on the window and a familiar brown face peered out of the dim interior. “Hey, V. What you doing out here? You got work?”

It was Quinn Mayfield from day one. Quinn who laughed at Virgo and sometimes clutched her hand when Virgo lost her way in the hall. Quinn who some people called Quinn Bee because they couldn’t resist the pun and she was queen of the good and the graceful with a golden crucifix on her neck and a copy of the Bible in her bag. Virgo loosened her grasp on her knife and stuck it deep into her back pocket. Hallowed be thy name.

“I have an appointment-at the doctor.” As if any doctor could save her now.

“You taking the bus?”

“I was gonna walk back home, make my foster bro take me from there.”

Quinn played with her cross pendant. “I’m headed to work at the law firm, I could drive you.” Quinn was ahead in all she did. Ahead in her classwork, ahead in her classes. She was a junior already doing half-days working at her godmother’s law firm in the city. She was perfect and for some reason she was deadser on inviting Virgo into her perfect life.

Virgo shoved a hand in her pocket from sheer nervousness and nicked her hand on the blade of her knife. She hissed and held it to her chest, smearing fresh blood on the neck of her shirt. Quinn sat up with her concern. Quinn was always concerned; if she wasn’t laughing, she was watching Virgo like she wanted to save her soul.

That was what drove Virgo to confess. “I’m lying.”

Quinn furrowed her brow and stopped her car’s slow trudge toward the red light. Virgo stopped with her.

“Why?”

“Because you won’t like me if you know the truth.” Nobody ever liked her anymore afterward. Not even the evidence and the testimony and the medical examinations of the survivors were enough to stand as proof in her favor. The verdict was as follows: Virgo could not be trusted. ‘Girl, don’t speak ill of the dead,’ she’d heard over and over. In their view, the worst thing Virgo had done was survive. They might have been nicer if she hadn’t.

“Get in the car, V.”

“You’re gonna be late to work.”

“Get in the car and let me worry about my job.”

“Promise you won’t throw me out later.”

“Promise you won’t kill me with that knife in your pocket?”

“Promise.” Virgo extended her uninjured pinkie like it represented an oath that mattered. Quinn intertwined hers with Virgo’s and they shook on it.

“Promise. Get in the car before the sheriff deputies see you, now.” Getting nabbed for truancy wouldn’t be good for her. Her freedom depended on her being seen as reformed. In their eyes, truancy was the first sign of recidivism. Skip a class, plan a massacre. Sure, that made sense.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Virgo was bad at believing in good people and good things, but Quinn Mayfield was someone she wanted to believe in. In her bleeding hand, she clutched her zodiac pendant and counted her lucky stars.