The Reformation of Marli Meade Read online

  I visualized my imaginary armor clicking into place as the unspoken insults continued to build.

  “I have some hand-me-downs you can have!”

  “Think she’s ever been kissed?”

  “Doubt she even knows what sex is!”

  “Nah. They’re probably doing it like rabbits up on that mountain of theirs.”

  Unable to stand a minute more, I darted down the hall and ducked into my classroom just as heat exploded over my face.

  Guess the armor didn’t work today.

  I slid into my chair and wiped at my cheek as the teacher came into the classroom, his booming voice obliterating the girls’ laughter from my ears. Unfortunately, it didn’t wipe the humiliation out of my heart.

  But that was okay. I was tough. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these kinds of comments didn’t faze me.

  Today must be a one percent day.

  But there was also the tiniest, faintest glint of light that formed the shape of a certain brown-haired boy who had called my eyes beautiful. For the rest of the day, I clung to his image like a drowning sailor clings to a buoy.

  WHEN I WALKED out of school at the end of the day and saw the object of my day-long reverie standing beside the Ophidian Mount High School sign, I couldn’t decide if my imagination had conjured him or if he was really standing there.

  “Hey.” He said the word easily, like the soft toss of a child’s ball.

  “What are you doing here? I’ve never seen you at this school before.”

  “I came to see you.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall. He wore all black again—a shirt loose enough to look good yet tight enough to show he wasn’t just a skinny high school boy underneath, black jeans, and black lace-up boots that were heavy in the sole. He wasn’t wearing his hat and I liked how he looked without it, though I didn’t say so.

  “I’m new here. A sort of virgin, you could say.”

  A loud guffaw exploded out of my mouth. Even with going to the public school I was sheltered. I knew things, yes, but these things weren’t incorporated into my daily life. And to hear something so taboo spoken so freely did strange things to me. For starters it made me laugh like a foghorn.

  I clamped a hand over my mouth.

  He reached up and tugged at my wrist. “Take your hand away.”

  I tilted my head. It was an odd request but I didn’t analyze his words. Instead, I lowered my hand. He gazed at my lips with a sort of look of wonder on his face. I pulled the bottom one between my teeth, leaving the fuller upper lip protruding.

  I wasn’t one to have many insecurities. Being someone who traveled so far off the beaten path meant I had so many insecurities they pretty much canceled each other out, not to mention the only time I looked in a mirror was in the girls’ bathroom at school. But my lips were the one thing that did give me pause, the one thing my eye was always drawn to when I looked at my reflection. They were full and overly bright, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was my top lip. It lacked a little bowtie curve at the center and was misshapen and too large.

  To sum it up? My lips were ugly.

  His focus on that lip made me want to crawl into a hole. Instead, I turned on my heel and walked away.

  “Wait!” He hurried to my side. “So, like, this is for real? This marriage thing?”

  I picked up my pace.

  “Don’t you want more out of life?”

  “I don’t have to answer that.” I hugged my books to my chest and stepped around him. I did have a little bit of pride.

  “I think you deserve more than being a pawn in their game.”

  What was there to say to that? He was right. “So you’re a student here now?” I asked in place of a response.

  “Yeah.”

  “Which school did you used to go to?”

  “Bloodwood High, but I need to change schools. I can’t live with the Stones forever. God knows, I don’t want to. My dad has a trailer between the two school districts and my probation officer doesn’t think I should return to my old one.” He smiled. “You know, bad people, bad habits and all that.” His smile faded a shade.

  “Your probation officer? I didn’t think you got arrested when you took the truck.”

  “I didn’t. I got arrested a year ago for trespassing.”

  This guy was unlike anyone I had ever met. “Was it actual trespassing this time, or were you running from the baseball bat again?”

  “No, this time it was pretty much trespassing.”

  “Why would you do something like that?”

  “Someone stole something from me and I went to get it back.”

  “What could someone steal that would make you risk getting arrested?”

  His mocking expression froze in place. “My mom.” The two words came out with forced lightness that nothing about him supported.

  “Your mother? Your mother stole something?”

  His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to mask the pain. “Someone stole my mother.”

  I tried to organize his words into something that made sense. And while I fought for clarity, his smirk returned, as did the levity in his gaze.

  Just then Heather and her posse walked past. “Bye, snake-girl!” Janelle shouted. Giggles rang across the front lawn of the school. “Don’t go doing anything your father wouldn’t want you to!”

  A football player named Chad doubled over, clutching his stomach like the statement was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Are you kidding? Her father’s probably the one she’s doing it with! Everyone knows they all marry each other up there. Even family members!” His words came out in breathless spurts. “Hey!” He gulped air. “Isn’t the old rumor that they used to do it with snakes?” He grabbed his friend’s shoulder to keep from tumbling over with laughter. “The world’s first sex toy!”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Nate faced the group.

  “What did you say?” Chad straightened and started a slow lumber toward us.

  “I said…” Nate stepped forward, hands clenched. “Shut up, asshole. Do you have a problem with your hearing?”

  Though they were almost the same height, Chad had to outweigh Nate by fifty pounds, or more.

  “You little prick. Who do you think you are?”

  “Come on, Chad. We’ve got practice.” A junior named Shawn punched his arm. “Coach told you no more fighting or you’re off the team.”

  Chad jabbed his finger in the air. “You’ll watch yourself if you’re smart.”

  Nate rolled his eyes, unaffected.

  Shawn pulled Chad’s arm until he fell into step with the group. Unable to let it rest, their insults popped into the air around them like audible kernels until they passed out of sight.

  “They aren’t very nice,” Nate said.

  “Comes with the territory.”

  “Hmm…”

  I glanced at my watch to avoid his searching gaze but also to check the time. I was on my way to the library, something I did every day after school, and I loathed wasting those coveted hours. I cherished the quiet time among the books as much as I savored occasional morning hikes through the forest. In fact, any amount of time spent away from home and church was sacred.

  Charles and Edna, surprisingly, allowed me to go to the library instead of heading straight home with the other children of the mountain. Charles picked me up at five o’clock sharp after his rounds to nearby churches, and the setup was just fine, thank you very much.

  “Well, bye, I guess.” I walked away from him again, ignoring the part of me that wanted to stay exactly where I was.

  “Bye, beautiful.”

  The words brought me to a halt. I couldn’t move forward, but I also couldn’t turn. The burn of my face would reveal how much he affected me, and I didn’t want that. Why not? Because I had only ever known one thing in my life—the church’s teachings. My entire life was shaped by it and the fear it instilled.

  Act ye not vain.

/>   Act ye not proud.

  Act ye not in frivolous expenditure.

  I sighed.

  Don’t talk to boys, even ones from the mountain unless you’re engaged to one.

  Don’t look at yourself in the mirror. The only way I knew what my body looked like unclothed was by glancing down at it.

  Don’t cut your hair, put on makeup, wear perfume…and on and on. The list of rules was endless.

  I didn’t know what to do when something fell outside those strict boundaries, regardless of how much I yearned for freedom. If something like this happened in a book? That was fine. It was fiction and so out of reach it was entertaining but otherwise inconsequential.

  But being moved by a boy, a real guy who called me beautiful? I had no idea how to handle that.

  Did I want to find out?

  Yes.

  No.

  Oh, who knows?

  Without a backward glance, I ran toward the library, my frumpy shoes slapping against the concrete. In the library I wouldn’t have to think about Nate or how confused and uncertain and…charged he made me feel. Somehow, though, I felt the heat in my cheeks, and in my body, long after Charles picked me up.

  THAT WEDNESDAY EVENING, I sat in church as Charles’s gravelly voice boomed and pounded, ricocheting off the solid surface of the walls. Acid filled my stomach and burned my throat like I had just swallowed an ember of fire.

  The congregants sat stoically, straight-backed and whisper-thin, pale-faced and sunken-cheeked. Underneath the black of their hair, coupled with the severity of their expressions, they looked like undead gathering for a sacrifice. I didn’t want to think about what I looked like with my blood-red hair. Maybe the object to be sacrificed…

  “Let us raise our voices and sing his praises!” Charles shouted, slamming his hand down on the pulpit, a bare-bones, tall, wooden box that allowed room for him to rest his Bible and his elbows and nothing else.

  “Amen!” muttered the congregants as they pulled out their hymnals—worn and decrepit books with handwritten lyrics and crumbling leather exteriors. Mary slid behind the organ, shoulders hunched forward as if she lacked the strength to straighten, while Samuel lifted his guitar. Charles took several steps backward and hovered in the corner, the candles casting dim shadows over his expressionless face.

  Edna sprang forward like a praying mantis to lead them in song.

  I moved my lips but no sound came out. Within these walls I felt like the undead, a soul—or the shell of one—trapped and weary. I had never felt the fiery passion that came from hearing God’s word that the other congregants seemed to experience.

  Perhaps, because in here, nothing felt alive. The candles added minimal light to the dark room, the flames dancing along the walls like little grasping shadows. Even the people inside the church didn’t seem quite alive, almost like shells of human bodies filling the pews in an aged and fading photograph.

  As usual, I sat in the front row in that most-coveted spot. Only now, instead of sitting with Edna, I was beside Mrs. Stone. Josiah sat between his mother and father. Nate wasn’t here today and I ignored the stab of disappointment, shocked that there was a physical reaction to it like the world’s strongest man pushing a barrel down on my chest.

  When Betty Jean, an overweight, middle-aged woman, jumped to her feet mid-song, Charles lowered his voice to allow her chants, spewed forth in a strange tongue no one understood but her, to reverberate around the room. Her palms lifted upward as her ample body moved in a fluid rhythm her size should’ve prevented. With eyes pinched shut, she seemed to have little control over what she was doing, as if the Holy Spirit had taken control of her mind, tongue, and body.

  Three male congregants eased forward and huddled nearby. The last time this happened, Betty Jean fainted and hit the floor with a resounding thud, leading Edna to solicit help should she faint again.

  Having witnessed this scene too many times to count, I let myself get lost in thought again and nearly jumped out of the pew when warm breath tickled my cheek.

  “What is going on here?” Nate was sitting in the pew behind me, leaning into my ear.

  Despite the thrill of excitement his voice, and breath, brought, I tried to ignore him and focused on Betty Jean as she teetered dangerously close to toppling.

  “That’s whack,” Nate mumbled as Betty Jean started to shake and convulse. The men closed in around her.

  Nate had obviously never seen anything like this. Did he think we were all crazy? How did he see this little church and its miniscule number of congregants?

  I tried to take a step back and look at the situation from his point of view.

  What did I see?

  A woman who was well beyond her ideal weight, dressed in a loose-fitting floral print dress. Her hair, permed at home by her daughter, was frizzing and unkempt like a million black worms had sprouted from her scalp. Her eyes were rolled back in her head as the strange language tumbled out of her mouth. The men now had their arms outstretched, ready to catch her.

  “Do they really think just three men can catch all that weight?” Nate asked.

  It suddenly seemed so ridiculous that a burst of laughter flew out of my mouth like the bullet from a gun.

  Thankfully, Betty Jean was so loud no one heard. No one but Edna and my future mother-in-law.

  If Nate heard it, which surely he did since he had been leaning in my ear, he probably realized the mistake I’d just made. If he saw the expression on Edna’s face, or Mrs. Stone’s, there would be no doubt.

  At one point in the church’s history, a sin such as this would land the sinner—in this case, me—at a punishing ceremony where the offending congregant was shamed publicly and judgment was rendered by the mouth of a poisonous serpent rather than the preacher or congregation. If the offender survived the encounter with the snake, thus signaling the offender could be redeemed, the punishing ended with a marking—when a stick with a heated metal tip in the shape of a snake’s splayed tongue, called a marking stick, was pressed into the wrist of the offender, a sort of permanent Scarlett A as a reminder of the grave offense committed.

  These ancient practices had long since gone out of use. For one thing, it was illegal to use poisonous snakes as punishment, even on the isolated top of the mountain. Sheriff Wilton oversaw that change from his tri-yearly visits to Ophidian Mount. For another, modern-day people wouldn’t accept such a thing, even people as suppressed and dominated as we were, though this explanation seemed weak—the congregants did whatever Charles or Edna told them to.

  But Charles seemed content with bringing up the church’s more sinister past during nearly every sermon, referencing the olden practices like threats veiled as history lessons. None of us were left unscathed.

  And now, my body coiled into itself, suddenly desperate for some form of protection. Would Edna tell Charles? Take away my morning hikes or the afternoon library trips? What more could they take away from me until I had nothing…was nothing?

  Or would the punishment be something worse?

  As an eerie smile spread across Edna’s face, I knew the answer.

  After Charles called for the ending prayer, the congregation filed out like good little soldiers. As the preacher’s daughter, I always waited until the church was near-empty before filing into the back of the line, but Edna slid up behind me and yanked my hair so hard, tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Sinner! Don’t you ever laugh in church like that again.”

  I tried to pull my hair out of the bony, wrinkled hand but it wouldn’t budge. “I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!” My voice was shrill from the pain but then the slap came, landing with a sting to my cheek, and my hair was forgotten.

  “Stay here tonight.” She shoved me from her.

  “Here? In the church?” I scrambled to regain my balance as my eyes darted.

  The snakes of the mountain often found refuge from the cold mountain nights inside the church. It was not but three months ago when a congregant was bitten
by a snake coiled under a pew. The fangs sunk into his ankle and he was dead within the hour. Charles had said it was the serpent acting on behalf of God’s will.

  The thought sent a rampage of shivers through my body.

  “This is a holy place and deserves your respect. You would be well-served to pray for your soul, little granddaughter. If you’re anything like your mother, you’ll need it.”

  “Grandmother, no. Please. I’m sorry.”

  Edna’s eyes narrowed. “Remember who you are. You are a descendent of the serpent, and this behavior will not be tolerated.”

  “It won’t happen again!” I tried to grab her arm, but she took a long step away from me.

  “Tomorrow you will clean the church from top to bottom.”

  My throat swelled as Edna moved from candle to candle, blowing each one out with a quick puff of air.

  “Grandmother, you can’t leave me here in the dark!”

  Another candle’s flame died.

  Panic flooded through me like a tsunami. I wasn’t particularly afraid of the dark, but this would be darker than anything I’d ever experienced—tomb-like darkness. No moon. No stars. Black snakes slithering across the blackened floor.

  “Just one candle? And I’ll have the church cleaner than it’s ever been!”

  As Edna neared the door, I knew she would show compassion and leave one candle lit. Just one. Enough to see something…something besides complete and total darkness.

  But Edna opened the door, blew out the candle, and shut it with a click. The grating sound of the lock turning was the single most frightening sound I had ever heard in my life, its echo lingering like the tolling of the devil’s bells.

  A blackness darker than the deepest cave enveloped me. I could not see my hand, the door, the pew bench pushing into my knee. I could see nothing.

  Nothing.

  The building suddenly became alive with sounds, or was it my imagination?

  Was I, in my terror, conjuring up the sound of dozens of long, thin snakes slithering out of their hiding places to come coil up by my sinful feet?