Together We Rot

Description

A teen girl looking for the truth about her missing mother forms a reluctant alliance with her former best friend…in exchange for hiding him from his cult-leading family.

“All hail the new queen of YA horrormance! Arndt’s unputdownable debut crackles with wit and seethes with terrors just beneath the surface. Equal parts tender and grisly, Together We Rot will sink its roots into you.”—Allison Saft, New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic

Wil Greene’s mom has been missing for over a year, and the police are ready to call the case closed—they claim she skipped town and you can’t find a woman who wants to disappear. But she knows her mom wouldn’t just leave…and she knows the family of her former best friend, Elwood Clarke, has something to do with it.

Elwood has been counting down the days until his 18th birthday—in dread. It marks leaving school and joining his pastor father in dedicating his life to their congregation, the Garden of Adam. But when he comes home one night after a final goodbye with his friends, already self-flagellating for the sins of drinking and disobeying his father, he discovers his path is not as virtuous as he thought. He’s not his father’s successor, but his sacrifice. For the woods he’s grown up with are thirsty, and must be paid in blood.

Now on the run from a family that wants him dead, he turns to the only one who will believe him: Wil. Together, they form a reluctant partnership; she’ll help him hide if he helps her find evidence that his family killed her mother. But in the end they dig up more secrets than they bargained for, unraveling decades of dark cult dealings in their town, led by the Clarke family.

And there’s a reason they need Elwood’s blood for their satanic rituals. Something inhuman is growing inside of him. Everywhere he goes, the plants come alive and the forest calls to him, and Wil isn’t sure if she can save the boy she can’t help but love.Love for Together We Rot

“All hail the new queen of YA horrormance! Arndt’s unputdownable debut crackles with wit and seethes with terrors just beneath the surface. Equal parts tender and grisly, Together We Rot will sink its roots into you.”—Allison Saft, New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic
 
“Together We Rot is an atmospheric, twisty read that seamlessly blends horror and romance. Arndt’s incisive character work and punchy prose conjure two leads who are impossible not to root for, and her immersive, well-drawn setting is a riveting character of its own. An impressive debut.”—C. L. Herman, New York Times, USA Today, and national indie best-selling author of The Devouring Gray and All of Us Villains

“Haunting and spellbinding.”—Kirkus ReviewsSkyla Arndt has always loved the creepy, crawly side of life. When she was younger, she thought that love might translate to hunting Bigfoot, but luckily for him, writing proved easier. Together We Rot is her debut novel.

Connect with her at arndtskyla.com or @arndtskyla on Instagram or Twitter. (Howling at the moon works, too.)CHAPTER ONE
WIL
“It doesn’t count as evidence if you were stalking them, Wil.”
Sheriff Vrees has been kicking up a storm since I waltzed through the door, but he lets out another groan for good measure. We’ve got a weekly ritual, the two of us. I’ve spent the last year digging into his ribs like a thorn, looming over my mother’s missing person case, and he’s spent the last year looking into early retirement.
“You can’t solve crimes by committing your own,” he says flatly. Every day, I parade into the Pine Point police station with new clues; he dismisses them, and then we duke it out for fifteen minutes. Today, we’ve made it to the second minute of our scheduled banter.
I slap my hand on the counter. He’s lucky there’s a barrier between us. I’d love nothing more than to leap over it some days and throttle him. “So you admit what happened was a crime?”
His co-workers don’t bat an eye behind him. They’re used to this song and dance. They’re also too busy not doing their jobs: chatting among themselves, wadding papers to toss into faraway cans, slurping coffee, and snacking on doughnuts. Overly stereotypical crap. Anything to egg me on, I guess.
One of them is fiddling with the radio and playing tinny Christmas music over the warbled speakers. I don’t care how much Michael Bublé plays or how hard the snow falls beyond the glass windows—I’m not in a holly-jolly mood. There’s a limit to my patience and we’re at the end of it. My mood today is best described as five seconds away from physically assaulting an officer.
“For the last time, Ms. Greene, there is no sign of foul play.” His fingers lock together, the way they always do when he’s absolutely livid, just barely keeping his shit together. I’ve done a number on him in a matter of twelve months: Weathered eyes, black hair streaked through with gray, a family of premature wrinkles carved into his skin. “We’ve looked into your mother’s case. Tirelessly. Endlessly. All signs point to your mother leaving town voluntarily.”
Behind him, the wall is a boring wash of pale yellow. It bleeds together with the rest of the office. With him. Muted and dull and unremarkable, Sheriff Vrees is about as bland as they come. He’s a lukewarm TV dinner or a mindless Saturday afternoon, the kind you spend with your eyes glazed over and the local news playing quietly in the background.
He’s shown more emotion in the last couple months than he ever has in his life. He should thank me for that.
I tap a nail-bitten finger on my photo. How I got the evidence shouldn’t matter. “I’ve also been looking into it, Mark.Tirelessly. Endlessly. And look what I’ve found.”
The photo I took shows the beloved local preacher—the one seemingly as untouchable as God himself—in the woods beyond his house. Shadows dampen the image, soaking the details of the scene into a blurry haze. Despite this, there’s enough moonlight to carve the unmistakable silhouette of him with his hands around a hare’s throat. Pastor Clarke had snapped it in two and the blood is staining the ice red.
Sheriff Vrees’s eyes glaze over the image for a measly second. “I don’t get it.”
I scoff. “A man sacrificing an animal out in the woods isn’t weird to you?”
“Sacrificing? Pfft. With that logic, everyone in the UP is in a cult.” To prove his point that ritualistic animal sacrifice is a popular pastime in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Vrees nods toward the photos on his desk. Next to a portrait of his pregnant wife is a hunting shot. Vrees with a ruddy red nose, standing in front of a deer stand and grinning proudly beside an animal carcass.
“Twelve-pointer,” he says, humming to himself.
“What a beast,” Officer Mathers calls from his computer. He’s not even looking into anything important on the screen. The bastard’s playing a round of solitaire. And losing, at that.
My patience was limited to begin with, but it’s long gone now. “Whatever,” I gripe, “this is onlyone of the things I’ve shown you. I was posting again on my forum and—”
“The Nancy Drew gene really runs in your family, huh?” Vrees has a good long laugh at that.
My fists ball tight at my sides. “My mother isn’t just some amateur detective, okay? She’s a journalist.Was a journalist. Had a whole degree before she moved here and became a school counselor—I don’t have to explain this shit to you. It’s none of your business.”
Vrees’s scowl disappears under his mustache. “I don’t care what you or TrueCrimeLover420 has to say, Wil. We’ve been through this a million times before. Case closed.”
“Yes, we have, and each and every time, you never stop to actually listen to me.” I go to snatch my photo back, but Vrees is quicker. He yanks it out of reach and rips my work apart with heartless efficiency.
“What the hell?”
His skin ripples with frustration. “I sympathize with you—believe me, kid, I do—but your mom’s case is as good as closed. She skipped town. You and your dad don’t deserve that, but life’s like that.” He sips his coffee like we’re talking about the weather, not his own ineptitude and my missing mother. “Now it’s time to stop playing Sherlock and leave the Clarke family alone. They’re good people. Served this town well.”
I’d hardly call them good people. Mom hadn’t been missing for more than two days when Mrs. Clarke knocked on our door. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, Wilhelmina,” she’d crooned, so sickly sweet, it could rot my teeth out. Her eyes were splotches of spilled ink and her smile was full of brilliant white teeth. “Send my regards to your father. Our whole congregation is praying they find her soon.” And when she’d reached out to hold my hand, I could’ve sworn my mother’s bracelet jangled from her wrist.
Vrees pinches the bridge of his nose. “For as much as you’ve been harassing them, they should be the ones filing a complaint. Instead, they’re helping free your dad from that money-pit motel.”
“Money-pit motel” being code for our family home and the only piece of my mother I have left. “Free my dad” meaning steal the place out from under us and flatten it into a parking lot. Anything to run us out of town. Vrees isn’t the only one sick of me at this point. I’ll never forget the way Mr. Clarke had stiffened when I’d shouted down the street at his back. The hellfire in his eyes when he turned to face me.“Watch yourself, Miss Greene.”
There’s only so many times you can poke a bear before it finally shows its teeth. But I won’t let anyone scare me off. I’ve got teeth of my own.
My fist slams hard enough on the desk to send every head flying up. “And I’ve told you a million times too. I’m never giving up on her. Unlike you, I actually care.”
“Go home, Wil,” he orders.
I huff and shove my phone deep in my pocket before Vrees can confiscate that, too. With a dozen eyes searing into my skin, I storm my way toward the frozen hellscape outside.
“And, Greene,” he calls, his voice more grating than usual. “Consider this a warning. Next time I see you bothering anyone in this town, there will be hell to pay.”
I freeze with my back to him. My fists clench the door handle and I fear any more pressure will have it ripping right off. Beyond the window, the snow has made the evergreens in the forest twice as vibrant. Just like how your eyes get brighter after you cry. Not in spite of the pain but because of it. I swallow back tears. “Don’t worry; I’ll do this on my own from now on.” The door slams hard behind me.
Naturally, my bike is buried beneath a mound of snow in the parking lot. It takes several minutes of yanking it free before I’m able to mount the slippery seat, but then, with a shaky start, I’m off.
The roads aren’t quite treacherous at this hour, but riding in this weather is hardly pleasant.
The storm has bleached the blue right out of the sky. Pine Point is always dreary, but the lack of color makes it worse. It is a ghoulish sort of gray, dismal and infectious; it soaks into my skin, magnifying my bad day until it feels like the entire world has been thrown off-center. Like I might never be happy again.
Get your shit together.
I pedal faster on my bike. I should be going home—warming myself up before my nightly stakeout in front of the Clarke house—but home is the last place I want to be right now. So instead, I veer toward one of the only people in this town I still care about. Ronnie Clearwater is in the middle of her shift at Earl’s Diner. I might’ve been fired from the same place, but Earl has yet to outright ban me, so I loiter there on the regular.
It serves as a neon-red beacon in the distance, earl’s pasties shearing through the soupy stretch of white. I have to hand it to Earl. The rest of his food might be school-cafeteria grade at best, but his signature meat pies are surprisingly good.
The diner is small and severely outdated, but it’s got a roof and a heater, so it’s fine with me.
It’s also got a million of those little scented pine tree air fresheners in the window, so that’s an added perk. The real pine trees outside aren’t quite as fragrant.
Even in December, the Morguewood forest reeks to high heaven. The stench of decay wafts from the forest’s soil, tickling my nose. The nasty, lingering odor lasts all year. The first frost subdues it, but it still looms like bile caught in the back of my throat.
Creatures die in droves out there. Deer stiff with frost. Bears with their eyes trained upward, past the starving flies and swirling maggots, up to the grimy gray sky above. Winter keeps their bodies fresh, and their carcasses thaw in the spring, decomposing with the wet slide of summer.
I rip my eyes away from the trees as I reach Earl’s.
I swing the door open after kicking my bike to the curb. I don’t bother locking it up. It’s a rusted, ancient thing that no one in their right mind would steal. If someone needs it that badly, they’re in worse shape than me.
It’s important to mention that Earl’s isn’t one of those cute small-town, fifties-style diners.
There are no trendy black-and-white-tile floors or glossy red chairs, no teens sipping milkshakes at the counter while someone punches in an Elvis song at the jukebox.
Instead, we’ve got ugly-as-sin wood paneling and an overwhelming number of deer heads and taxidermy fish on the wall staring at you while you eat. A local station plays from the radio. Some twangy country song about a wife who wants to commit a felony on her husband.
I shake the snow off on the grimy mat and step into the sickly white glow of the fluorescents.
There are generations of dead flies trapped in them, and when the lights crackle, it sounds like pattering wings. Typically, this would be the point where I’d slump into one of the worse-for-wear booths and smear the last guy’s crumbs off the table. Ronnie would hand me a leftover basket of greasy fries, and we’d gossip back and forth until her shift ends.
Not today. She’s busy being held hostage at someone else’s table. From the tremble of her fists and the grit of her teeth, I can tell she’d rather run a mile in the cold than talk to this booth right now.
I know who it is before I even look. Ronnie’s ex, Lucas Vandenhyde.
There are less than a hundred students in the entire Pine Point school district, but Lucas Vandenhyde has made it his mission to be the most annoying one. He’s a walking, talking migraine. Five seconds with him and I need an Excedrin.
Everything about him is too manufactured. Too put in place. His straight white teeth are the product of years of orthodontic work and every word out of his mouth feels like it’s been fed to him by a corny eighties high school flick.
“Vee, I only want to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Ronnie snips, and I’m proud of her for it. She’s taken notes from my daily “How to Be a Bitch” TED Talk.
“Please—”
“Fine, fine. You want to talk?” Ronnie echoes, her voice lowering into a sharp whisper-growl. Not much of a whisper, since I can hear it from across the restaurant. “Okay, let’s talk. Let’s start with how you’ve been flirting with Leah Westbrooke all semester. Is that why you’re here now? Because she’s got a boyfriend? You’re wasting your time crawling back to me.”
I know she’s seething, because she’s got a strand of her hair curled around her finger. Some people twirl it like that to flirt, but it’s Ronnie’s alternative to yanking her hair right out of her scalp. I scowl at its color. Her harpy of a mother was quick to cover the blue. In less than forty-eight hours, she’s already driven her daughter an hour away to a salon to fix it. It’s no longer virgin blond but a brassy imitation of it.
Lucas’s cheeks burn scarlet. “Flirting? She’s my lab partner, Vee. What was I supposed to do? Not talk to her on the off chance you decided to stop hating me and make up?”
Lucas’s friend Kevin Garcia sits in the middle of their fight like a skittish referee. He looks so thoroughly out of place in their argument that it’s almost funny. He’s Waldo hidden in the middle of a battlefield, giving a little smile while surrounded by fallen soldiers. Except Kevin’s not the red-and-white-striped-T-shirt kind of guy. He’s a walking advertisement for the weird and unexplained.
Today he’s wearing an extraterrestrial-themed Christmas sweater, i want to believe (in santa) scrawled on the front, with a UFO led by reindeer. He’s “Jack and the Beanstalk” tall, with black hair cropped close to his warm brown skin. He’s one of those guys that would have girls lining up for him if he wasn’t so obsessed with Bigfoot.
Kevin catches me looking over and gives me a sheepish half smile. We’re not friends, but I guess it’s one of those “Congrats, you’re the only one who found me on this page!” sort of things. I don’t return it.
His smile drops and he occupies himself with the syrup container beside him.
Ronnie whips away from Lucas. “Last I checked, making out with your lab partner wasn’t on the syllabus . . . and for the love of God, I keep telling you to stop calling me that.”
Lucas’s earlier bravado is gone completely. He sucks in a sharp breath and guards his heart with two tightly crossed arms. “We were broken up . . . Ronnie. It was one stupid time and it meant nothing and we never—we didn’t—it wasn’t like that. It was a mistake, and it ended as soon as it began. Please, can we not do this here?” He waves his hand around likehere speaks for itself.
Ronnie’s having none of it.
“If you’re not going to order,” she snaps, “then leave.”
Lucas tuts. “Give me a Sprite, then, and Kevin will have a . . .” He looks over to Kevin and Kevin lurches in his skin. He pushes the syrup dispenser away like he wasn’t just playing with it.
“Dr Pepper,” Kevin answers. “Please.”
Ronnie sneers. “Two lukewarm waters coming right up.”
She spins on her heels, but Lucas’s hand lurches out to capture her wrist. Kevin sneaks a pleading look my way again, and he gingerly tries to remove Lucas’s arm.
No luck.
“Veronica, you know I don’t like her, right? It’s always been you. I didn’t come to fight. I was thinking . . . maybe . . . Well, my dad’s in Iron Mountain at the moment, so I’m having a bit of a get-together at my place. I was hoping you’d come and we could talk about us and—”
That does it.
My fury propels me toward them in seconds, and I don’t miss Kevin’s sigh of relief. He won’t be relieved with what comes next.
“Didn’t you hear her?” I snarl, slapping his arm back toward the floor. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Where the hell did you even come from?” Lucas massages his temples as though I’m the one giving him a headache. “This has nothing to do with you, Wil. Butt out.”
“If it’s about my best friend, it has everything to do with me.” I’m sure I look like one of those dogs with the foaming mouths, peering at him from behind a flimsy fence. My smile is nothing more than clenched teeth and unblinking eyes. A face that says, “Try me; I dare you.” My finger juts toward the door and I point a path from here to the parking lot. “Walk away right now.”
If someone told me a year ago that I would be standing here defending Veronica Clearwater, I would’ve thought they were on something. But that was BMD—Before Mom Disappeared. Back when we both still lived in separate worlds and Mom was the glue keeping the universe tethered together. It was back when Ronnie wasn’t a social pariah like me but genuinely popular—ponytail bobbing behind her head, soft gold shimmer swept across her lids. When she spent every second slung around Lucas’s arm, giggling when he pressed kisses into her cheek.
But neither of us is the same person we were junior year. Fate had Ronnie and I slumping into the bleachers at the same time, worn out and ruddy-eyed and alone. We’d talked about everything and anything. The carton of milk she’d dumped on her stupid ex’s head. Elwood’s stone-faced silence as he ran away. The night my mother went missing and the night her father took one too many pills. He had slipped into the night with a single note scrawled beside him:We can’t keep doing this. She’d cried on my shoulder and I’d cried on hers and that one afternoon changed everything.
I’d rubbed off on her like a bad case of poison ivy and she’d kept me from spiraling to the point of no return—and if you asked me now, I’d say I’d do anything for her.
Lucas’s cheeks burn scarlet, his teeth grinding together like flint sparking a fire. His eyes whip from mine to hers. “You know she’ll turn on you, too, Vee,” he spits, “just like she did with Elwood. She doesn’t know how to trust people.”
Elwood Clarke. The name stokes a flame inside me, rekindling something that never quite died in the first place. He used to sit by my side, his eyes lighting over the tiniest of things, always rambling incessantly about his butterfly collection. We made sense hanging out together. I was the girl that was quick to bite someone’s head off and he was the skittish boy who needed me to. Best friends until suddenly we weren’t. Before everything in my life went to hell in his family’s handbasket.
Now when I think of him, it’s like swallowing a lit match. The longer I dwell on what we were, the bigger the hole burns inside me.
Lucas’s hands clench at his sides and I know he’s on the verge of saying something particularly nasty when he stands. He doesn’t disappoint: “Elwood was a mess after you. You know that, right? You ruined a lifelong friendship and you didn’t even care. So, what, Wil, did you get tired of ruining your own relationships after your mom left? You had to go and ruin other people’s too?”
He’s taller than me, but it doesn’t stop me from getting close. “Anything else you want to say? You don’t know shit, Lucas. You don’t have a clue what I’ve been through.”
He didn’t spend days sprawled beside Mom on the couch, her nimble fingers twisting intricate braids. He didn’t shadow her every summer in the garden with a wicker basket, dutifully collecting fresh herbs and listening to her prattle on about each one. He didn’t cry so hard, he threw up when days turned to weeks turned to months of his mother never, ever coming home.
I grind my teeth and hold my ground. Keep talking, Lucas. See what happens. 
“Wil!”
We’ve gained an audience, but I’m fine with it. The locals have pulled away from their greasy plates, their eyes shifting from the box TV on the wall to the two high schoolers in the far left booth. WWE has nothing on me.
Lucas breathes in one long, shaky breath through his nose and then out his mouth. “Your mom skipping town on you was some messed-up shit, but, c’mon. You use it as a free hall pass to be an asshole. You need to know your place. You walk around this world like you own it.”
Anger twists my ribs into tightly wound knots. I go for the throat. “Then do it. Put me in my place.”
My world drips red.

CHAPTER TWO
ELWOOD
I’ve spent the last sixty minutes praying for a heart attack.
Or a stroke. Or an aneurysm. I’m not picky. All God needs to do is strike me down before my father drags me to the pulpit. The idea of standing in front of anyone—a congregation, a classroom, the mirror, some days—gives me heart palpitations.
But it’s official: God’s not listening.
“Elwood, won’t you come here for a moment?” my father asks, a rare slash of a smile on his face as he beckons me to stand in front of an unblinking crowd. I try to remember how to breathe again, but my lungs have thrown out the owner’s manual and left me gasping.
“Don’t make him repeat himself,” Mom snarls too low for others to hear. I know better than to go against her. Her threats have a way of tallying into scars. She reminds me of a spicebush swallowtail, wings as black as a blooming bruise, edges sharp like a mirror shattered by the weight of a fist.
I grip the back of a pew to steady myself. I’ve not only forgotten how to breathe; I’ve forgotten how to walk. It should be easy, but now it feels like flying with tattered wings.
Nothing will pacify her until I’m up on that stage. “Go.”
And so I do.
The church scrutinizes my every creaking step and tries to fit me into the same cookie-cutter mold as my father—but they fail, no doubt, when they see the two of us side by side. My father, the “Right Hand of God” for seventeen years. Me, the boy who doesn’t know what to do with his own hands. Behind my back? Wrung out in front of me? Definitely, a hundred percent, not in my pockets.
“Elwood’s big day is coming soon,” Father says with a pride I desperately hope is real. I resist the urge to smile. I must look solemn, serious, ready. My father isn’t a butterfly. He’s a praying mantis. If I’m not careful, I might lose my head.
He clamps a frigid hand on my shoulder and I risk a tiny look his way. From a distance, there are some undeniable similarities between us. I’ve grown in his image—wild, woodsy hair; eyes more golden than green, amber spilling in the center. Identical right down to the moles marring our skin. But despite it all, we’re not the same. He’s taller, broader, his personality a knife wrench to the gut. He twists my features in strange ways, making my eyes too harsh, my lips too cruel.
I’ve always pictured God with his face.
“Soon he will come of age and abandon his worldly studies for a more important mission.” He’s talking about my eighteenth birthday. The day I graduate early and life as I know it uproots.
I’m not sure where my parents are shipping me away to, but I know what awaits me: intense scripture study, prayers, and painful devotion. I’m to follow in my father’s footsteps no matter how large they may be. Maybe when I return, I can finally fill them.
Devotees lift their hands to that, their fingers reaching toward the heavens. There are so many familiar faces in the crowd, people who’ve spent their whole lives watching mine. They were there when I was born and they’ll be here when I come back. Mrs. Wallace, an older woman who has been our school receptionist since the dawn of time; one of the PTO moms, Mrs. Clearwater, who stares at me some days like I’m a specimen under glass; Prudence Vrees, the sheriff’s wife, always cradling her blossoming stomach, so large now, she might easily topple over.
The church is the only family I have.
“Our final lesson today revolves around change and the necessary transformations we go through under God’s will.” Satisfied that everyone has properly acknowledged my fate, my father shifts focus. He splays his hands against the pulpit, and for a fleeting moment, beside him, I spy the key swinging from my father’s throat.
I’ve seen him open the tabernacle door with it a million times, watched each and every twist of the lock. As a child, I used to think he kept his heart locked alongside the chalice. But I’ve looked within and while there’s a torn page squirreled inside and perhaps an old cobweb in the corner, there’s no softer part of him he’s kept hidden away.
Before Father can catch me staring at the lock, I avert my eyes and gaze beyond the pews. I study the ceiling, my tongue tripping over the Latin as I hum the words to myself.
crescimus in horto dei, the script reads. We grow in God’s garden. It’s a fitting quote for our church’s name. It’s carved on a wooden slab beyond the doors: the garden of adam. It’s nothing commercially produced, no clean lines for your finger to follow. One of our ancestors had whittled the letters freehand with the edge of a knife and the sign has sat there in front ever since.
When my father turns, his eyes swarm across my skin like flies to fresh roadkill. “Elwood, if you will.” With a pointed glance, he beckons for me to retrieve the cage in the corner.
I respond with a shaky nod, and it takes the rest of my body a second longer to catch up. I know exactly where the creature is—Father made me catch it, trap it, sit with it in the back seat the entire ride here. My heart is alive in my chest, no longer trapped within a cocoon but ready to fly away from all the guilt. The creature trusted me. It trusts me now.Run, I’d begged. Run far from here. It hadn’t.
The rabbit shivers inside its cage. It’s plump and white like a mound of ice. Silent, save for the occasional twitch. I try not to think about what will happen to it later tonight after the service. It never gets easier to watch. The plunge of the blade spewing through its throat, the blood dripping from the branches. My father’s merciless with a knife.Men have offered sacrifices to the Lord since the dawn of time, Elwood. Who are we to go against His word? I dread the day my father passes the knife to me. I know I’ll hesitate.Man disobeyed God in the very beginning, son, and we are here to atone for that sin.You are here to atone.
For now, though, the rabbit will serve as a lesson.
“God gave you ribs for a reason, Elwood,” my father scolds quietly when I return. I don’t need a mirror to know my lower lip is trembling. “Don’t wear your heart so openly on your sleeve.” I hope while he’s at it, he can’t read the rest of the lies off my face. He’s always been good at picking my brain and locating the most treacherous parts.
If he figures out what I have planned for tonight, he might swap me for the rabbit. With one last pointed look in my direction, he lifts the caged creature onto the pulpit. “What beautiful white fur, unblemished as fresh snow. If we released it outside now, it would blend in easily.” He snaps his fingers for emphasis and the noise spooks it. “But that’s only because of its winter coat. If it hadn’t changed color with the seasons, we probably wouldn’t have it here with us. Some larger creature would’ve snapped it up as prey. Thanks to the Lord, of course, it’s got a working advantage. The world changes and we change with it.”
The church’s silence opens the door for the world outside. Wind howls through the pine and dead branches scrape the glass. Soon the moon will swallow the sun whole. What’s left of it spills like yolk over the trees and dies on the horizon.
“Church, you might think you have nothing in common with this rabbit. There are no predators to hide from, your hair doesn’t change through the year—well, ignoring the occasional gray hair.” That earns a slight chuckle from the crowd, enough to cut through any of the tension. He never jokes like that at home. He saves his smiles for an audience. “But I’m here to tell you today that’s simply not true. We are precisely like this rabbit in God’s eyes. When we encounter obstacles and opportunities in life, we cannot always face them as we are currently. We must ask the Lord to change us—whether we need to become stronger in the face of adversity or we need to summon the courage to follow the path laid out for us. I want transformation to be our theme this Christmas. Stasis is death.”
His words have talons, clutching and digging into my already-tender flesh. “If we do not change to adapt to God’s plans, we are no better than a brown hare in the snow, waiting for Satan or a hawk to swoop down and grab us.”
His lesson is accompanied by a harsh gust of snow. Like my father’s lesson, the storm is changing too. It’s becoming something impossible to outrun.
It will do more than bury the cars in the lot. It will smother our homes, our stores, the school . . .
School.
The word rolls into my mind unprompted, punching deep in my chest and leaving me winded. I try to shake it off, but I can’t. All of it, gone. The old, creaky desks, the ivy slithering up the alabaster sides. And, of course, I think of my only two friends.
Living things have always been so difficult. I remember all the times butterflies fluttered away from me, never to be seen again. The dead ones didn’t. They let me pin them in place, safe behind glass. Beautiful and mine. No work needed.
People aren’t like that. They’re more like flowers. If you don’t tend to them, they’ll shrivel and die and leave you with nothing in the end. When I leave, how long will it take for them to forget me?
“Think of it as a going-away party.” That’s what my friend Lucas said in the hall today, the start of my moral unraveling. I’d been resolved to my fate until those seven words slithered into my ears. “Please tell me you’ll go. It might be the last time we see you for years.”
I shot him down instantly. “Hell would have to freeze over before my parents agreed to that.” But he was just as fast. “Then don’t tell them.”
“That’s a . . .” I didn’t finish, and it turned out I didn’t need to. My face gave me away.
Lucas filled in the gaps: “Sin, yeah, we know the drill. C’mon, live a little before you go away, Elwood. You really want to go your whole life without ever having fun? Give yourself one night.”
“One night,” I’d parroted.
“That’s all we’re asking for, buddy. You can pray about it after. You’ll be there and back before anyone notices. What do you say?”
I know what the wind says now. It screams beyond the stained glass.Sinner, sinner, sinner.
I shouldn’t have entertained Lucas’s plan or told him that I’d go if he parked the car far into the trees. One last taste of the outside world—that’s how I’d rationalized it to myself. Now I’m wondering if I should’ve changed like the hare. If clinging to the past really will be the death of me after all.
“A prayer for Elwood’s big day,” my father finishes, and his palms lift skyward. “That he may continue to change as God commands him to.”
The church bows their heads on cue. Their eyes might be closed, but mine are locked on the rabbit’s. Its eyes are glossy, black, and unyielding.
“We bring Elwood before you, O Lord, as a testament of our eternal devotion. We ask for his strength and for his transformation. Let him reach manhood in accordance with your word and inherit the heritage he was born to receive. For with life there is death, but with sacrifice, there is eternity.” My father’s eyes reopen as he calls to the church. “We are seeds in the wind.”
That always marks the end of our prayer, a final tribute to the forest around us before we begin the sacrament. Every seed planted in this forest is blessed. Our trees stand like saints, our livelihood, ourEden. We whisper our thanks to them when we drive past, when we link hands for dinner, when we gather in church. Father worships each trunk before he cleaves his axe through it.
“And we shall grow in His image,” the church returns dutifully, and the sound builds with every voice.
“Amen.”
My stomach burns from the sins I’ve yet to commit.US

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