“What does it sound like, Moses? What does the water sound like?”
Niagara. It sounded like the falls. I’d heard the sound of the waterfall in Hawaii as it fell around Ms. Murray and the man she loved. Ray. Ray had shown me the inside of the waterfall. It had been so loud that there was no other sound but the water. And it had roared in my head then. Now it roared again.
“It sounds like a lion. It sounds like a storm.”
“So let the wall of sound fall down around you.” Gigi was speaking directly into my ear, yet I could barely hear her, as if we, too, stood inside a waterfall that was so loud all other sound disappeared.
I let myself get lost in the sound. Lost in the best way. Freed from myself, from my head. From the pictures.
I saw those towering walls of water held back by the hand of a God who could do all things, a God who had done as one Moses asked, long before I lived. And I asked Him to do it again. I asked God to release the water. And Molly disappeared completely.
Georgia
MOSES STOPPED GOING to school for good after the cops pulled him out of class because of the painting he’d plastered under the overpass. I stayed away from him for four weeks. For almost a solid month, I kept my distance. And he never sought me out. I didn’t know why I thought he would. But there were rules about this kind of thing, weren’t there? You didn’t have sex and then never call, never come by. You didn’t take someone’s virginity in the most epic, earthshattering way and go about your business. Or maybe he did.
But I knew he had felt what I felt that night. I knew he did. I couldn’t be the only one. And those feelings were wearing me down. The desire, the overwhelming need to do it all over, to let him cover me and make me do all the things I had sworn I wouldn’t do again was getting the best of me. I was absolutely miserable, and the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I couldn’t stand it anymore. I drove to the old mill and found his jeep, parked up close to the old rear entrance. He had to be about done with the clean-up he’d been hired to do. But he was here now, and I scribbled a note on the back of a service check-up I found in the glove compartment of Myrtle and I wrote –
Moses,
Meet me at the barn when you’re done.
~Georgia
I didn’t want to sign my name, but I wasn’t even confident enough to assume he would know it was me without my signature. Then I put the note under his windshield wipers, the words facing down so that if he missed it when he came out, he could almost read it right through the window, sitting in the driver’s seat.
Then I scurried back to my house, made sure I smelled like roses with fresh breath and clean undies and I tried not to think about how pathetic I was, how disappointed I was in myself as I put a little mascara on my lashes, staring into my own eyes, purposely not seeing myself.
I waited in the barn for an hour. My dad came out once, and I almost gave myself away, turning with a huge grin only to see him instead of Moses. I was instantly filled with terror that my dad would know something was up and disappointment that Moses still hadn’t come. There was a storm coming and as the weather turned colder, we often brought the horses in for the night. Lucky and Sackett, along with Dolly, Reba and Merle—the horses my parents used exclusively for equine therapy—were cozy in individual stalls, all of them brushed down and better groomed than they’d ever been. They gave me cover, and my dad fell for it. And I felt like a harlot when he headed back to the house, not a worry in his greying head, thinking his tomboy daughter was safe from the neighbor boy. Sadly, I probably was. But he wasn’t safe from me. And yet, there was not enough shame to make me leave the barn.
He didn’t come. I waited until midnight and finally wrapped myself in one of the blankets I’d spread over the straw, blankets I told myself we could sit on while we talked. And I fell asleep alone in the barn.
I awoke to the sound of rain against the tin roof, warm, comforted by the stirring of the horses and the smell of the clean straw beneath the blanket that had come loose while I slept. It wasn’t especially cold. The barn was cozy and sturdily built, and I’d flipped on the space heater before I’d succumbed to sleep. The light above the door was just a bare bulb, and it threw a mellow light across the floor as I opened my heavy lids and considered staggering to the house and crawling in bed or just staying put. I’d slept in the barn before, many times. But those other times I’d brought a pillow and I wasn’t wearing a lace bra that cut into my sides and jeans that were a little too tight to substitute for pajama bottoms.
It was when I sat up, shaking straw from my hair, that I saw Moses, just sitting in the far corner on a low stool my dad used for shoeing the horses. He was as far away from the horses as he could get, and thankfully, none of them seemed especially alarmed by his presence. But I was, just for a moment, and I let out a startled squawk.
He didn’t apologize or laugh or even make small talk. He just eyed me warily, as if watching me sleep was what I had summoned him for.
“What time is it?” I whispered, my voice scratchy and my heart heavy. He just made me feel so damn heavy.
“Two.”
“You just got home?”
“No. I went home. Showered. Went to bed.”
“You’re sleep walking, then?” I kept my voice light, soft.
“What do you want, Georgia? I kind of thought you were done with me.” Ah. There it was. A flash of anger. Quiet, brief. But there. And I reveled in it. My mom always said negative attention is better than no attention at all. She was usually talking about foster kids who acted out. But apparently it also applied to seventeen-year-old girls who were in love with boys who didn’t love them back. That thought made me angry.
“Do you love me, Moses?”