Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Charliegh: Drowning Lessons

Nowhere to go. Maybe that meant there was nothing to fear.

"Charliegh! Charliegh McCowan!" Bicycle treads swished along the long grass. Someone was screaming, so close that it made her hair stand on end. "Charliegh McCowan!"

Nolan. And others - she could hear the other bikes, bumping and jostling along the uneven ground. One was laughing, low and loud and mocking, and another was swearing, a symphony to the rapid pounding of her heart.

"Hey, whore!" He leaned over the handlebars, smile vicious against the clarity of the January sky. "You can't run, Charliegh! You can't run!"

The ground flashed beneath her feet. Everything was short snatches - watery light, jagged edges of the treetops, branches clawing at the clouds. Above the roaring of her pulse in her ears, fear settled thick in her throat, turning her stomach inside-out.

They would find her. They would catch her. There was no escaping destiny.

If she turned, she would face her enemies. Her greatest fear. But after they had been vanquished - if they could be vanquished - she would still face the fire, the ruins of the church, disparity licking at her heels like an unfurnished flame.

"Too slow!" A hand grasped for the back of her jacket and shoved, hard enough to twist her ankles beneath her. Pain streaked up her leg, drumming along the length of her bruises, and she cut through the flesh of her lip with her teeth, trying to keep her terrified howl inside.

When she rubbed the dirt out of her eyes, flakes digging into the sensitive skin, they were all around her. She could imagine their jeers through the blur of her tears, wicked as cannibals. Her feet were twisted up beneath her. She was fairly certain that her ankle was broken, yet she gathered the looseness of her limbs and hauled herself to her feet.

Nolan was standing directly across from her, a smile curved like the edge of a dagger upon his lips. "I told you I would finish." He said. "Didn't I, Charliegh McGowan?"

She couldn't glare at him. She couldn't even try. Her courage had always been weak, and now, facing a crowd of teenagers who wanted nothing more than her humiliation, she couldn't even find the strength to pull a straight face.

"You raped me." She swallowed. The acknowledgement struck her like a visceral force. "What more do you want, Nolan?"

He threw his bicycle onto the ground. It raised a cloud of dust, handlebars wrenched and wheels partially deflated. "I want you. Your pain. Your humiliation. Your life. I want from you what Randall refused to give me."

She couldn't breathe. "Randall killed himself. Can't you even leave his suicide as sacred?"

"There's an ocean behind us. A few dozen trees. There's a lot of ways to die," he said, "so why'd you think he picked my lake? Behind my farm?"

When someone grabbed her arms, she didn't protest. She couldn't run. Couldn't move. What had they done to Randall? What did he mean: my lake, behind my farm? He had killed himself. She read the note. She had felt his goodbye upon her lips, burned onto her mouth like a terminal cancer. Love had been his undoing, and suicide had been his untimely end.

"After all Nolan did to you, you still have lovely hips?" It had to be Dom, musky and snakelike as he slid one wiry arm around her waist. "Too bad about that, slut. Vickie was getting boring."

"Shut up, Dom." Vickie leveled a glare at Charliegh. "Feel like walking, sweetie?"

Nolan grabbed her wrist, yanking her body forward. She feel into an embrace of bones, rough and menacing. "She doesn't have to be walking. Just breathing."