Mary Katherine forced a smile and a sign of the cross and ran to the bathroom. She went to the sink and spit out the flesh and blood. But when she looked into the sink, all she saw was a wafer and wine.
Mary Katherine suddenly felt her stomach come up. She rushed to the handicapped stall. It was always the cleanest. She got on her knees and threw up the eggs she had for dinner. She sat there for a moment, catching her breath. Then, she flushed the toilet and went to the sink.
She wiped away the thin layer of sweat that had broken out on her forehead with a coarse paper towel. Then, she fished in her purse for peppermint Tic Tacs to wash the wretched taste out of her mouth. She couldn’t find any mints, but she did find a stray tampon hidden on the bottom of her purse.
That’s when she realized her period was late.
Mary Katherine stopped. She thought about her aching body. Her tender breasts. The horrible nausea she felt all morning. The pit in her stomach. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she was pregnant. At first, the thought terrified her, but quickly, her mind calmed down. She couldn’t be pregnant. It was impossible.
After all, she was a virgin.
And virgins can’t get pregnant.
Everybody knows that.
Chapter 55
The wind howled outside. The lights began to turn off. And it was almost time for the old people to sleep. Ambrose had been reading his brother’s diary every minute since he’d found it. He wanted to stop several times, but he wouldn’t allow himself. His eyes could handle this much information, but he didn’t know about his heart. The feeling was more than guilt or regret. He had experienced plenty of each over the last fifty years. It was the diary itself. Everything about it reminded him of David. It smelled like him. It felt like him. And of course, it had that handwriting.
It looked like the walls of an insane asylum.
Most little kids have a chicken scratch scrawl, but when David’s mind turned, he took the prize. He wrote in the weirdest combination of capital letters, lowercase, cursive, and printing Ambrose had ever seen. Everything was a little off. Just like David was a little off. Ambrose had expected to finish the diary in a couple of hours. But somehow, one day stretched to two, and Ambrose wasn’t even halfway done. Every page was filled with so many sketches, drawings, and hieroglyphics that sentences couldn’t be read.
They had to be excavated.
But if there was a clue in here, he was going to find it. Ambrose rubbed his tired eyes and opened the diary again. The leather cracked. He continued to read.
April 1st
Ambrose said he was too busy to come to the woods today, but that’s okay. He is on the varsity baseball team and has important things to do. I just wish I could show him the inside of my tree house. It took me so long to build it by myself. But maybe that’s what makes it special. When you go in, you can walk around town. But it’s not really town. It’s a copy of town. People think they are alone, but they’re not. Imaginary people are with them all the time. Some people are very nice. Some are very bad. But none of them can see me, though, so it’s okay. In the daylight, I’m invisible like Wonder Woman’s jet. So, I am safe until night falls. That’s when the woman with burnt feet can find me. She always makes that terrible hissing noise. I just wish Ambrose would come and see it for himself.
April 13th
I am becoming a superhero. When I am on the imaginary side, I can jump really high if I think about it hard enough. But then, when I leave, I feel sick. I woke up today with a very bad headache. I thought the headaches were over. But they aren’t and now I have a fever. My mother is starting to get worried, but I can’t tell her what’s going on because I think the woman with the burnt feet is watching me. So, I pretended I was okay. But I don’t know if I’m okay. I’m starting to get scared.
April 23rd
I am having trouble sleeping because I’m so sick. And I’m afraid of the nightmares. I thought they were mine for a long time, but