Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,8

hanging where he’d left it. He didn’t hesitate, standing tall for the cameras and sliding inside.

Emma’s room was heavy with the smell of her, a thick, fruity department store perfume, and dimly lit by bedside lamps. There was a split down the center, between Neesha’s perfectly organized bed and desk, and Emma’s side. Half of her clothes were strewn across the floor. Two of her textbooks were buried in the mess. Her sheets were tangled at the base of the bed.

There were photos taped all along the wall, but a few obvious gaps suggested some had been torn down. Most of the photos weren’t taken at Redemption, but what Evan assumed was her family home in Kansas. Young Emma was undeveloped but perfectly recognizable. The same thin blonde hair, but cut just below her ears. The same hundred-watt smile, but missing a few teeth. She had photos smiling with her mom, smiling with her dad, smiling at her church confirmation, smiling at what looked like a birthday pool party.

Then came the Polaroids from Redemption. A picnic with some instructors, a photo on a bench with Neesha, a Bible study with Father Farke. All of them were sterile and detached.

Emma didn’t smile in photos anymore; she hardly ever took them. She’d stopped going for walks to take her journal into the forest. Her conversations with friends were less than a minute long. She’d stopped doing her homework. Two days ago, she slept all day, instead of going to class. Emma was broken. She was crying out, but no one was listening.

Except him. He was listening.

By the foot of the bed, there was a photo with Aiden, his arms wrapped around her, suffocating her. Evan ripped it down.

There was one surface on Emma’s side of the room that wasn’t in disarray. The only item on her desk, a small, leather-bound notebook, sat perfectly centered, waiting for him to discover it.

Emmalynn Donahue / Testimonial Journal / Year Four.

Below the title was Redemption’s crest, a half oval with crescent moons and a book, shining upward into the school’s credo: You are the light of the world.

Evan sat in her chair for a few moments without moving, his heartbeat rising as he stared into the cover, its jacket cracked from use, unsure where to start. With two fingers, he pulled back a single page.

Day 1. Sigh. Another new year, another opportunity to get this right. I see myself in the face of every new student, their eyes wide enough to reflect my own, smooth skin where my creases have formed—

He retreated, pulling his hands off the surface quickly like it was hot to the touch, his temples pounding. The front cover fell on top of the journal again.

This was it. Ever since May fourteenth, he knew the pattern of Emma was fragmented. Everyone else was so directional and readable, but Emma curved, cut, and folded into herself. Everyone else could be predicted by patterns of desire and familiar endgames, stepping on others to get the things that they wanted. But Emma submitted herself to them, swam with their currents, felt their pain. Emma’s mysteries grew out of her subconscious. Poetry was her translation and her salvation. The testimonial journal was full of her poetry. This was the key to the pattern, the key to the mission, the answer to every riddle.

He flipped through the journal, scanning each page, trying to find the poem she’d read for him five months earlier. On Day 9, he found it, decorated with the same doodles that brought the rest of Emma’s writing to life. His heart beat faster, twice its normal speed.

I’ll hold your place next to me, eternally, endlessly.

This world was never big enough, but you still tried to make a place for me—

There was a knock on the door behind him.

He almost fell backward out of the chair, grabbing for the desk to stabilize himself. He held his breath and squeezed to prevent his muscles from vibrating. No one knew he was here; no one had any reason to think that the room wasn’t empty.

There was another knock. “Open, open.” It was a man’s voice, not one he recognized, with what sounded like a Russian accent. “We know you’re in this room.”

Evan’s pulse accelerated as he searched for options. He could try the window, but it was a three-story drop to the rocks below. There were places to hide, but the man’s S2—Subtext told him he wasn’t going anywhere, and if the S3—Intention was to punish him,