NATE NEVER SHOWED up to school that morning, leaving me caught between relief and deep stabbing pangs of worry. As class after class passed, my conviction to keep away from him morphed into a desperate need to make sure he was okay.

I stopped by the nurse’s office to get a Band-Aid for my finger, and as she rummaged through a drawer brimming with first aid things, I peeked into the back room where sick students went to recuperate or wait on their parents. The room was empty.

“Marli, are you okay?” The school nurse, an elderly woman the students called Miss Claire-Anne, ripped open the Band-Aid paper.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem to be feeling well. You look pale. Are you getting enough sleep?” Forgetting the Band-Aid, she pushed her palm against my forehead.

I stepped away from her touch. “Um, do you know if Nate Porter is sick or why he’s not at school?”

The shadow that passed over Miss Claire-Anne’s face was the answer her mouth didn’t say. “We can’t give out personal information.”

“Is he hurt?”

Miss Claire-Anne watched me for several moments as if she was trying to decide how much to confess. “Yes, he’s been hurt.”

I clutched the nurse’s arm. “What happened?”

Miss Claire-Anne pried my fingers off and wrapped the Band-Aid around my finger. “I can’t say, dear.”

Tremors shot through me. I was unraveling like a rag doll whose seams had been cut loose. The scent of burnt flesh was still alive in my nostrils as were Mary’s cries in my ears. And now Nate. I was committed to breaking it off with him, telling him we could no longer see each other. In this instance, that conviction, as fragile as it was, shattered and flittered away, if it had ever really been a conviction at all.

Miss Claire-Anne popped out of her chair and folded me into her arms. “There. It’s okay. He’s going to be okay. He’s in good hands.”

“Good hands? You don’t mean his father?”

The shadow passed over her again. “No, dear. He won’t be going back there.” Miss Claire-Anne looked around as if to make sure no one was listening. “He’s in the hospital. He’s fine, but he might have to be there a few days.”

I doubled over, catching a breath suddenly impossible.

“My dear, lie down. Come.”

“Oh, God.”

As Miss Claire-Anne pushed me toward a chair, I wrenched free. “No, I have to go. He’s at the local hospital?”

“Honey, you can’t just leave school.”

My mind was racing. It wasn’t even lunchtime—I could get there and back before the end of the day.

With as much effort as I could muster, I forced my features to relax even though there were gale-force winds whirling inside me. “I’m sorry. I’m just shocked. I’ll check on him after school. I should get to class.”

Before Miss Claire-Anne could protest, I bolted out of the room and headed straight to my locker. As classes settled into the beginning of another mundane lecture, I slid out the side entrance.

Without a backward glance, I ran several blocks until the hospital loomed ahead. It was an aged building, red distressed brick with windows whose frames were cracked and in need of painting. One hundred years before, it was a lunatic asylum and still held the same eerie façade, but I didn’t care. If they could take care of Nate, they were saints.

But Nate wasn’t inside the hospital. He was sitting on a picnic table underneath a soaring maple tree.

“Nate?” I sprinted forward. “Are you okay?” I stumbled to a halt in front of him. “Oh my…God…Nate…”

At the same time I scoured his appearance, he scoured mine and his mouth fell open.

“What happened?” we demanded of the other at the same time.

Moments passed in charged silence as if the words that needed to be spoken were pressurized, becoming more and more heavy, weighted, bloated with pain that was too difficult to describe.

Finally, Nate reached for me. I slid my hand into his and allowed him to pull me forward. Soon, I was pressed against him, feeling the only ounce of peace in what seemed like an eternity.

“Hey, beautiful.” He pulled away, scouring my hair.

I fingered the short ends. “I have a new hairstyle. It’s all the rage now a’days.” The attempt at humor fell flat.

“Edna?”

I nodded.

My hair didn’t matter, though, not nearly as much as the bruises on Nate’s face. I was unsure where I could touch him. His lip was busted open with dried blood peppering his chin like a splatter of miniscule paint droplets. He had a deep-black bruise under his left eye and a cut along the right side of his cheek, long and deep.

When he tried to pull me onto the bench, he winced and grabbed his side.

“Your ribs too?”

He answered with a grimace.

I sat beside him. “Tell me.”

He was wearing his fedora, and I resisted the urge to shove it off his head, to take away anything that indicated this was a normal day.

“Same ole song and dance.”

“I don’t know what that means. Tell me without trying to play it off like it was no big deal.”

“You know that thing I was going to do for the police?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it didn’t go as planned.”

“Go on…” I braced myself.

He watched a car pull into the parking lot across the road. “I was in Jude’s room when he got home.”

“And he obviously didn’t like finding you there.”

“Yeah, well, I was elbow-deep in his dresser looking for any information I could find.”

“And he just…did this to you?” Marli wasn’t sure her heart could break any more.

“Pretty much.”

“How could the police put you up to this?”

“All they wanted was an address, and they kept telling me over and over not to risk anything. If I found something lying around, then bring that to them.”

“And you…didn’t listen?”

“Well, kind of yes and kind of no. I was looking for Mom’s address again while keeping my eyes open for any info on that lab.”

“How’d you get away?”

“I’m not helpless. I fought back. He’s not looking so good either, ya know. Anyhow, I managed to get out the front door and didn’t go back.”

“Miss Claire-Anne said that you would be here for a few days. Did they admit you?”

He shrugged. “We’ll see. I told them I wanted to leave, and since I don’t have health insurance, they let me walk out the front door. I left a message for my PO, but I’m not going back to the Stones’. At one point I thought about it, but no. Don’t even suggest it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I whispered even though I was.

“Why didn’t you show this morning?” There was no accusation in his tone, just concern. “Is everything okay?”

“You were hurt and still came up the mountain?”

He shrugged it off. “I had nowhere else to go so I hiked up overnight and just stayed there. I went to school this morning and ran into the nurse. She was going to call an ambulance, but I talked her into giving me a ride to the hospital instead. She’s supposed to come back after school. She might be a little surprised to find I’m not here.”

If my heart wasn’t already broken at the sight of him and what he had endured, it would have surely become so at the thought of him waiting for me up on the mountain. Hurt. Alone.

“I didn’t want to risk it. Things are falling apart up there. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.” I choked on a sob but managed to keep my composure.

“Did something happen?” He toyed with my fingers.

I didn’t return his gaze. Instead, I stared at the mountaintop. From this angle, the swirling mist obscured any sign of the little church and its foreboding cross.

“Yeah. Something happened.”

“What?”

“There was a punishing, a ceremony where whoever did something bad is judged, punished, and then cleansed or re-baptized. It was a part of the church’s history but they had stopped years ago. I never dreamed they would start them again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I was lost in memories, my voice mechanical and emotionless. “You know my friend, Polly?”

He nodded. “I’ve heard you talk about her.”

“She has an older sister, Mary. She was caught sneaking around with a guy from school. They had one of these punishing ceremonies for her. At first it was just sort of humiliating for her. The entire Lowe family had to stand at the front of the church. Then…”

He caressed my arm.

“Then…the judgment. My father brought out a snake…” I shuddered. “If the snake bit her, she was beyond saving—and I assume it was poisonous—and she would die. It didn’t bite her, thank goodness.”

“You’re kidding.”

Oh, how I wish I was.

“Is that even legal?”

“The mountain has its own set of laws. The police don’t have influence or jurisdiction. They leave the Church on the Mountain alone and vice versa.”

“I get that, but something like this? I can’t believe they can get away with it.”

“That’s not all. Then we left the church. At first I thought they were just going to baptize her, wash away her sins. But they didn’t. They marked her.”

“What do you mean, they marked her?”

“They took a stick from the fire that had a metal tip on it. Then they pushed it into her arm.” My voice crackled and split.

“Oh my God,” he whispered as he turned sideways. I knew it hurt his ribs, but I couldn’t protest and allowed him to ease me into his arms.

“Damn that church,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

I pulled back, searching those colorful eyes for meaning.

“We can’t wait for this to happen to you. And it will. Something will happen. They’re losing their grip on you. We need to leave. I’ll get money and a car. We’ll go far away. No one will find us and when we’re eighteen, no one will care.”

“What?” I felt like a little child trying to understand advanced chemistry.

“They’ll kill you. Maybe not really kill you but they’ll kill your spirit. They’ll never let you go. We need to escape and we can’t wait another day.” He pulled my face into his hands. “Marli, they’ll do to you what they’ve done to Mary.”

As if to seal the deal, he lured me into a deep, resonating kiss that set about an alteration of every chemical inside my brain until I was leaning into him, then farther still. If I could’ve, I would’ve merged my body with his right then and there.

He pulled away. “Tomorrow morning. Four thirty.” His eyes locked on mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“Pack a light bag. Meet me at the usual place. We’ll hike off the mountain and I’ll have a car and money ready. And then we’re going to run.”

My mind whirled with possibilities, fears, decisions.

“Marli?”

I looked at him.

“Is this what you want? I need to know for sure.”

“Yes.” I studied the split skin on his lip. He needed to leave as much as I did. “This is what I want.”