THE STARS ARE BEAUTIFUL - WATTYS AWARD NEW ADULT WINNER 2019

Callum | Chapter 19

WE RIDE THE SUBWAY on my first Sunday off rotation in six weeks. I slid Julep's Bible to her with a folded piece of paper tucked inside.

Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it she calls her friends and neighbors to say, "Rejoice with me—for I have found my lost coin." In the same way, I tell you, there was rejoicing in the presence of angels of God, over one sinner who repents.—Luke 15:8-10

Everly Anne,

You're my little lost coin in the dark.

Now that I've found you, I don't want to spend you.

Now that I've found you, I want to keep you close enough to me so I won't ever lose you.

—Callum Andrew

And I added, "Merriam-Webster's schedule was a little full, but thankfully Luke was available for guidance. He thought that's how I should ask a beautiful girl festooned with interesting qualities to be my girlfriend. What do you think?"

Everly rested her head on my arm. "Much better than an okay."

I locked our free hands. "And you're much better than a self-appointed redhead."

She sighed heavily. "Now that we have that settled, I guess we should get down to business."

"On the train? But there's people watching."

She looked up at me. "Are you making a sex joke?"

"A bad one. Definitely."

"Maybe I need to make my own list."

"What number would you be on?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know if there are numbers high enough for you, Charming Sweeper."

She poked my cheek and then sat straight in her seat, handed me her backpack. "I have paper and writing utensils—the essentials for compiling a plan to rip my heart out and give it to another person."

I unzipped her bag. "Settle down. We're just talking CIPA today. We'll save heart ripping-out for a less merry day."

I grew quiet as I wrote her name and age. "Date of birth?"

She gave me the Eye. "If this is going to be clinical, I'm going to be extremely difficult about my answers."

"It has to look and sound legit, Everly. Plus, honestly? I need to know these things. A judge will ask me questions and expect perfect answers."

She sighed in frustration. "Just talk to me like I'm a person and not some inanimate protoplasmic blob of flesh and bone sitting here."

"Congratulations, we just reached the triple digits in how utterly interesting and adorable I find you, despite how immature your overall demeanor is right now. Why are you so grumpy, anyhow?"

"Puppies are adorable," she scoffed.

"And she just keeps heading in the kindergarten direction." I looked down to the pad and then tossed it aside. "Give me your hands."

"They're kind of attached to my arms."

"Everly Anne." I sighed, but she wasn't being moved from her mood. "Dearest Everly Anne, please place your palms against my palms so that I may ask you very important questions in a way that doesn't reduce you to mere protoplasmic blobs of human flesh."

"Thank you." She rested her hands in mine.

"Tell me a story about an injured pinkie finger."

"Toddlers like biting their hands," she said with a shrug. "We've been over this part."

"Yeah, but I was smitten, remember? Refresh my memory."

"I just bit myself and didn't know it hurt, so I kept doing it until they had to amputate part of my pinkie. I wore those oven mitts to stop myself, but that only worked some of the time. They fell off, or I'd take them off, or the nurses would be pissed off because they got dirty or wet, and so they'd ditch them and then I got hurt. So, when I was a real problem, they put me in a cast so I didn't end up chewing my fingers off completely. Wanna know how many times I almost bit my own lips off, too?"

I smirked. "Wanna know how many times I've thought about biting your lips off?"

"I'm in a crappy mood, so I'm betting at least twice since we got on this train."

"I thought about doing other things to your lips, too, but then remembered we had an inconvenient reality to consider... So..." I shrugged and wrote down notes. She didn't say a word.

"How do they perform 'checks'?" I asked next. "Same as Montauk?"

"No." She flushed. "Not anything like Montauk."

I played along. "How does it differ?"

"No one kisses me naked on their bed, for starters." She smiled. "The nurses only make sure I haven't hurt myself. Morning, noon. Before bed. If I go out. If I stay inside. I'm basically strip-searched at will."

"Do they ever ask?"

"What do you think?" she replied.

"That this part is very important." My eyes narrowed. "What do they do during 'checks'? I mean... I get it... But what happens? From beginning to end, how has it always been?"

"I strip, they look me over. If I'm hurt, they treat whatever is messed up, and I get dressed or shower or whatever."

"Timothy ever performed these Checks?"

"Just drop it, Callum."

"How old were you the last time he examined you?"

"It's not what you're thinking, so drop it. I despise Timothy, but it's not like that, and I'm not going to cry wolf that he's that kind of monster."

"That's not an answer."

I stared at her until she said, "Thirteen."

"That's a little old for a father to be staring at his daughter naked."

"It was my fault. I wouldn't let them look at me because I had my period, and I was embarrassed, and he thought I was hurt and not telling someone. It's the tactic I use to wiggle what I want from him. When he realized what was happening, he left the room, and he's never looked at me again. He's twisted, but he's not that twisted."

I sighed as I sunk in my seat. "I'm sorry. Also, I might be experiencing a minor panic attack."

Everly rubbed my chest. "He would never hurt me, you know. I mean... he is hurting me, but he doesn't mean to hurt me."

"No offense, topolina, but with that statement you sound like a textbook example of every victim who has had an abuser."

"Think it'll hold up in court?"

I put the paper on the seat beside me and let her lean her head on my chest. We rode the train in silence for a few stops, but then Sunday stepped aboard. It wasn't so much a person as it was an assembly. Everly smiled at each person cloaked in black, greeted them by name, and they did the same to her, except her name on this train was only Peach. As soon as the train started to move again, Everly rested in her seat with her hand in mine and closed her eyes.

"This is my favorite way of attending church," she told me.

And then the black robes started rehearsing "Amazing Grace" for the choir they were bound toward.