I close my eyes, taking in a huge gasp of air. She remembers it.
“Getting hit by cars and screaming in class? I swear, you’re getting weirder by the hour.” She starts walking like she’s in a hurry.
“Where are you going?” I ask as we pass the cafeteria. I’m not a fan of fish sandwiches, but right now, I’m starving. Sarah stops fast and I nearly collide into the back of her.
“I have to meet Seth, and you’re coming with me.”
“Ew, no way. I don’t want to hear the details of your hookup.”
“He won’t, not with you there. But if he’s willing to ask me out with you standing there, looking all judgmental, then I know he likes me.”
I step back from her. “Ask you out? Sarah, he bad-mouthed you to the entire school.”
“I remember,” she says. “But what if—”
“No,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “You can’t go talk to him.”
“Why? Did you foresee something?” She looks hopeful.
“No. But I know he’s a jerk.”
She looks disappointed, but then shrugs. “You’re right. He is. But I still think he likes me, and now that I’ve put him in his place, he’s ready to apologize and we can move on.”
“He’s an ass**le.”
Her face begins to darken and for a second I think she might cry. But instead, she just twitches her mouth. “You may be right,” she says. “But it’s all I’ve got.” And then she walks away, leaving me alone in the middle of the hallway.
I’m just about to go double up on tater tots when a burning sensation prickles my skin. I blink slowly, the world around me fraying at the edges. Not now.
I try to turn to the cafeteria, but pain spikes through my joints. Eventually I give in and start walking toward the back of the building.
I stare at the doors where light filters in, thinking I’m leaving the school, but at the last second a rough wind blows through me, stopping me at a wooden doorway a few feet away.
Looking it over, I see everything but the handle lose its focus. I think . . . I’m at the teachers’ lounge. My skin tingles and my body is pushing me, but I don’t want to open the door. I don’t want to give in to the Need anymore.
But after an intense burning in my back, I reach out my hand and turn the knob. When the door opens, my sight fades. There is a glowing figure in the room, sitting at a circular table. Sister Dorothy.
If I wasn’t in so much pain, I might laugh. The Need has to help a nun? It seems ironic. But I don’t have time to think about it because I’m entering the room, the door closing behind me.
She looks over her shoulder at me, her features barely recognizable underneath the light. “Miss Cassidy? What are you doing in here?”
Her voice is high-pitched and alarmed, like I’ve broken one of the commandments of St. Vincent’s: Thou shalt not enter the teachers’ lounge. But then her life flashes before my eyes.
Suddenly, I am Dorothy Beaker. I’m in Italy backpacking with my best friend, Marjorie. We are twenty and we came to see the Vatican. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope. We’re waiting in the courtyard and I’m so excited. I feel like God is smiling on me.
The scene changes and Marjorie is crying as we sit in the small room at the hostel. She’s pregnant. She never told me that she was having sex, and I’m offended. I’m offended that she would disgrace her religion. I tell her so. I’m breaking her heart because I am her only friend and I’m ashamed of her.
It’s a year later. I’m back in Washington, living at my parents’ house as I prepare for the order and there’s a knock at my door. I’m annoyed. I want to keep reading but I go anyway. No one else is home.
When I open it, Marjorie is there. Her face is puffy from crying and her body looks softer, curvier after her pregnancy. She asks for my forgiveness. I tell her I’m not the one to forgive her.
I listen impatiently as she tells me how she gave her baby to the church, that she wanted to keep it but her parents wouldn’t let her. She had no one. She didn’t even have me.
Now she’s desperate to find the baby. She asks for my help. She gets on her knees and begs for it.
In the teachers’ lounge, I flick my eyes to Sister Dorothy. She’s fifty-eight and small, a shadow of the woman she used to be. She stares at me, asking me questions and looking like she’s going to go for the phone. But I can’t hear her. I just hear Marjorie’s sobs.
“Help me find her!” she cries.
But I am Dorothy and I tell her no. That she wasn’t meant to have that baby. That the baby is better off with someone else. I am cruel.
As Dorothy, I resent Marjorie. She gave up both her religion and me when she sinned. So why now should I help her? She was supposed to be going into the convent with me. But now she can’t.
Which is why as she cries, I shut the door and leave her.
“Sister Dorothy,” I say finally, startling her. “I know what happened to Marjorie’s baby.”
The light around her blazes, like an overwhelming emotion just struck her. Her gray eyes turn glassy as she stares at me.
“You know Marjorie?” she murmurs, not disbelieving.
“It was a girl. Her name is Catherine.” I smile a little, seeing images of the child growing up, quick snapshots of her life. She was happy.
“Heaven above,” Sister Dorothy whimpers and makes the sign of the cross. She starts to pray quietly, her hands clasped in front of her.
“She has a husband and two little boys. Marjorie’s grandchildren. She’s always wanted to know her mother. But Marjorie passed away a few years ago. They never found each other.”
“What have I done?” Sister Dorothy whispers, her eyes squeezed shut. I step forward and put my hands over her folded ones. When she looks up her eyes gaze past me, like she’s not seeing me. Like she’s seeing something else. Something beautiful.
“Find Catherine,” I tell her. “There’s an old farmhouse just outside of Vancouver. The last name is Paltz. Tell her about her mother. Tell her about Marjorie.”
Sister Dorothy falls to her knees, sobbing, just as the light goes out around her and my sight returns. For the past thirty-six years Sister Dorothy has been repenting. Now she’ll make it right.
I swoon and nearly fall on top of her, but I catch my footing just in time. Euphoria stretches over me and I laugh out loud, feeling so damn good.
“Can I help you?” Sister Dorothy asks sharply. She’s oblivious to the tears on her cheeks as she scrambles to her feet. “You have no business being in here,” she says. “New students should report to the front office. Not the teachers’ lounge.”