Camp Damascus(45)

Lisa hesitates, struggling to maintain her composure as I reveal just how much I already know. I can see the quiet cadence of a desperate prayer dancing across her lips as she takes a moment to gather her thoughts.

Eventually, Mom points at a house to the right of my idling vehicle, a familiar blue rambler with a white picket fence circling the front yard. The Martinsons live here.

“Sexual deviance,” Lisa announces, her jaw trembling as she speaks. “The daughter thinks she’s in love with a whore.”

I know what she’s asking of me, but I refuse to play along.

“Sexual deviance,” Lisa repeats, her gaze burning a hole through my head as she struggles to stay calm. “What would you do to help her, Rose? What’s the right thing to do?”

I shake my head, lips sealed tight.

“Get out of here,” my mom finally blurts. She pushes the duffel bag through my window, the heavy canvas tote landing on my lap with a thud.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” I stammer.

“Was it worth it?” my mother demands.

Now directly confronted, I decide to finally answer. I’m no longer conflicted in my response, no longer overwhelmed by any judgment-based household thought experiment.

“Yes,” I tell her bluntly, holding my mother’s gaze. “It was worth it.”

Mom stares back at me. She’s trying so hard to stay angry, but there’s simply not enough hate left to fill her veins.

She wants to see me as a heathen—a lost cause—but right now she sees her daughter.

“This was all for you,” Lisa groans. “Your dad’s waiting back at the house with some men from the congregation. They’ve got zip ties and duct tape. They’re gonna take you back to Camp Damascus whether you like it or not, and I can’t watch you go through that again. You might not remember it, but I will.”

I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.

“So don’t let them,” I demand.

Somehow a smile manages to break out across my mother’s face, Lisa briefly chuckling at this suggestion before sadness gradually creeps back in.

“It’s so far past that now, Rose,” she says, shaking her head. “You have no idea how hard it was to convince the congregation to step back after your crash, but you still couldn’t stop looking for answers. Well, now they think you’ve found some, so it’s not really our decision anymore.”

I open my mouth to speak, but the words catch in my throat. I’m not sure what to say.

Suddenly, Mom’s phone rings. She clears her throat and sniffles the congestion from her nose, stepping away from the car and picking up.

I hear the muffled sound of my father’s voice on the other end of the line. I can’t make out the words, but his tone is deep and frightening, the polar opposite of his casual tenor during our last discussion.

Our final discussion.

“No, I don’t see her yet,” Lisa offers, staring right at me. Her goodwill is barely hanging on by a thread. She listens for a moment, then loudly continues. “Sure, I’ll let you know when I see the car. Okay. Yeah.”

She hangs up.

“They’re waiting to take you back,” my mother reminds me. “You need to get out of here. Now.”

I don’t protest, rolling up my window and putting the car in reverse. I start backing away, but only get a few feet before a final thought surges through my mind.

I recall my mother’s favorite house from our walks, the one tucked back in the woods where nobody can see it. There are no bake sales or women’s worship groups there, just a quiet little cabin at the edge of the world.

I slam the brakes and drop my window once again, calling out to my mother.

“You should leave, too” is all I can think to say.

Lisa hesitates, her eyes burning through me. At first I think she’s chosen silence as a final goodbye, but at the last moment she opens her lips to offer a parting phrase. “You are so, so spoiled,” my mother says in disgust.

I continue my retreat to the main road. It feels as though my heart is connected to a string, this spiritual cable stretching like taffy as I back away. It battles to hold me in place, but the once-sturdy rope has frayed beyond repair.

The farther away I get, the more taut this string grows. It aches so badly, but finally, it snaps.

The strangest thing about all this is that I physically feel it happen, sense the very moment my heart breaks. It’s a quick jolt to the chest, shocking me briefly then fading away.

I take one last look at my mother, offering a slight wave and receiving nothing in return.

As traumatic as all that was, my body somehow keeps me from accepting the full weight of what just happened. I’m strangely calm, despite my skin tingling and my head throbbing.

Everything else is operating on autopilot.

My hand mindlessly reaches up to pull the blinker as I turn onto a long, desolate backroad, and at the stoplight I have no problem pressing the brakes, then starting again when the light turns green. My body is a shell, the space within me hollow and empty, a blank void.



* * *



The only sound is the hum of my tires on the road, and this lonesome song stretches on forever as I cruise deeper into the woods. The trees fill in thicker and thicker on either side as Neverton disappears behind me.

I can sense fleeting emotions as they creep back into my brain, filtering through my mental safeguards one by one. Every time I accept a new portion of this awful reality, it stings and aches and hurts so bad that I want to scream, until eventually that’s exactly what I do.