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"What? You're in the room?"

"It's not working."

"Cat, take it easy. You're getting hysterical."

"I lit the candle. I tried to meditate and calm down and..."

"All right. All right. I'll send Misty over now to be with you. She'll be there as soon as she can."

I heard her groan in the background.

"She's going to hate me. I know she wants to be with Chris."

"It'll be all right. I'll talk to her. She'll do what she said," Jade added, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "She'll come in through the back. Unlock the door and just wait for her. And Cat, try to stay calm. That's the most important thing now."

"I'm sorry. It's all my fault."

"Let's not do that," Jade nearly yelled. "Let's not start blaming ourselves. They're always trying to pass the blame onto us somehow. Just wait there, calmly. Damn them," she said.

I wasn't sure who the them was at this point, but I was afraid to utter another sound.

"Okay," I said in a small voice, and hung up the phone.

Trembling so badly, I clung to my crutches as I made my way out of the room. I didn't know where to go. Suddenly, going downstairs and being alone seemed terrifying. I went into my bedroom instead and closed the door. It was where I went and what I did all my life when I was afraid. I would crawl onto my bed and pull my legs in and hold myself and-close my eyes and wait for the waves and waves of anxiety and trepidation to go away. Sometimes they did immediately and sometimes it seemed to take hours, I would fall asleep and wake and still be trembling.

Geraldine never came to check on me, even when I was very little. It got so whenever my father did come to see if I was all right I welcomed his hands.

"There, there," he would say, "let's get our little girl to feel good again."

All my unheard, unvoiced screams were trapped in this room. I imagined them bubbling under the surface. The walls had absorbed them like a sponge. They could, at any sudden moment, explode in a cry so powerful, the whole house would go up in a cloud of dust. Some wind would come along and blow it all away so that it would be as if it had never existed, me and my sister and father along with it. The world would be so much better off, I thought.

I tried to close my ears as well as my eyes because sounds were rising up through the floors. I could swear I heard the vacuum going. Geraldine was there, cleaning, hating the dirt and dust, mumbling to herself about something she had read or seen that confirmed her dark, dreary view of people. Maybe I shouldn't have hated her so much. She had been betrayed too, I thought. Now I could understand why she was so hardened and bitter. Whom could she believe in?

Was that the sound of water running? Was she washing a floor, rinsing a table, doing windows? And that now, was it the droning of the television set, locked on one of her electronic preachers, confirming her dismal visions? Did I hear footsteps on the stairs? I tightened my eyelids and squeezed my body. She was whispering through the door.

"I told you. Now you see that you reap what you sow. You slept with him. You let him touch you. You're dirty deep down into your very soul. You can't scrub it out no matter how long you soak in a tub or shower or rub. Anyone can look at you and see. Sin is in your eyes. You let him touch you."

Whom did she mean, Stuart or my father? The whispering became unintelligible. It was just the constant sound of air flowing through her dried lips. I put all my strength of concentration on the image of a single candle flame and watched it flicker and flicker until it drifted into the tiny spiral of smoke and was gone.

A loud rapping sound snapped open my eyes. I listened, my heart thumping. Had all I had imagined been true? There was a tinkle at the window and then a thump on the wall. I rose, puzzled and terrified, but I made my way to the window and gazed out. Misty was below. I opened the window quickly.

"What are you doing? You didn't leave the back door unlocked."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "I fell asleep."

"Hurry up. It looks like it's going to rain," she ordered, and went around to the back of the house.

I moved as quickly as I could and made my way down the stairs, through the house and to the door. She burst in, closing it quickly behind her.

"What happened? Don't you remember our plan?" "Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't realize how long I had been asleep."

"Jade told me what you said. I knew we shouldn't have trusted him Did you break up?"

"I guess," I said. "I don't expect him to come back."

"You're better off," she said. "I'm never going to fully trust any man, even the man I marry, if I marry. What good are promises and vows, even with a priest holding his hand over you both? I feel sorry for Ariel. My father will probably break her heart, too.

"Did he call again?" she suddenly asked.