December

By Linda Oatman High

Lake Millay has goals, hopes, and dreams...until she moves to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and becomes ensnared in a vortex of violence.

Bullying and stalking become Lake’s life, and ultimately the destroyer of her dreams. A cautionary tale based on the true story of Laurie Show, murdered by three teens in 1991.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Teen
• Release date: Jun 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781772333374

Linda Oatman High

Linda Oatman High is an award-winning author of many books for children and young adults. Her book Barn Savers was an ALA Top of the List Best Picture Book, and Under New York was named a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Book and a Nick Jr. Best Book of the Year. She frequently offers writing workshops and enjoys visiting schools. Linda lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

Book preview

Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2015 Linda Oatman High

ISBN: 978-1-77233-337-4

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: JC Chute

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

In memory of my cousin Hazel’s beloved daughter Laurie Show, murdered at the age of 16 on December 20th, 1991, in Lancaster County, PA. Laurie died in her mother’s arms, with a beautiful smile of anticipation and peace, which gives us all Hope.

For Laurie’s parents Hazel and John, and for all of our families who lived through that terrible day and all the years After.

DECEMBER

Linda Oatman High

Copyright © 2015

Prologue

Brit has a knife. A knife, not scissors but a knife, a sharp knife, a long knife, silver and black-handled, pointy and hard in her red-nailed hand, and holy shit, Brit has a freaking knife flashing out of that backpack she carried into Holly’s house when we pushed through the door and into this house and pinned Holly to her bedroom floor. I thought we were coming here just to cut her hair, to chop off Holly’s shiny red hair, still wet from her morning shower and smelling like shampoo, but Brit has a knife––a knife––and her knuckles are white. Seth is trying to hold Holly’s ankles, but Holly kicks hard and she’s fighting and kicking. Beside Seth, Brit is screaming. I’m pregnant and she’s kicking my stomach. Hold her legs.

Seth’s pressing his whole body against Holly’s legs, her kicking legs in pink flannel pajamas. His head is bent and his earring, a silver cross, falls out and it’s on Holly. Hold her head! Her arms! Brit screams at me, and she leans forward with the knife and her eyes are a wild, weird and crazy blue, wide open in rage, and there’s spit on her lips and it drips and I’m frozen, so frozen.

I scream STOP but it’s inside my mind and it won’t come out, and my throat and my heart and my skin melt, melt, melt and I’m numb and I wonder is this really happening––is this real, or is it a dream, and how can this be? Get her head! Brit screams again and I can’t move but I do, I do, and I get Holly’s head and there’s blood. Blood soaks through the pink and there’s vomit in my throat and blood on me, and the screams, my god, the screams. Fingernails, fingernails. So much red. And Brit, stabbing her with the knife. I’m holding her wrists, Holly’s skinny wrists, and she twists and twists. Sweat, and Holly’s head squeezed between my knees as she screams again and again and again, and Brit just keeps on. I’m holding her head, on my knees, and she’s saying Please Please Don’t Please and there are the screams and there is blood. Blood in the hair, Holly’s hair on my hands, soft blood, warm and soft hair on my hands, and a Christmas song playing from the kitchen that smells like breakfast.

Blood so much blood so much blood so much blood and I just want to die, I want to die and I’m crying and I’m thinking, no no no no no, please God no, I pray HELP and it just doesn’t stop. No. God. Help. No. Close my eyes close my eyes I don’t want to see I don’t want to think I don’t want to be.

Seth says RUN! GO, and then we run. I don’t know where to go but I follow, I follow, and Seth and Brit and I run out of that house, that beautiful house and leave Holly behind in that bedroom bleeding, bleeding, and… Oh God, what have we done? And I just run and run and run, past the snow globe, the blowing cold snow globe, the lights. It’s cold so cold and I’m frozen, frozen frozen frozen, and there’s the smell of smoke, a woodstove smoke from houses nearby, and a lady on a porch yelling Hey and we run and we run, and there’s blood on the snow. All of us with blood on our clothes we run and run to the car the green car Seth’s car that’s waiting to take us away, take us away from what has just happened.

PART ONE

What Came Before

July

No, I do not want to go. I don’t want to move to the boonies of dorkhood in Amishland: Badger Gap, Pennsylvania.

You’re going to love it, Lake! Dad keeps saying, as if he’s trying to convince himself as well as me. "The grass is so unbelievably green. You know––like that really bright, Wizard Of Oz emerald green? And, oh, my goodness, the shoo-fly pies are so delicious, all gooey with molasses. You never tried shoo-fly pie, did you, Lake? Oh, and the fields are just chock-full of fresh strawberries and watermelons and corn, just so sweet and beautiful. He says it like a poem, or a Bible verse that he’s memorized, always ending with the same lame and unconvincing geek-words: You’re going to love it, Lake."

I. Don’t. Think. So.

He repeats it again, his mantra: You’re going to love it, Lake. A note of hope makes his voice rise higher, and he slides a worried sideways glance at me.

I pretend not to see. I have great peripheral vision, though, like a juggler keeping all the balls in the air––unlike my ‘Mr. Tunnel Vision’ dad, who has a one-track mind and blind-spot eyes behind those big thick 1980s gold wire frames.

Slumped down in the passenger side of Dad’s van, riding shotgun, I drop the seat to recline, tilting back like someone in the dentist’s chair. Someone, that is, with a lot of cavities.

"Yeah, right, Dad. I’ll love it in Badger Gap. Not. It’s practically in the middle of nowhere, out in the boonies." I say this to the van ceiling, faded and thin, pieces of upholstery wisping down like torn remnants of a spider web. I push the seat latch to lift myself up, but it’s not working right. I force the seat into an upright position, clicking it into place.

Dad clears his throat, and he turns his head for another quick glimpse. "Well, honey, you didn’t exactly come from the metropolis. Minnesota’s the boonies, too––the whole state of Minnesota, as a matter of fact."

Yeah, I say, "but it’s my boonies." I cross my arms.

Dad sighs. I turn my face toward the half-open window, trying to catch a breeze, and look up into a melancholy sky. If it’s going to rain, I wish it would just get it over with, instead of just pissing raindrops in a wimpy little mist.

Dad has the windshield wipers on high speed, for some reason. Slap, squeak, slap, squeak, a fast dance of rubber against glass.

I can’t even believe it’s summertime. We’re deep into July, when the world is supposed to be all berry-blue sky and marshmallow clouds and buttercup sun. July should shimmer like a vacation postcard, all bright colors and blue swimming pools shining with the happy vibe of: Having a great time. Wish you were here.

Nobody would wish to be here, in Amishland. The view from inside this rattletrap minivan is an old black-and-white horror movie, a 1950’s flick, maybe titled Lake Millay Gets Eaten Alive by Amish Country. If my life had a soundtrack, the music would be gloomy, an ominous warning of trouble to come. Unbeknownst to me, I’m getting ready to be swallowed.

Everything is gray, I mutter to myself. Gray sky, gray road, gray houses, gray barns, gray fences around gray tombstones, this gray van that’s taken me prisoner, wiry gray hairs in Dad’s beard, and gray lines of writing on Dad’s black T-shirt: What Would Jesus Do?

I know what Jesus wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t move his daughter from the only home she’s ever known, all the way across the country, right before her senior year of high school. He wouldn’t ruin his kid’s life just because he’s been offered a crappy preaching job at some rinky-dink, holy rollerchurch a thousand miles away.

Neither would Dad, if he had any sense of what’s best for me. Like, hello, Dad, remember me, your only daughter, Lake Amanda Millay? The girl you gave your last name, even when Mom kept her own? The girl you raised, even when Mom went away?

I’m a huge fan of the dead poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and I do love my last name. That’s one good thing that Dad did for me: he gave me a great name that will be perfect for the poetry and pie shop I plan to open at some point in my future, maybe right after college. Millay’s Poesy Pies, that’s what I’ll name it.

I close my eyes and visualize my pie shop: pink and white painted wood, the black-and-white checkered tile floor, my fireplace, good music, my pies displayed in spinning carousels lit by white light, with funky framed Edna St. Vincent Millay poems and paintings by undiscovered artists, bathrooms with poems on the walls, poets and painters hanging out and drinking coffee, totally digging Millay’s Poesy Pies. That’s my dream.

Dad semi-reads my mind, which is something he hasn’t done for a long time. Somehow he knows I’m thinking poetry.

Let’s do some Road Haiku, he says. Pass the time. This has been our tradition, ever since I was little. We make up goofy Haiku poems while we’re on the road to the grocery store or school or church.

You go first, Dad says. Road Haiku. He turns off the radio, and the static crackles fade away into the air of the van.

I think for a minute. I am quick with Haiku, and so it comes out fast. I count the syllables on my fingers:

"I don’t want to go.

Amishland is not my home.

No, there is no choice."

Dad takes a gigantic breath, puffing out his cheeks. His skinny, skeletal fingers tap across the steering wheel, as if he’s typing or playing the piano. His eyes are focused on the road. Tunnel vision.

Honey, he says, "I have tried to explain to you a thousand times, and you need to understand this. I need a job. They need a preacher. This economy makes it so tough on everyone, Lake. On everyone, and sometimes you just have to do something you don’t really want to do. It’ll be fine. You’ll see. Sometimes life works out just fine."

Yeah, I say, and sometimes it doesn’t. We know all about that, Dad and I. He’s quiet, and I know that he’s thinking about Mom, and so I decide to take advantage of this tender Hallmark moment.

Can I drive?

Not now. He always says that, as if in the very near future he might just decide that now, right now, is exactly the time for me to drive. It’s not happening, though. Dad’s motto is obviously: Never Trust The Driving of Anyone Whose Diapers You Have Changed.

Why can’t I ever drive? I say. I did not flunk Driver’s Ed. I have never had a wreck. I am not a car idiot. I will not crash into houses and bridges and people and walls and babies and dogs. I. Will. Not. Crash.

Sometimes a person just can’t help it, Dad says. And it’s not always you…sometimes, it’s the other guy.

I pull my legs up to sit lotus-style, crisscross applesauce, as my kindergarten teacher used to say. The black plaid shorts I’m wearing reach my knees, but they don’t cover my fat thighs, which pudge out like a sausage in its skin, pushing at the seams of my shorts. I’m a sausage. I’m a hot dog. I’m a pretzel: all twisted up, inside and out. Coarse black hair on my knees, missed when I shaved, bristles. Why did I have to get Dad’s frizzy dark hair, when the chance was 50-50 that I’d inherit Mom’s sleek blonde? I bet Mom doesn’t have to shave every day. Bet Mom’s hair doesn’t go wacky in wet weather.

I’d love to be one of those polished blondes, like Mom, but I’m not. So I just accept it and go Goth style, which works best with my black hair and my ghosty-pale face. I’m kind of Goth and kind of not, meaning that I sometimes dress the part but I don’t always walk the walk or talk the talk. Yeah, I have the black hair and the black eyeliner and I do wear a lot of black, but I’m not like a True Goth. I don’t exactly embrace my inner darkness, and I totally don’t go for that vampire crap. I’m not into dressing Victorian, and I don’t have any piercings. My fingernails aren’t black nor are my lips, so am I really a Goth Girl? Even I’m not sure anymore.

Goth is just a word, anyway. No one word can totally describe a human being, and no one word can describe me. Except maybe Me. That says it all. I’m just me. Why do people need labels, anyway? It’s not like we’re cans of fruit or vegetables, all specific and trademarked with brand names. Lake Millay is not Green Giant canned corn. I’m just me.

Dad’s voice jolts me from my thoughts. Funny how riding in a car can make me forget somebody else is there, right beside me, in the same space yet so far away.

I’m so very eager to see our new house, Dad says. He twists the knob that turns the radio back on and it’s some religious radio station. The song is about salvation and redemption, two things I guess I need right about now.

Dad changes the windshield wiper setting to low. The farmhouse was built in the 1800s, I’m told, and it has some very interesting architecture. We only have about twenty miles to go. I am just so eager to see it.

Great, I say. Who uses words likeager?" Dad. At least we won’t have to stop at some crappy hotel again tonight.

Nope. You’ll be sleeping like a baby in your new home.

The windshield drizzles with mist, and I peer through the hazy glass, hypnotized by the movement of wheels against road, wheels against road.

I make up another haiku, a rhyming one this time, in my head:

"The whole world is gray.

When will there be one blue day?

My sun went away."

Just one day on the road since we left Minnesota, twenty-four hours of tires turning on concrete, tires turning on concrete, and already I’m going out of my mind. Only yesterday, as Dad drove off without a backwards look, I hung my head out the van window like a dog on a summertime car ride and took one last look at our awesome little pink house on the lake. I was named for Lake Superior, and I still cannot believe Dad has taken me away from it.

Lake Superior is a glacial lake, and I love the spooky cold dark greenness of it (the exact same stunning shade as my eyes, so I’m told) in those pictures taken from the sky. The reason for the green is algae, lots of algae, which some people think is disgusting. Not me. I love algae, which is actually a useful thing. I wrote a poem about algae back in middle school, and it won the Scholastic Writing Prize. The title was, The Beauty in Algae, and Other Misunderstood Stuff.

That poem