Now the Battle Hymns are Playing

[Gundham]

Twice in one day, the ethereal solemnity of the graveyard was shattered by the report of shots not far away. It happened first in the morning, then again much later in the afternoon. Between them, Juanita happened.

The morning gunshot came from the cellar, shredding the cold ambience left in Claire's wake. This one, Juanita noted, wasn't like the staccato bursts that'd come from the cellar earlier. It had a different timbre to it. A different gun? A different shooter?

The Cobray rested uneasily in Juanita's hands. Evie had shot someone, or been shot by someone - or someones. No way to know which, without going down for a look. Schroedinger's Box with a twist of Russian Roulette. That made, what? The third gunfight she'd avoided walking into in as many days?

Juanita looked at the cellar stairs. Snow had blown in over the past however long, coating the steps with an icy sheen. No way was she charging down them - anybody who'd seen Home Alone knew how that kind of cowboying turned out. Instead she withdrew, circling cautiously around the dark opening. She parked herself between the cellar doors and the church building, leaning back with both the Cobray and her spine braced against its outer wall. If anybody who wasn't Evie came up the steps, they'd take a full load of buckshot to the back of the skull before they could turn around.

Yeah, there might have been a truce. There might have been a stalemate. But someone in the cellar didn't know or didn't care. If the game was nearing its end, she wasn't going to miss the flight home by waving a white flag at someone who'd only use it for target practice.

She waited there, gun trained on an imaginary skull, her breath silently painting curlicues on the atmosphere. Waited for what felt like an eternity. Minutes? Hours? Long enough for the muscles in her arms, the ones she was using to keep the gun steady, to scream, wail, and then go numb. But no one came clomping up the steps. No cries for help came from below. Eventually, she heard the ghosts of sounds coming from inside the church. Whoever was in the cellar, they'd moved upwards. Which meant she was safe to go down.

Juanita nearly bit through her lip once or twice, as the stairs threatened to pitch her forwards or downwards, but she slowly and patiently made her way from step to step. A few steps from the bottom she clicked on her flashlight. She saw blood splatters, debris. A body she didn't recognize - not Evie's clothes, at the very least. Which meant that she hadn't suffered the same fate as Colm - though Juanita wasn't sure whether to count that as a positive or a negative. Evie had shot this guy, which meant... she didn't know what.

Could be that the boy on the floor had opened fire first, and Evie had dropped him with a single shot from a different gun. Could be that she had been the aggressor, shot at him using multiple pieces from the arsenal that Juanita had observed her carrying. But if Evie was under fire, why hadn't she called out? Why hadn't she tried to get Juanita to back her up?

Juanita couldn't put Claire's words out of her head. About monsters lurking beneath masks of civility, and the shreds of humanity that might still be somewhere inside them. If Evie wasn't willing to gamble on the ceasefire, if she was determined to see this through to the bitter end, what did that say about her, or about Juanita herself for enabling it? Evie's willingness to kill, her grimace-and-get-it-done attitude, those were why Juanita had gone along with her in the first place. Those had been important, back when they knew that the killing was necessary. But now there was doubt, uncertainty. There was a chance that it didn't have to be this way, that they didn't have to kill anymore. What if Evie had rejected that possibility, if her fear of the collar would keep the slaughter going even after the whistle had blown? Did Juanita really think that she could stand in her way, or put her down if it came to that?

She didn't know the answer to any of those questions. That uncertainty kept her quiet, stopped her from calling out Evie's name. Instead, she turned and made her shaky way back up the stairs. It took a long time.

Her lacrosse stick lay where she'd dropped it, wind and snow whistling through the netting. She picked it up and made her way towards the doors of the church, intending to reconnect with Evie. Through the open doorway Juanita could see her sitting in one of the pews. She wasn't alone. Another girl, with dyed hair, was snuggled up close to her.

Kelsey Brewer. Evie's girlfriend.

It didn't feel right to intrude. Didn't feel right to even exist, in a moment like that.

Evie was a killer, and a ruthless one. If it came down to it, she wouldn't choose Juanita over Kelsey. If Juanita so much as stepped into the church, let herself exist in the same room as Kelsey, she'd be inviting a contrast. Hey, look at me. See how I stack up against the girl you love. She can make you happy. She loves you, even though you're a murderer. You don't know me, barely trust me, you know that she won't kill you and you know that I will if it comes to that. And she can walk like a normal person, too. So, who are you gonna side with?

Yeah. Better not to give Evie an excuse to crunch the numbers on that one.

Juanita trudged away, not sure where to go. After a little though, she headed for the small wooden shed at the back of the graveyard. Far enough to not be intruding, close enough to be found if Evie came looking for her. She stepped inside. Small whirls of snow crystals sparkled briefly, then the door closed and they were snuffed out. She slumped down against the wall, cradling the stick.

She hadn't held a lacrosse stick since the day she was injured. She'd never wanted to, because it would hurt. It would hurt because it wouldn't feel right. The weight, the balance, it'd all be wrong. Her muscle memory would be in tension with her capabilities, and all she'd feel were the can'ts and won'ts and don'ts of everything she couldn't do anymore.

Everybody always said, Juanita thought, that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But that wasn’t true. There were things that could happen, things that wouldn’t kill you but they’d cripple you. Things that’d take your future and strangle the life out of it, and leave in a mangled husk on the floor. Those things never stopped hurting. Not ever.

They'd given her a journal, in therapy. Told her it'd help, give her something to look back on so she could see how far she'd come. They said she should write about getting better, and what that'd look like. On one of her darker days, one of many where she'd pushed herself too hard and hadn't been able to mask the pain well enough to keep the therapist from spotting it, she'd sat down and she'd written, "I don't want to get better." Sure, she wanted to walk and run and do everything again, but "getting better" only meant doing those things in the context of reduced capability. Getting better meant admitting that, right now, you were worse. So she'd attacked her therapy not with reckless determination not with the aim of getting well, but to have never been unwell in the first place. She'd wanted her leg to be a hiccup, a speedbump, a temporary detour before she got back to who she was destined to become.

But it didn't go that way.

Yeah, there were things that'd cripple you. The pain would never stop, and it’d never get better, but you’d learn to manage it. You’d learn how to hurt in a way that let you keep going, because the world kept going, hurtling along that detoured route, and it didn’t stop for you, no matter how hard you wanted it to. You’d keep moving forward, but you wouldn’t be the same. Like a broken limb that was never splinted, or a tree that cracked in half but didn’t die, you’d just keep growing around the broken bits and you’d come out misshapen. You’d never be who you were before the pain, and there’d be this void, this hole in the universe, shaped exactly like the perfect You that you were supposed to have been; there’d be a you-shaped void that your gnarled, twisted self couldn’t fit into anymore, because you weren’t the right shape and you weren’t the right you. And you’d contort yourself, trying to force your awful, misshapen self into that hole, you’d rasp off the bits that stuck out, sandpaper yourself down to the bone to try and make yourself fit. But even if you did it, even if you squeezed yourself, bleeding and raw, into that hole, you’d never stop hurting. You’d know, always, that you were something else, something that didn’t fit and that wasn’t right.

It wasn't fair that those Juanita-shaped voids existed. It wasn't fair that she didn’t fit into them. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. It never stopped hurting to look in the mirror at the Juanita that was, and to see all the gaps and protrusions that didn’t line up with the Juanita that she could or should have been.

That was why she hadn't picked up a lacrosse stick. Because picking one up meant facing down that void. It meant glimpsing the Juanita with a perfect leg and a spot on the All-Star team, the Juanita who was respected and admired by coaches and players and fans alike. She’d bulldozed her way through therapy with one eye fixed squarely on the Juanita who went on to become a professional athlete, a trainer, a coach. And she’d ruined herself trying to manifest that Juanita and bring her to life. Every time she came popping out of that mold, she'd sledgehammered herself back into it, battering and bruising and pulverizing herself to try and be that person, until one day the mold broke. Her scholarship had dissolved and her graft had failed and it'd become clear she was never going to be she wanted to be. Not ever. And from day that forward, her entire life had been a consolation prize.

And, whether she wanted it to be true or not, Survival of the Fittest was the same way. If Juanita came back at all, she wasn't going to be the same Juanita who'd left for the winter trip. The Juanita-shaped hole she'd left behind in Salem was one that she no longer fit into. She'd be a new person, a different person, and in almost every respect, a worse person.

It hurt to hold the lacrosse stick. But she clutched it tightly, curling her body around it. Because now even that battered and broken Juanita from therapy, the one who hated herself and hurt herself, was enviable in comparison to what she had become. Because she wanted to remember that once upon a time, she'd been good. She'd been brave and bold and athletic, she'd stood under bright stadium lights and drank in the cheers and whoops from the bleachers after every show-stopping play. Nobody was ever going to cheer for her like that again. The praise and goodwill, the camaraderie and competition, they were all gone forever. Even if she made it home, she was never going to be praised, or loved, or admired. Not by anyone. Evie had Kelsey, who, even knowing that Evie had killed half a dozen people, would snuggle up to her and hold her tight. But Juanita didn't have that kind of trust, not with anyone. Her family would shun her, her boyfriend had tried to kill her, everyone at school would know her victims. Everywhere she went, she'd be looked at with horror, suspicion, loathing. If that was all that there was to look forward to, was the game even worth playing? If the cavalry arrived, would it even be worth grabbing that outstretched hand?

She clenched her hands around the stick, and heard the ghosts of a roaring crowd cheering for her. And she started to cry.

She cried for a long time. Hours. She didn't know. But the tears didn't bring any clarity. She didn't know if it was better to fight, or to just lay down here and die before she somehow made it worse. Maybe Evie had the right idea, shooting the boy in the basement. Maybe it was better not to get her hopes up, to let the explosion mean nothing and to carry on. Maybe it was better to see the game through, and commit to the path she'd set herself on, and go out fighting to the last breath. Maybe it was better to salvage some last lingering shred of humanity and let herself be cut down so someone like Beatrice could live.

Getting better meant admitting that right now, you were unwell. It meant accepting the pain of who you were and who you'd never be. And it meant figuring out who you would become in response.

Did she want to get better? What would that even look like?

She didn't know. But she was cold. And she didn't want to stay here and freeze. That wasn't a lot, but it was something.

Slowly, stiffly, she made it to her feet. The door creaked open. It had gotten dim while she'd been in here. Maybe she'd fallen asleep in the darkness.

Should she go back to the church? Would Evie and Kelsey even still be here? Would Evie think that Juanita had run off? Now that she had Kelsey, would Evie just shoot her on sight? Impossible to know. Was it even worth bothering to check?

A gunshot made the decision for her. Different from all the others she'd heard today - wasn't that a depressing thought? - and far off. But not far enough. Too close to the church for comfort.

Juanita pressed herself back into the shack, her heart jackhammering against her ribs.

Okay. Okay. What should she do? Were Evie and Kelsey still there? Was someone shooting at them? Were they shooting at someone? Either way, the ceasefire was well and truly broken. Which meant that priority one was to find somewhere safe to be. And right now, that meant the church. If Evie and Kelsey were still there, they wouldn't shoot her. Probably. If they weren't, then she'd have the run of the place. And either way, she wouldn't be stuck here in a tiny wooden box.

She headed for the church, and whatever came next.

((Juanita Reid continued in In from the Cold))