The Altar Girl: A Prequel

CHAPTER 34

Nadia tried not to think of the images that came to mind, but the more she wished them away, the more vivid they became. What sound would her fingers make when they pulled the man’s eyeball out of his head? How mushy would it feel?

She felt the urge to puke. She waited. The wave of nausea crested, and then nothing. She waited some more but nothing would come out. She understood why. There was nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

Her body heaved up and down in cadence with the man’s lungs as he took one long step after another. Sweat rolled down Nadia’s forehead. She had to do it. She had no choice. PLAST had taught her self-reliance. Who else was going to come rescue her?

Nadia brought the first three fingers of her right hand together to form an adjustable clamp. Grabbed the man’s T-shirt with her left hand for ballast. Yanked herself up, reached around and jammed her fingers toward the man’s right eye.

He turned his face toward the woman behind him to say something to her.

Nadia’s fingers connected with his cheek instead of his eye.

“What the hell.” The man shouted and cursed.

Nadia stabbed at his eye. Got a handful of slimy hair instead.

The man tossed her to the ground. Nadia landed in a bed of ferns.

“You little brat,” the woman said.

The lantern swung toward Nadia’s head illuminating the woman’s orange sneakers. The right sneaker reared back, its toe aimed at Nadia’s head.

A strong wind shook the pine trees to either side of her. Nadia was reminded of the night she’d first arrived, when dusk came and the trees began to whisper and move as though they were human, capable of pulling her to their trunks with their branches and devouring her with hidden mouths. The next morning, she’d thought how silly she’d been when she’d thought a tree could come alive, but now she realized she hadn’t been silly at all. Trees had faces. Maybe most people didn’t know this because the trees revealed themselves only at night. Like the one she was staring at right now.

And then, the tree came alive. She could make out its face clearly. The eyelids batted once, twice, three times, right at her. The trunk sprang a limb and raised it to its lips. The tree was going to save her. It was telling her to be quiet. If only she could keep quiet, the tree would come to her rescue. That it would do so didn’t come as a surprise, Nadia thought. She was always one with nature. She’d never chopped a live tree for kindling, she didn’t leave garbage behind her, and she stepped on bugs only if they were near her lean-to. She loved nature and nature loved her. Of course it would save her. Of course it would.

The face of the tree moved. It grew a human body. She could see its outline within the tree itself. It was the body of a young man. It sprang from inside the trunk — a hollowed-out, dead tree trunk. The man’s face was caked with mud the same color as the tree. The golden locks that had been tucked behind him were released. They fell to his shoulders and bounced off his back. He gripped a homemade bat carved from a thick tree branch. His ferocious blue eyes were glued to their target.

Wait, Nadia thought. She knew those eyes. They didn’t belong to a tree.

They belonged to Marko.

He swung the bat into the man’s knees. The man fell. Marko pummeled him in the head once, twice. The woman lunged at Marko with a knife. Marko darted away. Not quick enough. The blade stabbed him in the side. He let out a muted groan.

Nadia screamed her brother’s name.

Marko and the woman squared off. Bat against knife. She backpedalled, pointing the blade at his chest. Put the lantern down to free her left hand.

Take two more steps, woman, Nadia thought.

One.

Two.

Nadia leapt from the bed of ferns and grabbed the lantern. Turned it down until there was only a spark left.

Everything went black.

A shuffle of feet. A yelp and a thud.

Five seconds later Marko told her to turn it back on.

“You all right?” he said.

“I’m good,” Nadia said. In fact, she wasn’t good. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering and she felt light-headed, as though she might faint any second and never wake up. But she couldn’t let Marko think she was a weakling so she pretended she was okay. “What about you? You got stabbed. You must be bleeding. Let me take a look.”

“There’s no time for that, Nancy Drew. We need to tie these two up. Get the hell out of here.”

They bound her captors’ wrists and feet with rope from Marko’s backpack.

Afterward, Marko carried Nadia three miles to a ranger’s station, where a man in a gray uniform drove them to a hospital in his pickup truck. Nadia thought of fun things during the entire ordeal. There were plenty of them, she realized. Life wasn’t so bad. There was Fanta Red Cream Soda, her best friends Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and there was Marko. He was her brother and as long as she had him there would always be joy in her life.

When the nurse in the emergency room took Nadia’s temperature it was 102. The doctor feared she was coming down with pneumonia so he admitted her for the night. Marko’s wound needed twenty-one stitches but otherwise he was okay.

Two policemen came and listened to Nadia’s story. They told her the man and the woman had concussions but were going to live, and spend most of their lives in jail. The man had escaped from the Coxsackie Correctional Facility four days earlier. It was a maximum-security prison in New York State. He and his girlfriend were making their way to a farm she’d inherited in Canaan, Connecticut. They both had a history of doing bad things to children.

Nadia stayed in the hospital for one night. Then she went home and recuperated without catching pneumonia.

Two months later at a PLAST summer camp, Nadia was awarded her merit badge. The pride in her father’s eyes made the entire ordeal worthwhile. She’d pleased him. He was happy. There would be no yelling or screaming for at least a few days.

When Nadia held the cotton badge in her hand at the awards ceremony, she knew there was nothing in this world she could not do.