WAKE (Wattpad edition)

21. More real thing.

{Kadee}

"Your dad was at my house last night," Kadee said.

Cary did a double-take with his cigarette halfway to his mouth, going pale under his tan.

"Pastor Pete," she corrected herself hastily. "Sorry."

He hid his face, and she saw it took a moment for him to pull himself back together. Another little reminder that she had no idea what his relationship with this father had been like from the inside. Those scars were real things that had happened to him; she was still wrapping her head around that.

"I think he came to talk about Jon," she said. "My mom came and talked to me about it after."

Cary frowned sideways at her. Kadee hesitated. They'd talked until late in the night, actually. It had been one of the first times that her mom had seemed like a real person to her, someone who listened and cared and had a story of her own. "They're...um, they're praying for him, I guess. If you—believe all that stuff. It's their way of caring."

Cary was still frowning. "Don't you believe all that stuff?"

She shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I mean—that's how I grew up." She rubbed her hand over the brush of hair on the back of her head, dropping her eyes and feeling her face get warm. "Maybe I don't know where I'm at with it right now. Or...where God is at with me." The longer she was away from Curtis, the more mixed feelings she had about the things that they had done. She wondered why God hadn't intervened to stop them, if he cared so much.

He stubbed the cigarette out in the grass. "You pray?" The word came out blue with the smoke of his last drag, and he turned his head to blow a stream away from her.

The question caught her off guard. "Sometimes." Not very often. "I used to more. It's just hard to believe it's real, you know? I don't think about it at school usually." She paused, looking curiously at him. Sunlight was picking red glints out of his thick, dark hair. "Do you pray? Since you came to live with the Whites?"

He had his eyes turned down, plucking a blade of grass and spinning it between his fingers. "Yeah, I pray," he said quietly. "I don't know a more real thing."

That knocked her back a little. "You don't ever think...if God is real, why he doesn't stop shitty stuff from happening?"

The stalk of grass bent in his fingers, and he stopped spinning it to smooth it straight again, lifting a shoulder. He answered slowly. "I guess what I know is—I was walking dead when the Whites took me in. And I thought the only way it was gonna end was I was gonna kill myself—or I was going to hurt someone real bad and then kill myself. And the truth is—that's how it should have ended. But it didn't. I'm living. And that's real."

She was astonished to hear him talk so openly about wanting to kill himself. "Because of what the Whites did? Because they took you in?"

He had plucked two more grass stems and was weaving them together with the broken one, his face relaxed and absorbed. He shook his head, laying the grass braid aside and pushing his hair off his face. "No. I think it was too late when they got me. I was beat to shit from the last time—that would heal. But inside...I was dead and gone, and time don't heal that, just buries you a little more every day. Even being with the Whites—couldn't touch it."

He looked aside, drawing a knee up and clasping a hand around his ankle. "That's how I know prayer is real. Because it reached inside and—brought me back to life."

"Prayer did," she said.

"Jesus did." He looked quickly at her, from under his eyebrows, like he was checking whether she believed him. He shrugged, ducking his face away from her again. "I'm glad your parents are praying for the Whites. They need it."

There was an awkward silence while she processed all that he'd said. She'd never heard anyone talk about prayer like that—not like it was a chore; like it was their life. She tilted her head and crinkled her eyes at him. "So does that mean—I don't have to worry that you're going to try and kill yourself again?"

He snorted softly. "If that was keeping you up at night. I'm not going to try and kill myself again."

She examined his face, the sardonic smile on the side of his mouth. "Does it still hurt you?" she asked tentatively. "On the inside?"

He folded his arms against his body. "Didn't hurt at all when I got to the Whites." His voice had flattened out. "Couldn't feel anything anymore." He went silent, turning his face aside. Kadee watched him, trying to guess what he wasn't saying. He made as if to shrug, but his shoulders just got small. "Feels like something now. I don't know." He took a slow, unsteady breath. "Guess that's living."

She took that breath with him, feeling something unfolding inside her, opening toward him. She had avoided dark feelings her whole life, preferring to skim the surface, where things were light and fun. But she knew the truth in her body now—things weren't always light and fun. Her regrets were real. Her loneliness was real.

Cary had touched the bottom of all that darkness and gone deeper, and he was still breathing, still standing. She wanted to be enough to stand there with him. Even more, she wanted to give him the comfort and happiness she had taken for granted, beam it across to him like a light in the dark. How good would that feel—to be the person who made Cary Douglas feel good?