Our Sacred Bonds

The air smelled sweet and sickly, like honey and sweat and rotten apples.  

     The grass was littered with apples that had been felled by the storm the night before, and ants gorged themselves silly on the blackened, fermented fruit before stumbling drunkenly back to their nests.  

     Not unlike the partygoers that currently inhabited the orchard at the edge of town. Someone had driven their truck as close as the trees would allow, and a playlist consisting exclusively of country rock was blaring from the speakers. I winced as a girl attempted to sing along to the Eagles.

     I lifted the plastic cup of homemade blackberry wine to my mouth and downed the last of it. It tasted like cough medicine and granulated sugar, and it had stained my lips the deep, dark red of blood.  

     I tossed my empty cup into a trash bag that someone had hung from the branches of a tree. I raked my fingers through my tangled brown hair—or what remained of it. That very morning, I’d gone after the locks with a pair of sewing shears that I’d found in the drawer of my nightstand, and though I knew that I’d come to regret it, I hadn’t. Yet.  

     Someone had propped a tarnished, floor-length mirror against an apple tree, and I didn’t recognize myself as I glimpsed my reflection across the clearing.

     My hair was cropped close to my chin, though I hadn’t bothered to brush it after I’d showered earlier. My eyes were framed with smudged liner, and my cheeks were flushed from a combination of alcohol and balmy night air. I wore a flimsy white nightgown that I’d discovered among my mother’s things once-upon-a-time, paired with fishnets and heavy black boots.  

     I hadn’t worn a bra, and my nipples were peaked despite the humidity. I smoothed my fingers over the lace collar of my nightgown and pasted on a smile that looked like I’d just swallowed a mouthful of broken glass, even to myself.  

     “Asher!” someone called.

     I turned my head at the sound of my name, offering a smile to a girl from my sociology class. I thought her name might have been Hazel or Hale.  

     She beckoned me over to the card game she was playing in the grass—it looked like it might have been strip poker, given the players’ various states of undress—but I shook my head and made a vague gesture with my empty hands before I turned and headed towards the drink station in the bed of the truck.  

     The wine had been depleted, so I grabbed a plastic cup and filled it with lukewarm beer from the keg. I made a face as I took a sip of the bitter, watered-down liquid.  

     A breeze rustled the branches of the trees, and I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of it whispering through the leaves: shhhhh.  

     Something brushed my shoulder, and I jumped backward. A scream caught in my throat.

     I blinked up at the girl standing in front of me. “What the fuck, Beck?”  

     Beck made a face from behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair was piled messily onto the top of her hair and held in place with a pen, and she was dressed like an elementary school art teacher, complete with embroidered overalls.  

     She had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, in the sense that we’d been forced together by our parents as children, and obligation, rather than loyalty or common interests, had sustained the relationship over the years. She was a Gemini, and I was a Scorpio. She liked oat milk and indie folk bands and The Catcher in the Rye, and I liked listening to true crime podcasts at 3 am.  

      “Don’t what the fuck me,” Beck chided. “You’re the one standing there with your eyes closed, looking like you’re waiting to get beamed up by a spaceship.”  

     She plucked the cup of my hand and swallowed the rest of my beer, and I bared my teeth at her, though I knew I was about as intimidating as a Pomeranian.  

     “Listen,” she said, suddenly serious as she brushed wisps of hair from her face. “You didn’t answer any of my texts.”  

     “My charger broke,” I said.  

     “I wanted to check in because I know the anniversary of your sister’s death is coming up,” she said. “But given your new haircut, and the fact that you aren’t passed out in the back of some dude’s Honda Civic, it looks like you’re coping.”  

     “Tonight.”

     Beck blinked at me. “What?”  

     “The anniversary of Merry’s death,” I clarified. “It’s tonight.”

     Beck closed her eyes for a moment. “Fuuuck,” she muttered. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Ash.”  

     “It’s fine,” I said, waving my hand, though her words had lodged in my throat like a cherry pit, hard and sticky and tart. “It’s been a year. I’m not—I don’t—” I swallowed and tried again. “It’s fine. Really.”  

     Beck laid her hand on my arm, and I tried not to flinch at the contact.  

     “If you need anything, give a shout,” she told me earnestly. Then she smiled. “I’ll be around—and with any luck, I’ll be making out with the girl from my ceramics class by the end of the night.”

     “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

     “You’re a peach, Ash,” she said. She winked and blew me a kiss, and then spun on her heel towards a group of girls dancing around the bonfire.  

     I watched her go, and then looked down at my empty hands. I curled them into fists, digging my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms, and hissed out a breath at the pain.  

     I uncurled my hands and held them out in front of me, imagining a soft, golden light pouring into the small, crescent-shaped marks on my palm.  

     The wound is the place where the light enters you . . .  

     I dropped my arms back to my sides and glanced around the orchard, and that was when I heard it: a whisper, so soft that I almost thought I’d imagined it.  

     I looked over my shoulder, and then scanned the trees around me, though there was no one there. I glanced at the truck, thinking that it might have been static from the radio that I’d heard, but it was playing “Gimme Three Steps.” For a moment, I was certain that I had imagined it.

     Then I heard it again.  

     “Asher . . .”  

     I took a step towards the dark shadows of the apple trees, and then another, straining my ears as I tried to block out the music and laughter.

     “Asher . . .”  

     I patted the pocket of my nightgown to make sure that I still had my keys and phone—I hadn’t lied when I’d told Beck that my charger was broken; my battery had been steadily creeping towards one percent since that morning—and then I stepped from the protective glow of the bonfire’s light. A fallen apple burst beneath my boot, and I grimaced as I wiped the bottom clean in the grass. The scent of rot and decay was stronger here, where the orchard lay untouched by human hands.  

     “Asher . . .” 

     I jerked my head towards the voice, which was closer now than it had been before.   

     I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my phone, switching on the flashlight even though I didn’t want to waste what precious battery life remained. I squinted against the darkness.  

     “Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”  

     I heard something shift behind me, and I whirled, swinging the beam of my flashlight towards the noise. There was nothing there.  

     My mouth had gone bone-dry, and I licked my lips. I felt my pulse throbbing in my neck as I switched off the beam of my flashlight and turned back towards the party. 

     I only made it one step before something struck the back of my head.