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When it was all over, Grace found herself standing mindlessly on the fifty yard line.
Max had been taken a while ago now. The cigarette on her lips had long since burned out. Steph and Pete laid next to each other a good distance away from her. Her eyes were too unfocused to really see what they were doing.
Probably kissing, her mind spat, disgusted with the mere idea.
…But she had done much worse than just kiss, hadn’t she?
She’d been trying not to think about it. She hadn’t been thinking about anything, really. Just white noise and static ringing in her ears, the fluorescent lights of the field casting ominous shadows in the turf.
She felt every uncomfortable crease in her clothes. Every spot that had been pressed into the ground. Every area where she could still feel little rubber turf bits that had gotten in her shirt as she…
Fucked.
Fuck.
She mentally cursed herself for mentally cursing. God could hear her after all, she shouldn’t think such crude language.
…But then, she’d done so much worse today, hadn’t she?
She almost laughed from the absurdity of it all, but nothing came out. Her throat felt tight. She wasn’t sure she could speak if she tried to. She wasn’t going to try to.
There was only one person worth talking to now, and He didn’t care if she spoke out loud or not. He could hear her either way.
I’m sorry, she thought. She forced the words over and over again in her head, trying to make sure they’d reach Him. Trying to make sure He’d hear.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
For a long moment, she didn’t hear anything in response, save the ringing still piercing her ears.
You’re disgusting.
Was this her voice, or His?
You’re worthless now. They’ll hate you. They’ll all hate you. Your mommy and your daddy raised a disgusting, ungrateful whore.
God hates you.
No one will ever love you again.
You have nothing to give. Nothing to offer. Nothing to save.
Your parents will find out and they’ll hate you.
They’ll fucking hate you and you’ll deserve it.
And they’ll lie and act like they understand and they’ll be the kind people that the bible tells them they should be but you’ll know, you’ll KNOW what they really think of you.
You’ll know.
He’ll know.
Plead your case to deaf ears all you want, but there’s no language you could ever be forgiven in.
There is no God that can give you your purity back.
You should be dead.
You should fucking die.
Grace’s body felt numb. Cold. Useless.
Her eyes fell on a certain item.
Small and sleek and black, discarded in the turf nearby where Pete and Steph now laid. It almost shined in the stadium’s lights.
She remembered the weight of it in her hands.
Her fingers ached for it.
She couldn’t go home.
There was nowhere left for her.
No one cared about her. Her parents would be better off without her. The world would be better off without her.
They’d mourn Grace Chasity despite half of her name being a lie, and they’d bury her under a little cross-marked gravestone, unknowing that heaven wasn’t where she’d arrived.
But it would be better.
If she was dead, none of this would have happened.
Everything would be better.
They’d all be better.
She just had to…
Her eyes locked on the gun laying just a little ways ahead of her.
A sort of peace flooded through her. An acceptance, as she understood what she had to do.
She wouldn’t die for the world’s sins the way His son had, but maybe she could die for her own.
Her legs stumbled forward, her mind only half aware of her body.
She knew this was the right thing to do. She knew this was the only option. There wasn’t a single thing left for her here.
She heard quiet, muffled chattering as she approached where Steph and Pete were. She couldn’t understand it.
She didn’t care.
The gun was right in front of her now, laying in the faux grass just a foot away. She dropped to her knees ungracefully. Unlike herself.
It might have hurt a bit if she could really feel anything.
She plucked the gun from the grass and held it easily, lifting it to her forehead and placing the barrel right above her eyes. Her wrist contorted somewhat awkwardly. She hardly noticed.
She felt the cold end of the gun resting against her. It reminded her of Ash Wednesday, the pastor’s cold fingers painting a soot cross onto her forehead.
Ash would rain over her face once again.
She knew it wouldn’t be enough to cleanse her.
The voices were louder now, but nothing more than static in the background. Ringing, mindless noise.
Tears finally spilled from her eyes. She made no move to wipe them.
She felt at peace. She would join Him.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
There was only one way to find out.
She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.
————-
Steph was fucking tired.
She’d had a long day to say the absolute least. She’d watched her asshole dad die and almost shot her kinda-sorta boyfriend and then watched a creepy fucked-up killer zombie get dragged to hell.
So yeah. She was about ready for the day to end.
The field was dark now, and Steph and Pete laid beside each other, staring into the sky. The lights of the stadium made it so they couldn’t really see the stars, but they weren’t looking much anyway.
They both wanted to go home—Pete’s house, maybe; Steph didn’t want to return to hers so soon—but Grace had been entirely unresponsive after Max had been taken away, and both Steph and Pete had agreed that it didn’t feel right to just leave her alone there.
So, there they sat, talking aimlessly as they waited for Grace to come-to enough that they could just make sure she got home okay.
Nothing they talked about mattered. Neither wanted to say anything that really needed to be said. It was just nice to fill up the silence.
Eventually, Steph heard some scuffling nearby. She glanced over and saw that Grace was finally walking towards them, so she swiftly sat up to greet her.
There was some sort of off-look in Grace’s face. Steph didn’t quite recognize it, but it didn’t look right. Didn’t look like her.
“Hey, Grace?” Steph called, her voice a bit louder than it needed to be for her to have heard.
Grace didn’t respond. Didn’t even blink. Just kept walking.
“Grace, what are you doing?” Pete asked, exchanging a confused glance with Steph.
“Grace, hey, snap out of it—we’re ready to go home.” Steph sighed, starting to get annoyed with how stubborn the girl was.
They’d waited for her for forever, their ‘conscience” deciding they couldn’t leave without her, and Grace didn’t even have the decency to address them?
Steph realized that Grace wasn’t even actually looking at them—she was looking at the ground a bit in front of them. She wasn’t sure what that was about, but chalked it up to eye-contact anxiety. Or maybe just snootiness. Steph didn’t care.
Grace slowed to a stop, but she wasn’t in front of Pete and Steph, she was still a little ways away.
“Grace?” Steph called, somewhat annoyed. She was still unsure what was up with her.
“Shit,” Pete said next to her, seemingly seeing something she didn’t as he stumbled to his feet. Grace fell to the ground, landing roughly on her knees.
Steph realized what Grace had been looking at, just as the girl lifted the stolen gun from the ground.
She was going to shoot them.
Panic spiking, Steph stumbled immediately to her feet, preparing to push Pete behind her or wrestle the gun out of this prude’s hand. She knew Grace was crazy, but had no idea why, after all they’d done, she’d try and murder them.
“Pete, get—“ Steph started, before immediately cutting herself off.
Grace didn’t hold the gun towards them.
She didn’t look at them at all.
She simply held it to her forehead, her eyes glassy as small tears reflected in the lights of the field.
“Shit,” Steph started, her heart dropping to her feet as she filled with immediate, icy understanding. Her instincts kicked in suddenly, starting toward the kneeling girl and attempting to get through to her.
“Shit, Grace?! Grace!!” She yelled, hoping it’d do anything. Hoping Grace would snap out of it. Pete was yelling next to her too, but neither voice seemed to break through. Grace didn’t seem to hear.
Steph went to reach for the gun and take it from Grace’s hands.
They weren’t fast enough.
Grace’s shaking hand flexed around the trigger, her eyes closing.
Steph and Pete froze, both terrified of what they were about to see. Both regretting not doing something earlier.
If only she’d thought a little harder instead of being the dumbass she always was. She could have realized how bad Grace was really doing. She could’ve stopped this. She could’ve prevented yet another meaningless death on her hands.
But it was too late, now. Grace had already pulled the trigger.
…The gun clicked uselessly in Grace’s hand.
Grace sat stock-still. Unharmed.
All three of the teenagers were frozen for a long moment, stunned into silence. Steph could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Time seemed to stop, everyone waiting for an action to happen that never came.
Steph watched as Grace slowly peeled open her eyes, confusion etching into her features.
It seemed like she was realizing the same thing Steph was.
She’s not dead.
Grace pulled the trigger again.
Nothing happened.
“No,” she whimpered meekly. She sounded quiet. Broken. “No, no, no, no—“ Grace shot each word out like they alone could puncture her skull, emphasizing each word with another pull of the trigger in an attempt to fire the weapon through her head.
Each shot clicked and made no effect. Steph and Pete still stood, frozen. Watching.
Her whimpers of no’s rose into loud, violent cries that ripped through the silence of the field.
“No, no, no, no, NO, NO—“
She began to bang the gun into her forehead, weaker at first but growing in force with every word she sobbed.
Her cries were hardly intelligible now, the ‘no’s slurring on her tongue and coming out in a jumbled mess. Her hands shook as she banged the barrel of the weapon into the same spot on her forehead, over and over.
Steph had never seen anyone like this. She had no clue what to do.
Grace’s forehead turned a scarlet hue, the skin either split and bleeding or possibly just red from the force.
Seeing the mark snapped Steph back to reality, and she finally managed to jump into action, closing the distance between her and Grace and immediately dropping to the floor next to her.
Steph’s hands wrapped gently around the gun, keeping Grace from hitting herself with it again. It didn’t take much force to stop it, as Grace’s shaking arms gave up the gun with little resistance. Steph set it on the ground, out of her reach, and grabbed Grace’s hand.
Grace was sobbing violently now, though she’d stopped screaming. She started to claw at her neck with her free hand, digging at it like she could burrow to her brainstem and curling into herself as much as she possibly could while still holding Steph’s hand.
From close up, Steph could see that she was bleeding a bit from her forehead. She could also see small bruises forming on her neck, and she winced.
“…It’s okay, Grace.” Steph muttered, rubbing circles into Grace’s palm. “He’s gone. You’re okay.”
She knew the words didn’t mean much, but she had to say something. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this. She wasn’t sure how to deal with much of anything that had happened that day. Pete sat next to her, not touching Grace for fear of how she may react, but close enough to help if he was needed.
Grace’s cries racked her whole body in violent, painful sobs. She clawed at the ground and then at her hair and her chest, shaking like a leaf with every action.
Steph had never seen anyone cry like this. Grace Chasity was breaking into pieces right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do but watch.
She cursed herself mentally for not even thinking about how much this would have affected her.
Yeah, virginity is a pretty fucking lame thing to hold above all else, but it was what Grace cherished most.
And it was gone now.
It shouldn’t have been a shock that she wasn’t holding up well.
After a long while, Grace’s sobs slowed as the energy drained from her. She sagged on her knees, her hair covering her face as she stared at the ground.
“Grace?” Steph asked as gently as she could muster. “Can you hear me?”
After a moment of hesitation that felt like an eternity, Grace nodded, just barely enough to be noticeable.
Steph hadn’t thought this far ahead. She wasn’t sure what to say now. She waited a long moment, gathering her thoughts while simultaneously waiting to see if Grace wanted to say anything.
“Do you want a ride home?” Steph asked, finally. Grace visibly tensed with the question, pulling her hand away from Steph’s and dragging her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. Blood from her head trickled onto the knees of her already-stained jeans. Her breathing picked up as she suddenly muttered something into her knees that Steph couldn’t understand.
“What?” Steph said, leaning closer and straining her ears as Grace lifted her head just the tiniest bit to repeat herself.
“There’s no home left,” she muttered, her voice raspy and broken and impossibly quiet.
“What do you mean, Grace?” Steph asked, trying to be as quiet as she could with Grace still hearing. Grace sobbed lightly again, still not looking up.
“They’ll hate me,” she whispered. “He’ll hate me.”
Steph exchanged a glance with Pete, before looking back at Grace.
“Who is ‘He’? Your dad?”
“No,” Grace spat, her voice lacking any real menace. “Him. Him.”
Steph didn’t know what she was talking about, but Pete’s eyes widened in realization. Steph quirked a brow at him in confusion, and Pete gestured to the sky, mouthing ‘God’. Steph’s heart dropped with the understanding.
“Oh, Grace,” Steph muttered. After hesitating briefly, she placed a hand on the girl’s back in an attempt to comfort her. Surprisingly, Grace melted into the touch, her body almost collapsing with exhaustion as her arms fell to the ground beside her. Steph helped her stay sitting up.
“There’s nothing left for me,” Grace whispered, a small sob escaping her throat. “I’m tainted. I’m dirty. I’m ruined.”
“Grace that—that isn’t true,” Pete piped in, still not touching her but seemingly trying to help.
Grace let out a manic, humorless laugh that bordered on a sob. It made Steph uncomfortable. It sounded forced—it didn’t sound right.
“You don’t get it.” She muttered. “I’m nothing now. My parents will hate me. God will hate me. Everyone’s gonna hate me. It’s over, it’s over—”
“No one’s going to hate you, Grace—“
“Shut the fuck up,” Grace whined, her voice still uncharacteristically quiet. Steph and Pete both froze in shock at the girl’s words, the curse sounding foreign on her tongue. “Just… Just shut up. You don’t—you don’t get it. I’m going to hell, Peter.” Her words were hardly audible, as if she was scared someone would overhear. “I’m going to hell.”
Grace broke off in sobs again, making no move to wipe her face as the tears sunk into the fabric of her jeans.
“You’re not going to hell, Grace; you saved our lives.” Steph said. Grace just laughed humorlessly again.
Steph wasn’t entirely sure how to comfort Grace. It felt like she was trying to talk a girl off the ledge when she didn’t even know where the ground was.
She had never been a fan of religion in general. She thought it was silly that so many people dictated so much of their lives around a bunch of dumb words from a billion years ago. She’d thought Grace was an idiot for believing in that sort of stuff. Hell, part of her still thought that Grace was an idiot for her beliefs.
Despite everything, no matter how little Steph understood it, this was affecting Grace intensely.
She literally tried to kill herself over having sex, and now she was sobbing on a field about how she was worthless.
That wasn’t exactly a normal reaction to… well, anything.
In the fluorescent glow of the giant overhead stadium LEDs, Steph saw Grace in a new light.
She wasn’t this cocky, self-assured, happy-go-lucky know-it-all anymore.
Now, she was just a scared girl whose life had fallen apart in a matter of minutes.
…And she’d done that for them.
Grace could have ran off and let Steph and Pete die—Max didn’t seem to really want to kill her. She could have made Steph or Pete try again to kill each other. Hell, she could have used Ghost-Max as her own personal pet if she wanted, she had him wrapped around her finger.
And yet… she’d come back.
She’d given up what she cherished most, knowing it would destroy her.
Steph decided from that point on, she would protect Grace the best she could.
In one fell swoop, a nerdy prude she couldn’t stand being around had become one of the most important people in her life. Surprisingly, Steph wasn’t too upset about this fact.
Turning her attention back to reality, Steph could see that Grace was in much the same position as before. She was still crying into her jeans, though her sobs were less forceful now; rather a quiet and continuous stream. She was still shaky and weak and absurdly scared.
“Hey, Grace,” Steph said gently, moving to sit directly in front of the girl. She risked cupping her hand on Grace’s cheek and very gently helping her lift her head enough to look at Steph. Grace didn’t tense with the action, simply letting her head be raised.
Grace’s eyes looked red and unfocused, but her exhausted gaze rested on Steph’s own, bringing a small, warm smile to Steph’s face.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what you had to do.” She whispered, the words feeling impossibly heavy. Grace’s gaze lowered, though Steph couldn’t tell if it was in shame or exhaustion or something else.
“You can stay at my place,” Pete piped in, now sitting next to them. Grace glanced in his vague direction as if to signal she was listening. “You can stay as long as you want. Seriously. We were gonna—we were going to go tonight, actually—me and Steph. Just, uh—we were just… waiting on you.” He stuttered.
The last part of his sentence seemed to interest Grace, whose brow furrowed slightly as she directed her blurry gaze at Pete.
“Why?” She asked. Her hoarse voice cracked with the singular word. Pete and Steph exchanged a glance, not entirely sure of the question.
“Why… Are you allowed to stay?” Pete offered. Grace looked at the ground again, not offering any confirmation. Steph grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently.
“We’re your friends, Grace.” She stated. “We’re not gonna let anything happen to you. Not… Not again, at least.” She muttered.
Grace looked back up at Steph, her eyes searching. Steph stared back, taking care to show her certainty in her expression. Finally, Grace broke.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“…Okay,” Steph smiled. “Let’s get out of here.”