When it happened
If you happened to be out late on the night of October 28, 1969, in the small town of Berkley Cove, North Carolina, you would have seen a small boat. You would have seen a woman with ragged tangled hair that twisted down her back. The Marsh Girl. Abandoned. Alone. Survivor.
She neared the fire tower, standing lone on a small piece of land. If Kya had counted correctly, there were fifty-six stairs leading to the top, where Chase would be waiting for her. Her heart surged in anticipation.
Just as she reached the last step at the top of the tower, Kya slowed. Because there, near the railing, stood an isolated figure. It barely took a beat of her heart for Kya to realize the figure was Chase Andrews. He stood still. Kya froze.
Chase whipped around, only to realize who was there. His lips slowly formed a lustful sneer. Kya felt her words trapped in her throat, unable to get out.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked as his smirk widened. Around his neck hung a delicate shell necklace. Kya’s breath caught. She gave that to Chase out of love. Seeing it hanging around his neck still filled her heart with fury. Yet her face remained a calm mask.
“I’m sorry for what happened, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kya forced the words out of her mouth.
Her mind couldn’t erase the helplessness she had felt as Chase attempted to kiss her, touch her, control her. Her heart sped up remembering the fear she had felt, thinking he would find her somehow, and this time wouldn’t let her go.
“I just want to be with you.” he said, refusing to acknowledge her pain.
Kya’s eyes moved past him to the open grate a few feet behind him. It lay wide open, big enough for someone to easily fall through.
At Kya’s lack of response, Chase’s eyes glinted. “C’mon,” he urged. “If we get together, I’ll never let you go.” But she knew the words implicated a different meaning. Without a response, Kya gazed past him at the reflection of the moonlight on the water, at a small wooden boat. Tate’s boat. The love she had chased her whole life coursed through her like a drug.
The thing about drugs though, is that they make you so desperate. They break through your defenses and let the worse things in.
Her mind shuffled through the collection of images she held in her head. Her father hitting Ma. Covering her body in bruises and scrapes. She felt her heart tear at the memories, memories of before. This is for Ma, she thought.
Looking Chase in the eye, Kya stood taller in attempt to say her final words. “I never loved you. And I never will.” Reaching forward, she ripped the shell necklace from his neck. It gave with a satisfying rip in the fragile cloth.
Chase’s eyes pooled with confusion, then an expression that masked a slight fury. But before he could even react, Kya stepped forward, placing her palms on his chest. Then she pushed him using strength from deep within her that she didn’t even know existed.
Chase stumbled backward toward the open grate in the floor. His eyes locked with hers as his left foot fell through. His eyes begged for help, and for a split second, Kya almost reached out to stop him from falling. From dying. The rest of his body fell through the hole. His head hit the pole sticking out from the tower, and she watched, in a trance as his neck snapped backward. His eyes held hers with a sad reality until he wasn’t there anymore.
Kya watched him get smaller and smaller through the darkness, until she couldn’t see him at all. She held the shell necklace, before curling her hand into a fist. Carefully, she crept down the stairs until she was standing over his body.
There, she took a moment to say goodbye. Goodbye to a boy she thought she loved.
A single tear fell down her cheek as she backed away. Her footsteps made deep holes in the thick mud, but she knew the marsh water would cover them up by sunrise.
Her secret would be hidden in the swamp, below the mud and in the highest branches of the highest trees. Woven and intertwined in every piece of grass, and every flower.
It would be lost, buried under the secrets of the Marsh.
