Angry God by L.J. Shen

The weeks leading to the exhibition had been so busy, I was sometimes surprised I didn’t forget to breathe. I certainly forgot to eat and sleep.

Papa and Poppy stuck by my side throughout, taking time off from their own schedules to assist me. It’s like they could see the hole Vaughn had left in my heart when he packed his bags and vanished. Neither of them talked about him. He just hung in the pregnant air, suspended by strings of cruel hope and tragic impossibility. Heartbreak had a taste, and it exploded in my mouth every time I tried to smile.

I worked on autopilot, putting the last touches on my assemblage piece. I’d met with curators, designers, and the exhibition coordinators. I’d signed contracts and smiled for cameras and explained my work to people who oooh-ed and ahh-ed. I’d interviewed, along with Pope and other young artists, with magazines, local newspapers, and even the BBC.

Pope visited me every other day, his face marred with paint and triumph.

His piece was good.

Realgood.

We’d share a kebab and drink Irn-Bru and crochet our plans for the future. The theme for the exhibition was the most promising young artists in the world, and I was excited to be included. Although no matter how much Papa assured me I’d earned my place fair and square, doubt gnawed at my stomach every time I looked at my piece.

I wasn’t supposed to be a part of the exhibition.

I was a last-minute replacement, second best, a fill-in.

And it wasn’t the only reason my stomach always felt hollow.

Three days after Vaughn tore me to pieces with his letter, the news came out that Harry Fairhurst had committed suicide in his St. Albans mansion.

His death was met with cold, unnerving silence from his colleagues, close friends, and fans. Shortly before he was found dead in his bathtub, swimming in a pool of his own blood, some past and current students at Carlisle Prep had plucked up the courage to come forward and call him out for his sexual abuse.

Dominic Maples, a current senior, had led the petition against him.

Apparently, the posters I’d hung everywhere, combined with a traumatic experience involving my uncle, encouraged Dominic’s decision. He explained in the news that there was something sinisterly liberating about watching Fairhurst’s face on paper poked, dented, and smeared in paint, almost beyond recognition. It made him look less powerful, human. It occurred to me that many mortals were burdened with the false status of a god, and almost none of them enjoyed the power that came with it.

Vaughn Spencer, as an example.

While Poppy refused to believe the mounting evidence against our uncle and insisted on attending his small, intimate funeral, my father seemed furious and disgusted with his cousin. He refused to speak of him. We both opted out of any and all tributes and memorial arrangements for Fairhurst.

Father wasn’t stupid. He must’ve connected the dots leading to Vaughn’s disappearance. All the same, he never questioned Harry’s so-called suicide.

But I knew.

I knew Harry Fairhurst hadn’t committed suicide.

To put an end to your life, you must first feel acute regret, guilt, or unhappiness. I’d grown up next to my uncle. Not once did he look uncomfortable in his snakelike skin.

In the week leading to the exhibition, my art piece was shipped, right along with Pope’s painting, to Tate Modern. I packed all of my belongings and said goodbye to Carlisle Castle for the last time. I returned my key to Mrs. Hawthorne, gave flowers to the staff, destroyed my student card and cafeteria pass, and threw out my cape. The finality of it frightened me to death. I was never going to live here again. I would visit, perhaps, but not often, and I certainly wouldn’t be roaming the hallways with confidence, like I had before. I had no desire to return as a teacher. The idea crippled me. I didn’t want to teach; I wanted to create.

Papa drove us to our house in Hampstead Heath, where I was going to live until I found my next gig. Like many artists, I still wasn’t opting for higher education. I had the tools I needed from my studies at Carlisle Prep, and I believed in autodidactism. I wanted to work at a gallery, perhaps snag an internship with someone creative and patient, if I had any luck.

Everything was in motion, yet life had a stale feeling—like trying to run underwater.

“Tell me three things: something good, something bad, and something you are looking forward to,” Papa requested in the midst of a traffic jam, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of his vintage AC Ace/Cobra. I looked sideways, tapping the edge of the window. It was difficult to think about anything that wasn’t Vaughn. He drenched my thoughts, contaminating everything else I wanted to focus on.

“Something good? I’m excited for tomorrow. Something bad? I’m frightened about tomorrow, too. Something I look forward to…” I trailed off.

For Vaughn to come back.

But I knew that wouldn’t happen. He said he’d disappear after he killed Harry Fairhurst, that once he had blood on his hands, he wasn’t going to smear it on me or anything in my life. And he was a man of his word. I needed to come to terms with it. Although he was crazy if he thought I could truly move on with someone else.

“I’m looking forward to nothing,” I finished quietly.

Nothing really mattered that much anymore. A journey without Vaughn was not worth taking. I wanted him to challenge my every step, to keep me on my toes. To drive me mad. To give me his laughs, his thoughts, his blood.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do things with my life. But the aftertaste of nothing, the one I’d felt every day the past couple weeks, was going to chase me to the grave. I knew that with depressing clarity.

Nothing was going to taste as good as those brownies and chocolate.

I should have known they weren’t divine because of some secret recipe—he’d sent them from different places, in different countries, even. They’d tasted divine because I knew, subconsciously, that they came from him.

Vaughn didn’t stop sending me chocolate and brownies after he left, but I stopped taking them into my room. Frankly, it was a relief to move somewhere he couldn’t send them anymore. He didn’t know my personal address.

“That saddens me to hear.” Papa clucked his tongue, his thumb brushing the steering wheel.

We’d had many intimate conversations since Arabella left. Her father had picked her up—I saw them from my window, hugging, shedding tears. I hoped he was in a better mental place, that he could be there for his daughters the way my father couldn’t after my mum passed away.

“I’ll get my groove back,” I lied, feeling an incredible urge to down a bottle of gin. I understood alcoholics now. Numbness was far superior to pain.

“I know you will.” He nodded and started talking about the weather.

I rested my head against my seat and closed my eyes, drifting.

I wore a black wool, one-shoulder bustier dress, which flowed down my body with tulle made of lace. It had been sent to me by Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer the evening before the exhibition in a special delivery, and it contained a note that made my fingers itch to call her and ask for the meaning behind the unexpected gift.

Lenora,

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

• Aesop

Thank you for giving my son a home away from home. You broke down his walls, yet gave him shelter. I am forever in your debt.

Emilia LeBlanc-Spencer

Though I’d been in the same place as this woman several times over the years, we’d never been officially introduced. To me, she was a famous painter and Vaughn’s mother. I knew of her gallery in Los Angeles and had admired her art from afar (and her son from up close). Why had she reached out? Had Vaughn been in touch with her since he disappeared? Had he told her about me?

The idea filled me with foolish hope that maybe he was missing me, thinking about me. That perhaps he’d changed his mind after all. The morning sweets deliveries almost felt like a force of habit at this point. An apology, perhaps.

Maybe he’ll be at the exhibition.My mind raced into dangerous territory: hope.

The love declaration he’d made in his letter grew watered down by doubt with each passing day, but I had to admit, slipping into the dress Emilia had sent me felt like walking into his arms. I swore it had his scent.

It was Gothic, chic, and enchanting.

Christmas hung in the air like an overripe fruit. The sweet scent of pastries wafted in the chilly London air, and white and red lights wrapped around the English capital like a bow. Tate Modern was a brown, boxy thing on the southeast side of London. It wasn’t as posh and beautiful as Tate Britain, but today, it looked perfect to me.

Poppy held my hand, and Papa draped an arm over my shoulder as we walked across Turbine Hall toward the exhibition room. The minute I entered the space, I spotted my piece. It was impossible not to. It had been placed in the center of the room, surrounded by the other works of art, most of them pushed against the white walls.

Bursting from the bowels of the gallery with pristine brilliance and vivid colors, his tin face stared back at me in challenge. The Indian yellow of his cape battled for attention with the ruby red of his bleeding crown of thorns. He was alive, deadly, and godly.

My Angry God.

My heart beat faster when I realized a cluster of people orbited around it, staring. Some seemed to read the little explanatory sign underneath:

Angry God/Assemblage/Lenora Astalis

Material: nails, wood, thorns, paper, fabric, metal, glass, plastic, hair, blood

From the artist: When I started working on this piece, I had no idea what it meant to me. I wanted to immortalize the depraved ferocity of a beautiful man willfully marching to his own demise. The name, Angry God, derives from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon written by the Christian theologian Jonathan Edwards and preached to his congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1741. It is said that Edwards was interrupted many times during the sermon by people asking, “What shall I do to be saved?”

What will you do to be saved?

Would you go so far as losing the love of your life?

“Come, come, the woman of the hour is here.” Alma Everett-Hodkins curved her wrinkly, thin fingers around my wrist and pulled me into the throng of people, all of them sophisticated-looking professionals in black.

“I noticed her rare talent when she was merely eight.” Alma grinned knowingly as my father and Poppy stood next to us, smiling proudly and cradling glasses of champagne. I would’ve killed for a drink, but I needed to remain professional and, unfortunately, sober. People asked me questions about the piece and gave me their interpretations of it. I answered dutifully, trying to cling to the moment, to be there, to experience the now, and to push Vaughn from my thoughts—at least for the duration of the evening. This was the height of my career, the peak I’d been waiting for. It wasn’t fair that he was going to steal it without even being here.

Without even trying.

Pope stood on the other side of the room next to his floor-to-ceiling painting, talking to a cluster of young artists. There were many pieces of art in the exhibition, but most people were standing around my statue. Pride overwhelmed me. Maybe I really was good after all.

I craned my neck, stupidly looking for Vaughn among the crowd of people, but he wasn’t here. It felt so fitting; it was hard not to hope he’d show up, like in the movies, storming in frazzled and lovesick, with a Hugh Grant smile and a stuttered-yet-charming monologue that would rip everyone’s heart out, mine included.

“Did you have anyone in mind when you sculpted the face?” asked a stunning, blue-eyed woman with a brown chignon, the tips of her hair dyed lavender pink. She cradled a glass of red wine.

I turned to look at her and smiled. “What makes you ask that?”

“The cut of the cheekbones.” She motioned with the hand that held the wine in the statue’s direction. “The high brows, wide forehead, strong chin—it is symmetrical to a fault, more than King David. Almost godly in its beauty. I find it hard to believe a man like that exists.” She tapped her lips now, musing. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I would definitely remember if I’d met her before.

“Oh, he does,” I said, running a finger along the cold, metallic side of his face.

“I know.” She turned to me fully now, searching my eyes. “He’s my son.”

We both froze in our spots as I processed the information. My body prickled hotly, and my heart began to pound.

“Emilia?” I gasped.

She wrapped her arms around me, as if hugging were the most natural thing two strangers could do. I struggled to keep myself in check, knowing my tears were already planning their grand appearance. I had so much I wanted to ask her, yet somehow, I couldn’t find my voice.

Once we disconnected, she cupped my cheeks and smiled down at me. She had a lovely smile. Not only because it was aesthetically attractive, but because her goodness shone through it. I could see why Baron “Vicious” Spencer was so madly in love with her. Rumors about the way he worshipped her, how he’d built a cherry-blossom garden for her in their backyard, had traveled throughout higher society in Todos Santos. She had this quality about her that made people do crazy things to please her—an invisible hold.

“How are you?” she asked.

I couldn’t lie.

“Worried. Is he okay?” I dropped my voice so people around us couldn’t hear.

Some moved to other pieces in the exhibition, but most waited patiently for us to finish talking so they could speak to me. I found the situation bizarre. The entire point of making art was so I didn’t have to explain it.

She smiled, but said nothing. She pulled me behind the assemblage so we couldn’t be seen or heard.

“Lenora, you’re about to be showered with proposals from gallery owners in approximately two minutes, but I wanted to be the first to offer you a spot in my gallery in Los Angeles. You don’t have to answer now, of course, but I would be very excited to work with you. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for all you did for Vaughn.”

I swallowed. “Is he going to be there? In Los Angeles, I mean?” I eyed her.

I hated that I was desperate, that I still cared. No. Scratch that. I hated that he was all I cared about. At this moment, I didn’t consider the merits of working in her gallery because it was prestigious or huge or offered a lot of work experience, God forbid.

Emilia shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Love is a trickster. It has a way of twisting you, doesn’t it?”

My head hung low. “Yeah.”

“The pain fades, eventually.”

“How do you know?”

“Once upon a time, I felt it, too.”

I squeezed her hand in mine. “All right. I’ll think about it. Thank you.”

She kissed my cheek and walked away.

The rest of the evening was a blur. I had business cards shoved into my hands, people asking for my number, my email, my price. By the time ten o’clock rolled around, my legs were trembling with exhaustion.

I leaned against Poppy for support, plucking a heel off for a moment and massaging my foot on a wince when she turned to me and said, “Papa called you a cab. Hurry up, now.”

“A cab?” I frowned. “Why?”

“He’s taking Pope for a drink to close up a deal.” She cocked her head toward the two of them, arching a meaningful brow. Dad and Pope were standing next to each other, shaking hands and laughing. I grinned. I was so happy Pope was going to stay close by, that we wouldn’t become glorified strangers who sent each other the occasional Christmas card. I looked back to her.

“What about you? Are you coming with?”

She scoffed. “Hard pass. After Pope has a drink with Papa, I intend to have something else with him, so I’m tagging along.”

“Are you serious?” My eyes widened.

“As a heart attack. Have you seen him? He is gorgeous, and he did a lot of growing up while we were in California. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not, you slag.” I laughed.

She shrugged and strutted back to them. I shook my head. Rafferty and Poppy. Who would have thought?

In the cab, I let my mind wander to the fact that Pope had once touched me in a way I wasn’t sure Poppy was going to appreciate. I shot her a quick text saying there was something I needed to tell her, and perhaps she should hold off on the shagging session with my best friend.

Her reply came promptly.

Poppy: For God’s sake, don’t worry about us! Just go home.

Me: Pope and I did things. They meant nothing to either of us, but they still happened. I don’t want you to be blindsided.

Poppy: Buh-bye!

Upon arrival, I shoved the key in, pushed the door open, and locked it behind me. Sighing heavily, I shouldered out of my coat and hung it in the foyer, kicking my heels off once and for all.

“Argh, never doing the high-heel thing again,” I announced to the empty space.

After finding a glass of water, I went upstairs to my old childhood room, which barely reminded me of my younger years now. I identified that period of my life with Carlisle Castle more than anything else. I pushed the door open. As soon as I did, the glass slipped from my fingers, dropping noiselessly to the carpet.

A yelp escaped my throat.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Vaughn said, perched on my bed, looking at me like nothing had happened at all.

Like he’d never left.

Like he hadn’t broken and entered into my house for the thousandth time.

Like there wasn’t a six hundred kilogram sculpture in the middle of my room—life-sized, gigantic, and absolutely gorgeous. I’d never seen anything like it. Violent shivers ran down my arms and back, and pure adrenaline dropped me to my knees as I tried to gulp a deep breath.

“It’s…”

“Us,” he said, standing from my bed and approaching me in measured, careful steps.

He looked good—healthy, tall, ripped, and still in his tattered black jeans and half-torn black shirt that couldn’t dim his brutally stunning features. He stopped in front of me, offering me his hand.

Tentatively, I took it.

I stood, stepped forward, and examined the statue.

It was the two of us, curled against each other as children, lying on a bed. We were twelve and thirteen and looked just the way we had the day I’d caught him and Harry. Only in the sculpture, he wasn’t standing above me, watching and threatening. Instead, we were entwined together, his face partly covered by my hair. I was breathing into his neck, my arms protectively circling his shoulders.

Everything had been realistically carved, to the point that it looked like a giant, living picture. I was sure if I put my fingers to our necks, I’d find a pulse. But when my gaze moved down to our stomachs, I noticed something weird. Our bottom parts were meshed together, mermaid-like, as if we were conjoined twins. We didn’t have legs. We couldn’t escape each other.

We were one.

The name of the sculpture was carved on its side:

Good Girl

Vaughn took me by the hand and walked me to my bed, where we slipped under my blanket, legs entwined, mimicking the statue—his face in my hair, my nose pressed against his neck. Home, I thought, and everything became clear.

That’s why Papa had taken Pope for an after-show drink. That’s why my sister had stayed behind. She had no interest at all in Rafferty. They wanted to give us our privacy.

Emilia knew, too. That’s why she didn’t tell me how Vaughn was doing.

It dawned on me that Vaughn and I had been ruthlessly patient with one another all those years. He’d waited for me to open up while I long-sufferingly watched as he crawled from behind the tall walls he’d built around himself.

“I started working on this statue before we were together. I started it before we’d even kissed. Before Jason. Before Arabella. Before everything, there was you,” he whispered into my hair. “You came before art. Before life. Definitely before hate.”

I shook with unrestrained tears. They were falling down my cheeks now, hot and furious and grateful. I pulled back reluctantly, catching his gaze.

“How could you think you are less than enough? How could you ever think that?” I asked, feeling my cheeks heating up with anger.

“I don’t think that anymore,” he said softly, caressing my hair. “Or if I am, I don’t care. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t kill your uncle. I stood there with my weapon, and all I could think was what if he were right—if it was getting revenge or getting the girl…” He closed his magnificent blue eyes, taking a deep breath, opening them again. Determination zinged through them. “I’d rather have the girl.”

I hugged him to a point of suffocation, laugh-crying. When we disconnected again, I frowned. “So who did it?”

I still didn’t believe Uncle Harry had committed suicide.

Vaughn shrugged. “Perhaps another angry god.”

I nodded, catching his drift.

“Why did you leave if you hadn’t killed him? Where have you been all this time?” A pang of pain slashed through my heart. Those weeks apart felt like forever. They’d stretched longer than all the years I’d lived without him by my side.

“I stuck around, admiring you from afar—but never too far.” He took my chin between his thumb and index, bringing our lips together in a sweet, unhurried kiss. “Stayed at the cottage my parents rent downtown. I watched you walking into town with Rafferty, buying groceries, and hiking. I didn’t come close, because I knew that without me out of the way, you wouldn’t have your chance to display your work at Tate Modern. And frankly, you were far more deserving of this spot. I’ve been your shadow for so long, Lenora. I wanted you to bask in the sun a little.”

“My shadow?” I breathed.

He nodded. “Always there, following you, even when you didn’t see. Remember the day Arabella, Soren, and Alice crowded you in that locker room and a door slammed in the distance, making them leave? That was me. And they paid for what they did. I stole Soren’s Maserati and totaled it, causing his parents to almost disown him, and I planted cocaine in Alice and Arabella’s purses. Alice’s parents gave her so much shit they decided to send her to rehab instead of college. With Arabella, I got even better results. She got hooked.”

Silence.

“I’ve always loved you in my own fucked-up, destructive way.”

I closed my eyes, relishing the word as it rolled off his tongue. So fantastically rare, and forever mine.

“Say it again,” I whispered to his lips, cupping his cheeks.

“I love you,” he said, his tongue flicking my lips when he pronounced the L, opening them in the process. We kissed hungrily.

“Again,” I growled into his mouth, clutching his shirt, knowing it was wet because of my tears and not giving a damn.

“I.” He nuzzled his straight nose along my jawline.

“Love.” He flicked my ear with his tongue.

“You,” he finished, closing his mouth over mine in a passionate kiss that made my eyes roll in their sockets and took my breath away.

He moved on top of me, thrusting his groin into mine, pinning me down, and just like the sculpture, we became one again. He kicked his jeans off, I hoisted my dress, and a few minutes later, he was inside me, and we were perfectly tangled. He drove into me deeply, again and again and again, until I was delirious with pleasure and my heart soared and bloomed. I could feel my love-cells multiplying inside my chest. More. More. More.

This. This was what I wanted and needed. Vaughn Spencer, of all people. In my bed. Protecting me from my favorite monster.

Himself.