THE PROMISES MADE TO BELLE LOVE #ONC2024

Chapter 3.

Gen didn't leave her room for the entirety of the next day.

There were search parties out for Belle. A case surrounding her absence had transpired very quickly. Lucia was not a large town – if there was a girl on the loose, somebody would have sighted her by now. She hadn't booked any train tickets or hailed any cabs. Belle was somewhere in town – or, at least, what remained of her was.

Gen couldn't sleep or eat. The night of New Years Eve was coming back to her in wretched shards. Again, the memories with no real foundation: a boy on his knees, a prayer, a sacrifice. Blood on her hands, blood on her hands. Thinking too hard about it all caused Gen's throat to burn, her gut to twist. She had to know what had happened that night.

The day stretched on and on, each warped hour hurting more than the last. Gen had been supposed to meet up with Belle, that night of the festival. Instead she'd abandoned her best friend for a boy she didn't even know. Where was Dante now, Gen thought idly? Probably throwing paper balls at the back of his classmates' heads, or laughing riotously in the cafeteria. He certainly wasn't worrying about the repercussions of whatever he'd done with Gen that night. To boys, these things didn't matter. Not in the same way.

He'd abandoned her that night. This, Gen remembered. The memories were trickling back in. She recalled the beginning of the night, and the end. He'd dared her to do something – she didn't know what, but she knew she'd done it. He'd promised to be there for her when she completed it. He hadn't been there.

Gen's knees recalled what her brain didn't. Bruises and scrapes told the story: she had collapsed on the edge of the woods, she'd called for him, and he didn't respond. Because he was gone.

As the sun began to set in the present, Gen clawed her way off her bed. She couldn't trap her thoughts in her mind any longer. She needed to write them down. She was starving, but refused to descend to the hall for dinner. She didn't want to see Jade, who knew that Gen had abandoned Belle that night. She didn't want to hear the whispered gossip.

Gen sat down at her desk, sweeping her long hair into a ponytail as she went. She pulled out her chair and sat down, freeing her diary from beneath the strew of loose pages of homework scattered over her desk. She picked up a pen. She would tell the pages everything about Dante, about her guilt, about disappeared Belle Love.

But when she opened to the most recent page, Gen saw that she'd written a lot more recently than she thought.

A mangled gasp left her mouth. The pages were spotted with blood.

Gen flung her pen down and leaned back in her chair, putting both of her hands to her forehead. She stared at the cream pages and the unmistakable stain on them. Her writing was frantic and messy – she'd been drunk. The blood marks were not deliberate. She realised that the swirling red lines stamped into the blood were handprints. It had come off her palms while she was writing.

Against her better judgement, Gen began reading the entry. She had no recollection of writing it, which could only mean it was from the night she'd met Dante. New Years.

I loved Dante Leon tonight and he loved me. The fleeting kind of love that only exists at nighttime between two strangers.

He has wavy hair and he dresses like he always has someplace much fancier to be. He is surprisingly kind, and funny. He doesn't live on campus with the other boys, but in the big white house at the end of the cul-de-sac off Spell Street. The house everybody has been in love with since we first laid eyes upon it.

He is the boy we've all been in love with. Since forever.

We kissed under the fireworks and kissed all the way down the street. We kissed at the park and then he took my clothes off and kissed the rest of me. We lay together for one hour or five, I'm not sure. But it was still dark when we went to the woods.

He got down on his knees and was laughing. We both were. We were daring each other to do ludicrous things all night, so I could tell he was about to give me another.

He told me, "Summon a god. In the old-fashioned way."

The old-fashioned way is sacrifice. The old-fashioned way is blood.

I was out of my mind then. I am out of my mind, still. I don't know what a god is because nobody ever taught me. School has tried, and the church has tried. But their God isn't the one Dante wanted me to summon.

I thought, the only way to find god is to call him down myself.

So I did it. I killed and I called. I knelt in the dirt with blood pooling around me and I asked any god to answer me. I don't know if one did. I came to my senses very quickly after that. All I wanted was to find Dante and tell him that I did it, and ask him to take me home.

He promised he'd wait for me exactly where I'd left him. I went back to the very place, though, and he was gone.

I waited until I knew sunrise was about to come, and then I left. He was not coming back for me.

I am home now. I've taken off the shirt that I'll be never able to wear again. It has the blood of my sacrifice on it, or the blood of god. I'm not sure. I don't know if I killed for god or if I killed god.

All I know is that I have already stopped loving Dante. A few hours of him was enough for me.

I feel sick. I'm going to hang out of my window until it goes away and then I think I am going to sleep until I forget that I ever let a boy tell me to believe in god.

Gen stared at the page. Stared. Stared.

It was all exactly true, she realised. With the words came the memories. She remembered crouching, shivering, on the edge of the trees, waiting for Dante to come back for her. Trusting that he would. She remembered coming home in the darkness, campus totally empty. All the girls were in bed already. She remembered unbuttoning her shirt... tossing it away. Thoughtless.

Her bloodied shirt.

Gen groaned to herself and staggered to her feet. She raced to her laundry hamper. The rest of her laundry was tossed haplessly across the floor, like always. But that night, she would have had at least a fraction of sense to hide that particular shirt. To put it someplace it wasn't out in the open. In her drunken state, it was no wonder she'd have thought the laundry hamper was a good option for this – no matter that when her room was cleaned in a few days and her laundry was taken downstairs, the maids would see it.

Gen fell to her knees before the hamper and emptied it straight out. Only a few garments tumbled out. But one was much more distinct than others. Gen gagged at the sight and rocked back on her heels, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

"No," she murmured to herself, building up the courage to snatch up the shirt. "No, no, no."

She held up the white button-up. Splashes of gore coated the front in the undeniable pattern of savagery. It wasn't red paint. It wasn't cranberry juice. It was blood.

Gen leapt half out of her skin when a banging started on her door. She shoved the shirt back into the laundry basket and slammed shut the lid. She tripped trying to clamber to her feet and banged her temple hard on the edge of her desk. She gasped in shock and pain, but didn't let it give her pause. She hauled herself up and dashed to the door.

There was a woman standing on the other side of the door who looked aghast when Gen ripped it open. She took a step back. It was Miss Len. "Sorry," Gen huffed. "You startled me."

She did her best to straighten up, smoothing her hair back out of her eyes. "Um, anyway, I'm not hungry." She assumed that was what Miss Len was here for – to collect her for dinner.

But Miss Len's eyes only softened, and she gave a gentle shake of her head. "Oh, love, no. That's not it." Gen had never seen her teacher look so fragile. Were her eyes even watering?

"Then what is it?" Gen whispered.

It was an effort for Miss Len to meet Gen's eyes. When she did, they were full of sorrow. "They found Belle in the woods." Relief ruptured in Gen's chest. Unbelievable, soaring relief. Then: "Her body. Belle is gone, Genevieve. She's dead."