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It's difficult not to dream of her every night.
No matter how much Becka tries to drown out the image of her in her mind. At dusk—her dainty bedcovers pulled all the way up as if she's afraid of a make-believe monster tucked beneath her skin—all she sees is Agnes.
She's there, peering into her eyes, soaking up her worries with a soft grin, the brightly beautiful image of her coaxing a smile out of Becka easily. Agnes again, beaming with an impossible glow about her as they waltzed and twirled in her bedroom fit for a princess, their arms raising in unison, unfolding together like a bud freshly blooming into a flower.
Becka was sure she'd perfected every step. Agnes told her so; she was made for this. Their arms line together in the delicate dance, and the warmth of her is almost too much to bear—Agnes is so close that a heavy dread begins to wash over. So when Becka feels her own heart knocking stone-hard against her chest, her hand begins to slip.
She keeps slipping after that.
The most persistent of her dreams puts her back in the water, and instead of Aunt Estee, it's Agnes holding her beneath it. Practically burying her until she's suffocating under the crystalline blue, but she doesn't struggle much against her hold.
She knows how badly she must be cleansed, because when she's finally lifted from the weight of the water, all she sees is red—red infesting the pool, staining the whitework of her nightgown in a lacy intrusion of color, red stubbornly streaming down her flesh as she stands in the bitter cold of the water.
Blessed be the fruit, Agnes whispers in her ear softly, always softly.
Becka hears the knell tolling faintly from within the academy—the end of her girlhood sounding out as the morning sun creeps out from the horizon.
Some nights, Becka sees her friend bathed in that light, rendering her holy in its warmth. In one scene, she stands cradling a lamb. In another dream, she clutches a sword. Becka imagines she bleeds her out, the delicate line drawn across her thin flesh. Agnes's arm around her neck, silver dragging her skin open until she too blooms ruby red.
She prays that if she has to, she'll meet her death this way. Punishment slow and sweet, a torturous act done lovingly.
Sometimes, Saint Agnes holds an apple in one hand instead, a noose in the other. Mixed images and warped signs, muddled tricks of the mind. Becka sees the red fruit held stark amid the light, grasps at the girl's hand to take a bite, and watches the limpid nectar trickle down her wrist. She nearly angles her head down, wanting to lick, before she realizes she's not supposed to want. Before she wakes, wide-eyed and terrified, feeling a viscous wetness clinging to her underwear.
As if her body had wept without her even knowing it could.
Becka wonders what that makes her. A traitor? Surely, Agnes had known it, the way she'd looked at her earlier that night. A feeling like a heaviness to her limbs as she'd watched her friend dance with someone else.
They'd reconciled later, her fears temporarily put to rest. But in bed, Becka still wondered: Could Agnes sense it all this time? The want in her eyes?
She'd wanted to memorize the sensation of their hands intertwined, of their fingers locked tightly into a promise; the sound of her laugh, a melody far sweeter than any song she'd ever been taught.
“I'm in love,” Agnes confesses the next day. “And it's horrible.”
Becka doesn't know why she pries, why she drives the sword's edge deeper into her flesh.
“How do you know,” she begins to ask, “that you're in love with him?”
Her friend pauses, thinks it over with a hesitant half-smile, like she's doing a small deliberating dance in her head. Becka wants to call her adorable.
Agnes inches a bit closer, out of earshot of the other girls, sounding surprised when she says, “Anytime I'm near him, I feel hot.”
Agnes details the sensation: In her skin—Becka thinks of grazing her fingertips along the softness of it. Her cheeks—she achingly imagines the other lips that might kiss them. Her belly—she wants to know what it might feel like to put her mouth there, inch lower in wisplike kisses until Agnes chokes on a breath.
Becka imagines an all-consuming warmth, like a hungry mouth, working its way through her own body, and wonders if this is what Agnes means. It hurts to imagine it is.
She smiles at her anyway.
“Have you ever felt that way before?” Agnes asks, and when she looks into Becka's eyes, expectant and excited, the light in them seems endless.
“No,” she answers with an easy, feigned certainty. “But I'm happy for you.”
She believes it when she tells her it’s a blessing. She wants to find it in her heart to, at least, despite the want she couldn't even let herself dream of, which couldn't have been anything less than a curse.
Becka lets her mind return to that night: the ardent wave washing over her like a fever, the sweat sticking to her skin when she'd startled awake, the ugly realization that her body had betrayed her. Desire was utterly unbecoming of a girl, the Aunts would always say.
Unsightly. How they would've rebuked her, seeing the way her own deep and terrible want had spilled out of her.