The Eighth Deadly Sin

“Can you keep a secret?”

The ceiling fan scoops a breathful of dust from the edge of the dresser and spins it into a small twirl of dirt that shimmers against the pale light filtering through the window. I stare at the yellowing glass and count the splotches of dust and dried water that have formed small ring-like colonies all over the glass, and I press my fingernails into my palm, avoiding Tova’s desperate gaze. A few moments pass, and I almost drown out the sound of her heavy breathing before she rips me from my dazed state with her groan of a voice. 

“Camille?”

I wince. “Of course, I can keep a secret, Tov, but—”

“But what?” she interrupts me, and betrayal flutters within the flecks of gold in her deep-brown eyes. 

“But,” I pause, searching my mind for the right words. “What if I don’t want to know?”

Tova appears to chew on this thought for a moment before clenching her jaw tightly. “You’re my best friend, Camille. You’re my only friend,” she says. 

And that’s all she has to say. She senses my surrender before I can manage a response, and grabs my hands in hers. Tears well up in my eyes, and my bottom lip begins to tremble. “Tov, please,” I whimper. “Don’t put this on me. Don’t say it.”

I think back to when I first met Tova Sawndane. Old enough to tie our shoes but too young to bother, we were in elementary school and plagued by the same, incessant desire to crawl to the top of the web-like structure on the playground and make mud-pies and play tag. We were introduced during those beautiful years of utter acceptance—the days in which anyone and everyone is your friend, even if you don’t know their name. Even if they don’t know yours. 

As I clutch Tova’s trembling fingers in my own, I gaze into the grooves of the wood beneath us and release a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. As I shudder, another cloud of dust is swept up and settles on the toe of her Converse. I smile wryly at her worn sneakers. We’re in the same clubhouse we spent months of our childhood in. And she has on the same black Converse she’s been wearing since I met her. Or at least, that’s how it feels. 

“Camille,” Tova coughs shakily, and I’m reminded about why we’re here. Tomorrow, we graduate high school. The years of bliss have passed and been replaced by a nagging understanding that everything hurts. That there is no silver lining nor compromise. Life isn’t beautiful nor carefree—not unless you have the willpower or the ignorance to allow it. 

I feel her staring at me—a deep pull that pries at my skin and tugs on the strings of my heart—and I can’t fight it anymore. I look up. And, of course, I wish I hadn’t. 

Tova’s skin is a plush and fiery pink. She has this awful habit of chewing on the inside of her right cheek when she’s bothered, and I can tell she’s been doing it. My hand starts to move towards her face—to caress her cheek the same way I have when she cried to me after fighting with her parents or bombing a test—and she feels it. She lights up and starts to let go of my fingers, but I freeze until she gulps bitterly and grabs them again. But now she holds me softer and less hungrily than she did before. 

Her eyes grow filmy with tears, and when she blinks, the flutter of her eyelids entrances me easily. Not just because she’s beautiful, but because she’s in pain. And not just that: I let myself grow lost in the web of her lashes because I know her well enough to ease her heart but choose not to. Some friend I am. 

She knows she’s lost me again. “Are you kidding me, Camille? Hello? I’m right here,” the devastation in her voice settles into a crevice in my mind, and I know it will stay there forever. “Are you hearing me, Cam?” 

I look at her, and I just want to scream: “Yes, I hear you, Tov! Of course, I hear you. Can’t you see that that’s the problem? You aren’t a falling tree in an empty forest. I’m here, and you’re being heard. But I can’t help you.” But I don’t say anything except, “I’m right here. I hear you.”

“Do you?” she’s spitting her words at me now. This is the other thing she does. She approaches everything with a timid and impenetrable softness, but when it isn’t reciprocated, she’s quick to turn to stone. Aggression and defensiveness rip apart the veneer of her once gentle nature, and then you have about five minutes to show her that you aren’t her enemy before she hardens for good. “What aren’t you telling me, Cam? What’s going on in your head?”

“I just—” I stutter. One look at her face, the expression of pain and frustration and a deep, deep longing to be heard, and I break. “Tov, please.”

She drops my hands, and I flinch. Exasperation. Shock. Betrayal. Maybe a little bit of hate. What else is she feeling? Even after a lifetime of learning to understand the mysteries of Tova Sawndane, I have no idea what’s going on in her head. For once, whatever she’s thinking is completely obscured. But does it matter? I know what she wanted to tell me. I already know what her secret is. She looks at me one last time, shakes her head, and then starts to leave. 

“I know what you were going to say,” I stand up straight and call to her just before she reaches the door. 

“Do you?” she doesn’t even turn around. 

“Yeah, I do.”

The silence that fills the room solidifies into a thin stream that encases the both of us. It tightens slowly as the moments pass, pulling us closer and closer together. “Don’t you hear me, Camille?” replays over and over in my head. 

And I just want to say: “Don’t you  hear me, Tova?” And when another blanket of seconds pass without either of us moving to speak, I do. I say it. 

Because for each handful of understanding that I may have of the lanky girl in front of me, she has twice that of me. And if I’m clever enough to hear her beyond her words, she’s genius enough to say mine for me. She knows exactly why her secret will hurt me, but she’s handing it to me anyway. She knows how it will haunt me. But Tova Sawndane does not care. 

“I hear you, Camille,” she says matter-of-factly, refusing to meet my eye. 

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“We promised,” I remind her. “We said we weren’t going to talk about it.”

If I had known this is what it would take for her to face me, I would have said it sooner. Tova looks me over and crosses her arms. She knows exactly what she’s doing. I feel myself growing smaller as she surveys me—as she tries to decide what to do next. Tries to decide how much I can take. 

I must look a lot stronger than I feel. 

“I told you I don’t like promises.” 

“Tov,” I’m pleading with her at this point. 

She interrupts me, “I love you, Cam.”

The church bell echoes in my ears. It sounds the same way it always has—compassionate and welcoming if you allow it. But cruel and suffocating when you’re alone in a room full of unanswered prayers and a lifetime of sin. My mother is dunking me over and over again in the lake, and reciting a prayer with supernatural speed while everyone I know floats around us in paddle boats with glistening oars. Each time she pushes me under, a thousand of black, slimy fingers wrap themselves around my limbs. They pull my hair and force their way into my ears and towards my brain. They grab my thoughts and toss them up above water, and each time she lifts me up, the disgust on the faces of the people in the boats grows heavier as the tendrils reveal sin after sin. Greed. Wrath. Gluttony. Sloth. Envy. Pride. Lust. Homosexuality, the deadliest of the sins. The one so despised that we don’t speak of it in the church. 

Tova steps towards me, and I feel my legs turn to hot candle wax. I’m reaching for her hands as she reaches for mine, and the piece of me that has been fighting the pull of Tova for the past twelve years evaporates and is replaced by the blazing understanding that I cannot live without her. She knows exactly what I’m thinking, and she pushes her own fingers through my hair, brushing away the sticky, toxic appendages of the church. 

“I love you, Camille Autumn.” 

“Can you keep a secret?” I ask her once I find my tongue.

She nods, and the flecks of gold in her eyes that once held betrayal and pain now glimmer with a deep and irresistible warmth. 

“I love you, too.”