The Never Prayer

Book Description

A Broken Girl

Shattered by the death of her parents, Lena knows she is not handling her sorrow well – running drugs, dating an addict, keeping to herself. Still, she doesn’t want anyone’s help, though every day she lives in fear that her little brother will be taken away.

Two Lost Souls

Lurking on the edges of the afterlife, Chael and Johnny Beels have spent centuries manipulating events, one pushing for good, the other sowing chaos. Now these two desperate souls have become human to play a dangerous game of hope and despair.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

When Lena falls in love with both Chael and Johnny, she falls hard. But who is the demon and who is the angel? And can she make the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone she loves? 

Aaron Michael Ritchey

Digital Edition - 2015

THE NEVER PRAYER

Aaron Michael Ritchey

ISBN: 978-0-9861845-3-6

Copyright Aaron Michael Ritchey 2012. All rights reserved

Cover Art: Natasha Brown

Editor: Lin Browne

Layout/Typesetting: RuneWright LLC

Author Photograph: Steve Jankowski

Published by Black Arrow Publishing

blackarrowpublishing@outlook.com

First Edition: February 2012

Second Edition: 2015

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Discussion Questions may be used and reproduced in a classroom setting.

Contents

Book Description

Title Page

Dedication

Dramatis Personae

Cold Monday

i the red purse

ii the devil whispering despair

iii heretics, paladins, untouchables

iv santiago’s cold caring

v the dog men

vi on the side of the road

vii gramma scar

Desperation Tuesday

i lunch with the heretics

ii the text message

iii the new outcast

iv the blond boy in the cold room

v the cherubim day school

vi lancing at the door

vii chael’s hell

Broken Wednesday

i blood and questions

ii damaged

iii threatened

iv chael and lena

v chael and dodson

vi chael and deirdre

Thursday’s Kiss

i the talk with pockets

ii santiago overcome and undone

iii return to hell

iv the hard kiss of desire

v good deeds done

vi tabitha and the red purse

vii gramma scar’s husbands

viii in the wanting car

ix at the church

x in the shack

xi chael in the clouds

xii chael overnight

Good Friday

i heretics in the morning

ii the drugs

iii sitting alone

iv lunch with the untouchables

v santiago after school

vi the lake, the clouds, the kiss

vii pushing

viii three times born

ix untouchables at la rosa calda

x together, alone

xi gathering santiago

xii saving deirdre

xiii taken away

Apocalypse Saturday

i taken back

ii deirdre and the untouchables

iii stealing the night

iv chocolate ice cream

v apocalypse now

vi crucified

vii stones and souls

viii sissy

ix snowfall

x untouchables on the roof

Holy Sunday

i the drive to vail

ii family

December’s Diaspora

i the avalon high school caravan

Reader Discussion Questions

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Aaron Michael Ritchey

Dedication

For the Lauras and Andreas that made this book possible. And for all of those living on just this side of hopeless. Angels and demons alike.

Dramatis Personae

family

Lena Marquez

Jozey\Joziah

Aunt Mercedes

friends

Deirdre Dodson Santiago Scarpetti

Gramma Scar

paladins

Rob Cutler

Avery Tyson

Parker Lee

heretics

Bruise\Bruce

Bramage\Dane

Emma Leon

untouchables

Pockets\Paulie

Tubitha\Tabitha

Remy Bach

townspeople

Sheriff Art Lancing

Principal Percy

Mrs. Weyland

New boys

Rob Cutler

new boys

Chael

Johnny

Beels

Cold Monday

i

the red purse

I’m not going to do it again, Lena Marquez whispered to the red purse across the hall from her nestle of blankets. Never again.

All of her other purses, scarves, and belts were just shadows hanging from hooks on both sides of the bathroom door, but in the glow of the cracked Thomas the Train nightlight, the red purse glittered. Each sequin like a teardrop of blood.

The heater chugged on sending lukewarm air into the basement apartment, as cold as an icebox. In October, at ten thousand feet, Avalon, Colorado had no pity for the weak or poor. It killed both.

Through anorexic walls, Lena could hear her aunt’s barking cough in the next room. But it wasn’t the coughing that had Lena awake at 4:46 on a Monday morning. It was her three-year-old brother, Joziah, who would wake up any minute.

He was like an alarm clock, same time, every morning. So regular Lena was awake before he asked the questions she couldn’t answer.

Already the work of the day felt like bricks on her chest. Her junior year homework continued to pile up among the dirty laundry around their mattress on the floor.

But first, Jozey, always Jozey, no matter what.

Mama! he called out, still caught in the clutches of sleep.

Lena smoothed his hair with dark purple fingernails, perfectly polished. It’s okay, Jozey. Lena’s here. Lena’ll always be here.

Only half awake, he struggled in his footed blue pajamas and asked the same question he asked every morning. Where’s my mama?

She’s in heaven, Jozey. Her voice cracked.

Where’s Daddy? He blinked as if he had forgotten everything.

Lena let go of her tears. She could only cry them with Jozey in the darkness of the morning, because once she had her mask of make-up on, she sealed up all emotion with base, blush, and mascara. Everyone was watching.

Jozey sobbed against her, soaking her father’s t-shirt she wore as pajamas. I want them, Weni, I want them. Weni, because he couldn’t say Leni, what her parents had called her.

I want them, too, she said through her tears, and she cried with her brother until he fell back asleep. She stayed with him, cradling his warm body, brushing the tears off his face.

The ritual of her morning continued. First, her orphaned brother, followed by a shower, then her equally orphaned aunt. Aunt Mercedes shuffled out of her room wearing the bathrobe she always wore at home, holding a cigarette that was always lit. She stopped in the narrow hallway to watch Lena apply her make-up.

Her aunt’s voice came out in a slow scratch. We need a hundred dollars. More if it don’t snow and I don’t get my real job at Copper Mountain.

An ever-so-slight tremor shook Lena’s fingers as she fought the urge to throw her eyebrow pencil at her aunt. She forced herself to concentrate on her face in the mirror, but Aunt Mercedes was behind her, taking up most of the doorway, all sad eyes and dog face and bad square haircut. Next to her aunt, the red purse dangled on a hook tempting Lena to use it.

End of the month, sure. She brushed on the eye-shadow with irritated strokes. End of the month means we need a hundred extra dollars. I bet I could bring home a thousand and you’d still say the same thing. She changed her voice to mimic her aunt. ‘End of the month, Lena, and we need a hundred dollars.’

Aunt Mercedes took a long pull from her smoke. If it don’t snow, we won’t make our rent. Then it’ll only be a matter of time until the social workers come. Without me around, who you gonna hate?

Lena froze. One of her eyes was made-up and gorgeous, the other was gaunt and haunted. Her dark hair, dyed platinum at the tips, stuck to her skin like snakes. In the mirror, she leveled a shotgun gaze at her aunt. There’s plenty of hate to go around, Auntie. You. God. The drunk psycho who killed my parents. Oops, he just killed my dad. We won’t talk about who killed my mom.

Lena felt the words leave her mouth like bullets. She had gone too far this time.

Aunt Mercedes didn’t move, didn’t shout, didn’t do anything for a moment.

Then the big woman reached her arm forward, cigarette first, and Lena thought her aunt was going to burn her. Lena didn’t care. She deserved it with what she said.

Instead, her aunt ashed her cigarette into the sink and then withdrew. I love you and Jozey. You’re all I have left. Hate me all you want if it makes you feel better, but we need a hundred dollars.

Lena knew the bills and knew what she would have to do to pay them. Her aunt never asked where the money came from, which made her aunt really smart, or really dumb, or both.

An hour later, Aunt Mercedes was back in her room, and Lena emerged from the bathroom in her armor of beauty. Complete and flawless. She found the cleanest clothes she had, layers of black, red, purple skirts, black leggings, tight sweater, and her high-heel bitch boots, laced up to her knees.

Between six o’clock and seven-thirty, her world was Jozey. She laughed with him, threw cereal so he could catch it like a puppy, read him books, watched PBS Kids on the T.V. in the crumbling kitchen. He clung to her tightly the whole time, as if at any moment she would vanish and leave him alone.

Then it was out the door into the cold.

Lena’s mind nagged at her as she car-seated her brother into the cab of her father’s ancient Ford truck. Red purse, red purse, had to get the red purse and do what needed to be done.

If they lost the apartment, they would lose everything. The social workers would take Jozey and throw him into foster care, and her aunt would be locked away in an asylum because everyone knew she wasn’t right. And Lena would be alone.

Feeling as numb as the frigid mountain peaks around her, Lena hurried back into her aunt’s rat-hole basement apartment.

The red purse wasn’t on the door to the bathroom where it should be. Where it had been for weeks. Aunt Mercedes hadn’t left her room, and Jozey was too short to reach it. No, something else was going on.

Not again, Lena whispered.

ii

the devil whispering despair

Shattered-lung coughing came from behind Aunt Mercedes’ door. Down the long hallway, Lena could see Jozey in the truck outside, smiling at her and waving. He had no idea they were late. Or that someone or something was playing tricks on her.

Lena waved back, then she dove into her room, throwing clothes. The red purse had been there on the door, she was sure of it. And now the purse was gone.

It had happened before. Whenever she got the courage to use it, the red purse would disappear right when she needed it. Most people would call that Murphy’s Law, but Lena’s mother had had another name for when things went wrong.

It was the devil whispering despair.

This felt like the devil shouting. She could work without the purse, but so far it had kept her safe and out of jail. With what she was doing, she needed all the luck she could get.

Lena finally found the purse on the last of her parent’s boxes, stacked in the closet. She hadn’t put it there, but there it was. A shadow seemed to pass through the room, and Lena felt the heat from the furnace keenly. Sweat trickled down her sides.

Her parents were long buried, but they whispered to her from the boxes, voices full of love. Get rid of the purse. Find another way.

Easy for you to say. Lena closed her eyes. You don’t need a hundred dollars. Not much to buy when you’re dead except for a coffin.

She put the red purse next to her in the cab, then started the rusted truck while Jozey sang sweet cartoon songs. His words swirled into mists from the chill. Trying to sort through her exhausted mind felt like digging a hole in loose sand. Up too late again, doing nothing, hoping Jozey would sleep longer.

The truck idled as she put her hand up to the heater, waiting for the hot air to come. Her dad had always said Ford heaters were the best.

Mountain Avenue was quiet. The Torres family in the little gray house above them had the lights on, but they weren’t going to work. No work to be had with the snow locked up in the cold sky. Every week it didn’t snow, the ski areas lost money. Which meant everyone lost.

Engine warm enough, Lena eased the truck onto the street.

Avalon was crammed into a jagged valley, surrounded by the Mosquito Range Mountains too steep and wild to ski. Mount Calibum and Ablach Peak rose like craggy hands up to the dark lavender sky, the sparse snow like vanishing white veins in gray skin.

Splitting the two peaks was Mountain Avenue, the main drag of Avalon. Most people just knew it as Highway 77 because there wasn’t much for anyone to stop for. Too many windows showed cardboard and for-sale signs. Too many houses with broken windows, tangled lawns, and siding so frazzled you could use it for kindling.

In better days, back when the Climax Mine was open, the little houses on the banks of Camlann Lake had been filled with workers and their families. The little neighborhood was still known as the miner houses. Across the lake was the new housing development, Lakeview, where Lena had lived for a short time in what felt like a palace, every room filled with more windows than wood.

Of course that was before the accident. Before medical bills had taken everything.

Now the house sat empty on the slope of Ablach Peak, like a dog starved to death. Now some bank, somewhere, owned the property her parents had worked so hard to buy.

But the dark citadel of Avalon High School stood strong while everything around it crumbled. More than a century ago, they had hewn the stones out of the Rocky Mountains to make an ornate town hall. When the county seat moved to Leadville, the building became a school, housing everyone, K-12, from all over Lake County.

At a stoplight, Art Lancing’s police SUV pulled up next to her. When he looked over and waved, fear swept through her like a blizzard wind.

In her old life, the sheriff had been a friend. Now, he was the enemy. She put up a trembling hand and breathed out a sigh of relief as he turned down the next street.

Weni! Weni!

Lena opened her mouth to snap at her brother, but she caught herself. It wasn’t Jozey’s fault they were poor. What, Jozey, sweetie?

In his cold, red fingers he held up a single, fluffy, black feather. God birdies, Weni. The God birdies love us, Weni, right? His face was still a little milk-drippy from breakfast. His wide, dark eyes with the baby-long eyelashes pleaded with her to agree. God loves us, right Weni?

Right, Jozey. Just like Mama and Daddy in heaven. She said the words easily, as if she believed them, as if no one could ever doubt them.

She pulled the red purse close. She had her talisman. Now she just needed a cell phone so she could sell her soul one more time. Better to lose her soul than lose Jozey.

iii

heretics, paladins, untouchables

With Jozey safely at his daycare and the drive to school done, Lena closed the cold out behind her and charged up the tiers to the top of the lunchroom. She needed a phone and she needed one fast, before the desperation dissolved into despair.

Their cafeteria was long and narrow with sectioned-off platforms rising from where the little kids sat by the door, all the way up to where the junior and senior Paladins ate looking down on their kingdom. The walls were the same smooth, gray stone of the school, covered with pictures of congressmen and town leaders from long ago, all trapped under thick glass, scratched and showing the graffiti of Heretics long past. Like all the rest of the school, the floors were polished hardwood.

Deirdre Dodson and several girls had spent a weekend decorating for Halloween, now just six days away. Black and orange crepe paper streamers hung about the halls, high enough so no one could rip them down. Hobby store spiders clung to the fakery of spray can spider webs. Plastic bats flapped lifeless on fishing wire, and round-mouthed ghosts served as a warning to the living that death was waiting for them, sometimes not very patiently.

Lena called Deirdre the best friend. Not her best friend. The best friend. As if her life required one, whether it was true or not.

Deirdre was tall, tight-jeans thin, and wore a blood silk blouse drooling down her shoulders. The other Paladin girls sat pretty and perfect around her, but Deirdre was too blonde not to rule them all.

Paladins because the school’s basketball team was the Avalon Paladins.

Deirdre’s face lit up when she saw Lena. Why, Magdalena, we were just talking about you and your special gifts.

Lena raised a plucked eyebrow. With Deirdre, every conversation was a test of loyalty. Too many wrong answers meant exile. My special gifts? Like how I can single-handedly have the most screwed-up life possible? Okay, I accept. Where’s my reward?

No, my girl, this is Avalon. You have too much competition for the worst life. So no award for you. Deirdre poked out the last five words with a sharp, red fingernail. We were talking about the caste system at Avalon, and your name came up.

I am intrigued, D, but first, I need to borrow your cell phone.

Deirdre reached into her fur-collared coat and out came the bejeweled phone. Not even a little curious?

Give me a minute.

Lena punched in the number and Santiago answered with a rasp and a cough. Yeah. In the background, opera murmured and clashed.

The memories of Santiago’s bed and kisses left her feeling nothing. Nothing was nice compared to what she usually felt: muddy sorrow oozing out of her heart. You’re going to be late for school, Lena said to the boyfriend. The best friend and the boyfriend, both requirements.

Late for school? Whatever will I do? Santiago feigned shock.

I have my red purse, she said.

"Bellisimo. I’ll have an address. Good timing, Lena, very good timing."

For you. Lena hung up on him, then deleted the number from the log before giving the phone back to Deirdre.

So, what’s my special gift? Lena asked.

Deirdre took her phone and smiled. You are the only person at our little school able to straddle the castes.

Sounds obscene.

Deirdre laughed and the others followed her lead. I don’t want the details of your love life. Straddle, as in you have one foot in the world of the Paladins and one in the cemetery the Heretics call their lives. No small feat to be both a Paladin and a Heretic.

No award though, Lena said.

No award. But maybe the best of both worlds? You get the bad boy Santiago, you get to experiment with fashion… She emphasized the word experiment with a look of distaste. And yet, you still get to hang out with us. You lucky, lucky girl.

Lena was taking fashion cues from