Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 103104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103104 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Just a fucking kid!
I barely know anything.
Since he won’t talk, I do, my voice gentle, ignoring the razor blades for now. “I was worried when you didn’t come to school.”
Several seconds pass.
“Let me get you a towel.” My legs feel weak as I push myself to stand and open the cabinet, grabbing a white one.
When I turn, he’s watching me, eyes empty.
Give me strength. Please, God, I don’t know if you’re real or if you’re listening, but this is my brother and he’s messed up, and he’s all I have, and…and I don’t know the right things to say and if I lose him—
I get in the shower with him and sit next to him and throw the towel over his shoulders. I’m not sure how long we stay there, my arms tight around him until he finally starts to cry. Long, earthshattering sobs. I’m terrified, but I don’t let go.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I say softly.
“I want to die,” he says in a ragged voice into my chest. His fists pound into my arms, and I take it. “I can’t do this shitty life anymore. I’m so tired of being lost and going on and pretending I’m okay when I’m not, and I know it and you know it, and I’m not strong, I’m not. I’m weak and I can’t shake things off like you do and carry on like she didn’t die and leave us and leave us and leave us and, fuck, I miss her so much…”
Helplessness eviscerates me. Tears clog my throat until they’re falling with his. I lift his face and press our foreheads together. “Dane, please, brother, please, you can’t leave me here. She’s gone, she is, but I’m here for you.”
He looks up at me, his face twisted. “Maybe you’d be better off without me. I keep bringing you down and you keep worrying and worrying…” He shudders, his voice halting and etched in pain. “You’re going to hate me.”
“Never.”
Several moments pass as he weeps, and I keep my arms around his wet body. I feel the tension in him, as if…
I push the hair out of his face. “Come on, talk to me. Tell me what brought this on.”
A long exhalation comes from him as he leans his head back against the shower wall. In a toneless voice, he says, “I remember…what happened to Ava.”
I flinch, revulsion crawling over my skin. “Are you saying it was you? Because no way—”
“Might as well have been,” he says bitterly. “It was Liam. And I knew it this whole time.”
I can’t breathe. Anger and rage coil inside me, itching to get out. Liam. Liam. Liam. I’m going to pound my fists into his face. I’m going to rip him apart, and then I’m going to do it all over again—
He grabs my hand and clenches it until it hurts. “I know you want to run out of here and kill him, but you have to hear all of this. You have to hear my part.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I tell him brokenly, my shoulders hunching.
He gulps air. “Liam, last night, he…he had a small group at his barn, some of the players, and he was hot after some girl from Hampton High. We were drinking and he pointed toward the Hampton girl and said, ‘Tonight I get a trophy from her.’”
“What does that mean?”
He closes his eyes. “It just sounded like something I’ve heard before, like it knocked something loose in my memory.” He scrubs his face. “It kept niggling at me. Then it hit me. I recall being at the bonfire and watching him slip off into the woods. He set his drink down on a stump, said, ‘Trophy time,’ and followed Ava.”
His words sink in, and my hands clench. Different scenarios fly through my head—
“It’s my fault too. I was there. I was THERE. And I’ve known for ten months.”
“You just now remembered,” I tell him.
“Maybe there’s other stuff I don’t recall.” He pauses, his hands wringing. “Last night, he wanted to do some coke, and I didn’t, and he kept asking me why and when I said I was tired, he just got this hard look on his face, like he knew I remembered something. I could tell he regretted saying the trophy thing.” He takes a breath. “So before he brought me home, he asked me if I remembered that I roofied Ava’s drink at the kegger, and I said no, I didn’t give her anything to drink, and he just laughed and gave me that aw-shucks routine and said, ‘I saw you giving her drinks but I won’t tell anyone.’” Anguish glazes his face as he looks at me. “I wouldn’t do that, would I? Not after what happened to Mom…”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I assure him, and he just stares at me.