Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
“You’re lucky to be alive, young man. If you hadn’t been found out there, there’s no telling what might have happened.”
I’ll never forget the agony as I stumbled away from the burning house, fumbling my way through the woods. I had to get away. That was all that mattered—getting away. There was no feeling. I didn’t even register my injuries, no more than I noticed the branches whipping against me or the uneven ground that made me stumble and fall to my hands and knees more than once. I just kept going, some instinct telling me to put as much distance between myself and that house as possible.
Looking back now, I know I was in shock. I could barely string two thoughts together after apparently getting out of the house before the explosion, though not soon enough to avoid the fireball that burst from the windows and blew out the back door. I got lucky, even if I didn’t feel lucky in the days that followed.
Dark now. So dark. Lights up ahead, traffic sounds. I can barely breathe. Every breath feels like fire in my lungs. And my face, there’s something wrong, I know there is. Every breeze that moves across my skin is like a thousand knives slicing into my flesh. I don’t want to see it—I don’t even want to touch it, afraid of what I’ll find. All I can do is keep moving, dragging myself forward, forcing one footstep after another.
It was only when I reached the road that I let myself rest. I had no choice. I collapsed in the dirt along the shoulder, my last conscious thought hoping someone would find me before I allowed exhaustion to win out.
Someone did find me, someone I was never conscious enough to speak to. I woke up in the hospital without any idea how much time had passed until one of the nurses told me the date. It had been two days since the fire.
And according to the news, I was dead.
By the time I reach the sketchy part of town that is now my home, the sun is sinking. Broken glass crunches under the soles of my boots, and a stray cat darts out from between a pair of trash cans as I approach. What was a warm breeze earlier has turned colder, sending ripples of goosebumps over my skin and making me hunch my shoulders higher, my chin close to my chest. Walking around with my hood pulled up gives me tunnel vision. I can’t see what’s happening on either side of me, which makes it all the more important to listen carefully to my surroundings.
This is my life now. Hiding from the world, protecting myself, wondering how much longer it has to be this way.
The old brick building where my apartment sits is about as grim and depressing as I can imagine. It always stinks of piss, and the walls are paper-thin, meaning I can hear every damn thing happening around me at all hours. But everyone minds their own business. That and a couple of working locks are all I need right now.
A pair of guys who I’m pretty sure live on the front steps day and night jerk their chins in my direction as I walk past. I give them my usual grunt in response before walking through the plexiglass door into the narrow space where rows of mailboxes sit. There’s no name on mine—not that I get any mail anyway.
“He came to us with no identification and doesn’t give any answers when we ask about his identity. And nobody has called in looking for a missing person.”
They think I’m asleep, in a drug-induced haze, which is the only way I can be sure they’ll speak honestly while I can hear.
I’m supposed to be dead. Bradley must’ve been killed, and they figured his body was mine. They haven’t said anything about him on the news, so that’s the only thing that makes sense.
Dad is dead. Amanda, too. I didn’t mean to kill her. She wasn’t supposed to die. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for Leni. One more way I destroyed her.
I take the stairs slowly, as usual, listening for anyone hiding out further up in the stairwell. Sometimes, a guy who lives here will wait around, hoping to score a little something out of the pockets of someone coming in or leaving. Considering I helped kill my father and stepmother, I can’t really give them any shit over it. Everyone does what they have to do to get by.
They probably see me and figure I came from a shitty background, addict parents or something like that. It’s easy to make assumptions about a person’s past based on the way they look and act today.
I wonder what any of them would think if they knew how I really grew up. The comfort and privilege. I had every opportunity to be better than this, at least on the surface. The rot was underneath, out of sight.