Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
The sweet, lovely, beautiful, amazing, hilarious girl I knew turned into a zombie.
I find the spade I threw into the bushes still laced with Kellen’s blood and start digging.
I still think about how she was at the end, when we were at the bottom of our mutual addiction and pushing each other to spiral more and more. She was an absolute fucking wreck. Skinny, strung out, not caring about anything at all. We’d go to school high and come home and get high again. People would make comments in the halls, talk about how skinny she’s getting and how weird she’s been acting, but none of it mattered. She could barely make it through the day without sweating and shaking. The teachers all knew, our friends could all see it, but she was Cait Hayle. What could they do?
Nothing at all.
Nobody said a damn thing.
She’d laugh after plunging the heroin into her veins. By then we were shooting up, no more pills for us, the pills were too expensive and we couldn’t keep stealing that much cash without drawing too much unwanted attention. We switched to the cheaper stuff and never looked back. I felt like I was chasing after Cait while she was chasing after some elusive feeling she’d never catch—some love, some acceptance, some sense of inner peace that was always out of reach, but at least the screaming voice in her head that was desperate for a better world went quiet when she was too stoned to think.
And I can remember her then, all her flaws and horrors, but I can’t let myself remember how I was exactly the same. Just as strung out, just as detached.
Just as bad.
You know what I want to be one day? Cait asked one night while we sat in her room and listening to records, plunging the needle into her arm as I held the band tight around her bicep. Older. She laughed like it was a joke, but she never got what she wanted.
I wonder all the time if she did it on purpose. If she took too much just to make everything stop or if she fucked up somehow. We were inexperienced and stupid teenage girls and we barely knew what we were doing, but I thought we were being careful. I obsessively researched this stuff and Cait said she did too, but I don’t know if that’s true. We followed online tutorials, the sort of horrible shit you find when you really go looking, and the internet was full of that stuff back then. Maybe it was just a mistake, or maybe that joke wasn’t a joke, more like a cry for help.
A cry I didn’t hear.
Because I was too high.
I’m crying now as I dig a hole. Dig, dig, dig, hard enough that I get dirt under my nails, and my fingers start to bleed.
“Are you trying to bury a dead body or are you looking to murder all those flowers?”
I stand, breathing fast, and look over at Hugh. He’s lingering nearby in sweats with a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other. It’s pungent, the smell of burning dark tobacco, and I don’t know how I didn’t notice until now.
Stuck in the past. Always stuck in it.
“I know why you’re here.”
“Do you?” He smiles at me like that’s amusing. “I wasn’t sure myself.”
“Kellen told you to leave me alone but now you can’t. It’s like a compulsion, isn’t it?”
He chuckles and shrugs. “I suppose so. I like to imagine it’s more that I want to retain what I’ve taken over the years, but maybe I do just like knocking down the privileged older son one more peg.”
“I almost feel sorry for you.” I shake my head, gripping the spade tightly.
“Oh, it’s okay, I wouldn’t if I were you. I was given plenty. It’s just that Kellen was given even more, and before you start saying how he paid for it all, don’t bother. We were all treated the same, if you understand me.” Hugh’s smile sours but doesn’t fade away. “Still, I believe him when he says he’ll kill me if I hurt you.”
“Is this your way of apologizing for ransacking my cottage?”
“No, no, not at all. That was a lot of fun, actually. I did that all myself and I’ll admit, it was extremely cathartic.” He laughs and puffs on the cigar. “No, I’m here to tell you that I won’t hurt you. Not physically anyway, but I will make your life hell. I’ll dig up your precious plants. I’ll pour salt in the soil. I’ll spray weed killer on everything you love until it all shrivels and dies. I’ll turn this place into a wasteland unless you start doing the right thing. Until you do what I say.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I laugh, shaking my head, because it’s finally come to this. The garden is the only thing I have left in the entire world, no friends, no family, nobody. My mom died when I was twelve and my dad moved to Florida the year after I got clean to be with his new girlfriend and I’m still stuck here, all alone, and now Hugh wants to take away everything that’s left.