Chapter Twenty-One Thiago
Chapter Twenty-One
Thiago
She turned pale, and her hand started to tremble ever so slightly.
“Why are you here? Did he send you? I did everything he asked.”
I paid close attention to those words. To the way she talked to me, and how she immediately got so defensive.
But that’s not all, it’s how scared she was.
The fear behind her eyes told me everything I needed to know.
She couldn’t hide it. Something bad had happened.
And I wasn’t going to like what I heard.
“Amelia, it’s OK…relax.” I tried to sound calm. “I’m not here to hurt you. I promise. I’m here to find out about Jules because something tells me he’s dangerous, and I’m worried he might be about to hurt someone else.”
Amelia looked around and stood up.
“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person,” she said. I put my hand on her wrist to stop her and tried to stay calm. I didn’t want to scare her.
“Please don’t go,” I asked, “I’m scared that a friend is in danger because of him, and I need to know what’s going on before I make the wrong decision.”
She looked at me doubtfully.
“Please,” I repeated. “All I need to know is what he did and why you asked for a restraining order against him.”
Surprised now, Amelia sat back down. Not because she wanted to talk to me, it seemed, but because she was worried her legs wouldn’t hold her up much longer.
“How do you know about that?” she asked.
“Does it matter? Look: Jules is a new student at the school where I work as a coach. I had a feeling I’d seen him before and—don’t let this weird you out—I had.
We met in jail one day when I was a little younger, we both got arrested, and we were assigned the same holding cell.
Don’t be scared. I got in a fight, nothing serious.
It was a dumb mistake. But I remember meeting him there and that he used to go by a different name.
At the school where I work, everyone calls him Julian Murphy. ”
“Jules is crazy,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“What did he do to you, Amelia?”
She looked out the window, picked up her cup, and took a sip.
“He was a sweetheart at first, OK?” She spoke without looking at me.
“I’m a good student, but I’ve always struggled with math.
It’s been that way since I was a kid, and someone told me Jules was tutoring people for free.
So I got in touch with him and started lessons.
At first, he gave them in the library, but eventually he was like, Oh, you should come to my house or let me come to yours, and that made sense because it was more relaxed and we could meet whenever we wanted.
We got along, and he’s good-looking too.
I was the head cheerleader then, and he was kind of a nerd, so…
you get it, I wasn’t used to being seen with people like him.
When we first started going out, we kept it a secret.
I know that was wrong, I know now, but it’s high school.
I didn’t want people to know I was with some math geek.
Especially because Liam… Liam’s the captain of the rugby team and he ended up being homecoming king that year; he was into me, and I think people sort of hoped we’d end up being a thing. I know Liam did.”
All these details seemed irrelevant, except for the fact that I might as well have been listening to Kam describing herself. Amelia seemed a little more superficial, but they had more similarities than differences.
“Go on,” I encouraged her.
“We hadn’t been together for long before he turned super demanding.
He kept asking for more and more. I could have been nicer to him, I admit that, but it’s just that our lives were so different.
He used to say all the people at school were assholes, that I was better than them, that I shouldn’t even bother hanging out with them.
He never wanted to go anywhere; he just wanted to hang out in his room.
And soon he… I don’t know how to explain it, but he managed to drive me away from all my friends.
He’d be there waiting for me outside the door of all my classes; he’d pick me up and take me home from school.
People found out about us, of course, and some people thought it was weird. ”
Who cared what other people thought? I wanted to ask her that, but I held back. I was starting to get what kind of girl Amelia Warner was. Although they had some similarities, this girl couldn’t compare to Kam. Then, Amelia started getting nervous, and tears streamed from her eyes.
“I wanted to break up with him. Once we slept together, everything got worse. He turned obsessive. He wouldn’t leave me alone for a second, and he started threatening to hurt my friends.
He said they deserved whatever they got because if I was so superficial and empty, it was because of them.
And he always knew everything! I don’t know how, but he kept track of who I talked to, who I saw…
” She glanced at me a moment and her cheeks flushed an even darker crimson.
“Then, the last time we slept together…he took it too far. He liked to experiment, and at first, I was OK with trying new things. He had promised if I didn’t like something, I could just say our safe word and he’d stop.
But he didn’t… He tied me up, hands and feet, and he brought out a video camera… ”
I tensed up when I heard that. “He recorded you?”
Amelia nodded.
“He recorded all of it.” She wiped a tear from her face with the back of her hand.
“He told me he was going to post it online, and that’s when I called the cops.
People figured out he was a psycho. You can’t imagine the stuff he was into.
He knew everything about everyone, and I found out it wasn’t just me he was blackmailing.
It was my friends too, even people who just kind of knew me. ”
“So why didn’t you end up pressing charges?”
“Because he threatened to put the video online,” she said simply.
“The police couldn’t do anything about something they weren’t even sure existed.
They arrested him because I told them what he’d done to me, but I withdrew the charges when I found out that, if he wanted, that video would be all over the internet, haunting me for the rest of my life. ”
That piece of shit.
It was him.
My instincts had been right the whole time.
“By then he had a bad rep at school, and I guess he decided to leave before they kicked him out. My friends did beat the shit out of him, though.” Her look was defiant as she told me this, almost as if she were daring me to challenge her.
“He was an outcast then, and it seems like he’s still an outcast now. ”
I needed to tell Kam and my brother. I needed to let the school know. Julian was the one who had pushed everyone away from Kam. That was his MO. He was the one who had uploaded the video. How had he gotten it, though? Maybe he and Danny were in cahoots? Who knows.
“Thanks, Amelia. What you’ve just told me…” I was too furious to finish the sentence. I was far from home, and all I wanted was to disappear right then, to be near Kam so I could protect her and beat that bastard to a pulp if he even tried to get close to her.
“He takes advantage of your misfortunes. That’s how he gets to you. He’s a typical psychopath,” she concluded.
“Do you think,” I asked, “that he could be violent, apart from blackmail and manipulation?”
Amelia looked me square in the eye. “I think Jules is capable of anything if he thinks it will get him what he wants. He’s obsessed with popularity and with this idea that the way girls are raised makes them stupid and superficial.
He used to say that a lot, that I was better than those stupid bitches at school and I needed to act like it… ”
I stood. I needed to go. Now. Amelia grabbed my hand and stopped me.
“If you tell Jules what I told you, he’ll come for me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He will. He swore it. And he still has the video. Please, help your friend, but leave me out of this. I’m begging you.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, hoping to calm her down. “I promise I won’t bother you again.”
Amelia didn’t seem convinced, but I didn’t stay long enough to tell her what I thought: that she could put him out of her mind because I wouldn’t stop until he was behind bars.
I went straight back to the hotel, grabbed my things, and caught a cab. Once I was at the airport, I texted my brother:
Make sure Kam stays away from Julian. He’s dangerous. I’ll tell you more later. For now, just keep him away from her.
The plane took off on time, but it seemed like the longest hour and a half of my life. When we landed, I looked at my phone to see if Taylor had answered and, sure enough, there were two messages from my brother.
What are you talking about?
Where are you?
Once I got back to my bike in the parking lot, I sent him another message:
I’m on my way home. Don’t go to bed.
It took me a while to get there—the airport was a ways from town—and by the time I made it, all the lights were off at my place and at Kam’s.
I wasn’t surprised since it was pretty late, but when I walked upstairs and saw the light under my brother’s door, I knew he’d done as I’d asked.
I knocked before opening. When he told me to come in, I saw he wasn’t alone.
Kam was there, wearing one of my brother’s shirts.
My brother was sitting in his swivel chair, and he spun around to look at me.
I wanted to hug Kam and tell her everything would be OK, but I stopped myself as my brother asked, “What’s up, Thiago? What’s the deal with Julian?”
I shut the door behind me. “First off, his name isn’t Julian, it’s Jules.
” I told them everything I’d found out, the entire story from the beginning, starting with when I saw him in the cell and how it reminded me of meeting him before, and finishing with my quick trip to New York to hear Amelia Warner’s story.
They listened closely, struggling to believe it.
Kam was white as a sheet when I was done.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Taylor said, getting to his feet. I held him back.
“We need to think about how to deal with the situation now. We still don’t have any proof.”
“Taylor, let me see the video,” Kam said, interrupting us.
“What?”
“You’ve got it, right? You told me that someone sent it to you in a text, right? Not via Instagram,” she said.
“OK, but why?”
“Taylor, just show it to me.”
Tay scrolled around in his phone, then passed it to Kam, who took it in her trembling hands. I didn’t understand what was happening. What she was looking for, what she thought she’d find in it.
“Jesus,” Kam said, covering her mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“It wasn’t Danny,” she said. “Danny’s not the one who recorded me. It was Julian,” she said, dropping the phone suddenly, as if it were burning her hands.
“What?” my brother said.
“It was the day of the game against Falls Church. Oh my God…” She started crying. “He drugged me. He drugged me that night. That’s why I couldn’t remember falling asleep. That was why I didn’t get up on time and was late to practice!”
My face flushed with rage.
“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to control the anger and the sense of powerlessness coming over me.
“Look at the video,” she said, her voice cracking. “See the wall? It’s the same color as the walls at the motel. I didn’t realize it until you told me all this stuff. How didn’t I realize…? I erased the video immediately. I was so ashamed…”
“Why would Julian do something like this?” my brother asked.
“Because he’s in love with her,” I said, imagining myself beating him to a pulp.
“Julian’s gay,” Taylor objected, looking confused.
“He’s not in love with me,” Kami said. “We’re supposed to be friends.” She stood up, as if moving around could somehow help prove that this nightmare wasn’t actually real.
“Julian’s no gayer than you or me, Taylor,” I said, walking over to my brother’s desk and opening his laptop. I sat back on the bed and searched for the page Perez had sent me. “Look what Perez found,” I said, showing it to them.
Kam examined it and shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she said, sitting back down on the bed beside me. “Look! There’s a comment from a couple days ago that says ‘They’ll all burn in hell’ and it’s from @omv_ovamat; that’s the same username that was leaving comments on my Instagram.”
“What the hell does @omv_ovamat mean?” I asked, disgusted.
“No idea,” Kam replied. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the way he lied to me, deceived me…”
“At least we finally know who was behind it all,” Taylor said, but it didn’t seem to help much.
“Listen,” she said, standing, “I need to be alone, I need… I need to go.” I could see the panic, the sorrow flooding her brown eyes.
I stood too. But why? What was I going to do?
Hug her? Tell her everything was OK? I couldn’t.
I couldn’t because she wasn’t my girlfriend, she was my brother’s girlfriend.
“I’ll walk you home,” Taylor said, standing.
I looked at the computer again and then closed it.
In the doorway, Kam turned back. “Thanks, Thiago. For everything. For going to New York, for looking into this even though it wasn’t your problem. Honestly, thank you.”
I nodded. I did it because I love you, I wanted to tell her, but one look at my brother was all I needed to tell me how angry he was that I had figured things out about Julian instead of him. They walked out, and I went to my room.
What am I going to do about you, Jules? I asked myself. Take care of you for good and ruin my life in the process?
I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
Worst of all, there would be many sleepless nights to follow. There are times when I go back to that moment and I tell myself I should have followed my instincts, because getting him out of the way would have been the best choice.
Because if I had, it would have saved a lot of lives.