twenty-four #2
“I don’t care about him, either,” I mutter, seething as I slam the freezer and pace the kitchen, shaking with cold now.
I thumb open my phone, and I send more, even though I get the away message for him.
DukeOfBeavertown: did u c what happened 2 Dixie
DukeOfBeavertown: I did it 4 u
DukeOfBeavertown: I did what lo couldnt
DukeOfBeavertown: now am I good enough?
I curse myself for that, but I can’t unsend messages on the app. He can turn me in if he wants, laugh at me while I’m in prison.
Or he can come back for me.
He did it the last time I saw him. He followed me when I tried to leave.
You’re smarter than that, Dad whispers in one ear.
He doesn’t want you, Dixie whispers in the other. Not after what you did to me.
No one wants you, Dad whispers. You’re weak.
You’re a failure, Dixie adds . You didn’t even mean to kill me. Loser.
I clap my hands over my ears and scream.
They’re right though. I can’t block out that knowledge, even when the voices recede. Colt doesn’t want me, and I shouldn’t want him. He’s not some hero who’s going to come flying back to rescue me from myself. He’s a villain like the rest of us.
I hate him.
I asked for help, and he laughed in my face.
He laughed when I told him what Mabel was doing. He probably thinks Baron will protect me. But he doesn’t know Mabel, how deep she got into us, infecting us with her toxic Darling blood that poisons everything like Black Widow venom. Everyone thinks Baron is immune, but he’s not.
I’m the only one who can stop her.
I stare at my phone, and then I make some calls.
You can stop her.
I don’t know who’s whispering to me now, if it’s me or Baron, the demon or Dad. He always wanted the Darlings gone from this town. My family forgot that. Crystal married one. Even Royal’s cozied up with them now. And Baron’s too far gone.
But I can do something. I can make Dad proud at last, something I never did in life.
I can make sure Mabel leaves and never comes back. I can make sure there’s nothing for her to come back to after she signs those papers.
I can make Baron leave too. I couldn’t save anyone from Baron, but I can save him from her.
The kid gets there with his truck filled with five-gallon containers a while later. He asks what they’re for, and I tell him to shut his mouth if he knows what’s good for him.
“If you’re smart, you were never here,” I tell him.
He looks at me funny, probably because I’m still fucking naked, but he helps me haul them onto the porch. I hand him all the cash in my wallet.
He looks at it, then back at me. “That’s not even enough for the gas!”
I grab my bag and tear it open, pawing through the clothes.
I shove a bag of Alice into his hands—hundreds of pearls, maybe more.
His eyes widen, and he takes off before I can change my mind.
But I don’t need it anymore. I’m fucking done with all of it—murder, and Mabel, and Alice. I’m done with everything.
I uncap the first jug and inhale. The fumes feed the demon, wake him.
He’s happy, thirsty, excited. I stand and slosh it over the floor, my open bag, Mabel’s bag by the stairs, Baron’s bag with his laptop where he looked for Blue and never found her.
He probably never really tried. I hope he didn’t.
No matter what he says, Baron doesn’t make mistakes.
If he let her live, it’s because he couldn’t bear to kill her.
He won’t be able to kill me either. And I can’t kill him.
But one of us has to go, to make her happy.
I back through the room, then the living room.
I stop and drink a beer. The fumes are making me sick.
I take the next one, open it, and go to the top of the stairs.
I watch it flow down like a waterfall. My eyes are watering, but I don’t know if it’s the fumes or if I got gasoline in them.
I take out my contacts and put on my glasses and keep working.
When I’m done, I lie down on the bed. My stomach is churning, and my limbs are buzzing but limp, as if I drained my own lifeblood. In a way, I did.
For them, for all of them, I bled myself dry. It was never enough. But maybe this is.
When people talk about love, they make it sound like this great thing. They say you never forget your first love. That love makes life worth living. That it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
They’re right about one thing. I will never forget my first love as long as I live. I won’t forget my second love, either—the brother of my beloved, my monster.
I’ll never forget the way they became fuel for my nightmares. They dragged me to the depths of hell and made me confront the twin faces of evil. Their faces.
Loving them didn’t give me a reason to live.
It gave me a reason to die.
I hate them both. Not because they can’t give me what I want, but because they won’t.
They refuse. They will always be there, reminding me of my worst days, my worst self.
They will never forgive, never let me forget.
I can’t undo what I’ve done. All I can do to make it better for any of them, is to be gone.
I have to stop fucking up, to stop hurting people.
And there’s only one way to guarantee I’ll never do that again.
I take out a pack of matches from the drawer beside the bed.
I want a cigarette, but I left them downstairs, and it’s too much work to go down.
I think about how bright I’ll burn out. How the last thing I see will be fire, how it will consume me from the outside like the demon has been consuming me from the inside.
Do it, he whispers. It’s the last thing you have to do.
I believe in you , Colt whispers.
What would you give up for me? Mabel whispers.
“Everything,” I whisper, and I open the matchbook.
For a flash, I see it empty.
There’s nothing there. No options.
But when I blink, they’re back. Half a book still. Plenty of chances, if the first one fails.
“For you, and for Baron,” I say. “You always belonged with him.”
Colt smirks down at me, all smoke and shadow, and flicks his Bic.
Nothing happens. “Got a light?”
I tear off a match. “And you belong with Lo.”
And you belong with me, my demon whispers.
It’s the only place I ever belonged. Maybe that’s why I made him up, like Mabel thought she made up Dahlia.
Because I didn’t fit with my family, and he kept me company.
He helped me fit with them, helped me belong, like I helped Baron belong to the world.
But it was always just the two of us. Me and my demon. But he’s not real, so it’s just me.
Colt was right. There is no demon. It was always just me.
I hate him for that. For knowing me better than I knew myself. For calling me ‘man’ like we’re buddies, like that’s all we are. For not letting me hate him.
I press the head of the match to the strip. I can smell it, the phantom sulfuric scent through the gasoline. It makes me delirious.
He won’t do it, Dad whispers. He’s not man enough.
I can see them all crowded around the bed now, phantoms in the vapors of gasoline.
They’ve gathered to watch me go.
Dawson. Dad. The man we killed.
Jane. Dixie. The demon who looks like me.
Is it Baron? Is he my demon?
He doesn’t belong to the world. He belongs to me. He is me.
His hand closes around mine, gentle but firm. It crushes my fingers painfully tight.
“Don’t. Move.”
I stare up at him through my glasses, smudged and splattered with gasoline. He’s a mirage, a figment of my imagination like the demon, a drug-fueled hallucination. He’s my reflection in the mirror, myself but reversed, the man I want to be. My savior.
“Baron?”
“What. The fuck. Are you doing?” he asks.
“It’s really you?” I pull my hand away, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth. I touch his face. I must be dreaming. I must have already done it, and this is what comes after.
“Duke. What are you doing?” he asks, and this time, his voice breaks.
“Are you here to kill me?” I ask, thumbing the slight indent in his square chin, the same one I have. “I knew you’d come. Light the match. It’s okay. I’m ready.”
“I’m not.”
We stare at each other, and he eases the matches from my fingers and pulls them away. Gently, he pulls my glasses off. He sits there, cleaning them on the edge of his shirt, and then slides them back onto my face. They’re slightly blurred, but I can see.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“I told her to wait outside. It’s not safe in here. Can you stand?”
“She wants me to kill you,” I say. “I can’t do it, Baron. I’m not a killer. I couldn’t live with myself. But you could. You’re a killer. You do it.”
“Not if we were the last two people on earth and I had to do it to survive.” He stares at me, and his eyes are blazing like I’ve already struck the match. “I would sooner kill myself. I love you, Duke. You are my brother. I would never hurt you.”
“Then why did you?” I ask, my throat thick suddenly, aching. I’m a kid again, and I just want to be the Robin to his Batman, and he’s saying no. Robin is lame. And I know that means I’m lame, even if I can’t articulate it.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I know I didn’t make you feel important.
I don’t understand feelings, so I don’t know how to make you feel the way I want you to feel.
I failed, Duke. But I want you to know. Whatever you need, I’ll do it.
Anything you want, it’s yours. Anything.
If you want space from me, or medication, or therapy…
It doesn’t matter what I believe in. It only matters that we find what helps you.
Just tell me, so I can give it to you. You have to help me too, Duke. ”
“Are you crying?”
He touches his face, then stares at his fingers like he’s never seen them before.
“I guess I am.” He raises his gaze to mine.
His eyes are red, wet. Or maybe that’s what I want to see, proof that I matter more than her.
More than anyone. That must be why my own eyes sting.
I can’t remember where I end and he begins anymore.
“I didn’t know you could cry.”
“I didn’t either.”
My eyes are burning too, as if I can feel his pain, the depth of it mirrored in our twin hearts.
“I was so focused on setting up the life we planned, getting it all right, at all cost,” he says, shaking his head. “I never would have done it if I’d known the cost was you.”
“Baron,” I say, gripping his fingers. “It’s too late. I’m always too late. I don’t see it until it’s over. But this time I do. This time, I’m looking ahead. I see what’s coming. You don’t need me. You’ll be fine without me.”
“I thought that too, once,” he says. “But I was wrong.”
“No, you weren’t. And she’ll keep doing it until one of us is gone. Maybe both. You should be the one to have her. You love her more than I do. You’re more like her.”
“Then why didn’t she ask me to get rid of you?” he says. “It’s not because she knew I wouldn’t do it. It’s because she always wanted you, Duke. She always loved you. Everyone loves you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I can survive her. And I know I can’t survive losing you.”
“You’re not losing me,” he says, wiping his nose. “Remember what I said on the way out of Faulkner? I promised I’d never leave you. So get up off this bed and walk out of here, or I’ll carry you out.”
“I just fuck everything up,” I say, sitting up and swiping angrily at my cheeks.
“It’s better this way. I can show everyone I’m sorry.
They don’t believe me now, but they will when I’m gone.
Will you tell her that for me? That I’m sorry.
I wish I could go back in time and undo it all. I can’t do that, but I can do this.”
“No,” he says. “You’re going to walk out of here and tell her yourself.”
“I made a mess of the life you made—the one I helped plan,” I say. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Nothing is ever enough. And if I can’t be happy with everything, then I’ll never be happy. But you can be happy without me.”
“I don’t need happiness,” Baron says. “I don’t even know what that looks like. I need you, Duke. Don’t you know that? I need you to help me with all the things I don’t have. You’re all my missing pieces. I’m only whole when you’re with me.”
“But you left.”
“And I thought I was fine,” he says. “I wasn’t fine, Duke. Without you, I’m lost, an alien among my own people. I don’t belong with them. I belong with you. I don’t work without you. Nothing works without you. Now come out of the house. Please, brother. I’m begging you.”
“She’s out there.”
We stare at each other a second, twin eyes behind twin pairs of glasses.
“Yes.”
“She could light it,” I say. “Get us both at once.”
His lips tighten, and I think he’ll argue, say that she wouldn’t. But he just nods. “Then we’ll go out together. I’m not leaving you, Duke. I don’t break promises. Not to you. Never to you.”
I nod and climb unsteadily from the bed. Baron’s eyes are dry again, but mine are still streaming. He wraps an arm around me, throwing my arm over his shoulder and supporting my weight, and we start for the door.