Chapter Seventeen – Abby
I stand in the hallway in my parents’ house.
Mom and Dad are at work. I’m still in high school, in my senior year.
My sister, Nikki, is home for the summer, a junior in college.
She commuted to and from, so she was never really gone during the year, besides when she had classes or went out with her friends on the weekends.
As long as she was quiet coming home and she told my parents where she’d be, they were okay with it.
She’s an adult, they’d always say. She has to learn to make her own good decisions. I always thought that made sense. After a while, don’t all parents let their kids fly on their own?
But, before that day, she was quiet. Too quiet. She didn’t talk much when she was home, and it looked like she had heavy bags beneath her eyes, like she was whittling herself away for some reason. I didn’t get it.
That day, she was in the bathroom too long. I thought it was weird she’d been in there while I was at school; I couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a bath, let alone such a long one. It’s why I decided, after an hour had passed, that I’d check on her.
Knocking produced nothing. Saying her name through the door did not earn me a response.
So, I stood there in the hall, with a rapidly-beating heart and a nagging suspicion that something wasn’t right, mustering up the courage to open the door and see what’s going on.
If the door was locked, it was easy enough to go to the kitchen, grab a butter knife, and unlock it from the outside.
However, when I finally reach for the knob, I find it isn’t locked, and I’m able to push the door open on my own and step inside. My mouth opens, and I’m about to ask if she’s okay, but the sight before me stops me dead in my tracks.
Instantly, I feel like throwing up, like moving to the toilet and retching until nothing but bile comes out.
My sister, Nikki, is in the tub. The water is a bright, vibrant red. Her head is turned away from me, but her right arm hangs out of the tub, the skin on it too pale to be real. A sharp knife rests on the tile beneath her hand, like she dropped it. Like her strength gave out and she let it go.
Because she was dead.
“Nikki?” I find my voice and say her name, but it comes out sounding wrong. My body is like stone. I should go to her, see if I can help her, but deep down, I know it’s too late. She’s gone. She’s gone because she killed herself. If I go to that water, I bet it’ll be room temperature.
Nikki doesn’t move, no matter how badly I wish she would.
“Nikki, are you okay?” I don’t know why I ask. It’s mechanical at this point. It comes out without me thinking about it. “Nikki, get up.” Why do I keep saying her name? Why do I think saying her name will change what I’m seeing? It won’t.
The room spins around me, and though I should go to her, the only thing I can do is take a step back.
One step, then another, then another. I keep backing up until my spine hits the hallway wall facing the bathroom door, and the moment it does, it jerks me back to reality, and I bend over and throw up.
I heave like I’ve never heaved before, and then I scream like I’ve never screamed before.
This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. My older sister is the strongest person I know. She wouldn’t kill herself. She wouldn’t.
But the pain is too much inside, way too much for it to be a dream. My stomach hurts as it clenches in my gut. I sink down to the floor, right next to my pile of puke, as I fight to remain conscious. I want to pass out. I want to die with her. I want… I want everything to be okay.
Little did I know at the time it’d never be okay again, and I wouldn’t find out until I discover Nikki’s diary tucked away between her mattress and box spring, a diary my parents didn’t know existed.
That’s when everything became crystal clear to me, when everything changed. When I changed. The goody little two shoes I was became a distant memory, and I became determined to make her ex-boyfriend pay.
After I tell them the story, I go on, “The police asked if something happened, if something led to her killing herself, but my parents had no idea. They didn’t even know she was depressed.
They knew she and her boyfriend broke up two months ago, but Nikki never liked talking about it.
She wrote all about it in her diary, though.
I didn’t find it right away. I only found it after my parents separated.
Mom couldn’t stay in the house. Dad wanted to move out, too.
He wanted her room emptied, but he couldn’t do it himself, so he asked me to. ”
Going through her room… God, it was probably one of the worst things I’d ever done in my life, minus finding Nikki and attending her funeral—a funeral the church wouldn’t touch since she’d committed suicide. Apparently it’s one of the worst sins a person could commit. Go fucking figure.
“When I found her diary, I kept it because I thought reading it would bring my sister back. At the time I had no idea it’d tell me exactly who hurt her.
One of the entries talked about a party she went to, where she saw her ex.
Sometime during the night, things got hazy.
She could only remember bits and pieces, but she remembered her ex pulling her into a room in the house, where he…
where he took exactly what he wanted from her.
She was too out of it to fight him off, to scream.
By the time she managed to get up and leave, she blamed herself—and she kept blaming herself for weeks until she couldn’t take it anymore. ”
I feel itchy. I don’t like talking about this.
“The day I found the diary was the day I saw the news about D.D.K. That’s when I had the idea to…
to do a little copying. I wanted to kill him, but I wanted to do it right.
I thought it’d be easier to step down into the water than cannonball in.
Start with a stranger who deserved it, work my way up, and once I was comfortable doing it, then I’d go for the kill where it really mattered. ”
Tossing a glance at the two men on either side of me, I say, “Obviously, that never happened. You guys caught me before I could kill that asshole. I can say I am remarkably good at keeping my cool when it comes to dead bodies, though. Something is seriously wrong with me.” I say that last part as a joke, but then again, at the same time it’s not really a joke.
Oh, yeah. Something is definitely wrong with me.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Royal says. “We’re just… different. We’re built differently than most people.”
Yeah, ain’t that the truth. Most people who go through what we did go to, I don’t know, therapy or something. Their first instinct isn’t to become a serial killer. Or join a team of serial killers. That’s what makes us so unique.
“I’m sorry that happened,” Ezra whispers, and Royal says something similar, but I didn’t tell them so they’d feel pity or sympathy for me.
Why did I tell them? Oh, yeah, because they wouldn’t leave it alone. Stupid nightmare. Had to spill my guts just to make these two stop harassing me about waking up screaming. Oye-vey.
Royal asks, “So the asshole is still out there, then?” I nod.
“We should tell Hawthorne. If you have a name, he can do some research and pass it along to the Benefactor. If all this happened years ago, then it’s been enough time.
We don’t have to wait like we did with Ezra’s target and those frat assholes.
We can take him out as soon as everything is set up. ”
It’s strangely comforting to know they’d do it with me. Never imagined I’d have men by my side who’d stand with me and provide me with strength when it comes to the worst time of my life. This house, these guys… they’re full of surprises.
And it’s so weird to me, but I actually do feel a little better now that they know. Maybe telling them, maybe telling Hawthorne, was inevitable. Maybe it was necessary. I don’t need this tracking bracelet on me. If we take out my target, then I literally have zero reason to ever run away.
Hell, I didn’t really have reason to run before. I just thought I’d have to let that bitch slip through my fingers, but now that the possibility is there, I’m actually kind of excited.
“You guys can tell Hawthorne. Her ex’s name is Connor Connair. He’s a trust fund baby, though, so he’s not going to be easy to get ahold of.” Letting them know he’s a trust fund baby lets them know what kind of circles I was near growing up. My parents weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor, either.
Let’s just say we were closer to the one-percenters than the rest. My parents, unlike most everyone in our old neighborhood, were self-made, and they enjoyed working. After everything with Nikki and their separation, they drowned themselves in their work even more, splitting the company up.
I don’t miss that life, but my parents never cut me off, either. I might not have talked to them in years, but they did pay for my life up until very recently.
“Trust fund baby,” Royal repeats, staring hard at me. “Does that mean you’re a trust fund baby, too?”
“And if I am? You gonna think differently of me?”
“No,” he says. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as one, though. I ain’t gonna complain. Trust fund or not, you’re one of us.”
“Don’t worry,” I deadpan. “I don’t think I’m as rich as your Benefactor, if that’s what you’re worried about. Mommy and Daddy don’t really talk to each other anymore, and I haven’t spoken to them in years. You guys have nothing to worry about when it comes to little old me.”
Ezra tells me, “You’re always doing that, putting yourself down. You make them out like jokes, but… I don’t think they’re really jokes. You shouldn’t do that.”
Hmm. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism I picked up after discovering the truth about my sister’s suicide.
Maybe, just maybe I blamed myself, even to this day, that I should’ve noticed something was wrong with her and taken it more seriously.
If I had, who knows? She could still be alive today.
It’s easier to blame myself rather than the girl who took a knife to her wrist.
“I’ll work on it,” I say, even though I’m not sure I can.
We sit there for a while, the three of us side by side on the couch, as the TV show plays on.
I should be pissed off at their intervention, at the way they practically forced me to talk about my past, but I’m not.
It’s bizarre, but I actually do feel a little better, and that’s not something I thought I’d ever think.
I became a different person that day, a person carrying loads of trauma.
That trauma rebirthed me, made me born anew, and for so long I thought that was it.
That was my new life: stalking, hunting, and practicing on bad men in the hopes I’ll get good enough to kill the one asshole who fucked it all up to begin with.
And then I turned into something else when I realized Connor is simply a symptom of the disease, and that the disease itself will never be fully eradicated from this world.
I never thought I’d find myself here, or anywhere close to here. I never thought I would find myself surrounded by not one, not two, but three men who actually understand me and my need for vengeance, three men who agree the trash needs to be taken out.
I like them, as stupid as it might be. I really do. They get me, and I get them. It’s almost like…
Well, it’s almost like we were meant to find each other. Like we’re four parts of the same whole. Like we’re soulmates.