Chapter Twenty-Three
Ipush my palm to my abdomen when it swirls, reaching toward the handle of Rusty’s truck.
Translucent engine fumes lick around my ankles, ascending to the opening of my nose and I suck back a lungful when I feel the latch release, the door open for me.
“Hospital for Souls” by Bring Me The Horizon plays low and cool through the speakers, and Harlen falls back into the seat behind the wheel. He doesn’t look at me. He stares ahead.
I climb in, keeping my seatbelt off, and spread my legs. I notice how my right knee has begun bouncing to the same rhythm as my chattering teeth.
We don’t say anything.
My eyes are dry now, and blinking feels like my lids are closing over shards of glass.
I try to swallow, try to dislodge the tightness in my throat when a tap to my bicep comes.
Harlen holds a bottle of water toward me, and shakily, my blood-crusted fingers reach out, taking it. I press it to my lips.
Tires crunch rock, then rubber meets asphalt when Harlen peels onto the road, spinning the wheel and adjusting the shifter.
Both of our windows are down, cool wind slapping our faces as he shifts again and pushes harder on the gas.
Harlen takes the quiet roads toward Rusty’s, nestled deep in the solitude of the woods, and I allow my head to fall to the headrest behind me, squeezing my eyes closed, exhaling through my nose.
Rage and pain and hatred rise from deep inside, sizzling across my chest.
I knew my father hated women. I also knew he disdained Jade.
My mother once told me that when Jade was a baby, he’d refused to hold her.
It’s why I’d never left her in the house alone.
What father didn’t hold their own child?
I just hadn’t known that a hatred like that could extend to not caring about what had happened to her, to believing she deserved to be killed.
My stomach rolls at the thought and I slam my hand against the beat-up dash in front of me, my insides pushing to my throat.
“Pull over, man.”
I’m coughing, and Harlen is already off the road, pressing on the brakes.
I pop the door and I don’t have enough time to hike myself out before I’m turning sideways in my seat and retching onto the dry leaves beneath. And when my stomach is empty and my throat burns, I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth, then rub it down the front of my jeans.
My arms are trembling. I place both elbows to my knees, threading my hands through the top of my hair, sucking back a lungful of air.
Could he have done it?
Could he have…
At the vile thought, I’m stumbling out of the car, arms looped around my stomach as I cradle it through another bout of sickness. I’m dry heaving, struggling to catch my breath, to fucking see in front of me.
I spit the leftover sick from my tongue and stand up, turning and slamming both palms against the truck.
“Fuck!” I shout and it echoes off the trees around us.
I’m sucking on my front teeth when I realize that I have started to cry again.
Ramming my forehead into the back window and squeezing my eyes closed, I temper down each whimper, only my body betrays me.
Every harbored cry has me spasming harder, my shoulders shaking.
It’s excruciating, and I don’t think I can do this. I know I can’t do this. It’s why I wanted to send a bullet to the back of my throat.
“Why!” I cry, spittle spraying to the glass in front of me, rolling down my chin.
Why was my sister raped and murdered?
Why was I the one that shot the gun that killed my mother?
Why did my father hold such hatred toward my mother? And why did he have the same disdain for my sister?
Why was Laiken lying in a hospital bed cradling a gunshot wound?
Why were they targeted? And why did he let her go?
I push my forehead harder against the glass.
Why was I too weak to squeeze the trigger when the gun was in my mouth?
Agony is all I feel when I fall to the ground.
I rest the weight of my body against the wheel behind me, drawing my knees to my chest, reclining my head.
I’m shaking when Harlen does the same, and meets me right where I am, the wheel at our backs large enough to take us both.
We sit in silence, listening to the wind in the trees and an owl in the distance when I suck back a breath and tell my best friend, “I killed her, man.” I swallow my words and I feel a muscle in my neck tick. I turn to look at him. “My own mother, I fucking killed her, and then…”
A tear rolls down my throat and I shove it away, sucking on the inside of my cheeks.
“I put the barrel in my mouth, and I thought…I thought…” I begin to laugh, it’s a complete disconnect.
I don’t recognize it, don’t know where the sound is coming from, but it’s bitter and degrading.
“I thought I squeezed it…the trigger.” I’m shaking my head, tears streaming down my face, I palm them away with both hands.
“Fuck, I thought I did it…but I…” Each word is spoken through my teeth.
“I couldn’t,” I whisper, at the same time silence falls, broken only by my breath. “I couldn’t even get that right.”
Harlen says nothing, until he does.
“Kinda glad you fucked that up, bro.”
My body dips when the front wheel catches in a kink at the edge of the desolate road.
On the outskirts of Devil’s Peak, we draw closer to Rusty’s wood-paneled home set deep in the bowels of the woods that sit on the opposite side of town to Devil’s Peak mountain.
Rich emerald pine trees sway and rustle with the light wind as I step out of the truck, slamming the door closed at my back. I can hear the lake in the distance, the smooth flow of water moving with the breeze that skims delicately across the surface.
We corner the edge of the house, stepping onto the pristine polished wrap-around deck to find Rusty sitting at the outdoor table.
A cigarette is pressed between his lips, a bottle of whiskey perched in front of him. He’s highlighted by the shallow light spilling from the open door behind him and the subtle glow of the moon lingering above.
“It okay if Chase takes the room—” Harlen begins to ask his father, but his question is clipped almost instantly when Rusty coughs and leans forward, spearing the burned-out filter into the metal ashtray in front of him. He drops it to the dish and reaches beside it, swiftly lighting another.
My stomach tightens, my chest too.
I’ve known Rusty for years, spent more nights on the clubhouse’s couch than I had my own bed, but never had I stayed here. There was a difference between offering a dingy couch to someone in a building that never slept, to a room in a sacred space that holds memories you wish not to forget.
It came with questions, ones like, did I really know this kid enough to let him take up a room in my home? Or, the one that scared me most, could he be anything like his father?
My throat clicks when I swallow, my thoughts frightening me. I knew I was nothing like him, but did Rusty? Would he take that chance on me; the boy that just killed his family?
The legs of the metal chair Rusty is sitting on screech when he pushes it back, cigarette dangling from his mouth. He comes to his feet, and I watch his hands tremble when he drags both palms through his golden curls, drawing them away from his face.
The sharp cut of his jaw tenses, the bone ticking. He reaches out, his hand finding my shoulder, thumb pushing to my neck. Rusty clears his throat, then speaks. And his words are so quiet around the cigarette in his mouth.
“Welcome home, kid.”
I drag my eyes over my forearm when they drip. My heart has fallen to my stomach, landing in a pool of agony and relief, and when I raise my eyes, meeting Rusty’s misty blue ones, I see a matching kind of pain, something like recognition, staring into the face of my own.
I nod.
And he nods back.
And I make a promise to myself, to never forget what my best friend's father just did.