Chapter Thirty-Two
Nineteen Years Old
“Motherfucker,” I curse around my toothbrush.
White minty foam sprays from my mouth when I slam into the lilac painted plywood on my way out of the bathroom.
The kettle is whistling from the kitchen.
And with one hand clasped to the wet towel at my chest, the other curling around my body, latching to my now throbbing tricep, I stifle a sharp breath when I realize that instinctively I’ve reached for it—tracing my shaky thumb across the thick, depressed skin that night left behind.
It makes me want to cry, then I want to throw something.
Because today is the third anniversary of my best friend's murder, and I’d already been struggling to keep the surfeit of emotions at bay.
I bite into my bottom lip when it wobbles, reach for the chipped nozzle at the stove and turn off the burner.
My fingers tremble as I take a chai tea bag, dropping it into a pink checkered mug, filling it with boiling water.
I leave it on the counter to steep and return to the bathroom.
Spitting a glob of toothpaste into the sink, I hang my head, squeeze my eyes closed.
You can do this, I tell myself over and over again, until I’m working quickly, ignoring the pain at my arm—and my heart—layering my body in moisturizer before dressing in a pair of black booty shorts and my oversized taffy pink T-shirt adorned with New York in bold white letters across the chest.
Jade had the same one. We had bought them after the four of us made our pact three years ago—New York, the boys on a stage, and us shouting for them at the back.
I swallow, tempering my emotions. Dreams were dreams back then, but they felt real and reachable and tangible. Now those dreams were just a graveyard of memories.
Life had changed.
So had I.
So had they.
With a sigh, I shake out my white-blonde hair that now sits just above my shoulders before starting out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.
I have thirty minutes before I have to clock in for my shift at Devil’s Diner, and the sun has already begun to retreat.
Fingers curling around the handle of my now warm mug, I bring the lip to my mouth and with my free hand, work quickly to unlock the only door at the front of the trailer, catching it with the sole of my bare foot and slowly shimmying out.
I take a seat on the weathered step. The cement heats the backs of my thighs, and with my elbows resting at my knees, both palms framing the mug in my hands, I reverently bring it to my mouth and take another sip, staring out at the setting sun.
The sky is lit up with streaks of magenta, the breeze warm like it was three years ago, even though the day had slipped into late afternoon.
I had been on the night shift at the diner for the past three days which resulted in me sleeping most of the light away.
However, I liked catching the last of it, watching it illuminate the flowers in my garden that I’d put endless hours into in order to keep my mind busy.
The pinks and oranges and yellow hues are a stunning contrast with the lilac trailer that sits behind them.
It makes the space feel enchanting, reminiscent of a picture out of a fairy book my mother and father used to read to me when I was a child.
I take another sip of tea, cradling the mug a little tighter, relishing in the warm liquid sliding down my throat and heating my stomach.
My mother’s wind chimes start singing, metallic clinks, echoing like bells. I close my eyes and let the sound find my ears, a gentle reminder that she is always here.
After she took her life, we found out that I had inherited the family trailer. I was only sixteen at the time so of course it fell into the trusted hands of my grandmother. She had held onto it for me, and I was grateful for that.
She helped me bring life back into the bones of a home that had seen and felt so much love and happiness before that last year of tragedy and despair.
I liked being here, no matter how sad some of the memories were. It was my home, it always would be.
A small dot in the distance catches my eye and as it draws closer, I see Nan on her scooter, coasting along the edge of the road through the trailer park.
I swallow the last mouthful of my tea as she arrives, steadying herself on her feet. She turns, reaching for a covered dish, holding it in her hands.
“So we don’t have a repeat of last night,” she says, her voice croaky, reaching for me through a warm gust of wind—I had passed out mid-shift because I’d forgotten to eat.
I raise my brows, push to my feet, lean over and peek beneath the foil. Staring back at me is a bed of fluffy white rice, flaked salmon, chopped spring onions, cucumber, mango and avocado and a generous drizzle of what looks to be a spicy creamy sauce.
I curl it back into place and take it from her hands.
“You getting fancy, Nan?” I choose to bypass the comment about my incompetence as an adult. She was right, and I didn’t want to talk about it.
Nan enters the house ahead of me and speaks over her hunched shoulder, “I saw it on one of my shows…”
I place the dish on the Formica countertop and reach for a set of bowls, dividing a small portion into each, my stomach growling a tune with the clinks and clacks of me serving it up.
Nan takes a seat at the edge of the sofa, and I juggle two bottles of cold sparkling water and both bowls of food.
I’m placing them on the scarred wooden table in front of her when her small hand reaches out, gently coiling around my wrist. I’m still hunched over, catching my breath when I turn to meet her eyes.
It was the first time I’d properly looked into them since she had arrived. They are slightly misted and red, and I instantly feel my heart drop like a weight to my stomach.
Today was horrific for the both of us.
“Are you doing okay today, sweetheart?” she asks on a wobble.
I watch the wisp of steam rise from each bowl, and in that moment decide I’m not too hungry after all. I fall back onto the couch and drag the pink crochet blanket Nan had lovingly made for me a year ago, across my body.
It’s hot, but now, I am shivering.
Nan reaches toward me again, squeezes the top of my knee, though it’s so light I barely feel the endearment. I place my hand on top of hers and turn to look at her, tears flooding and pushing against the rims of my eyes.
“Are you, Nan?” I ask, because she had lost so much too.
“You first,” she encourages.
I shuffle my feet a little. “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared.” My last words come out on a whimper.
Being a victim—that’s what they called me; I would never call myself that—it was a death sentence in itself.
“Maybe you should stay home tonight…” she begins to say but she stops when she sees me wiping a tear away.
“Not tonight, not again,” I whisper, because last year—and the one before that—I locked myself away for weeks.
This year, I refused to hide. I refused to make my past my present. I refused to live in fear of what could happen to me, and what might just be waiting for me.
I blink away the tears, squeezing my eyes closed when a shredded wheel of pictures and short clips carousel behind my eyelids.
The car, the scent of mint strips, the ominous sound of an omen at the speakers, the forest flying past me as we ran, gunshots ringing in my ears, the pool of blood, my best friend's guttural cries and her neck, the way it—
I race to the sink and retch the contents of my stomach into the steel bowl, then I dip my head between my shoulders, both palms curled around the sink as I keep my arms above my head and crouch down.
Deep breaths, I tell myself and when my heart has settled slightly in my chest, I rise to my feet, suck back another lungful of air, moving toward Nan.
She stands, steadying herself on her feet and when I’m close enough, she reaches toward my face, cups the side of my cheek with one quivering palm.
“Oh, sweetheart…” she breaks, a tear rolling down her rubbery cheek.
I whisper so quietly, “If death is meant to be mine, it will be. I can’t live like I have been anymore.”
She steps back and nods. “You’re brave, Laiken. You got that from your mother, and your father, so brave.”
I curl the right side of my hair behind my ear, and she reaches for the left, doing the same.
“I saw him this morning.”
I knew who he was, I didn’t have to ask, and I sure as heck didn’t have to confirm. I stay quiet, choosing to hear what she tells me next.
“I was on my way to the store to get ingredients for this.” She pauses and jerks her chin toward the now cold bowls, sitting uneaten at the table. “He was cutting across that old graveyard, walking toward…” She doesn’t finish.
Devil’s Tunnel.
“Have you spoken to him?” she asks warily, and I shake my head, staring in a stupor at a loose piece of cream carpet.
She reaches for my hand, curls her other around it.
“What happened between you two?” Her green eyes are a little more open now. They feel warm, yet so sad.
He stabbed me, Nan, then he left me to bleed out. That’s what I wanted to say, only I don’t. I spare her the morbid details.
She begins to speak again, “Do you think—”
“It doesn’t matter what I think anymore, Nan, we aren’t friends…” I say quietly over the top of her, pause, then whisper, “I was stupid to think we ever were.”
She sighs, pinching my hand a little tighter. “Everyone handles grief differently, sweetheart, maybe he just needs a little more time.”
Time.
As if three years wasn’t enough.
The only thing I knew for sure was that time wasn’t on our side, and that we were strangers now.
When I see him around town, he looks at me as though I'm a ghost, like he can see right through me, or he doesn’t so much as see me at all.
Losing his sister killed him, and killing his mother hacked him to pieces. The shadows of our past had folded over him.
Harlen and I have stayed in touch, but we aren’t as close as we once were, as I’d like us to be, but I always knew that would be the case. He still checks in on me though, often visiting me at the diner. Sometimes he’ll even go as far as driving me home, so I don’t have to walk in the dark alone.
Life is just different now.
I’m not the girl I was when I was sixteen, and Chase is no longer the eighteen-year-old boy that I thought I knew.
Death had clawed through the serenity of the friendship we once had, tearing away the only pieces that welded us together.
And honestly, it was a goddamn fucking tragedy.
I loved Chase Keller.
I think a small piece of me always will.