Chapter 35 #2
It was all a waste of air. Even if I tried to tell the truth, to say that I’d gone to the old house to see if the ghosts were still there, and when they were, I decided to burn them out, it wouldn’t matter.
She’d see it for what it was: a tantrum, a last grasp at control, a way to sabotage something that maybe, just maybe, could have worked if I’d left it the fuck alone.
I rolled over, pressing my face into the pillow.
Every time I tried to close my eyes, something in the dark would flicker on and play back the worst parts of my adolescence.
There were so many of those memories, I could never tell if I was remembering something real or just making it up out of guilt.
Like that one time, after school, when I cornered her at the edge of the soccer field. The sky was a blue grey, the grass covered with November mud. I’d been thinking about her all day, the shape of her arms in that green cardigan, the way she tucked her hair behind her ears.
I’d meant to tease her, maybe fake a shove, something dumb and forgettable. Instead, I’d said: “You think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you?” The words had come out meaner than I meant, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
She’d looked at me with that clear green stare of hers and said, “I think you could be better, if you wanted to.”
I’d laughed, and said something about her dirty sneakers, and then shoved her anyway, just to see if she’d fall. She didn’t. She squared her shoulders and walked away, the back of her neck red, refusing to give me anything more.
I wanted her to. Even then, I wanted something from her.
I wanted her to turn around and say my name.
Instead, I got nothing but the echo of my own voice, hollow and small.
That night, I’d gone home and punched a hole in the wall above my bed, then blamed it on the door slamming. My dad never asked. He just poured another drink and turned up the TV, drowning out the sound of whatever I was trying to get out of me.
I never told anyone how much it haunted me. How much it still did.
The memories were a parade now; some clear, some blurred at the edges, like they’d been run through the wash too many times.
I made it my mission to consume every cubic inch she relinquished. If she were invisible, I was going to be the sun—burning, devouring, impossible to ignore.
I thought if I could just carve enough of myself into her, she’d never forget me. That some piece of my rot would sprout inside her and we’d be tangled for life.
It was wrong, so fucking wrong. Every day was a battle, and every day the monster won. I buried that affection, I fucking cursed it and tore it apart.
I lay in the dark on Dante’s couch, every muscle knotting in memory. My childhood had been a laboratory of cruelty, and I was its most dedicated scientist. I justified it then as survival.
I had to keep everybody afraid of me so they could never see how afraid I was myself.
I thought maybe, if I lay here long enough, the years would peel off and I’d reverse-evolve into a kid who could start over. But there was no mercy in the dark. Just the parade, relentless.
Memory was a parasite that doesn’t stop feeding, even when you try to drown it in bourbon or knock it unconscious against a windshield. I saw the timeline of my own cruelty, every instance a bead on a string, taut and unbreakable.
I wanted to believe there was a reason for all of it.
That maybe if I pieced together every sick day, every fight, every splintered smile, I could see the mosaic of necessity.
That hurting her meant she was close enough to matter.
That if I kept her orbiting around me, at least she was still in my gravity.
But the truth was, I just didn’t know how to want something that wasn’t destruction.
The moonlight angled through Dante’s kitchen window, catching on the rim of a crusted coffee mug. The ache in my head was receding, replaced by a new kind of soreness, a memory hangover.
I tried to focus on the little details of his house. It was easier to inventory other people’s lives than to think about my own.
I wondered if Amelia was awake, if she was laying on her back in some shitty motel bed, clutching her phone like a lifeline, reading and rereading my dumb, desperate text.
Or maybe she was sleeping, dreams mixing her mother’s voice with the static of my own apologies.
I wondered if she remembered any of those high school days the way I did, or if she’d sanded them smooth and buried them, just another set of bones under the floorboards.
I slept, eventually, and when I woke, the world was grey and still.
I listened for the sounds of Dante in the kitchen, but there was nothing. Just the ticking clock and the hum of the fridge, a silence too thick to outwait.
I padded to the bathroom and pissed away what little was left in me. My reflection in the mirror was a disaster. Even scrubbing at the grime and dried sweat didn’t do much.
I found Dante on the back porch, already halfway through a cigarette and reading something on his phone, thumb flicking quick, like he was trying to win a race he didn’t want to run.
He didn’t look up when I stepped outside. “There’s coffee,” he said. “Didn’t know if you wanted eggs. Figured you’d rather die.”
“Thanks.” I meant it, though my throat shredded the word until it sounded like sarcasm.
He didn’t say anything else, so I got the coffee, black and burnt, and joined him on the porch.
“What’s next in the life of Caiden Baxter?” Dante asked, a hint of curiosity and amusement in his tone.
I shrugged and stared blankly into the yard. “Don’t know. I suppose you could drop me off at my car. After that? I don’t know, man. I know I don’t want to go back to North Carolina yet.”
Dante sat back in his seat. “I know Amelia wants to see you. I was just texting her. She also said that she’s not ready to go back either. Needs to process this a little more. So, I told her I could take her to my family’s cabin by the lake. It’s small and quaint.”
He noticed my silence and spoke again.
“You want to come, too?” Dante asked, not looking up from the phone but somehow nailing my uncertainty to the wall with the question.
I considered it with equal parts curiosity and dread. “Wouldn’t that be weird?”
Dante smirked, finally glancing up from the screen. “Man, you set your house on fire. I think we’re past weird.”
I sipped my coffee, scalding my tongue. My hands shook, but less than last night. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe I’ll tag along. Amelia might not want me there, though.”
Dante flicked his cigarette into a chipped mug at his feet. “She actually told me you should come. ‘If he’s sober,’” he added, voice teasing. “So, try not to fuck it up.” The flash of his smile made it impossible to stay defensive.
I laughed, ran a hand through my hair. “No promises.” But I meant it, this time I would try.
We sat a while longer, the silence companionable in a way I’d never really had before. I didn’t need to fill it, didn’t need to ruin it with a joke or a confession. The morning was cold and clear, and for the first time in recent memory, I just let myself be in it.
Eventually, Dante got up and stretched. “Got to run by my mom’s place to drop off some stuff. Then we’ll swing by and get your car.”
The rest of the morning consisted of pacing, chugging water, contemplating, then repeating.
I was a messy, tangled web of emotions, and I wasn’t sure how I would sort it out.
I hadn’t gotten so fucked up in a while, but that streak fell apart last night when I decided to bury myself in the bottle.
Though the memory of being at my childhood home was blurred, I could faintly recall the grotesque feeling that had clung to me sitting in that house.
I don’t think it would ever go away.
Eventually, Dante dropped me at the edge of the bar’s lot, my car alone except for a pair of scattered empties.
“Text me when you get there, okay?” Dante said, like I was a kid on a field trip.
“Yeah,” I replied, but my hand was already on the door handle. I didn’t trust myself to say anything else that wouldn’t sound like a plea.
He waited until I’d unlocked the car and slid in, the seat still holding the shape of my last desperation. Then he pulled away, tires crunching over gravel, taillights fading out like the end of a good dream.
The drive to the motel was short, but I tried to drag it out by circling the block.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I gripped the wheel and watched them tremor, thought about my dad’s hands doing the same, white-knuckled and trembling, only ever steady when holding court with a bottle.
I pulled into the lot and sat there for a second, dreading and anticipating seeing Amelia.
I took my time while walking to the motel door, and once I made it, there were a few seconds when I wanted to flee.
Instead, I used my key card and stepped inside the room. Amelia was sitting on the bed, flipping through a photo album. When she heard my entry, the album fell to the floor as she jumped up in surprise.
Her whole face fluttered through a series of emotions. Relief, then anger, then something like embarrassment for being caught off-guard.
Her hair was wet, clumped in dark strings, and she wore a faded hoodie that hung off her frame like a borrowed skin. I wondered if she’d left the bed at all since last night.
She stared at me, jaw tight. “You’re alive,” she said.
I nodded and shut the door behind me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. The word felt so small it almost hurt to let it out. “About last night. About leaving you there.”
She looked down at the album, then back at me. “I thought you might have driven off a cliff or something. Up until I received your text.”
“Would have deserved to fall off a cliff,” I said, and tried to smile, but it didn’t land.
A long silence. I wanted her to yell, to throw the album at my head, to do anything except look at me with that lacerating mixture of pity and expectation.
She finally blinked and said, “Dante told me what happened at the house.” A pause, and then: “He also told me you set it on fire.”