Chapter 24
DREAD
My muscles burn as I kick off the cement wall and cut through the water. My arms grow weaker, my breath shorter with each stroke.
Still, I keep pushing.
Because the moment I stop, so does my will to live.
I complete two more laps before I’m physically incapable of moving another muscle. As tempted as I am to just let myself sink to the bottom, I can’t betray my mother like that.
With the last drop of energy I possess, I put my hands on the cement floor and propel myself out of the water. My muscles give, and I nearly eat concrete, but I make it far enough out to collapse on the floor, my legs still submerged up to my knees.
I pant heavily, my vision still swimming despite my body being motionless. Every breath feels like inhaling fiberglass, and my extremities tremble so hard, they appear completely still.
It’s exactly what I needed—to make the physical pain so loud, it drowns out the mental.
For twenty blissful minutes, I’m left in utter silence while my system struggles to regulate.
Until my body calms, and the thoughts start creeping in again, slowly at first, then all at once.
I battle with getting back into the water again, but I know I’ve already pushed myself too far and am on the verge of tearing a muscle. Then, I won’t need to worry about taking myself out. Coach will handle that for me.
Groaning, I sloppily pull myself the rest of the way out of the water and get to my feet before slowly trudging to the showers.
Reverie’s face pops up in my head, and I instantly push it away.
Only for her to reappear, over and over, until it feels like I’m playing fucking table tennis with her memory, driving me even more insane than I already am.
My rage is a constant state of being, but the direction it points is ever-moving.
It’s been nonstop since I stormed out of my room after she dropped a fucking bomb on me yesterday.
I needed space, but with Lionel or whoever the fuck leaving her notes, I couldn't allow her to be alone, so I asked Rogue if he could post up outside my door while I slept in his dorm instead.
I felt bad for forcing him out of his bed to sleep on a hard hallway floor, but after I gave him an extremely brief rundown of what I'd just learned, he made no complaints.
He's watching over her today while I figure out where the fuck my head is at.
And right now, I'm just… pissed.
At fucking everyone. Reverie, Lionel, Regina, the copycat, whoever her stalker is, Roxi—fuck, myself.
However, at this moment, I’m currently inundated with fury because of everything Reverie’s parents did to her.
She was adamant about not demonizing Regina for her actions when she had postpartum psychosis, and I know enough about it to understand why.
However, it doesn’t make me any less furious.
It doesn’t make me any less sick to my stomach that she experienced something so horrific.
It doesn’t make me hate Regina any less for continuing to blame Rev for it.
And what she witnessed from Lionel… to see something as brutal as she did, only for the sole parent she felt safe with threaten to make her watch him do the same to her mother?
My fists curl tightly, and the yearning to make Lionel suffer is a scream that never quietens.
Fuck, I want to kill him so fucking badly. But first, I want to torture him so fucking slowly, so painfully, he’ll beg me to end it. And I won’t. I fucking won’t for as long as I can.
But then, a voice in the back of my mind will softly whisper to me, Lionel would’ve never taken your mother’s life had Reverie just said something. None of this would exist if not for her silence.
It’s not fucking fair of me—I know that.
It’s irrational to think a six-year-old who had experienced more trauma than most do in an entire lifetime should’ve spoken up after witnessing the horror she did.
But fuck, it doesn’t make it any easier not to feel that way, anyway.
It doesn’t make it any easier accepting so many women would be alive today had she done it.
However, my anger doesn’t end there. What hurts is that she watched the world rip me to pieces and did nothing, even after Lionel could no longer make good on his promise.
I can rationalize her silence at first, but I can’t do the same with her silence after Lionel’s arrest. I can’t, not when she was silent after the copycat invalidated me to the public.
She was a kid, but I fucking was, too. I stood on that stand for two days, one of them under constant interrogation, while the entire world sneered and called me a liar. But I told them the fucking truth. Despite my fear, the death threats and relentless bullying, I did it, anyway.
So I can't help but question why she couldn’t have said something to anyone.
I mean, I know why. She was fucking terrified.
But I wish she just did… fucking something.
Even if it was to make people suspicious of Lionel.
If she had, he might’ve never gotten out of prison.
Because regardless of Lionel’s good deeds behind bars, what truly led to his release was their belief in his innocence.
Is it so selfish to wish that, at the very least, she spared me some goddamn torment? Even if it changed nothing but the way people treated me, is it so wrong to resent not having that?
I shake my head and force myself to shower quickly and then exit the pool, where people stand outside the windows in the center's hallway to watch me.
Excitement and appreciation light up their faces as I pass, but my thunderous expression must be severe enough for them to bite their tongues.
By the time I’m slamming open the door to the gym and charging into the cool February air, my head aches from all the back and forth.
There’s only one place I can think to go that might clear it.
I knock on the red-painted door, my porous bones soaking up my anxiety until I'm vibrating with restlessness.
Instantly, quick little taps come running toward me, followed by a feminine voice yelling out, “Juniper Kelly! You know not to answer the door without Mommy.”
Her giggles bring a smile to my face. She’s been a hellion since the day she was born.
The door opens, and I only make it to three seconds before Junie launches herself at me. I crouch down in just enough time before she’s leaping into my arms.
“Kelly!” she exclaims excitedly, nearly bursting an eardrum.
“Oh no, she’s gotten too heavy!” I shout before dramatically falling backward, my arm banded tightly around her.
She cackles loudly, and her hair gets caught in my mouth as I teeter onto my back. She doesn’t even give me the chance to spit it out before she’s scrambling out of my arms.
“Do it again!” she demands, going to run back into the house so she can launch at me a second time.
“No, no, Junie. Let him get in the door,” Olive says, catching Junie just in time before she jumps into the air.
If she hadn't, I one thousand percent would’ve gotten a head, hand, or foot landing in a terribly painful place. It’s a toss-up between my eye, my mouth, or between my legs. Actually, no, she would’ve managed to land at least two out of three.
I get to my feet just as Junie takes off flying down the hallway toward the living room, already intent on wreaking havoc some other way.
Her mother and my best friend, Olive Benderman, meets my gaze with a tired, exasperated expression, though a smile tips up her lips. Junie looks just like her—same sapphire blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair, and face full of freckles.
“I told you when you were pregnant with her she’d never stop running,” I remind her, lifting my brows with a ‘you did it to yourself’ look.
“Yeah, well, I was hoping you were wrong for once.”
I scoff. “I’m never wrong.”
Rolling her eyes, she nods for me to follow her inside. “Come in before the paparazzi see you and you have another scandal on your hands. I’m pretty sure Junie already drew with a Sharpie on half the house by now.”
I snort but do as I’m told, instantly greeted by the aroma of marshmallows and vanilla. She has that damn fragrance diffuser running at all hours. If I ever walk into her home and don’t smell that exact scent, something is terribly wrong.
She leads me down the hallway into her kitchen, the dark wooden floors creaking beneath my feet. To the left is the living room, Bluey playing on the TV while Junie—surprisingly—calmly plays with her Busy House.
I give it eight minutes before she’s back to being a menace.
“So I assume you’ve had people camping out on your lawn,” I surmise as we step down two steps into the living area and sit perpendicular from one another on her L-shaped, gray plush couch.
Junie is sitting on the floor in front of us, completely absorbed in her activity.
Olive scoffs and rolls her eyes derisively. “Since news broke that he got out. They finally started getting bored with me a couple of days ago, when they realized the playground, grocery store, and her preschool didn’t make for a very juicy story.”
I shake my head, hating Junie had to see those fucking vultures stalking them.
However, Olive is unfortunately used to it. Her mother, Olivia, was one of the Locksmith’s more infamous victims, mainly because the discovery of her remains was one of the more morbid.
Olivia went missing August 18th, 2009, from a country bar a couple towns over from Silent Mist. Two months later, an eight-year-old boy discovered their family dog chewing on her leg in the backyard of their farmhouse.
When the little boy went in to tell his mother, she lost her mind and called the police.
Authorities found the rest of Olivia’s remains buried throughout a corn maze nearby.
The officers were constantly getting lost while recovering them, and I guarantee, Lionel did it for his own sick amusement.