30. Not Today
Not Today
Melody
How old was Ian? Sixteen? Old enough to have his license, because this was clearly his car; I’d noticed the custom plates with his name. Expensive. Greasy finger smudges all over the stained dashboard, with a sticker of the American flag with the red and blue stripe running across it.
“You should have skipped town the first time I warned you!” he said through his teeth as we drove through the deluge, weaving through the twisted mountain roads.
Honor student decal on the rearview mirror too, along with a Spartan shield hanging from it.
The pistol in his hand. The other on the wheel. His knee shook.
And perhaps it was more absurdity, but I wasn’t scared.
Annoyed, yes. Irritated? Also yes. Of all the days, he chose today to make himself known.
Couldn’t he have waited until tomorrow? I could have handled this better tomorrow.
I could have played the damsel and pretended to cry, like he clearly wanted me to.
“I warned you! This is your fault. All you had to do was disappear!”
Yes, yes. I know. I was asking for it.
That was the Grays’ defense for everything. It was Turner’s excuse for getting a fifteen-year-old pregnant, and then his excuse for getting the next wife pregnant at only seventeen, which brought Ian into existence. A mistake on so many fronts.
Then all the other things that happened after.
Stamped, sealed, and delivered to us all with the Grays’ trademark. Not a family. A fucking corporation. A firm. A brand.
“You couldn’t listen, could you?”
He didn’t see me roll my eyes. He was too busy driving through the torrential downpour as the water rose higher and higher.
Maybe I should have started building an ark.
Too bad I didn’t have two-by-two animals to put on it.
I would have liked to have some goats. Maybe some cows, too. Damn.
I needed to focus on Ian, and the gun, but my brain was just protesting.
“Can you hear me?” he snapped, finally bringing me back to the present.
“Yes, I can hear. I just don’t care…” I let out a long sigh.
“You kill me, then there’s foul play. None of you will get any of it.
Miriam and Marc would never be put in your custody, so you’ll never see a dime of that inheritance.
It’ll go straight to Miriam and Marc when they’re eighteen. They won’t share it with my killer.”
Marcus might hate me. Miriam and I weren’t close like we used to be. But they wouldn’t do that. They were good kids.
“Ha!” Ian snorted. “You think we hang out with Marc because we like him?”
He laughed, but it was forced. The bravado of a teen.
“He’s not even a fucking Brad, that little cuck shit.”
“Is that…code for something?” I was too fucking old to understand anything that idiot was saying.
“He’s such a fucking shitcel cuck, he’d hand us his money just because he’s so desperate to keep friends. He doesn’t get that he’s just a big fucking loser that’s gonna get railroaded by every real man out there, and he’ll be stuck with our leftovers.”
I didn’t have to understand what he meant to be furious.
“Marc’s a good boy. A bigger man than you’ll ever be,” I sneered.
“Tough fucking words for a Stacy who’s about to be tits up in the water,” he snickered.
He was trying to be tough, but this teenage bullshit this was lost on me.
“Jesus, just put a bullet in my head already,” I groaned.
I was born to argue with annoying men. It was why I wanted to become a lawyer. In a way, I would go out doing something I loved…but I wanted the men I argued with to be coherent.
I was so numb. So broken. So empty, I had nothing left but laughter. I marveled at the stupidity of my own existence.
“I can’t fucking shoot you, you stupid femoid!”
Oh. Ian was an incel.
Great.
He stopped on a familiar pull-off. It was a cliff with a footpath, that wove down to a small inlet. A common place to put kayaks and canoes in the water. The little cut out was a calm place to cast off and have a quiet float down the water.
The water wasn’t quiet tonight, though. The sky was angry, thunder rumbling, lightning flashed. The pending flood made the water roar.
“If I shoot you, then they’ll know you died! You’re so stupid!” He was still talking, but I just stared at him. Not insulted; a bit baffled by the audacity, in fact. “You always thought you were so much better than all of us, didn’t you?”
Was that what this was about? Because I thought I was better than them? After all the ways they treated me like shit, they thought I was the one treating them poorly? Ha!
“Get out.” Ian pointed the gun at my nose, and I stared down the barrel. “You don’t do what I say, and I’ll go after Miriam next. She’s your favorite, isn’t she? Marcus says so.”
Marc…oh, Marc. I had no doubts that he said something like that. That he might have even spoken terribly about me and Miriam. And he wasn’t wrong about my preference. What he was probably wrong about was that I loved him. I loved them both the same, even if it hurt to see his father’s face in his.
I had no choice but to leave the car.
“Miriam thinks she’s too good for us too, but we’ll show her. We’ll show her!” He laughed like a psychopath as he pressed the gun to my lower back, pushing me towards the water.
What was he trying to accomplish with the taunting? His insults to Marc, the threats to Miriam, they would do him no good.
I stopped and stood still, putting my hands on my hips as the rain pelted us.
“What? You think people will believe I drowned after all the drama your family kicked up about Luke? You don’t think it’ll be too much of a coincidence?” I was looking at the water, with Ian at my back. I wondered what happened to him. He’d been a boy once.
An okay boy. Spoiled…
Then he became a rotten man. They shut him up with money, gifts, and whatever he’d wanted. God forbid he ever learned to regulate himself.
“It’ll never happen.” I shivered in the cold, and my fingers grew twitchy, ready to lash at something. Anything. The water came down so hard, I tilted my head forward to keep from waterboarding myself.
“You’re so fucking stupid. Everyone said you were smart, but I knew you weren’t. Books, maybe, but here?” He tapped the pistol against his head, as if pointing to his brain. “This can’t be all books. You need to be smarter than just books.”
It wasn’t hard to be smarter than an object, but I didn’t think that was what he meant. Honor student, my ass…
“You just had a breakup in the middle of a fucking crowded parking lot with the out-of-towner! Ha! And everyone thinks it’s your fault. It is your fault! Ha!”
My smug smile melted away.
“No one will be surprised if you fling yourself off a bridge, so I’m just going to help you live up to their expectations.” His smile disappeared with a speed that was psychopathic. “Get in the water.”
I looked at the water, where the waves of the roaring current turned white as they flowed back into the town at the base of the valley.
“No.” I would die.
Some day.
But not today.
I hadn’t survived Luke just to be killed by the teenage mutant, discount version of him.
Ian fired, but the shot hit a tree. As if responding, the sky cracked with another thunderbolt that landed on the other side of the lake. It was close enough that I felt the vibrations in my feet, in my ribs, and in my heart.
“Get in the water!” His voice squeaked as he yelled. Just a boy. An idiot, murderous boy.
I would murder him, too. If I’m going down, I would take him down with me.
When I had nothing left, I had pettiness. It wouldn’t save me, but it was a nice silver lining.
“No.”
“GET IN THE WATER!” Ian’s feet squishing and sloshing. Grabbing my elbow, he waved the pistol while I bobbed and weaved to avoid getting hit by the damn barrel.
“Are you a fucking moron?” I squealed as he pushed me towards a cliff. Its edge had already begun washing away with the river’s fast rhythm.
“YOU! YOU ARE THE MORON!”
“I know you are, but what am I?” I snarked as we both hovered too close to the ledge. I reached out and clutched his collar. “If I go down, I’m taking you with me.”
“You bitch!” He screamed. “Just die!”
“No!” I twisted until I grabbed the wrist of his gun arm, pointing it away from us. He pulled the trigger. It fired into the ground, the force of the shot tipping him off balance. Ian fumbled and whimpered, unsteady on one foot as he kicked the other, trying to right himself.
I helped.
Pushing as he tipped like a teetering chair on two legs, just on the cusp of falling. He grabbed me, pulling himself up, or pulling me over. One or the other…
The sheer terror in his eyes when I started cackling was absolutely delicious. Even on the edge of the precipice, my own legs unsteady, my body struggling to stay upright and not fall over, I could relish in his fear as he hovered, shaking, teetering over the abyss.
Lights, thunder, flashes of light, faster and faster.
The light didn’t die with the thunder.
Headlights.
They swept over us as two car engines rumbled, their doors opening.
“Die!” Ian screamed.
“You first, you chicken shit!”
It was him or Marc. Him or Miriam.
An easy choice.
I would take him with me if it meant Marcus would have the wool pulled off his eyes. If it meant he would finally see what his friends really were. Spineless, traitorous, limp-dicked brats who did nothing to earn their standing, their reputation, or their wealth.
I would die for my siblings. Because they were part of me. Part of Mom.
Marcus and Miriam could have everything, and that was enough. I pressed forward, my fists still clenched around his wrist and around his collar. I would push him over or pull him down with me. One or the other. But neither of us would survive.
“Melody!” My mind imagined Greg shouting my name. “Melody!”
It was a mercy to hear his voice. For his words to be the last sounds in my head. It would have been tragic to die hearing nothing but Ian.
This was likely my mind protecting me from the darkness to come. What did I care?
With another heave, I pushed us over, letting our combined weight drag us into the nothingness of free fall.
My eyes snapped to the cars as we fell.
He was running, his hands out and reaching for me.
I smiled.
Greg wanted me to live. And that was so, so nice.
“Melody!”
Ian squeezed the trigger. I screamed, yanking his arm right as the heat of fire ripped through my thigh.
I murdered Ian Gray.