Chucking the other letters down onto the coffee table, I slide into a chair and read the description of Bobby’s last known whereabouts.
“What do you mean, Ebs?” Megan asks as she reads the flyer over my shoulder.
“I mean, I could swear I saw him in passing at the party last night.”
“Did he do that to your face? Did you take your revenge and murder the bastard?” she snorts gleefully, bumping my shoulder as Mateo helps himself to a glass of water from the fridge. I mimic her laugh because she is a little too close for comfort, but the whimsical chime doesn’t suit me. She eyes me shrewdly as her suspicions grow. My ability to weave a believable lie when questioned so brazenly, as we have learnt already, is downright diabolical. My face is too expressive for this calibre of interrogation. I’m a mess of nerves now as it is.
“Maybe the Horseman got boy curious and has branched out to dickhead football players.”I could kiss Mateo for the interruption as Megan is now solely focused on him. There was no love lost for Mateo where Bobby was concerned. Megan had briefly mentioned something about an award, a football scout, and a hot dog, I can’t remember the actual events that occurred as it was on a night where two bottles of wine felt like too little and four had wiped my memory of the eveningcompletely. Something tells me the hot dog had a starring role though.
“You play for the team too, right, Mateo?” I titter, my hackles softening the further away we get from the idea of Bobby being fed to the worms in some unmarked grave at my hands.
Pointing his screwdriver at me, Mateo grins. “That does not make me a dickhead football player.”
“Does it surprise anyone that Kaitlin used a photo of the two of them forhismissing poster? That girl is on a whole other level of delusional.”
“That didn’t surprise me, but his bio is laughable. Who here has ever considered Bobby Masters as hardworking, dutiful, and caring with a child-like approach to all the wonder that life had to offer?” I scrunch up my nose in disgust at the outright lies people tell when someone has died. Or for the purposes of keeping up appearances in this case, someone who is presumed missing until the necessary evidence can be acquired.
I’d like my grave to read: Ebony - insert applicable second name here - didn’t like many people, she was not a ray of sunshine, and her favourite word was fuck.
Short and to the point—perfect.
“I wouldn’t put anything past her. As I said, delusional.” Megan throws down the flyer and moves across to arrange the bunch of daisies in a glass vase, placing them on the windowsill. The sun’s rays not yet fully broken over the hills casts dancing rainbows on the rug beneath my feet, the stripes of colour distorted by the sheer white curtains billowing in the breeze. “Kaitlin is butt-hurt thather precious boyfriend has to share the limelight with yet another Horseman victim.”
“Suspected Horseman victim,” Mateo corrects as he runs his hand through his blond locks, the roots darker now as the colour fades.
“Sorry, yes, suspected. Word around campus is that someone else went missing from Tassel house last night.”
“Another victim?” I press.
“Some girls decided a midnight stroll in the forest was a good idea,” Mateo explains as he dumps his bag on the floor and begins riffling through it.
“Let’s call it what it is; some girls were out in the forest in search of dick. We all know what goes on in there on Friday nights.”
Mateo nods his agreement while I’m standing here in shock; I had no idea Fridays were for dick hunting; that certainly wasn’t covered in the welcome pack itinerary.
Without words, Megan knows what I’m about to say and cuts in first, “It’s basically an orgy for stupid people where they hand out venereal diseases like candy; it’s like Halloween, but every costume is sports related and every dick is attached to a moron. You’re not missing out on anything.” I can’t help the bubble of laughter bursting from my mouth, my bruised ribs tearing at my insides as I double over. The visual Megan paints has me wanting to take a long hot shower. My phone pings with a new message, the same noise coming from Mateo’s phone, and then Megan’s, like chainmail on a circuit. We all read the email in silence.
“The girl, she only lived two buildings north of here.”
“Apparently so. This isn’t nearly as juicy as the grouptext that made the rounds this morning from her roommate though. Apparently, her room had been ransacked, and there were no signs of forced entry. They suspect the Horseman has keys to the university dorms.” I don’t know why she whispers that last part as though he might overhear her in here.
“And is that why Mateo has changed majors and decided to become a locksmith?”
“Yep. When I called site services, they told me they were inundated with calls, and with seventy-three girls ahead of us on the list, we were looking at a two day wait.”
“Can’t put a price on safety,” Mateo croons as he struggles with a screw, and Megan moves over, abandoning cooking duties to sweetly ruffle his hair.
Mateo pulls out the old lock in our front door with a crowbar from the tool bag emblazoned with the wordbasementin Big Bird yellow paint. Discarding the tool with a clunk, he selects another. By the way he changes his grip of it, I wonder whether he knows what he’s doing.
“The janitor just let you have them?”
“I didn’t ask. We haven’t had a janitor here for at least six months, so anything in that basement is fair game. After today, we’ll know no-one else has a key, and at least you’ll both be safe.” Megan throws her arms around his neck and hugs him to her, while I sit here alone and bereft of the heat of a certain cowboy—and if he can learn to play nice, a certain cowboy’s crazy yet face-achingly gorgeous twin brother. The dull ache between my thighs that seems to only beat for those heathens now jolts me out of my seat, and I make my way over to the island to busy my hands.
“At least let the guy finish his job before you eat his face.” Chuckling when Megan sticks her tongue out at me, I hold up an empty cup to offer Mateo a coffee. He smiles, nods, and kisses his girl; after the last six years of feeling nothing but gut-tearing anguish, a little swooning is welcomed.
What has a girl got to do to find this Romeo and Juliet shit?
‘You know they both die in the end, right?’I add sugar to the cups and stir it into the creamer base, the spoon clinking against the porcelain as I tally a mental list of all the ways my non-relationship with Caleb and Cooper is bound to end in death. Absentmindedly fondling the patch of decorated skin between my breasts, I smile, realising that my fairytale ending was never going to be a love story meant for a sappy Shakespearean sonnet but rather a macabre sixteenth century retelling, psychologically intimidating and blurring the lines of classic gothic horror. That certainly felt more fitting for what me and the guys share. Watching them mutilate, torture, and murder a man because he touched me does have Poe-esque vibes to it.
