“Nothing,” I say. He drops it, but I can tell that all he wants to do is keep asking questions. I just don’t have answers for him right now. Two weeks ago, we were laughing in the Hollow after Brighton lost in a game of pool and drank a mystery smoothie as the loser.
Now we can’t find Brighton, my life is back to being nothing but a never-ending mess, and I can’t seem to collect the pieces fast enough to put it all back together. When we arrive, some asshole with a lifted truck is parked in my spot, and I almost lose my mind, but I pull into the visitor space instead.
“Come on.” I climb out and head for my front door. Even from outside, I can smell the mold crawling up the walls, and it threatens tears.You can do this.I unlock the front door, and Reid gags from the wet dogsmell that rolls from the hallway. “They fucking closed all the windows,” I swear, stepping inside.
It’s worse than I could have imagined, and there’s not a shot in hell that it’s an easy fix. Water damage wraps around most of the main space—two to three feet up the walls—grey patches of peeling paint and warped baseboards. My couch is destroyed and is the source of the foul smell.
“Damn, Ree,” Reid stands next to me with his sweater up over his nose. “Can you even live here anymore?”
Yes, and turn into a heartless swamp monster that never speaks to anyone and never loves a thing again.
“Probably not,” I say instead. “I just need to see if there’s anything I can salvage. They want to clean it out next week, and whatever I don’t take now is going to the dump.”
“That’s rough,” he says, nudging the crusty leg of my coffee table with his shoe. I didn’t really have it in me to have small talk with him, so I start moving around the condo in silence, collecting what wasn’t totally ruined and throwing it in a pile.
“There are two bins in the back of the Bronco. Grab them,” I tell him, and he nods, jogging out to the parking lot. I wander into my room and survey the mess. If I were tidier, the ruined clothes matted to the muddy carpet would have been in the dresser or hanging in the closet.
Brighton would have put them away.
I clench my jaw and stare at them, pushing away the tears with the back of my hand before I start to pull what I can up. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot my old CM Punk shirt, and I move toward it, stuck halfway under my bed. It’s crusted to the couch leg, and I yank on it, but the fabric rips clean down the center.
The sudden give sends me stumbling backwards, and I hit my head on the dresser, knocking over a few picture frames. I stare down at the destroyed t-shirt, and I should be upset that it’s ruined, but all I can think about is Brighton, and it only makes everything worse. The tears start,and I can’t stop them this time. I shove myself up and fling the shreds away.
I look around, pissed off at the room; everything feels so foreign now.
This isn’t my home anymore.
I hate it here.
I spin and swipe every picture off the dresser, sending them flying against the wall, before grabbing the lamp and throwing that too. It feels good to destroy something, to have control of that distraught rage that’s coursing through me, and once I start, I just can’t stop. I grab the back of the dresser and rock it as hard as I can until it crashes over. I slam my boot into the back of it over and over until the flimsy particle board snaps.
I don’t even give a shit about the posters on the wall that aren’t ruined; they get torn down, too. Glass shatters as I chuck them across the room and scream at the top of my lungs.
It’s not until Reid barrels into the bedroom with a scared look on his face that it hits me like a freight train.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, and I shake my head before I sink back to my knees in the glass and try to catch my breath. Reid kneels next to me, completely silent and unsure what to do as I cry out the rest of the air in my lungs.
“Hey, Ree?” he says after a few minutes. “Will you tell me what’s going on, cause that was…”
“I shouldn't have… I just—” I try to explain myself, but nothing comes out, and he nods.
“I get it,” he blurts and rolls back so he’s sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. He looks like a little kid again, and it’s been a long time since I saw his face so soft and sad. “You should see the inside of the shed.”
“In the back yard?” I question.
He nods. “Sometimes when I feel scared, I lock myself in there with a hockey stick and tee off on the walls.”
“Reid.” My mouth falls open in surprise.
“Did you know it went through him?” he says quietly, and my brows furrow in confusion.“The bullet. It’s in the shed.”
“What?” I sit straighter, my muscles going tense.
“Yeah, it’s stuck between two boards in there. Sometimes I think about prying it out with pliers, but I kind of like seeing it.” Reid explains. “Makes me feel less crazy because I know it happened, what wakes me up at night wasn’t just a nightmare, it’s real life.”
“Of course it’s real.” I reach out to him and tug on the hair at the back of his neck so he looks at me. “It was you and me that day, it was real.”
“Sometimes it feels like he’s a fictional monster, and it doesn’t help that Mom fans the flames any chance she can, kid. She’s made him into a figure of shadows that I can’t shake.” He inhales slowly, and my heart squeezes in my chest.
