However, I’m still conscious because I hear one of the most frightening sounds I’ve ever heard. It cuts through the turbid fog of my disassociation.
Because it feels so close.
And I don’t realize it’s coming frommeuntil I taste the warmth of copper sliding down the back of my throat.
I’m screaming, but this time,I’m calling out for Chase.
His name tears out of me in desperation.
And in an instant, trembling hands bracket my cheeks. The rough, yet gentle ones I’ve come to know as my best friends' brothers are around me, dragging me into his solid chest.
His hand clenches the back of my neck.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Laik. Fuck, I’m so fucking sorry.”
I grab hold of his arms, and I don’t realize that I’m cutting into his flesh, digging and clawing, until I feel the stickiness of his blood, the shreds of his skin beneath my nails.
He holds me together when I tear him to shreds, and he whispers over and over again, “You will survive this. I’ll make sure you do.”
I knew the moment I saw my father hanging from the tree that his suicide would be my mother’s demise.
I just wish I hadn’t been right.
I continue to stare at her bruised unmoving body on the sofa.
Her shell is here, though frail and splintered, I can still see her, hear her and feel her. However, her soul is gone, buried in the empty plot beside my father.
My heart thuds, cracks again.
It was hard watching her like this, brutally broken. And in some ways, it was harder than dealing with the loss of my father. Because while I watched him handle the bullying and the effect it had on him, he held the shards of his brokenness together. But my mother, I was watching her disintegrate before my eyes.
Fury fires through my veins. Hot and scalding.
My parents were good people, they didn’t deserve this fate, or the accusations the Campbell name carried. They deserved better,so much fucking better.
I curl my fingers around the edge of the purple crocheted blanket that has slipped off my mother’s shoulders, pulling it up and tucking her in. My mouth pushes to the top of her head, her skin cool beneath my lips. I step back, and cross my arms, bite and gnaw at my bottom lip when it begins to tremble, a shiver cutting and tugging at the skin around my spine.
My father hadn’t been dead for twenty-four hours before the town had started celebrating. They thought it was over, that the lives of the town's vibrant young women were no longer doomed to a sinister fate, and that the ones down there, in Devil’s Tunnel, screaming from behind the concrete, could finally drift away. However, I knew that eventually another life would be taken and they would realize that they had fucked up. That they had pointed the finger at the wrong man. That their whispers held the noose of a rumor that found the neck of my father and ultimately destroyed my family. That they, themselves, had taken an innocent life.
I shuffle toward the front of the trailer and peek from behind the gauze of floating cream fabric that hangs crookedly over the small, frosted window. The hood of Chase’s faded red truck has caught the sun hiding behind the heavy cloud cover, and I can see Jade in his passenger seat.
I drop the material and shuffle toward the door, my hand skating the length of the metal, unlocking all three deadbolts before prying it open and stepping out. I stumble over the dead pot plant I was supposed to have cleared a week ago.
Heat rises to my cheeks. It's a small hint of embarrassment, but mostly annoyance, and I’m reeling my leg backward, stubbing my big toe against the black flexible plastic.
My chin is angled down toward my feet, and I bite my tongue when searing pain shoots from the small bones and up my calves. That’s when I hear his voice, the same raspy, chesty timbre I’ve come to find comfort in.
“Hey, Laik!” Chase calls.
I spin and watch him jerk his stubbled chin at me. “Please, do that again.”
A small grin lifts my cheeks. I guide a cigarette out of my running shorts, biting it between my teeth and sparking it up. I am still sweaty from the ten-mile run I’d thrown my body and brain against. I’d started running after we’d lost Dad, after Mom took to the slopes that quickly turned to needles filled with heroin. I’d needed an escape too, and running had become mine. Taking a sharp pull, I raise my voice and call around a lungful of nicotine, “Hey, Chase!” On the recline of my head, I exhale, then drop my chin, smirking. “How about you go fuck yourself.” I return the cigarette to its place between my lips, snickering quietly, not taking my eyes off him.
And somehow, his dark eyes turn darker. I quirk a brow in challenge, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth.
He must say something beneath his breath because I watch Jade sputter a laugh from the passenger seat before slapping the back of her hand to his flexed bicep.
Chase curls his shoulders to his ears, sticking his tongue out and biting it when she does it again. His smile is wide, teeth bright.
