I don’t like the smell of Carrie’s house, and I can understand why she never let me come in here before.
I look down as my foot rustles on something. It’s an old newspaper. I notice my footprint left on it as I move off the crinkled paper. I stepped in mud on the way in. I turn to her and say sorry, and she says it doesn’t matter.
She’s right behind me as I walk down the hallway. It’s dark; no light comes in through her dirty windows with the drapes pulled shut. My heart is hurting in my chest. I’m scared. I don’t want to do this, but he’s a bad man and he deserves it. That’s what she had said. And I agree, I do. He is a bad man. Not even a man at all. But I find it strange that the police wouldn’t help. That the schools wouldn’t help. That no one, no one but me would help.
I brace myself to go up the stairs, but they don’t creak when I put my weight on them. Carrie is right behind me, her breath on my neck. There are nine stairs, just like in my house. How strange it is that our lives are so similar yet equally not similar at all.
“That one,” she whispers, pointing to a brown wooden door. “He’s in there.”
“Okay, Carrie,” I reply.
“I can’t come in,” she says, and I spin to look at her with horror in my eyes.
“Please!” I beg, close to tears now.
She shakes her head. “I can’t. I don’t want to look at him breathing ever again. The next time I see him, I need him to be dead.”
My eyes fill with tears, because I’m a pussy. I don’t want to cry but I can’t stop myself from doing it. She reaches up on her tiptoes and presses her mouth to my lips. She kisses me softly, deeply. Her tongue is wrapped in my warmth, my hand is in her hair. She tastes like sadness and cinnamon.
When she pulls out of the kiss, I’m not crying anymore. And neither is she.
“Do it for me, Ethan,” she whispers. “If you really love me, then do it for me.”
I nod, because I do really love her. Then I turn back to the door, feeling more determined than before. I look down at the knife and I touch my finger to the tip of the blade. It pricks my finger and a drop of blood slips from the cut and drips on the floor.
“Go on. You can do it. And then we can be together.”
I put my hand on the door handle and I push it open. Because I want us to be together, I really do. More than anything else in the world.
I step into the black within, and the soft snores of her sleeping parents tremble back to me through the darkness.
