“What do you mean?” Bull asked, stepping forward.
Maria flushed, her expression turning wary. “I heard she got into it with a couple of preppy guys at a party last month. Had great pleasure in letting that slip to her mom and dad.”
I shook my head. “No, she was a virgin—she told me.”
Maria laughed, but it died abruptly when Bull scowled at her. “She may have been a virgin, but that didn’t stop her from getting fucked up on oxy and blowing six guys in a row. She was a good girl gone bad, and couldn’t handle it the next day when people started calling her out for it. Her parents practically abandoned her after that because they were so ashamed. Their little princess was broken.” She laughed, but there was nothing but hate in her laughter. “Got herself hooked on drugs, grades started dropping, collages lost interest in her—she’d tanked her entire future. Not so fucking perfect after all.”
I shook my head again. I didn’t know the woman Maria was talking about. That wasn’t the woman I had met, but when I recalled the tortured look in her eyes I knew it must be true. It seemed stupid and trivial, but at that age I could imagine that it felt like her whole world had fallen apart.
“And I just bet you enjoyed torturing her with that information, right, Maria?” Hammer argued. “She was just a kid. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me? What’s wrong with me? Have you any idea what it’s like to be constantly compared to someone? I was two years older than her and I should have had the same opportunities she had, but what did I get? Asshole parents who preached about god and earning my keep!” Maria was screeching out her words now, and her friend had backed away in horror. “I waited a long time to ruin her, and it was just as satisfying as I thought it would be.” She smiled widely, looking happy.
I swallowed, feeling sick. Maria and Hope had known each other, and Maria had been on a one-woman crusade to ruin Hope because she was jealous of her. Hope had had everything going for her until Maria had set her on this path. I thought back to the last time I had seen Hope, and how sad and broken she had seemed. I knew that feeling well, but I also knew you could get through it. You just needed to talk to someone. You just needed your family and friends around you, supporting you and telling you that shit could get better. That shitwouldget better. But Hope, she’d had no one to do that for her.
I drowned out the rest of the conversation as I turned and started walking toward the last place I had seen Hope: the old garage. My heart was in my throat as I got closer, the hot sun burning my back and my fingers tracing over her name on my chest.
I had to be wrong.
I had to be.
Didn’t I?
I stood outside the door to the old garage, my hand on the rusty handle, and I stared at the door, wondering what I was going to find behind it. This was where it had all begun. This was where I had met Hope, and something inside me had come back to life. This was where she had offered her virginity up to me and this was where I had rejected it so I could do right by her. I had known that night that she was special, that there was something important about her that would change my life so dramatically.
I just didn’t know how.
But as I stared at that door, my bloody fingers smearing the handle, I finally knew, and I wished I could go back to that first night and do everything differently.
Perhaps we’re all set on our own tracks from birth, and no matter what we do, we’ll always end up at the same point. Or perhaps we have choices to make that can and will change everything.
If that was so, then the guilt I had felt previously was nothing compared to what I would feel once I opened that door.
“Crank?” Bull’s voice said my name behind me. “What’s going on?”
“She’s in here,” I said, my voice almost breaking. “Hope’s inside.”
“You sure?” he asked.
I let out a dry laugh, the taste of death thick in my throat. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“You want me to do it?”
I shook my head, my gaze still on the door. “Nah, I’ve got this.”
I took another taste of her death into my mouth and pulled open the door, letting the darkness within flood the light outside. Letting our two worlds collide and disintegrate all at the same time.
Death and life connected and I crashed to the ground as it surrounded me.
~ 16 ~
“That’s some fucked-up shit,” Sketch whispered to Ranger. “I ain’t ever seen something like that before.”
“Really?”
“You sayin’ you have?”
“Yeah,” Ranger replied. “Saw dead bodies all the time out in Syria.”
