“You’re protecting me because you’re my team leader,” I say, desperately grasping for logic or some explanation that makes sense. “You’d do the same thing for any of the others.”
He presses his face against the side of my head, his lips skimming my temple so gently that goosebumps chase one another down my neck.
“Eden,” he breathes.
I have never heard my name sound so much like a confession. Like a secret that’s escaped from a part of him so deep, he can only whisper it in the dark. He’s so close to me, but I still can’t see any part of him. We might as well be at the bottom of the ocean. Nothing but him and me, and this moment suspended between us like a held note.
“I don’t understand,” I say, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it pulse in my ears. “You barely know me.”
He pulls in a long breath. “Are you okay to keep the pressure on yourself?”
“Where are you going?” I ask, knitting my hand into the front of his jacket.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, gentle but wavering. He pries my fingers from the leather. “I’m going to stay right here, but I… need to not be touching you. When I say all this.”
He drags himself away from me, and the loss of warmth is jarring. A dense cold presses into the space he just occupied. My teeth start to chatter.
“I’m going to tell you everything.” His voice is still close, but he feels so far away. The only thing stopping me from crawling through the shadows to find him is how serious he sounds. “I have to start from the beginning, or none of this will make sense. Please don’t say anything until I’m done. If I stop, I might not be able to start again.”
I’ve never wanted to hear something so much in my entire life.
“I apologize in advance for any pauses,” he says. His voice is all that exists in the world. “I know it’s annoying how I choose every word, but this is important.”
I nod, then remember he can’t see me. “Okay.”
CHAPTER 44
I’m not sure I did the right thing, but I see potential in that boy. I hope I’m not proven wrong.
—Journal of Donald Dellman, April 2020
“When I was seventeen, I was so different,” Nico says. His voice is so quiet that I almost can’t hear it over the rush in my ears. “I wish you could’ve known me then. I used to think the worst thing that could happen was failing a test or disappointing recruiters who came to my meets. I was shy. Maybe too trusting. I believed people were good.”
There’s a long pause.
“I’d just begun my senior year when I started having these dreams,” he says. “The dreams were all similar. A chance meeting with a woman a good ten years older than me who I’d never met, always white, and with long brown hair. They were strangers, but they all felt familiar for some reason.
“All of my dreams ended with me chasing her through the woods,” he continues. “I didn’t know what was happening. Only that I needed to catch her, and when I did, I’d force her to the ground and strangle her. I now know they were Billy’s memories, but at the time, I had no idea where these images were coming from.
“It didn’t take long for the dreams to start happening during the day. I’d zone out while sketching and draw these disgusting things. Women with blue and waxy skin. Beaten faces. Naked women with their heads cut off. I had no idea what to think when the urges started. I’d be walking down the hallway at school andsee a girl at her locker, and this voice in my head would wonder what it would feel like to break her skull open on the metal.”
I’m so still, hanging on every one of his words that the pain in my hand feels like it belongs to someone else.
“One night, I was at this party,” he says. “In the woods. I’d never been much of a drinker, but my friends were pushing me to join them, and there was this girl, Allison, who I’d had a thing for since I was a freshman. I was drinking a beer on the edge of the group when I felt… something. I remember the feeling so clearly. It felt like ice water was being pushed up my brain stem. I got scared that it was alcohol poisoning, even though I’d only had two beers, but then this presence slammed into my mind and I wasn’t alone in my head anymore.
“I could hear him introducing himself to me, but I didn’t know what was happening. I tried to move. Call for help. But I was pushed so deep in my head that I could only watch what was happening as if from the bottom of a well. I watched my hand set my cup down. Felt my feet carry me to where Allison stood with her friends. She looked up at me, and Billy made me grab her face and kiss her. Right there in front of everyone. I’d never kissed a girl before. I was trying to scream because I knew something was wrong, but to everyone else, it looked like I’d finally worked up the courage to make a move on the girl they knew I liked.”
Nico sniffles. The space between us feels so wide, but I know he doesn’t want me closer, so I don’t move, even though I want to take away his pain.
“Billy made me get in my car,” Nico says. “I knew I shouldn’t be driving. I’d been drinking. But I could do nothing to stop it. He drove to the hardware store. I watched myself buy rope. The cashier talked about the weather, and I listened to my voice respond with things I’d never say.
“When I woke up the next morning, I thought it had been a bad dream, but my friends had texted to congratulate me about Allison, and the rope was in my car. I threw the rope in the garbage and tried to pretend it never happened. But Billy hadn’t really started.”
My eyes are adjusting as he speaks, the pitch black giving up small details: the suggestion of columns around us, and Nico’s silhouette instead of a void.
“I was walking home from cross-country practice a couple days later when Billy took control again,” Nico says. “I ended up at the art building where Allison was loading canvas boards into her car. She smiled when she saw me, but I could feel the intentions inside my body. I tried so hard to warn her.”
He stops, breathing quick and shallow.
