He hesitated.Started crying again. Harder this time.
“What then, Myers!” I shouted.
He flinched, and a groan escaped him as he clutched his bleeding stomach tighter.
“Then … I raised my gun to the back of the guy’s head, right here.” His shaking finger pointed to the back of his own skull. “And … and …”
The words wouldn’t come. A dark stain spread across his crotch.
Jesus.
He’d actually peed himself. Just like Zach did back then. The irony.
I stood up. Ready to leave.
“No, please,” he begged. “Please.”
“Then fucking talk!” I leaned over him, close enough to smell the sour mix of sweat, blood, and urine. “Talk, or I’ll leave you here to bleed out like the pig you are!”
He cried harder but didn't say a word.
“I swear to God,” I shouted, my rage breaking free. “This is your last—”
“Then I got out of the car!” he shouted back at me.
I stared at him.
His forehead glistened under the weak yellow light. Tears cut dirty tracks through the grime on his face. His lips trembled.
“You what?” I asked.
“I got out!” he repeated. “I got out of the fucking car.”
“To get the knife?” I asked.
“No! To fucking run!”
I straightened slowly, still staring at him.
“I couldn’t do it,” he rambled on, words spilling out fast now. “I just couldn’t. She’d offered so much money, but I couldn’t do it. So I got out.”
I heard him say the words. I really did. But my mind refused to let them in. As if they were so utterly ridiculous thatthey would be a waste of space in my brain.
“You’re lying.”
“I swear it’s the truth!” he sobbed. “I told her I couldn’t go through with it. I … I never killed anybody before. I just needed the money. My friend Billy told me about some woman he knew from his AA meetings years back. She knew about Billy’s record and contacted him all these years later. She asked if he knew somebody who could help her take care of some bad dude. Billy never told me we’d actually kill this guy. I thought we were just gonna hurt him a little. Scare him.”
It was like reality and some other dimension blurred together right in front of me. The walls felt closer all of a sudden. Then farther. Then closer again.
Every instinct in me screamed that Myers was lying.
I tried to sit on the chair but missed it. My legs folded, and I hit the floor hard. My shoulder knocked against the table’s leg. The wood scraped across the floor.
“After I got out of the car and told her I couldn’t do it,” he went on, “she got so mad. Started yelling at everybody. Then they got into it. The dude and your mom. In the car. Everything happened so fast. The shouting. The shoving. And then, all ofa sudden, the dude screamed. He screamed so fucking loud!” Myers’ head shook as if it were happening in front of him all over again. “That’s when I realized what she was doing. She was fucking stabbing him. Two times. Three. Four. He fought back. Got on top of her. But she screamed for me to help her. Said if he survived, we’d both go down. So I pulled him off of her, and she stabbed him again. Over and over. There was so much blood. His guts fell out of him right in front of us …”
I just sat there on the floor.
Feeling so fucking empty.
