Preston rolls his eyes. “Don’t be overdramatic. I’ll drive you to school, but you’re on your own for the day because I have shit to do.”
Finding my own ride anywhere else means probably hitchhiking, since I don’t have any friends, except for maybe Greyson, who I still talk to at work and hang out with sometimes, but I don’t think he has any class today and I hate asking people for favors—it’s bad enough I have to ask Preston.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” I force a chipper tone as I turn for the door, ready to get the day over with.
The last month has been really intense, especially with my parent’s case being highly investigated due to Luke coming forward and giving them information about Mira Price, his mom. I haven’t talked to Luke about it because I can barely look at him as it is, without feeling both agony and something else that I don’t think I’ve felt before. The case still hasn’t gone anywhere. Mira Price has been questioned and detective Stephner, who’s in charge of the investigation, is trying to get enough evidence to get a search warrant for her house. When I asked why Luke and I couldn’t just testify, he said he wasn’t sure if a song would hold up in court—they needed more. DNA proof or something better. I wonder what the hell would be left in her house after all these years—I’m sure she’s destroyed any evidence—so I’m pessimistic at the idea that an arrest will ever be made. However, what the case has done is spark tons of media attention, which has made my life a living hell, people like Stan, the reporter who harassed me through phone calls, popping up left and right. It’s nerve racking, especially because any of the text could be from the real killer since there’s two people out in the world that did it and they could still be lingering around, watching me.
What if he finally comes looking for me?
During one brief, semi-intoxicated meltdown, I told Preston my fears about this, which led to me stupidly divulging more than what I intended, like what went on between Luke and I, which he uses against me. So not only am I constantly looking over my shoulder, but I have Preston reminding me of what I’ll have left if I leave him—absolutely nothing. Still, sometimes I want to take the nothing.
I try not to think too much about it, though, as I head out the front door with Preston close behind me. When I reach Preston’s old grey Cadillac parked in the driveway, he steps around and opens the door, holding it open like a true gentleman, but he’s not. Something that he proves to me with his next move, when I veer around him to get in the car and he grabs my hip and pulls me against him.
I try to picture myself standing on top of the tallest building and soaring off of it with my arms spanned to my side as he presses himself up against me and kisses the back of my head.
“I was thinking that maybe tomorrow we could do something fun for your birthday,” he says, his fingers wandering downward toward my lower hipbone and pins and needles start to stab at my skin.
“My birthday was over a month ago,” I say flatly. Shut down. Shut down. “And honestly I don’t want to celebrate the day I came into this world.”
“God, what the hell is wrong with you. You’re always so down all the time.” He dips his lips to my ear and nibbles at my lobe. “Don’t I do everything for you… give you everything you want?” His fingers slip underneath the waistband of my pants and brush my skin. “Let me do something special for you or better yet, let’s do something together.”
“I’m not in the mood to sit around and get high while you cop feels.” I want to run. Take off down the road and never stop. Outrun what I’m feeling inside. The confusion. The disgust over this and the last couple of months. The obligation, something I know Preston will remind me off if I tell him to quit touching me.
His fingers dig into my skin, his flirty mood shifting to anger—I’ve said the wrong thing again. “Why can’t you be more grateful? Jesus, sometimes I think it might be best if I just kick you out. Just let you go live on the street. You could be a whore and make money that way.”
“Maybe I should.” I bite down on my lip as soon as I say it because I don’t want to be homeless right now, not with everything else going on. “Fine, if you want to do something for my birthday, we can.” I attempt to clean up the mess I made while I focus on picturing what it would be like to come to the end of the fall and crash. Would it feel like I was flying for a moment? Or would I just fall? Would I feel the pain when I hit the ground? My bones breaking? Or would I blackout before I even made it there?
“Good girl,” he says. “You’re always so good at doing what you’re told.” Then he kisses my neck, sucking on it before pulling away and my heart accelerates rapidly, but I remain dead on the outside and let the images of me splattered on the ground completely take over and consume me, but then they shift into something else, which happens sometimes. My mind goes from being on that ledge to falling into Luke’s arms.
Safe.
It would be so much easier if that feeling had stayed, but I know all too well that nothing good ever does.
Chapter 2
Luke
There are always two things on my mind. Booze and money. Or booze and gambling. It’s all I can focus on because the moment I stop and I let my mind catch up with life is the moment I think of her. Violet Hayes. The one girl who wrecked me in what I once thought was a the best kind of way possible when she broke me down, made me only think about her—made me want only her. But then it was taken away. Or stolen away by what my mother did. I should have known that I couldn’t escape my past—that leaving to go to college wasn’t enough to get away from the madness that is my mother. That she would find a way to have control over my life, like she used to when I was a kid. I should have known it wasn’t over yet.
After Violet moved out of the apartment two months ago, I called the police and reported what facts I knew about the murders. It was only a little bit, but I knew I owed Violet at least that much. But the phone call hasn’t led too much, unfortunately. The police haven’t found any real hard evidence to arrest my mother, but they’re trying to and I keep my fingers crossed everyday that something will happen.
I think part of me hoped that by telling the police, Violet would come back to me. But she didn’t. And the more time goes by, the less I think she ever will. If I was stronger, I’d go to my mother’s house and search for evidence myself, even though I have no idea where anything would be. But I wonder, what could be hiding in the chaos of that house. That perfect, clean house upstairs, covers up the years of crap she’s held onto that’s piled up in the basement. But the idea of going there and seeing that woman…feeling that kind of rage with her there… it makes me afraid of what I might do to her. So the wall remains between Violet and I, building higher and higher with each moment while I die a little bit more every day.
To help wake up every day, I try to tell myself that I’ll get over Violet eventually, because time is supposed to heal all wounds or some stupid shit like that, but it seems like time is having the opposite effect on me. The wounds have become infected and their seeping through my body and rotting me from the inside out. To add to the crap going on, I got a copy of my sister, Amy’s, journal she had before she committed suicide when she was sixteen years old. I didn’t ask for the journal, but my mother found it in one of her boxes and randomly sent it to me, playing her usual mind games, trying to tear me open by reminding me of my sister’s death.
“Remember how your sister left me,” my mother said when I’d called her up after I’d gotten the journal in the mail, wondering what the fuck it was. “You need to come back to me, Lukey. Don’t leave me—don’t be Amy.”
“Go to hell!” I’d yelled and hung up on her, feeling a fire so potent in my chest, I ended up tearing apart my room just to settle down.
I wasn’t planning on reading the journal because nothing that came from my mother has ever led to anything good. But with too much free time on my hands, the damn thing started haunting me and I finally cracked. The first thing I discovered is there was no way my mother even
took the time to read it before she sent it to me and she should have. The stuff on the pages paints a horrible, very true picture of the kind of sick, messed up person and mother she is. Whenever I read a page or two, I learn more and more about how much stuff was going on between Amy and my mother that I didn’t understand while living with them. For example, the time my mother tried to whore Amy out to one of her drug dealers for payment.
Twelve years old and my mother is asking me to do something that sounds so wrong at my age. To be with a guy… like that… I don’t know what to do. But she says it’ll help pay the bills and other stuff. I’m not sure what the other stuff is but I’m guessing it has to do with that shit she keeps making my brother inject in her veins, which I know isn’t diabetic medicine like my mother keeps telling me. I’m not stupid. I know she’s doing drugs.
But I wonder, if I can sleep with this guy she owes money to… give up my virginity to save the family from getting kicked out on the streets, if my mother will finally say thank you to me for helping out and that maybe, just maybe she’ll tell me she loves me.
Each word I read makes my hatred for my mother grows and the rage in my chest expand. Pretty soon I’m going to be filled with so much hate, I’m going to drown in it. So I do the only thing I can do to cope with it.
I drown myself in other stuff, just like I do to hide the pain connected to losing Violet.
For the last couple of months, my nights have been filled with booze, gambling, partying, and fights, some of which I go looking for and others are thrown at me like when I get caught cheating during a game. I know I should stop, not because it’s unhealthy, especially because I’m a diabetic, but one of these days I’m going to piss off the wrong person or take one too many drinks. But I can’t find it in me to give a shit. Live or die. It’s all the same to me anymore.
Sleep’s become a foreign concept, along with eating and drinking anything that doesn’t come in liquid form and gives me an after burn that numbs my heart, soul, and mind. When I do manage to close my eyes, my past haunts me. It’s becoming impossible to escape, so I try not to sleep as much as I can. I think it’s starting to show, at least that’s what I wonder when I walk out into the living room. Seth’s sitting on the sofa when I walk in, yawning and dreary-eyed from no sleep.
He glances up from the laptop with a disgusted look on his face when he takes in the sight of me. “No offense man, but you look like shit,” he says, closing the computer up as he takes in my sunken eyes and the healing bruise on my cheek, remnants of last weekends fight after I was accused of cheating down at Denny’s. Thankfully, the guys that hang there are a bunch of pussies and I got away with minimal scratches and quite of few swings myself. Unfortunately I can’t go back there anymore to gamble so I’m going to have to find somewhere else to make some cash.
“Shut the fuck up,” I grumble back at Seth, running my hand over my messy brown hair. It’s getting sort of scraggily since I haven’t been in for a haircut in a while. But I haven’t cared enough to go.
Seth flips me off, then rolls his eyes. “You need to get over this shit. Seriously. It’s going to kill you.”
“Get over what?” I play dumb.
He rolls his eyes again. “I’d tell you but I don’t dare say her name because you’ll give me that wounded Bambi look and then rip my head off.”
“I’m not a wounded Bambi,” I snap harshly, but have to swallow the lump forming in my throat. I snatch my jacket off the counter, before going over to the fridge. “Where the hell did the bottle of Jack Daniels go? And the Vodka?” I ask.
Seth puts his laptop aside, stands up from the sofa, and walks over to the counter area. “You finished it off last night before you went out to wherever it is you go.” He pauses like he’s waiting for me to tell him, but I don’t because I can barely remember myself what I did five minutes ago, let alone five hours ago.
I slam the fridge door and open the cupboard next to it where Greyson, Seth’s boyfriend, and my friend and roommate, keeps his stash of Cherry Vodka. “You think he’ll mind if I drink some of this?” I ask Seth, reaching for the bottle which is only about a quarter of the way full.
Seth shrugs as he leans against the counter. “I don’t think he’ll mind that some is gone since he barely drinks.” He wavers. “But I think he’ll mind that you’re drinking.”
I grab the bottle, wanting—needing—to get some in my system. I’m starting to shake just thinking about it—starting to think way too fucking much. “I always drink.”
“Yeah, but…” he trails off, massaging the back of his neck tensely.
I scowl at him. “But what? Just finish whatever it is you’re going to say.”
He sighs, letting his arm drop to his side. “Look, I get the whole drinking thing. I do it myself a hell of a lot, but Greyson and I have been talking and it seems like…” He shifts his weight, appearing uncomfortable. “You’ve been doing it more lately, particularly in the last month or so.”
“You mean since Violet left.” I ignore the knife slashing at my chest and it’s easier with the vodka in my hand.
He reluctantly nods. “Yeah, pretty much.” He blows out a breath, tugging his fingers through his blond hair. “Look I don’t know what happened between you and Vio…” He trails off when he catches sight of my face. “Her. But it’s obvious that you’re having a hard time dealing with it and you might… You might want to think about taking it easy on the shots and whatever the hell it is that you do all night.” He gives a pressing glance at my unwashed jeans and my wrinkled plaid shirt, then at my face. “It’s starting to show. Seriously, you looking like the walking dead all the time. I don’t even know how the hell you manage to go to school. And what about football practice? Doesn’t the season start in a couple of weeks? Shouldn’t you be getting in shape or whatever the hell you athletic types do to get ready for game season?”
He’s telling me things I already know and that I don’t care about, so I disregard him and start to unscrew the cap off the vodka. “I’m fine. I don’t do anything I can’t handle. And I work out all the time.” Lie. I’ve been slacking, something my best friend Kayden noted the other day when I didn’t show up for workouts. But not enough that I’ve lost a lot of muscle tone or anything and I honestly have a hard time finding the will to go, which is strange for me. My normal need for structure and order all fucked up, the only thing on track at the moment is school.
Seth shakes his head. “That’s the biggest bunch of shit I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. You’re not fine—nothing is fine with you anymore. In fact, I think you’re about two seconds away from falling apart.”
I tip my head back to take a swig, the sweet burning liquid instantly coating my mouth and I feel twenty times better. I take a long gulp, ignoring the bland cherry flavor, then lower the bottle from my mouth. “Since when did you become so concerned about my life?” I wipe my lips with the back of my hand.
He shakes his head, disappointed by something. “Since you obviously stopped caring about yourself.”
I drop the bottle of Vodka into my bag, swing the handle over my shoulder, and brush by him, heading for the front door. “I care about my life.” Lie. “Otherwise I wouldn’t get up every day and go to class.” Another lie. The only reason I do is a) because I have a weird issue with needing structure and school is the only thing that gives it to me anymore and b) It’s the only place I get to see Violet—seeing her consistently for the last week has been worth the pain in the ass of getting up to go. And even though it hurts like a motherfucker every time I see her, I must enjoy self-inflicting pain because I still want to see her.
Seth opens his mouth to argue, but I turn away from him and walk out the door. Luckily school’s within walking distance otherwise I’d have to ask Seth for a ride. It’s a decent day and I attempt to focus on that fact as I make the way to school. But then I hear my phone ring from inside my pocket, a familiar tune, and the possibility of having a good day diminishes. Even though
I don’t want to answer it and talk to her, I want to hear what she has to say—I always do—but only because I hope that she’ll finally let something slip that will help the investigation lead to her arrest.
“What do you want?” I snap into the receiver after three rings as I stumble up the sidewalk.
“Hey Luke,” my mom singsongs, either delusional or high—it’s hard to tell anymore. “How’s my little boy doing?”
“I’m not your little boy.” I make my way across the street, stumbling over the curb in the process. “So stop calling me that.”
“Oh, you’ll always be my little boy,” she replies as I approach the other side of the street and then start down the sidewalk. “When are you coming home?”
Rage burns inside me, a violent fire in my chest, as I think about everything she’s ever done to me in that hellhole she calls home. How she’s always acted like it meant nothing—that everything she did to me and to my sister Amy meant nothing. How she managed to ruin my life even when I wasn’t living at home. How she might have fucking killed someone, or at least been a part of it. All the harm she’s done. All the lives she’s ruined.