“College won’t change anything between us, Claire,” she says. “The kind of friendship we have doesn’t just stop.”
I don’t want to argue about going to see Branley, so I crack another beer as we head toward the church, the shadows of the woods around us lengthening in the dying light.
57. JACK
I’m the world’s biggest idiot.
An idiot for thinking Branley would let me go so easily, for not reading more into her parting shot over the phone, for not questioning why she wanted to meet out at the church and not at her parents’ house. I’m an idiot for not taking everything I know about Branley and realizing the equation didn’t add up. Branley who doesn’t give in. Branley who always gets what she wants. Branley who is sprawled across the altar when I walk in, push-up bra obvious under her cheerleading uniform, lacy panties flashing in my face.
The worst part is, I’m an idiot with a dick, and that part of me is dead curious about what she’s got planned.
“Jack,” she says, trailing circles with one finger in the dust on the altar. “I’m glad you came.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Branley?” I say, trying to keep my voice even. When she sent me a pic after prom, all I had to do was turn off my phone so I didn’t have to see. Now she’s right in front of me, and I can’t look away.
“How many times, Jack? You and me, right here on this altar . . .” She pitches her voice low and sexy, and I tell myself I’m walking toward her so I can hear and that’s the only reason why. “How many times?” she asks again.
A lot. The answer is a lot. Her hair hanging down the side, brushing in the dirt. Our noises echoing back at us from the stone walls. I clear my throat.
“Where’s my stuff?” I say.
Her eyes go big and wide, fake surprised. One finger goes to her lipsticked mouth in mock confusion. “Shoot. I forgot it at my house.”
“Goddammit, Branley,” I say under my breath, but she’s smiling at me, the perfect mix of the girl I know so well and one every straight guy in the world wants to fuck. “Get down,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “Come up here with me.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Bullshit, Jack,” she says, temper poking through the bedroom act. “You’ve been mine for years. She can’t just take you away, and you can’t act like I was nothing.”
“You weren’t nothing,” I say immediately, even though I hate myself for it, especially because it’s true.
Her face softens. “Then c’mere,” she says. “One more time.”
And I’m considering it. What would it really hurt, to say good-bye to Branley in the way she likes best? Alex would never know and goddammit I want to. Those are the only reasons why I should, against a million better reasons why I shouldn’t. But the wants are louder and more immediate, filling my head as she leans into me, perfumed hair against my cheek.
“Jack,” she says into my ear, and my whole body is humming. I think I hear a car outside and I pull away, but her hand is on the front of my pants and I don’t move far.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, hand against me. She’s going in for a kiss, but the half second of space between us cleared my head, disrupting everything I want to do and reminding me of what I should.
“Bran,” I say, and put my hands on her shoulders. “This isn’t happening.”
“Dammit, Jack,” she hisses. “All I want you to do is fuck me.”
“If you won’t, I sure as hell will” comes a deep voice from the front of the church.
I spin around, broken glass sliding under my feet, arms out in front of Branley like somehow I can keep the two guys who just walked in from seeing her. They’re hunters, locked and loaded for turkey season, shotguns in hand and a wave of whiskey breath preceding them that tells me bagging a bird wasn’t their only goal.
“What you two doing?” the guy out front asks, a twisted smile that says he already knows. He gets closer and I see why the smile goes past a leer and into something worse. It’s because he’s missing some of his nose.
We recognize each other at the same moment, and Ray Parsons turns back to his buddy, the one Alex never touched because she didn’t have to. “Well look who the fuck it is, Billy.”
“We’re just leaving,” I say as I feel Branley’s knees poking into my back, her fingers tight on my shoulders. She’s breathing fast and shallow, little puckers of air hitting my neck.
“Fuck you are,” Ray says. “We’ve been looking forward to running into you for a long time. Where’s your girlfriend, huh? Got a new one? This one ain’t so scary, is she, Billy?”
Billy’s bloodshot eyes skip right over my shoulder to latch onto Branley. “She ain’t scary at all,” he says. “Bet you could bend her over in two seconds, Ray.”
“Get out of here,” Branley says, her voice shaky. “Leave us alone.”
“We’re not gonna hurt you,” Ray says, ignoring me and talking to Branley. He leans his shotgun against the wall next to the door; Billy does the same. “See?” He spreads both hands in front of him but he’s still coming toward us, his smile too wide and empty, and Branley knows it.
“I said get the fuck out of here,” she yells.
“Listen to the mouth on her, Ray,” Billy says, following his friend.
Branley’s curled into a ball behind me and I’ve still got my arms out but I don’t know what to do with them. If these guys have got more than fucking with us on their minds we’re screwed and I know it.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I say.
“Neither do we,” Ray says, and now his chest is inches from mine, the stink of his breath in my face. “But some pussy’ll do,” he says to Branley.
“Back the fuck off.” I shove him, but he barely moves. It doesn’t even knock the smile off his face as he reaches around me to grab at Branley’s leg.
She yells and kicks, her bare foot striking out to hit him square in the face and splitting his lip open. I take a swing but his friend is on me and the punch hits him in the shoulder instead, not hard enough to do anything other than throw us both off balance as we land on the ground and roll in the dirt, hands grabbing for a hold.
I hear Branley screaming but all I can do is struggle. Billy is stronger than he looks. I get my feet under me but he’s on his too and gets my arms pinned behind my back. I buck and kick, swearing a blue streak as I see Ray drag Branley toward him across the altar, her skirt pulling up to show a tiny red thong that covers absolutely nothing.
He smacks her bare ass, leaving a welt. “You came up here looking for something, girl,” he says. “And you’re getting it.”
I’m fighting and twisting, anything I can do to get free, but Billy’s got a grip I can’t break.
“Ray gets his mind set on something, not much you can do to stop him,” Billy says, his tone weirdly conversational. “He’s had a bit to drink too. Let him have his fun and nobody’ll get hurt. It won’t take five minutes.”
Five minutes. Like the fucking problem is that we’re on a schedule and not that Branley is about to be raped right in front of me. She’s kicking and screaming but he’s already got her panties off and is going for his belt when I hear the sound of a shotgun being pumped.
There’s a moment when I lock eyes with Alex, calm and collected, gun in her hands. I’ve got the space of a breath to tell her not to.
And I don’t.
58. ALEX
This is how I kill someone, the cold steel of a gun unfamiliar in my hand but easy to decipher.
When I pull the trigger he is blown clear off the altar, a spray of blood arcing across Branley’s screaming face as he goes. There’s another yell, this one low and guttural. I hear someone coming for me, but I don’t know how to reload the gun and I always knew it would end this way, regardless. Violence begets violence, and if I want to be a cog in that wheel, I have to accept when it stops on me.
His shoulder hits me right in the sternum and
I’m flying, my back arched as I sail over a pew, the first of the stars popping in the night sky trailing across my vision as I land so hard some teeth are knocked loose, slipping down my throat before I have a chance to spit them out.
I hear Jack screaming and Branley crying and a vacuum of silence where Peekay’s voice should be, as blood flows down my shoulders so thick it feels like hair, wet and heavy.
This is how I die.
And I am not surprised.
59. JACK
Branley is hysterical, blood running down her face as she slides off the altar and crumples to her knees. She’s crawling for her underwear and saying my name over and over, but I go right past her to the other side of the pew. The guy who tackled Alex is leaning against the wall, mouth agape. “Shit,” he says, looking up at me. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Alex is half on, half off a pile of rubble—the same one we sat on a few months ago when she gave me her number. There’s bone sticking out of her arm and her shoulders don’t look quite right, but it’s what’s above that rips a sound from my throat as I go down beside her, hand clutching hers. The back of her head is caved in and blood flows down the rocks, bright red contrasting with the light pink of her brain.
“Alex?” I say, hands on her face, fingers on her open mouth. “Alex?”
Her eyes flutter and a ridiculous hope blooms in my chest. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to fix you.”
And I want to, right now with her mind out in front of me. I want to reach inside and pluck out the darkness, find the parts of her that aren’t supposed to be there and let the medics sort out the rest. Her fingers tighten on mine, but barely, and I know I’m bullshitting myself.
“Alex.” I say her name loudly, needing to say at least one thing. “I wasn’t with her, I wasn’t with Branley. I wouldn’t do that to you.” I’m yelling in her face, and the ghost of a smile spreads on her lips.
“I know,” she says, her words barely closing the distance between us even though I’m right on top of her. “You’re a good person.”
And then she’s gone, the inches between us nothing as she slips away and I’m only holding what’s left behind.
60. PEEKAY
My life is a list of things I didn’t do.
I didn’t send five bucks to a girl in Africa.
I didn’t call the cops after Ray Parsons tried to rape me, so he tried again on someone else.
I didn’t tell Branley she’s more than tits and ass and legs, so she still believed it.
I didn’t stop Alex from coming to the church even though I knew it was a bad idea, so now I’m standing here, empty hands at my side, looking at the blood spattered on the wall. Red trailing fingers point accusingly downward at a body hidden behind the altar.
Branley is on her butt in the dirt rocking back and forth and crying, her underwear in a ball in her hands, tears running down her face. A guy is against the wall saying shit, shit, shit, over and over again, like it’s the only word he knows. I can see the top of Jack’s head over the pew, but Alex isn’t getting up and I don’t want to know why.
My head is still ringing from the shotgun blast as I make my way over to Branley, but I’m barely lifting my feet and I trip over a beer bottle, the sound of it rolling away empty and hollow. Branley looks up at me but doesn’t stop rocking. I sit down next to her, peeling the thong from her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she says, words barely seeping out between tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You should put on your underwear,” I tell her. I don’t know what else to say and it seems to be the most sensible thing at the moment.
The guy in the corner is still saying shit shit shit. Between him and Branley’s I’m sorrys filling the air I can’t make my own words. Jack isn’t saying anything either, just leaning over an unmoving Alex, holding her hand against his face. It’s limp and loose in his hold, and I try not to look at her blood pooling around our shoes as I crouch next to him.
There are no questions, but I want to ask them anyway. I want to say, Is she dead? Is she gone? Is she going to be okay? so that Jack can tell me no, no, and yes. But the words won’t come because I know speaking them is useless, even as I reach out and press my warm skin against hers, now cooling.
The litany of shit shit shit has stopped, and the guy against the wall looks at me. “Hey, I know you,” he says. And I think my own mother could be in front of me right now and I wouldn’t recognize her.
“I don’t think so,” I say, but he’s saying shit shit shit again.
Tonight I have been too stupid, too slow, too still. I have not done things I should have. My hand goes for my phone but my fingers are too shaky to dial.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Calling the cops,” I say. Like I should’ve fucking done months ago when I was right in this very place but I didn’t, and now Alex killed someone and I don’t know what happened to Branley, and there’s blood pooling on the floor and fuck I just figured out where that guy knows me from.
Now all I can say is fuck fuck fuck, and he takes it from me, making the call himself. I slump next to him, rock cold against my back.
“Here.” He hands me a stick of gum. “You don’t want to smell like beer when the cops come.” I take it, balling up the wad of paper and throwing it on the floor with the rest of the trash.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he says. “To you that night, or to that girl now. You gotta know that.”
And I don’t know if it’s guilt or fear or shock making his voice quiver, or maybe it’s the actual truth and he wants so badly to believe it himself he’s got to tell me, of all people. But I don’t want his words, because I can’t forgive him right now. Not when the spreading pool of Alex’s blood has almost reached me.
“It’s just Ray, man,” he says. “He’s like a bulldozer. You’re along for the ride or you’re crushed underneath.”
And I think, yeah, he would’ve raped me, and Branley too, because who wants to be crushed when you can do the crushing? But when he gives me my phone back his hands are shaking worse than mine, and we can hardly make the exchange.
So I don’t say it. I don’t tell him that he’s an asshole who would rather rape girls than stand up to his friend because I couldn’t even make a fucking phone call to report my own assault because I was worried my friends who were drinking would be pissed at me, so what the fuck do I know?
“What do we tell them?” I ask. “What do we tell the cops when they get here?”
“The truth,” he says. “Ain’t no way around it. We tell them the truth.”
The truth is that I saw my best friend kill someone with no hesitation. The truth is that I stood still and did nothing while the life was knocked out of her. The truth is that Alex had just told me we had the kind of friendship that doesn’t end.
The truth is she had no way of knowing she was wrong.
61. JACK
I tell the truth. All of it.
Officer Nolan comes to my hospital room and writes until his pen is out of ink, holds up a finger to let me know he’ll be right back, and returns with one from the nurse’s desk, an advertisement for an antidepressant stamped across it.
He hasn’t said a word and I have no idea if he believes me or not, but when he asked me what happened I wanted to answer, and not just about tonight. Because maybe if I talk about Alex—the Alex from before I even knew her—she won’t be able to leave me yet. I’m keeping her alive with words, telling what happened years ago right up until now.
The town will explode, I know. Alex’s name will be everywhere, yearbooks cracked open so people can point and say they knew her. Her name and mine will be linked together forever, our names and faces the first thing that come to mind when the other is mentioned. And that’s exactly what I want.
I’m dead calm as I talk, piling the words on top of one another so I don’t have to hear my parents’ voices in the hall, demanding
to see me. I told Nolan to keep the door closed so I could tell the factual version, the one that has dates and times, conversations and locations. I’ll tell Mom and Dad the story from my heart, the one with Branley and blood, the smell of smoke in the night and tears sliding over freckles.
The nurse told me I’m in shock and that’s why I don’t feel anything yet. I’m okay with that, because I know when it hits it’s going to be a freight train that flattens me, knocking the wind out and leaving me on my knees, mouth open in a perpetual inhale before the racking sob breaks out.
Branley is already there. She’s having a complete breakdown in the next room. I can hear her through the wall, the rise and fall of her voice as familiar as my own but breaking with emotion, whipping everyone along in a tide that floods through the whole hallway. She started screaming when they separated us, feet kicking, swear words flying. It took two orderlies to get her under control but they must have lost their grip at some point because now I can hear them yelling at her to get down off the bed and stop swinging the IV tree.
“Your friend isn’t cooperating,” Nolan says, putting the final period on my statement and slapping his notebook shut.
“Don’t expect that to start anytime soon,” I say.
“Okay for your parents to come in?”
I nod and they’re through the door in a second, a nurse on their heels. My mom is a mess of tears, her face a mask folding under the mixed pressures of anger and grief, Alex’s name a word her lips can’t form yet. She just says your girlfriend with a question mark at the end of it, and I shake my head no. Dad’s more like me, a brick wall that I know I’ll have to run smack into as soon as I get home, all the questions and repercussions stopping me short the second I walk in the door.
“We want to keep him overnight because of the shock,” the nurse tells my parents. They try to argue that I’m better off at home, but the truth is I’d rather stay here, and not just because I’m not ready to tell them everything. The sooner I’m home in my bed staring at the crack in my ceiling, the closer I’ll be to returning to everyday life; the sooner I’ll have to stare at the Hancock pennant my mom hung over my bed and admit that the fantasy Alex and I spun together about apartments and part-time jobs and Irish wolfhounds was exactly that—a fantasy. One that evaporated right in front of me in a spray of blood.