by Sam Crescent
She wouldn’t accept that.
Breathing into her friend’s mouth, Taylor worked her chest, refusing to let this be over.
Time passed, and suddenly the ambulance was there. She was pulled aside. Someone held her arms, keeping her at bay. She watched as the men worked over Carla. She answered their question as best she could. What the hell was happening?
For a couple of minutes, the two paramedics worked over Carla without success, and when she saw them shake their heads, she screamed at them. Pulling away from whoever held her, she knelt down beside Carla.
“Come on, Carla, you’re fine. You’re perfectly fine. Nothing is wrong. You can’t give up.”
“Who are you?” one of the men asked.
She didn’t answer them as she pulled her best friend into her arms. She kissed Carla’s head, holding her close, trying to get her warm.
“You’re not dead. You’re not dead. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
She rocked with Carla in her arms, humming, trying to calm her own nerves. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she ignored the cold and whatever was going on around her. The music had stopped, and everyone had walked away.
Her best friend couldn’t be dead.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“What’s her name?” She heard someone speaking in the background, and she closed her eyes, not interested in whatever anyone had to say.
“Taylor,” someone said.
“Taylor, you’re going to have to let her go.”
Through blurry eyes, she looked up to see one of the paramedics staring at her. Next to him was a cop.
“You need to let her go.”
She shook her head.
“I can’t. She promised she’d be here. She shouldn’t be dead. No, she can’t be dead.” She held her friend tightly to her. There was no way Carla could die. It just … she was so young. They were eighteen. Their whole lives were ahead of them, and it just wasn’t possible for her to be dead. Taylor couldn’t handle this. Not right now. Not with so much for them both to do. They had a list they wanted to do, to accomplish together, and there was no way it could be all over now. Not now.
She’s dead.
You’ve got to let her go.
Even as she tried to fight the paramedics, she knew they would have to use force, and she couldn’t handle that.
Nodding her head, she lowered Carla’s still body to the ground and stood back, watching as they covered her body. Someone placed a blanket over Taylor, and she didn’t even realize she was shivering or shaking.
She was so cold.
How did her friend end up in the lake?
What had happened?
There were so many questions that were unanswered.
“We’re going to go to Italy, and you’re so going to find a guy to make all of your kinky fantasies come true.”
Italy.
Seeing the Grand Canyon.
Bungee jumping.
Seeing the United Kingdom.
College.
Drinking.
They were all plans that they’d made together, and yet, they weren’t going to get the chance to do them together because there was no time.
Carla was dead.
Gone.
She watched the ambulance pull away, and then her parents were there.
“Oh, honey, we came as soon as we heard.”
Taylor didn’t know why they were there, and she didn’t question it. Wrapping her arms around her mother, she felt them both try to comfort her.
This was senior year.
Death wasn’t supposed to happen, not to Carla.
She didn’t know what happened next. Her parents took over, and rather than fight them, she let them do what they did best, take care of her. This lake would never be the same again, not to her.
School.
She’d have to go to school.
Would they call her weird names because she’d held her dead friend? That she didn’t want to let go?
Staring out of the car window, she didn’t really see anything. Feeling someone’s gaze on her, she found Axton, one of the four kings, staring at her. He was standing with the other three of his boys. She couldn’t look away from his dark gaze, watching her. There were times when she looked at him that she had to wonder if he was real or not. Was he as evil as people said he was?
As he was the self-proclaimed leader of the four kings, the other three boys were gathered around him, waiting.
What were they waiting for?
Her mind was a mess right now. She’d held Carla’s dead body in her arms. Her best friend.
Dead.
Never coming back.
Looking away, Taylor stared down at her lap, the blanket held tightly in her fist. She was so cold.
Shivering, she closed her eyes, resting her head against the window.
“It’s going to be okay, honey. We’re taking you home.”
Her mother reached out, touching her knee. She glanced down at the touch and felt nothing. There was nothing.
She took a deep breath before releasing it.
“I’ll tell you tonight. It’s going to be fun. You’re not going to believe it.”
“Come on, Carla, I hate surprises.”
“You’ll love this one.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be dead,” Taylor said. Carla was happy. She’d been laughing, smiling. People who were happy didn’t die like that.
She’d seen Carla’s wrists. They’d been cut, slashed up, bleeding out.
No one who was happy did that.
Was Carla happy?
She knew her friend.
They’d been together since playschool.
There’s no way that Carla would have taken her own life.
No way.
Something pushed her over the edge.
What the hell was the big reveal tonight?
Wiping her face from the tears that didn’t seem to stop, Taylor couldn’t help but think something else was going on here. She had to find out why Carla did what she did. Nothing made any sense to her.
Her parents pulled away from the party and from everything that was going on. She didn’t recognize anything as they drove home. She was numb. Completely broken. What the hell just happened?
She couldn’t stop replaying that moment in her head of when she looked out at the lake. Of the body floating on the surface.
No one spoke in the car, and that alone terrified her. They weren’t speaking.
Silence.
She hated that more than anything.
It was why Carla had been such a great friend. She knew how to fill up the silences. Her laughter, constant jokes. Just the way she was, and it always made her laugh. Right now, though, there wasn’t any laughter.
Far from it.
Tapping her fingers on her leg, she tried to think of something, anything, but just turned up blank.
Arriving home, she felt nothing.
Everything was so completely numb.
Like her body.
A frozen pit of nothing.
She didn’t know what to do or what to say. Everything was just still within her. She couldn’t process what had happened. She’d pulled her dead friend out of a freezing lake, and now nothing made sense.
Carla was gone.
She had to keep saying it over and over in her head to make sure everything was fine. There was no way this was happening. She pinched her thigh, and still she didn’t wake up from this dream.
“I spoke to her parents. They’re going to arrange the funeral as quickly as they can,” her mother said.
Taylor wiped away the tears. This was the last thing she wanted to hear.
Climbing out of the car, she didn’t say anything or respond as her parents called her name. She ran upstairs, going straight to her room. Her reflection caught her eye, and she saw her clothes. They were dry now, but she’d been in the lake.
Rushing to the bathroom, she leaned over the toilet and threw up. Gripping the
edge of the bowl, she threw up everything she’d eaten that day, and she was sure even some of the lake water.
Resting her head against the edge of the seat, her stomach empty, her mind filled with stupid ramblings, all the same. All about Carla.
This couldn’t be happening.
Not now.
They had so much to do.
Standing up, she removed her clothes and stepped in front of the sink. In the distance she heard her parents knock, but neither of them entered.
They didn’t know what to do or what to say.
Staring at her naked reflection, Taylor grabbed a toothbrush and began to scrub at her teeth, to rid her mind of the memory of what happened today.
Up and down, left and right, backward, forward. Any way she could clean, she did. They had to be clean.
They felt dirty.
She hated this feeling.
Clean teeth were so important.
Good hygiene.
Why are you thinking good hygiene right now?
It seemed so pointless.
Turning on the shower, she stepped beneath the water.
Carla won’t brush her teeth again.
Carla won’t take a shower.
There are a lot of things that Carla will never do again.
Turning the heat up, Taylor stayed beneath the spray. Her body went red from the heat, but she didn’t move. Her skin got warm, but she felt nothing.
Her body, her feelings, it was like she didn’t have any.
Where was the pain?
The sadness?
The anger.
The pit inside her was empty.
No fire.
No nothing.
Carla had taken a part of her away with her.
****
Axton Farris told the cops everything he knew while his friends did the same, speaking about the party, why there was alcohol on the premises. He gave the cop a pointed look. He was a young cop, couldn’t be older than twenty-five, and yet it was Axton that held all the power here, not the law.
They all took payment to look the other way.
He held no respect for them.
If there was a guy at his feet right now, bloody from his fists, and he told them the guy had walked into a wall repeatedly, they’d make a note and walk away. They were nothing. He was the power in this town. The four kings, and everyone knew it.
It’s why he could do the shit he did.
Watching the cop note down everything he said, he waited for his friends to be done. Their parents didn’t come to pick them up, not like other kids.
A dead kid in a lake wasn’t noteworthy to their power-hungry parents. Especially as Carla Smith was nothing. She didn’t have any prospects other than her high grades. Her parents worked at a local diner. Her house was small, more like an apartment.
So, to everyone he knew, she didn’t matter.
Climbing into his car, he didn’t need to tell his friends where they were going. King’s Ridge only had one place for them to go, and that was their hangout at the fighters’ ring. They organized all the fights, all the parties, and they had the run of the place.
Pulling his Ferrari 599 GTO onto the main road, heading out of King’s Ridge, he saw his friends doing the same.
Smirking, Axton overtook a small campervan and followed the road. He loved his car, especially as it had been a present for his seventeenth birthday. His dad offered to get him a replacement for his eighteenth, but there was something about this car. He didn’t know what it was, only that nothing else would ever compare to the feel of this beauty. To him, it was his car, and he knew how to drive it. He knew his braking distance, the speed he could go, and he trusted this machine more than anything else in his world right now.
Following the road, he navigated the traffic, slowing down when necessary, pushing his foot to the gas during a long strip of road, loving the rush that came to him at the prospect that anything could happen within a single second. Like tonight. The party that had turned to shit. Romeo had been trying to get Julia to come and party with them. Not that anything would be done, nope. Several of the chicks at King’s Ridge High School knew the score and loved that they’d been fucked by the four kings.
The security gate to the compound where they dealt with all their fights was open, which wasn’t unusual. Everyone knew to say away from their shit, and not only that, there was security everywhere inside.
Parking, he didn’t wait for the other three to arrive. Climbing out of his car, he headed toward the court that was marked with paint. There was probably blood, piss, and semen on the ground as things always got a little rowdy on these nights. Mix drugs and alcohol with teenage need, and crazy stuff happened.
“What the fuck just happened?” Romeo asked, the first to join him.
“Wait for the others.”
“They were too busy jerking off to overtake the camper van. They were a couple minutes back.”
“Then we wait.” He folded his arms as Romeo lit up a cigarette. Smoking was something that didn’t appeal to Axton in the slightest.
“You’re not a little bit spooked by what just fucking happened?”
“Do I look like it?” He stared at his friend, waiting for a response.
Romeo just shook his head. “I don’t know what’s with you, man.”
Axton was saved from answering as Karson and Easton finally turned up. He stared at all three of them. Romeo and Easton were a lot alike, tending to be the two that chased the chicks and did their pranks. He and Karson had stared death in the face and knew the world wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
All four of them had families that weren’t exactly good. They thrived on being the best by making sure people feared them and were willing to do anything to keep their power. His father had taught him from a young age to make others fear him, to be willing to do everything that kept them alive. Lie, cheat, fucking, anything that kept them all on top. So many secrets, so many lies, blackmail all of it. He knew, and he intended to keep this power because if it fell in the wrong hands, people would die.
“What the fuck, man?” Easton said. “You saw that. You saw what just happened.”
“Keep your shit together,” Axton said.
“She pulled her out of the fucking water! Carla. You saw her. We all saw it, Axton. There was no getting away from that.”
“She slit her wrists,” Karson said. “Carla killed herself.”
“No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t fucking do that. Carla was strong. There’s no fucking way she’d take her own life like that.”
Easton was losing it.
“Nothing happened tonight.”
“You really think I’m going to believe that, Axton? Shit, you knew what was happening. What I was waiting for. I told you.”
“And now you don’t tell anyone,” Axton said. “She killed herself.”
“She didn’t fucking kill herself, Axton. You all know that. You know she was pregnant with my fucking baby!” Easton stormed up to him, swearing, cursing, pissed off. Axton expected it. “My baby. My kid, and now she’s gone. Fucking gone. You made me stand back and watch as Taylor tried to help her. You saw her. She jumped into that frozen fucking lake, and you made me watch.”
“As far as anyone knows, she killed herself, and you can’t change that.”
Easton threw the first punch. “Fuck you. Who made you the fucking boss?”
Axton smirked. He’d been expecting that all night. The pain meant nothing to him. He’d dealt with far harder fighters than Easton. Sure, his friend could hold his own, but out of the four of them, Easton wasn’t the fighter.
Reaching out, Axton wrapped his fingers around Easton’s throat. Karson and Romeo knew to keep out of this. He wouldn’t hurt his friend.
They were the only people he trusted in the world, even before his own parents. They all had a pact to stay together, to fight together, and it would be like that for the rest of their lives. Nothing came between them. Not money, or drugs, or pussy. It was
as simple as that.
“You want to hurt me, that’s fine. Fucking hurt me, Easton. I get it. You hate me. You want to fucking kill me. That feeling is not going to go away. Carla Smith killed herself, and you better hope nothing falls back on you. You think someone is going to let this slide? You’re one of the biggest names in town, and all it takes is for the wrong person to get ahold of the facts, and you’re someone’s bitch in jail. You want that?”
“No,” Easton said, gripping his arm. “Did you kill her?”
Axton squeezed just a little tighter.
“Like you said, she was a fucking useless whore. That I shouldn’t be spending the time with her. I liked her, Axton. Liked her a whole hell of a lot.”
“And that liking got her killed, Easton. Think about that. Remember that.”
“Like you remember that?” Easton asked.
He released his friend, stepping aside.
“What do you need us to do?” Karson asked.
“You know they’re going to try to figure out why she killed herself.”
“And they’ll discover a miserable teenager. Nothing more.”
Easton spat on the ground.
“You going to say something more? You want it to be known that hours before she killed herself, she saw you?” Axton asked.
“Fuck you. Fuck all of you and fuck our fathers. They don’t have control over me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Axton said.
Easton wasn’t listening. He’d already walked away, and Axton watched him go.
“I guess that’s my cue to go and make sure he doesn’t throw himself off a cliff,” Romeo said, taking off.
“What went wrong?” Karson asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Axton didn’t answer. “Make sure her locker is decorated. The usual shit when something bad happens.”
“What about Taylor?”
“What about her?” Axton asked.
“You think she’s just going to let this go? She’s not going to ask questions?”
“If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll stay well away.” He walked away, heading back to his car. Climbing inside, he didn’t look back. Karson would close up.
There was shit he wanted to do all the time, but right now, he couldn’t just drive away. Responsibility was a pain in the fucking ass. The drive helped him to clear his head. To think about everything that had gone on tonight. Drinking beer, watching chicks dance or be on their cell phones. Hearing Taylor’s sudden scream. The ensuing chaos as she dragged her own friend out of the lake. It would stay with him for a long time. Carla shouldn’t have been at the lake. Easton and his fucking infatuations with cheap bitches were starting to make life fucking hard. No matter what Easton tried to do, Carla would never be one of them. Pregnant or not.