Lost King

by Piper Lennox

  And when I open my eyes, I berate myself even more for believing a simple key would be all he took.

  “Thought you’d like to see this,” he tells Theo.

  In his fingers is my license. He lets it clatter to the table.

  I feel Theo staring at me, but I’m too scared to look back. Ironic, since Callum’s the dangerous one. His eyes are the ones that should be filling me with fear: they’re steeled with rage, glazed from God only knows, and so flat they look soulless.

  But in Theo’s, I know I’d see something far scarier.

  “Get out of here, Callum,” I snap, then soften my voice when I turn in Theo’s direction. “Look, it’s not how it—”

  “Ruby Aria Jacobs,” he reads.

  Like a magic spell, it freezes my heartbeat.

  “Theo, I swear, it’s not.... I can explain it all, okay?”

  Callum snorts. The scratched, overplayed record of my remorse flips to rage as I pivot and shove him.

  “Go,” I seethe.

  My gaze locks on his. It doesn’t scare me anymore. I wonder why it ever did—two beady, red windows into the mangled life of a boy who never tried to make things better. I used to feel bad for him, thinking he wanted out of the gutter and simply didn’t know how.

  But no…he knew. He just wanted to pull me in with him.

  “Get out of my house.” I bite off every word, fist closing around the hot metal of his key. My key. “Now.”

  Callum smirks in that blood-boiling way, hands up by his head, mocking me. “Easy now, babe. Losing one boyfriend tonight already—sure you can afford to lose me, too?”

  “You’re not my boyfriend. You’re fucking nothing to me.”

  Callum cocks an eyebrow, running his tongue along the inner edge of his bottom lip. The place where all the scar tissue is.

  “Tell him, Ruby. Tell him what you told me.”

  I shove him again, trying to steer him to the door. Whatever’s in his bloodstream right now obliterates his balance, and he stumbles hard into the utility door under the stairs.

  “Remember? That it was all fake?” He pulls himself up by the painted iron banister. The metal groans, barely able to hold his weight. “Just revenge?”

  My stomach collapses. My lungs follow.

  Most of those moments in our lives that stick with us, those short-term memories that age into long-term, feel insignificant at the time. Car rides with my aunt, holding my mother’s pearls…I remember them so vividly, but thought nothing of them as they happened.

  Other memories, though—you feel them. The second they occur, you know they’re carving out their own suite in your head, where they’ll remain until the day you die. Like the night Theo filmed us. Callum, scooping me off that driveway.

  And I know that right now, listening to his sick, mangled laugh as he pulls on the banister to right himself, is one of those times. My heart thunders again, as the truth I was too slow to reveal finally gets out there.

  I feel it happening. This moment, becoming part of my Forever.

  “What were you planning to do? You never did let me in on the details. Take his money? Film him and slap it up online?” Callum smiles knowingly at me.

  As in, he knows he’s spewing lies. He knows he’s ruining my life. And he doesn’t care.

  That smile is so crooked and wrong. It stretches far enough to one side to show the gap where a molar is missing, the one that turned black and had to be pulled. It makes me as sick to see the gap as the rotten tooth once did. Everything about him sickens me, now.

  It sickens me most that I once looked at that cruel smile and made it my whole world.

  “You’re welcome,” Callum sneers at Theo over my shoulder, as I corral him to the door, leaning my full weight into him. My nails claw at his chest. I feel frantic, and I don’t really know why. It’s done.

  My secret is over.

  I’d hoped I would be relieved, but I’m not. I realize it’s not enough, just having the truth out there.

  It was supposed to be me who gave it to Theo.

  The second Callum’s outside, I lock the deadbolt and doorknob. For once, he doesn’t put up a fight. His damage is done. He’s happy.

  I watch through the peephole as he vanishes down the steps towards the parking lot, blending into the night. My fists relax into open palms against the door.

  When I compose myself and return, Theo’s sitting again. I decide this is a good sign, even if he still won’t remove his jacket.

  We both stare at my license, now centered perfectly on the coffee table.

  I stand across from him and wait.

  “Aria,” he says again, scratching the back of his head as he nods to himself, like he should have known.

  I hate hearing him call me that. It’s not who I am.

  But am I really Ruby, either? The version he thought he knew?

  “Theo...this isn’t how I wanted it to come out. That—that was really fucked-up timing, because I was literally just about to—”

  He holds up his palm. It shuts me up. It feels like it stops my heart a second time.

  Even though he doesn’t speak, I know what he wants to say.

  The timing was coincidental, but not fucked up. What’s fucked up is that it even got to this point. My confession wasn’t a few minutes too late. It’s days. Weeks.

  “Are you and Callum really over?” He stares at the table, not me.

  “Yes. Don’t listen to shit he says, Theo, please. It was all stupid lies. Him throwing a fit.”

  He looks up. “All of it?”

  I shrink back, the flash of hope I felt going up in smoke. Theo studies me a moment, then nods again and looks back at the license.

  “What kind of revenge?” he asks.

  As the tears spill down my face, I sputter the starts of sentences, of truths, and feel the pain in my chest swallow me whole.

  Theo grows impatient. He stands and stares me down, eyes flashing. “Were you going to steal my money?”

  I shake my head.

  “Film me?”

  “No.”

  “What, then? What were you going to do to me, Ruby?”

  The tears I see gathering in his eyes should comfort me, somehow. They’re proof that this unbridled anger, the same brand I saw in the cabin when he confronted Max, isn’t totally pure.

  It’s tainted with sadness. And that small thread is the only hope I’ve got that I can keep him, after all.

  “I was just...” I wipe my face and force my lungs to breathe. Everything hurts. It’s not just my heart that’s broken; it’s all of me.

  Theo tilts his head back, staring down at me while his eyes glisten and burn at the same time.

  “...going to break your heart,” I finish.

  My hands, lifeless by my sides until now, hug my arms close around my chest like I can keep all the pieces together. I know I can’t.

  Not when he looks at me like that.

  “‘Just,’” he repeats, then scoffs as he blinks hard, turning away and pacing to the corner.

  “Not like that,” I stammer, following so I can reach for him. As soon as I grab his sleeve, he jerks away, shrugging me off. “I meant ‘just’ like…not any of the other things Callum said. That was it. That one thing, that was...that was my plan.”

  My explanation fades. It makes sense in my head. In words, it hits me how awful it still sounds.

  “Then congratulations.” Theo slides past me and grabs his keys from the sofa. “Your plan worked fucking perfectly.”

  33

  Ruby grabs the back of my jacket. I tear away.

  “Theo, please, if you just listen—”

  “You’ll start being honest, for once?” This is the first time in my life I’m grateful for the anger I inherited. That all-consuming, block-out-the-world feeling that drowns everything else. It’s the only reason I’m able to get my keys and start for the door, instead of listening to her.

  I have to get out of here, but I don’t know where it is I�
��d go. My house has Ruby stamped all over it. Clothes she’s left. Places she helped me clean.

  Places I kissed her, and tasted her, and made love to her until my boring, shitty life finally started making sense.

  “...not like I planned to do it, okay? It’s just— Once I saw you in the hardware store? All I could think about was that video. How...how humiliated I was. How humiliated I still am.”

  The mention of that video is what makes me stop and turn back to her. I couldn’t focus on anything else she was saying—but that one word stokes everything in me.

  Her tone shifts, volume rising once we’re face-to-face. “And you know what? Yeah, what I did was wrong, but what you did back then was more wrong.”

  “Except I didn’t do it.”

  My outburst makes her step back. Her anger slips. “What?”

  “I didn’t film us, Ruby. That webcam wasn’t mine.”

  She blinks at me, mouth moving in silence.

  The events of tonight start catching up to me. My chest feels like it’ll explode, I’m breathing so hard. I want to break every fucking thing around me. When I turn to open the door, my other hand squeezing my keys hard enough to puncture my skin, Ruby grabs my arm again.

  “Don’t.” I pull it hard from her grasp. “I need to go. I can’t be around you, right now.”

  “What do you mean the webcam wasn’t yours?” This time she pushes my arm, instead, turning me halfway towards her. “I found it, remember? In your pocket.”

  “Yeah,” I spit, “because I tore it off the shelf the second I found it.” My hand stabs at my chest. “I didn’t put it there, Ruby.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Paige.” I motion behind me, as though she’s right out in the parking lot, instead of jetting around the globe on her rich, older husband’s dime, waiting out the clock on his will. If rumors are to be believed, anyway. With her, I’m inclined to think it’s one-hundred percent true.

  Slowly, Ruby shakes her head. “No, Paige was my friend. She was the only person who...who was nice to me. She invited me. She—”

  “Trust me, however ‘nice’ she seemed, it was all fake. She was pissed at me, so she decided to get some petty revenge.” My anger tumbles back as I nod down at her. “Guess it’s a theme.”

  “Theo—”

  “I have to go.” I can’t stay here. I can’t keep feeling like this—outraged and confused, looking at her and not knowing if I’m seeing Ruby or Aria. Not knowing how I feel about either one.

  “No.” She braces her arm in front of her, blocking the door. “You can’t leave until I get a chance to explain.”

  “How do I know you’d be telling me the truth?”

  She freezes. Gradually, her arm lowers.

  “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” she whispers.

  Finally, we both shut up.

  That’s the crux of it, I realize—why we could stand here all night, arguing in circles, explaining the past and present to death without getting anywhere. We can’t trust each other.

  I don’t know what it is that finally gets me out the door. Anger, heartbreak...probably some ugly fucking hybrid of both, because I don’t even notice myself doing it. I’m just suddenly in the Jeep, eyes stinging in the heat bouncing off the fogged windshield.

  When it clears, I look up through the glass.

  Ruby watches me from her front porch. The light from her living room hits her back, turning her into a silhouette.

  Maybe it’s better if this is the last look I ever get of her: her face, tears, and everything I’ve memorized completely obscured.

  34

  My alarm goes off at five.

  At five-twenty, I call out of work.

  I didn’t sleep. Shapes and shadows danced across my ceiling until I couldn’t tell which were the shifting trees outside, and which were projections from my own exhausted, fevered brain.

  “I didn’t film us, Ruby.”

  “That webcam wasn’t mine.”

  Some part of me knows this is a good thing. A great, wonderful thing. It’s even better than Theo changing, no longer the heartless boy I thought he was; it means he wasn’t heartless to begin with.

  If only I could get myself to believe it.

  Too many details spawn too many questions. Our versions of that night don’t align. He says it was Paige—her own sick version of revenge.

  All I can think about is how kind she was. Not just to me, but to all of them. I saw it. I watched that group every summer and saw her laughing, kicking up sand at her friends and braiding other girls’ hair, teasing newly formed couples around the bonfire, and offering people blankets and jackets when the wind was too strong. She didn’t sit and seethe with jealousy or spit cruel remarks at anyone, like Vivi and Cate. She was the one who invited me to the party in the first place.

  But...

  The word keeps carving up my skull.

  But she was the one who invited me.

  She was the one who pushed drinks into my hands.

  She wanted to go upstairs.

  “Find Theo.”

  The rest of the puzzle pieces slam around behind my eyes until I can’t stand thinking about it. It’s too much to fit together. Nothing makes sense.

  All I know is that I’ve lost the first thing in my life that did.

  At six, I get up and force myself into the shower. The water leaves my skin red and raw, but still doesn’t feel hot enough.

  I spend a long time just standing there, crying.

  Theo said my plan worked perfectly, but he was wrong. Yes, I did what I originally set out to do...but I never thought the explosion would get me, too. I was supposed to be so far removed when it happened, it couldn’t touch me.

  When I get out, nose stuffy from crying and head spinning from the shower’s heat, I swipe off the mirror fog and look at myself.

  Focused eyes. Straight teeth. A slimmer face and better hair and better everything than how I used to be. But not a better person.

  All those years, I studied my reflection and grew to despise what I saw. That hatred was nothing compared to what I’m feeling now.

  By seven-fifteen, I’ve managed the impossible feats of getting dressed and combing my hair. I can’t eat. Even the coffee I brew makes me sick.

  It’s a disgusting day. The weather is fitting: cold rain and high winds that seem to push every wall inward. I lie on the couch under the afghan Aunt Thalia crocheted me as a graduation gift and poke my fingers in and out of the holes, the way she told me not to.

  “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  Every date plays in my head at once. Every night in his house, my bad memories being replaced with ones of deep kisses and white-hot touches, private piano concerts and slow confessions. My old wounds closing up until, finally, I trusted him. Or thought I did.

  I keep circling back to that night at the Falls, and how the mist froze my face while his chest warmed my back, all the way through.

  “I thought what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

  “Not always.”

  How right I was. It’s not always the fall that gets us. It’s the complications.

  At noon, I open our text thread. I tell myself it’s just to check in—a quick apology, maybe, and a request to meet up in a few days, once things have cooled down.

  Instead, I ramble on and on about how sorry I am. How I didn’t mean for anything to happen this way. How I changed my mind, and why that should matter more than my original intentions.

  How I don’t think I’ve fallen for him anymore. I know I did.

  After twenty minutes of rereading until it doesn’t even sound like English, I still can’t decide if it’s worth sending. Maybe some things are just too broken to fix.

  I decide to leave it up to fate. From the bowl of coins and gum wrappers I empty my pockets into every evening, I grab a quarter.

  Heads, I’ll send it. Tails...the message gets deleted.

  I close my thumb up
in my fist and position the coin on top.

  My eyes close. I hold my breath.

  I flip it.

  Only when it hear it hit the table, spin for a moment, and roll into silence do I open my eyes and lean close.

  Heads.

  The couch screeches into the wall when I sit back, phone in hand, and read the message again.

  I delete it.

  Theo and I aren’t too broken to fix. We weren’t whole in the first place.

  We were doomed the second I gave into that bitterness, the anger...that dark, tempting current that promised to take me wherever I wanted, but just tore me from shore instead.

  Eventually, I cry myself empty and fall asleep.

  It’s a small but welcome gift. Anything is better than lying here hating myself, mourning the losses of things I’m not sure I ever really had: emerald eyes and a knee-weakening smile, nights so passionate I already know I’m ruined for whoever stumbles into my life next.

  Gods of thunder under waterfalls, and green glows...and the beautiful terror when you start to fall.

  When I left Ruby’s, I didn’t go home.

  I drove straight to the city.

  “Shit,” Wes said, when he opened his door to find me standing there, probably looking like a zombie, “who died?”

  “I need to get wasted. Come with me.”

  The worry in his face snapped to annoyance. “Are you serious, dude? You knock on my door at”—he leaned backwards, holding onto the doorframe, to check the time on his DVR—“midnight for that? You scared the hell out of me. I thought it was an emergency.”

  “It is.” I hitched my thumb behind me, simultaneously pointing at nowhere in particular, and every nasty dive bar I planned to visit until I’d slaughtered every emotion in my body. “I’m getting drunk, and you’re coming with me.”

  Eyes narrowed, Wes stepped aside and motioned for me to enter. “Because...?”

  “Because we both know Durhams shouldn’t drink alone.” That’s when fights happen. And arrests. And things we can’t explain to this day, like the time Van woke up with his head shaved and a traffic cone in his bathtub.