Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  “Thanks, kid. All my students mean a lot to me. This one hurts,” he says. I squeeze his hand.

  “I’ll go with you, if you want,” I say. He looks up at me and smiles.

  “I’m not sure I should go to the actual service, kid. I don’t want to cause any raucous. But I do want to visit her after.”

  I nod.

  “I’ll come.” He smiles and nods then kisses my forehead and continues preparing the salad.

  The week passes slowly, and school on Friday is almost completely empty. Half the students and staff are at the funeral, and the other half are pretending to have gone. I’m sitting in chemistry with our substitute and one other kid, scrolling through Facebook on my phone. So many posts, so many pictures of Willa floating around that it makes my stomach hurt.

  At the end of the day, my dad pulls up outside of the school to pick me up. He started at the county admin office a few weeks ago, and I can see, every day, more and more of his color has been drained from him.

  “Mind if we stop by the cemetery?” he asks as we pull out of the school lot. I wonder how much it tugs at his heart any time he comes here to get me. If he has the urge to park in his old spot, check out his classroom, make sure his kids are keeping up their grades. “The service should be over now.”

  I nod slowly.

  “Sure,” I say.

  We drive to the outskirts of town and pull into the Tilden Towne Cemetery through the side gate. Dad stops for a moment to look around for the site. When we see the green tarp still laid on the ground, we know we’ve found hers.

  We drive down the driveway a little longer till we reach it. Dad goes to get out of the car but pauses to reach into the backseat. He pulls out a single red rose, takes a breath, then gets out of the car. I get out, too, but I hang back by the car. He needs a minute, I know.

  I watch as Dad walks over to the gravesite slowly. He’s not speaking out loud, but I know he’s saying something. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure walking down the hill behind us, then it stops. I look back and see him—Wyatt Mills.

  He’s still wearing his suit, his tie is undone, his hands in his pockets. He’s strikingly handsome, but it’s hard to notice because of the disdain I’ve felt toward him over the last few months. But the sight of him, right now, with his eyes staring straight ahead at my dad, is taking my breath away.

  His eyes are narrowed, and I’m waiting for him to speak up, to charge my dad, to tell him to get the hell away from his sister. But he doesn’t. Instead, he watches as Dad kneels down to place the rose then walks back to our car.

  I don’t say anything to my dad about him. I just keep my eyes trained on him. Finally, he flicks his to me, and my breath catches again. We look at each other for a moment; we speak no words; we make no motion.

  I hate him. But in this moment, we’re at an impasse. The air clears between us as Dad gets in the driver’s seat. I look at Wyatt one last time then duck down into the car as we drive away. I see him in my sideview mirror, walking toward his sister’s gravesite, all alone, kneeling down in the grass, his hands clasped between his knees.

  And for that one moment, I close my eyes and hope that he’s not in too much pain.

  Just for that one moment.

  27

  Wyatt

  When I woke up the next morning, she was already gone. I knew it before I even opened my eyes, because I didn’t feel her against me. I felt empty.

  When I rolled over, there was a note on the pillow, scribbled on the back of her business card which I’m assuming is the only thing she could find to write on.

  I’ll miss being yours.

  I clutched it to my chest like a fucking five year old, staring up at my ceiling and willing myself to get out of bed and figure out this mess that I call life.

  It’s been two more weeks, and I’m still trudging through my apartment in nothing but my boxers, drinking milk from the carton like I’m a teenage animal. I’ve only heard from her once, when she texted me to tell me that she had an inkling the press releases about the gallery were going to drop soon. I’d thanked her for the heads-up, and she’d asked how I was doing. I stared down at my phone, dying to tell her that I wanted her. That despite my quickly draining savings account and morale, I know it all would be better if I could wrap my arms around her and breathe her in.

  But I can’t tell her that. Because I know she feels something like this, too. And I know having to choose between me and her family is too big of a burden for her to bear, and I won’t do that to her. But let me tell you, this whole “if you love them, then let them go” thing is fucking bullshit.

  I’ve applied to a few jobs, but as I scheduled my interviews, the news of the gallery dropped. My name was suddenly everywhere—on the news, online, in my inbox. Two of the jobs dropped their interview offer; another totally ghosted me.

  My phone buzzes on the counter.

  “Hey, Ma,” I say nervously. I haven’t come right out and told my family that I am currently unemployed, and more recently, unemployable. It would be a little difficult to explain.

  No, I didn’t actually have anything to do with it.

  Well, I asked them to blame it on me.

  For the girl I’m not dating and that I know I can’t be with.

  Because I still feel guilty for taking her family down all those years ago.

  And because I love her. Because I’m a grown-ass man who can’t control his emotions. And because I just want her to be happy.

  They’d probably be more understanding than I think, but I just haven’t been in my right mind to think about it.

  “Hi, honey. Look, your father and I just saw the news,” she says. I swallow.

  “Ah, yeah, Ma. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to muster up the courage to tell you guys,” I say.

  “We talked to Maryn.”

  My heart rattles against my chest. I swallow a few more times, blinking.

  “You...what?”

  “She called us a few days ago. She didn’t want us to tell you, but of course, you’re my child. We had to check in on you. Especially when we saw it broke.”

  I blink a few hundred more times. She called my parents?

  “What did she...what did she say?”

  “Everything. She told us how that rat bastard Calloway kid was really at the center of it. And they were going to let her be the fall person for it all. And how you stepped in.”

  I swallow and nod to myself.

  “Yeah,” I whisper.

  “Oh, honey,” she says with what I think is disappointment in her voice. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Okay, not the turn I was expecting this to take.

  “You are?”

  “Of course,” she says. “You have always been one to do the right thing, even when it’s hard. You follow your gut, and I admire you so much for that, sweetie. I’m so sorry your name is going to get smeared by all of this. The world is such an unfair place, baby.”

  “Yeah, Ma, it is. But she didn’t deserve that, either.”

  “Tell me something, honey. If she wasn’t the girl it happened to, would you have…?”

  Her voice trails off, and I smile.

  “I don’t know, Ma. I’d like to think I would. But jeopardizing my whole career path...phew. I guess she means something, huh?”

  I hear a soft chuckle on the other end.

  “Tell me, honey. Have you spoken to her much?”

  I shake my head to myself.

  “Not much, Mom. I think it’s over. Our history...it’s just too cloudy. It would bring a lot of unnecessary pain to her family. I don’t want her to have to go through that.”

  She pauses for a moment.

  “Yeah, baby, I know. But remember, sometimes, clouds clear.” I smile. I’m not sure if these clouds will. I think these clouds are permanently parked right over our heads.

  “Ma?” I say, the heaviness of the impending date starting to weigh on me.

  “Yes, baby?”

  �
��What if he gets it?” I ask, my voice breaking as I stare at the date circled in red on the calendar on the side of my fridge.

  She pauses again.

  “Sometimes clouds clear,” she says again. “Let’s just hope they clear for us this time.”

  I nod.

  “Okay, Mom. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I lie in bed that night, staring up at my ceiling fan, watching the blades move in circles so fast that they blend together. I remember the first time I heard his name, saw his face. I close my eyes and try to clear it, wipe it away with images of Willa. Of Maryn. Of literally anything or anyone else.

  28

  June 2015 - Wyatt

  A few weeks have passed since Willa’s funeral. She had a closed casket, but before the viewing started, the funeral home held a private, open-casket viewing for just the family. My mother couldn’t stand it; she’d collapsed when it was opened.

  Dad stood next to her, grim and gruff, angry disbelief on his face.

  But I stared down at her, convinced this body wasn’t really her. It looked like Willa, if she’d been dipped in wax that was a few shades darker than her actual skin tone. The makeup was caked thick on her neck to cover up the bruising from the strangulation that killed her.

  The strangulation by someone else’s hands.

  Someone put their hands around my little sister’s neck and squeezed until the life was gone from her body.

  I received my degree in the mail, along with a letter of apology from the university for the “unfortunate circumstances” that kept me from the graduation festivities.

  It was a nice gesture, I guess.

  I’ve slowly started applying to jobs but with no real gumption to actually land one. I’ve grown lethargic and lazy since burying my sister. Like nothing else matters much.

  But bills still need to be paid. Loans still need to be paid back. And life, as hard as it is to imagine, has to go on.

  I’m sitting at dinner with my parents, quietly chewing as I stare across the table at the empty seat.

  “Any luck with interviews, boy?” Dad asks, his voice still gruff and thick. I shake my head.

  “Not yet,” I say. I don’t have the heart to tell them it’s because I’ve barely sent a single resume out.

  “Something will come soon, hon. I know it.”

  Just as we’re about to collect our dishes and head to our respective corners of the house, the home phone rings.

  Dad looks up slowly then makes his way to it.

  “Mills residence,” he says. His eyebrows knit together, and I watch as his broad chest begins to heave. “Yes, we’re here.”

  Mom and I stand perfectly still, our eyes trained on him.

  “What is it, Ray?” Mom asks, a hand to her chest.

  “They have a suspect in custody. Detective Robinson is coming out to the house.”

  We wait in the living room. The T.V. is on, but none of us are watching it. We’re checking our phones, staring at the screens blankly, waiting for his news.

  Finally, we hear the car door outside, and we all jump up.

  Dad gets the door and shakes Detective Robinson’s hand. He leads him in, and we all take our seats again on the couch and chairs.

  “Thanks for meeting with me on short notice, guys,” he says. Detective Robinson looks tired. This is a big case for him. He’s fairly young, and I know this is the first big case he’s been the lead on. I like him because I know that, when they had found Willa, he was as crushed as we were. And it wasn’t because of the accolades or the press. It was because he was damn good at his job. He wanted to make things right for a grieving family. He has a daughter. He knows.

  “So,” he says, scooting forward in his chair and clasping his hands between his knees, “we got the DNA evidence back from where we picked up Willa’s body. We just recently got a call in about a suspect who was picked up in Connecticut for some odd behavior, following and potentially stalking another teenage girl.”

  My mom takes my dad’s hand, squeezing it tight. He wraps an arm around her. I swallow and lean forward.

  “They’re going to compare his DNA to what we recovered here. He drives a black Durango, and the back half of his plates match the partial plate we got from the store cameras.”

  Tears start to stream down my mom’s face.

  “We don’t have the DNA back yet,” he says, “but I’m pretty confident he’s our guy.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mom mutters, tilting her head down and pinching her nose in her fingers.

  Dad’s quiet, just keeps nodding his head like he’s taking it all in.

  “What’s his name?” I ask. All three heads whip to me.

  “Excuse me, son?” Robinson asks.

  “Who is he? The guy?”

  “Sorry, man, but I can’t tell you that until it’s final,” Detective Robinson says. I nod, feeling my fists clench at my sides. I excuse myself and walk out to the backyard.

  29

  Maryn

  I haven’t spoken to him in over a week, mostly because I don’t know what to say. It’s not easy to speak to someone when all you want to do is tell them how much you need them, how much you want to make them happy, but in the same breath, you know it’s never going to be possible.

  My parents are slowly coming around. When I say slowly, I mean slowly. For the first few days, my dad wouldn’t speak to me at all. My mother, in an extremely cold and brief phone call, told me he needed space. Finally, when they wouldn’t warm back up to me, I showed up on their porch. It’s a lot harder to avoid your kid when she’s there in the flesh. We had an emotional conversation that resulted in me profusely apologizing and trying to explain myself, and that ultimately ended in them forgiving me once I told them we split up. Tucker is home, and we’re having lunch tomorrow, just the four of us.

  Things are starting to feel a little more normal now with them, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking about Wyatt on a daily basis.

  I miss everything about him. I miss catching him checking me out in the office. Caldell is so different now. I’ve truly lost all respect for Rex, and it’s hard for me to concentrate at work with Wyatt’s office empty. I haven’t seen Nate one time. It’s like they think if they keep him out of my sight, I’ll forget everything he did.

  But every time I accept a new project, I feel cheap. Every dollar I help this company make, I know how much of it goes right into the pockets of the bastard who cheated his way to get it, and the father who let him. I’ve started updating my resume. It’s time.

  Nights and weekends are a lot less exciting, too. Ellie has tried to distract me, but most of her shifts are at night, leaving me to my own torturous thoughts.

  A few times, I’ve found myself thinking about him before I fall asleep, clutching so tightly to my pillow that I thought it was going to explode. But then my brain plays this cruel trick on me where it replaces the breathtaking image of Wyatt with the terrorized, heartbroken faces of my family.

  I’m lying in my bed, flicking through the channels, trying to turn my brain off completely. I roll to my side and pull out my birth control from my nightstand drawer when I see my notebook shoved to the back corner. The same notebook I’ve been making entries in since I was a teenager. I swallow my pill and pull the book out.

  As I begin flipping through the entries, I go from wanting to laugh, to wanting to cry, to cringing. God, teenage hormones really are unfair.

  But then I get to the entries from that year. The year of Willa.

  And as I turn the pages, a clump of folded up newsprint falls from them. I reach down to pick them up and carefully unfold them. And I have the most horrendous case of deja vu I’ve ever had in my life.

  It’s like I’m reliving the whole ordeal through a few stupid newspaper clippings. But it all comes rushing back to me again.

  TILDEN TEACHER PLACED ON LEAVE AMID MISSING PERSON INVESTIGATION.

  Under this headline, there’s a photo of my father. The same photo taken for his school
identification card. He’s smiling. He still had his youth, not the harder exterior he grew.

  TILDEN TEACHER CLEARED AS A SUSPECT.

  Under this one, the paper used the same photo of Dad but only as an inset. There’s a photo of Willa in this one that’s much bigger.

  TILDEN TEACHER REMOVED FROM TILDEN HIGH.

  There’s no photo of Dad this time. There are pictures of Willa and the grocery store.

  BODY FOUND IDENTIFIED AS MISSING TILDEN TEEN.

  I freeze as I unfold this clipping. Because there’s something I never noticed before.

  There’s a huge picture of Willa again, but below it is a picture of the police captain at the press conference where he announced that she had been identified. And behind him, on the steps of the station, is the Mills family. Mr. and Mrs. Mills, him with his arm around her. Next to them is their son—my Wyatt. His head is hung, his hands clasped in front of him. He’s completely broken. And to think, at this time, I hated him. I hated him when he needed someone.

  There’s one last clipping, and I unfold it.

  SUSPECT IN MILLS CASE CHARGED.

  I remember this day. I remember seeing his face on television after they caught the creep stalking some other teenage girl in another state.

  Harvey Rett.

  I’ll never forget his name. Because after they found him, I found a new target for my hatred. Because of Harvey Rett, my dad lost it all. He lost his passion, his relationships. Because of Harvey Rett, the Mills lost their daughter. Because of Harvey Rett, Wyatt Mills said my dad’s name.

  Because of Harvey Rett, my dad was officially let go by Tilden County at the end of that school year. And after months of trying to find a job, even applying to school districts more than two hours from home, he had nothing. A metal factory out by the shore was hiring, and my dad got the job. The same damn factory job he will probably have to work until he dies. He got that job just before eviction proceedings were about to take place. Just before our little home was almost snatched out from under us.