by Bella King
Finally, Trent pulled away, staring into my eyes like he was about to kiss me. Instead, he spoke. “Angela is gone.”
“Good,” I replied, happy that my plan had worked.
“I suppose you’re the one who planted all that stuff on her. It was quite the talking point here for a few days before people got bored of it and moved on,” Trent explained.
I laughed, but he had a look of guilt painted on his handsome face.
“Samantha, I need to tell you the truth. There’s no point in continuing a lie that I don’t feel good about,” he began.
My stomach began to squirm. What was he talking about?
“Angela didn’t kill Emily. I only said that because Angela is my ex-girlfriend, and I wanted someone else to get revenge on her for breaking my heart. It’s not fair to you what I did, but I never thought you and I would be like this now. I’m sorry,” he said, genuine sadness creeping into his expression.
This was the first time I had ever seen him look so sorry about something. I took a deep breath, but it felt like my lungs had collapsed and would no longer accept air. He had used me, and he was only telling me now after the deed had been done. He used Emily’s death to get me to do his dirty work.
“How dare you,” I said, feeling more angry than sad.
“I know,” he said, looking at his feet. “I’m the bad guy, once again.”
“You are,” I said, raising my voice. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks as anger overtook me. “You fucking tricked me, Trent. How could you do something like that?”
I was desperate to hear that this was a sick joke. I was desperate to know that Emily hadn’t killed herself and that what I had done to Angela had been justified, but Trent stayed silent.
“You’re telling me that I had an innocent woman sent to jail just because she broke up with you? Is that what you’re going to do to me if things don’t work out between us?” I demanded to know.
Trent shook his head. “It’s not like that. She really fucked me over.”
I laughed bitterly. “Oh no, Trent. You’re the one fucking people over here.”
His face turned from guilty to defensive. The switch was quick, and I knew it was going to come with some aggression, which I brace myself for. I wasn’t going to back down now. I wasn’t the weak girl that I had been when I first came to Bayside. I was better than that.
“Angela is a bitch, Samantha. You don’t understand. She really fucked me over, and she got everything she deserved when you had her kicked out. I don’t regret it, but I’m sorry that it had to be you.”
“You’re not telling me why, Trent. You haven’t told me anything about her. You lied to me, and that’s not forgivable,” I argued, crossing my arms tightly over my chest.
He stepped back. “There’s a lot more to it, but I can’t explain. It’s complicated.”
“You sure as hell better explain, or you’re not going to see much more of me again,” I said, challenging him. In reality, I would be the one who missed out if we stopped seeing each other now. I was already head over heels for him, but I didn’t want to reveal that yet.
Trent sighed, leaning his broad shoulder against the white wall beside him in an iconic stance. “I’m kind of doing something tonight, so I can’t talk about it now. How about tomorrow?”
“You’re busy?” I asked, holding up my hands. “Are you serious? You have something more important than me?”
Trent nodded. “Actually, I do. I’m not kidding you right now,” he replied, his voice turning more serious.
I gave him a doubtful look and placed a hand on my hip. “Well, somebody better be dying, because I’m not going to wait for you over some stupid gang shit.”
He bit his lip and let out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, somebody is.”
Chapter 18
“Gunpowder is the only way to get through this damn concrete,” Trent explained to me, pulling out a package from his jacket pocket.
I finally had my jacket back as well, and I thumbed through the money in my pocket as I watched him open the taped package full of dark gray powder. We had to swing by the Lake cabin anyway to grab Trent’s supplies. Apparently, waiting wasn’t an option today. There was someone who he had to visit on the outside, and that meant tunneling through a layer of concrete to get there in time.
I soon discovered that Trent had his gang tunneling underground below the road so that they could sneak out into the city to gather supplies. He wanted to give off the appearance of living at Bayside while not actually sleeping in the dorms at all. It was clever, but very dangerous. If he was caught, he would be carted off to prison.
The tunnel was nearly finished, but the Killers had come across a concrete barrier near their desired exit, and Trent didn’t have time to maneuver around it. He told me that the only way he was going to get out tonight was to go through the concrete.
At first, I had thought he was joking when he said that he had something better to do after school. I thought he had wanted to avoid me so that I could cool down before we spoke. I would have begrudgingly accepted that excuse, but he had a better one. His brother was in the hospital, and he was on his last leg.
I never knew that Trent had a brother, but then again, there was still so much that remained a mystery about him. I wanted to know all of it, but that would come with time. I was upset about the lies he told me about Angela and Emily, but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve a chance. Right now, we didn’t have time to discuss that. I could tell that he was worried sick about his brother.
In my experience, the reaper comes quickly when he decides the time is right. All the mental conditioning in the world won’t prepare you for when it happens to someone you love. Sometimes you even wish it on yourself in hopes that the reaper will change his course. It never does.
My mother, Emily, and now Trent’s brother would be claimed by death. We all must go someday, but it always felt like the good were the first to go. I guess that meant Trent would outlive me.
“Hand me that metal thing,” Trent said, pointing to an object that lay a few feet from the concrete wall on the ground.
I bent over and picked it up, feeling the cool metal in my hand. It was a long dirty tube with black dust covering it. I assumed it had been packed with gunpowder at some point, because of the black grime. The tube was wide enough to hold a projectile the size of a golf ball. It was like a miniature cannon.
“Thanks,” Trent grunted as I handed him the makeshift weapon.
“Are you going to shoot something at the wall?” I asked as Trent poured gunpowder into the end of the tube.
“Damn right. I’m going to blow a hole in this fucking concrete. It will take too long to hammer through manually. We just don’t have the time,” he said, placing the package of gunpowder on the ground beside him and looking around. “Where is that ball bearing?”
I looked around with him and spotted it beside where the cannon had been lying. “Here,” I said, picking up the rough metal ball and holding it out to Trent.
He winked at me as he took it. “You’re going to want to get out of the way. There’s no telling where this ball is going to bounce off too once it hits the concrete.”
“Won’t it go through?” I asked.
“I have no clue. It depends on how thick the wall is,” Trent replied, sliding the steel ball into the pipe with a metal grating sound as the ball settled into the pipe against the gunpowder.
I watched him but didn’t move back.
“Seriously, go around the corner or something,” Trent said, waving a hand back at me. He pulled out a lighter and flicked it on.
I moved back, going around the corner just far enough to stay protected from the blast. Trent was standing boldly in front as though he couldn’t possibly be hit.
“That’s not safe,” I called out to him, peeking around the corner as he lowered the flame to the back of the pipe.
He looked back at me and grinned. “I don’t give a fuck.”
An explo
sion that was much louder than I expected caused me to duck back around the corner. The cannon went off with tremendous force, rattling the inside of the tunnel and shaking dirt from the ceiling. Loose chunks full onto my leather jacket and into my hair. The whole place shuttered, and then grew silent.
I uncurled my body from its instinctual fetal position, and looked around the corner, squinting my eyes through the smoke to make sure Trent was still alive. It took me a moment to see his figure, standing tall in the smoke as laughter broke out from his mouth.
“It fucking worked!” he cheered, turning around to me. “We’re through!”
I crept around the corner and approached the dusty rubble slowly, trying not to breathe in the smoke-filled air. Trent didn’t seem to mind it. A toothy grin stretched from one of his ears to the other. He was overjoyed at making it through. He looked quite sexy in this way, standing there, having conquered his inanimate enemy to get to his brother in the city.
“There’s no time to waste. Let’s go,” Trent said, pushing aside rubble from the wall to reveal more dirt on the other side.
“Where is the exit?” I asked as he clawed through the dirt.
“Here,” he said, punching a fist through the loose soil and breaking out into the evening air.
This was better than the lake. We could wander freely if we wished, and nobody would know that we came from Bayside Academy. We didn’t have uniforms, and we didn’t look like we were on the run. As far as anyone could tell, we were a young couple having a pleasant evening on the town.
Trent crawled out of the tunnel first, then helped me out.
I shook the dirt from my hair as I looked around at the tress. “It’s really good to be out,” I said.
We were in a cropping of trees, but I could see the edge of the main city just a few yards away.
“We can stay at a hotel tonight, but I need to visit my bother first,” Trent said, grabbing my wrist and pulling me along. He was eager to get to the hospital where his brother was staying.
I took his hand off my wrist and placed my hand in his as we walked, wanting to walk as equals now instead of him leading me like he always did. He accepted my gesture but still walked two steps ahead of me as I scrambled to keep up. Some things never change.
We got to the road, and Trent immediately hailed a taxi. I felt strange being out in the open like this, thinking that I needed to hide so that nobody caught me. Trent, on the other hand, seemed more focused on his brother than anything else and acted like there was nothing wrong with hopping into a taxi immediately after escaping Bayside Academy.
“The hospital,” Trent snapped to the taxi driver as we hopped in.
The taxi driver gave a curt nod, and we were off, barreling down the slick streets of the city. I felt like I was in a whole new world, experiencing life once again for the first time. I hadn’t been locked up for even a year, and I felt like I had been gone for a lifetime. The world was so different outside of the system.
My hands were down on my sides, gripping the cracked leather seat as the driver took us down long stretches of roads cluttered with other cars, weaving through them as though we were riding a motorcycle and not a full-size car.
The look on Trent’s face reminded me of me as a younger woman, terrified on the day that I got the news my mother had died. It hit me like a sack of bricks, and I didn’t want to believe it. I was pale, sick, and didn’t eat anything for a week afterward. Trent looked like the younger me. What would I have wanted someone to do when I was scared sick about my mother?
I placed my hand on his thigh and gave it a squeeze. “You’re really strong,” I said to Trent, watching his face closely.
He gave me a weak smile. “Then why don’t I feel strong?”
I wanted to cry at his words, but I didn’t want to make this any harder on him. The pang of remorse was going off deep in my heart, and I knew that it was a thousand times stronger for him. It brought me back to the days that I had to experience the very same thing. I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy.
“He’s not going to make it,” Trent said, shaking his head after a moment of silence.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, leaning in.
“I got a letter from him, and he said they didn’t think he was going to make it through the week. I spent the last couple of days in the tunnel trying to get through as fast as possible. To be honest, I barely noticed that you were gone.” He chuckled. “That’s pretty fucked up, I know.”
“No,” I replied, squeezing his thigh again. “You’re doing what you have to do. I’m just a nuisance half the time.”
“You’re not,” he said, a glint of anger in his eyes. “You’ve never been a nuisance. You gave me a chance when I thought you never would. That’s special to me.”
After all this, he still made me blush. Underneath all the tattoos and muscles, there was a fiercely loving man. I saw that now, and I wanted to keep it so badly. I wasn’t going to let some tough times get in the way of what we had.
“We’re getting close. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go in alone,” Trent said, taking a deep breath.
“Of course. I can wait outside,” I said. I didn’t want to interrupt such an intimate moment between two brothers. I didn’t know how close they were, but I figured it had to hurt one way or another. Losing someone, especially family, is hard, no matter how distant you are.
“Thank you, Samantha. After this, I want to turn a new page. I mean it. No more gang shit, and no more sneaking out,” he said, staring deep into my eyes.
“That sounds so unlike you,” I said with a small laugh.
He grinned. “I have to be better for both of us.”
“True. You have a lot to be forgiven for,” I said, not forgetting about his lies and trickery.
“Sure but be patient. I have a feeling it’s going to be difficult over these next few months.”
“I’m always patient,” I said, but that wasn’t entirely true.
He pursed his lips together and patted my leg as the taxi came to a stop outside of the hospital. “It’s time.”
Chapter 19
Night fell on the small city as Trent disappeared into the hospital. I stayed outside, bumming a cigarette off a nurse to take the edge off. I didn’t smoke, but it reminded me of Trent, so I puffed on the cigarette anyway. I could blame him if I got addicted.
I looked out onto the dark parking lot, noticing the little details of the outside world while I still could. Trent wanted to go back to leading an honest life and spend the rest of the year cooped up in the school. As much as I didn’t want to do it, I agreed that we needed to watch our step from now on. We were both on thin ice already, and the point of Bayside was to do better, not to end up in a prison cell for half of our adult lives.
I watched the thin smoke rise into the night air, marveling at how it moved. It's always the things that kill you that look the most beautiful. I was attracted to dangerous things more often since coming to Bayside. Trent was the perfect example of that. He could easily snap me like a twig if he got pissed off enough, and that was exciting for some fucked up reason.
I expected him to be a bit more subdued once his brother passed away, though. Stuff like that is difficult to get through, so he was going to have a rough road ahead of him. It was a strange way to start a relationship, but he probably needed the support now more than ever. His ex-girlfriend wouldn’t be getting in the way either. I had made sure of that.
I ashed the cigarette onto the dirty concrete sidewalk and flicked the butt into a trash bin nearby, taking in a breath of clean air before entering the hospital. I needed a cup of water and to sit down for a while. Even though I hadn’t been on my feet much today, I felt tired.
The double doors slid open as I approached them, and my eyes adjusted to the bright interior of the hospital lobby. I was surprised to see Trent already outside again. His visit with his brother hadn’t been very long.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
&nb
sp; Trent shrugged. “It didn’t go.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, worried that we were in the wrong place.
“He died yesterday,” Trent said, his voice quivering as he spoke.
I took a step toward him, knowing that he needed support. I held out my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice only a faint whisper.
He nodded, and I could see tears in his eyes. “It’s okay.”
I knew it wasn’t. I could see that Trent was upset by the way he held himself. His shoulders were slumped inward, and his head was held low. He wasn’t the cocky and borderline obnoxious man that I was familiar with. His world had been temporarily crushed, and it showed in his eyes.
I didn’t have anything to say to him. Now wasn’t the time for words. I opened my arms, offering them to him so that he could grieve, and he accepted a place close to my breast, laying his head down against my heart and sobbing.
I hadn’t seen a grown man cry since my mother had died. It seemed like they always kept their emotions locked in, so when they did cry, you knew there was something horribly wrong. My father had never been much of a crier, but he cried for a long time after my mother died.
Experiences like that change people. My father changed, but unfortunately, not for the better when my mother passed away. I hoped that Trent would change for the better after this, but I didn’t know. He was still a bit of a mystery to me. All I could do was hope for the best.
After a few minutes of holding him in the artificially lit lobby of the hospital, I convinced him to move the mourning to a hotel so that we weren’t the center of attention. I still felt uncomfortable as a pair of escapees roaming around the city. We were drawing an awful lot of attention to ourselves this way.
Hailing another taxi, Trent and I made our way to the nearest hotel. We arrived in the lobby, check-in, and went up to the room. By this time, Trent had dried his tears and was starting to look like he was back to normal again. His recovery time was impressive, but I knew that there was still a lot of pain inside of him.