Natural Selection
Page 22
IT TOOK A lot more work to stage the scene than I thought it would. Before we could even think of that, we had to get my father out of the house. Nate and Xander wrapped him in the blanket I had lain over him and slowly carried him home. I whispered a quiet prayer that no one saw them in the early morning light. It was definitely a good thing Evelyn lived so close! With one last look at their departing backs, I went into her bedroom.
She didn’t look quite as gaunt as before, and her skin looked a little less waxy. I tried to rouse her again, but she didn’t respond. Turning from the bed to survey the room, I placed my hands on my hips and pursed my lips. A quick note saying that she was running away would keep anyone from being too suspicious. She often threatened to over the years—between the groundings and the push for social perfection from her mom. Once when we were five we decided to run away together. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and packed our pajamas in my Hello Kitty backpack. We spent three hours walking around the block because neither one of us was allowed to cross the street.
With a sad smile, I pushed away the memories and tried to harden myself. Was Evelyn still my friend? She murdered people, but I saw the hatred in her mother’s eyes as she charged at us with that knife. If our positions were reversed, how much differently would things have turned out? I didn’t think I could kill somebody, but how much of that was the way I was raised? My mother’s belief in the sanctity of all life had always been stressed to us. It seemed odd to me that she wouldn’t let me kill a daddy long legs that was crawling on me. But in hindsight, it made perfect sense. But how much did that influence my opinion?
I wondered what it must have been like for Evelyn to think Otherworlders were evil. If I hadn’t learned all I had in the last few months, I would have automatically assumed we were. But witches had to know better, didn’t they? Had Mr. and Mrs. Matthews knowingly deceived their daughter? Or did they honestly believe they were saving the world one monster at a time? And if she truly thought we were all evil, why had she protected me? No matter how much I thought about it, I was just a dog chasing its tail, my mind pointlessly turning in circles.
Shaking off the troubling thoughts, I began to move through the house putting everything back where it belonged. Nothing could be out of place or the police would not buy the scene we were about to set. I righted houseplants and swept the dirt, placed books back on the shelves and straightened pictures on the wall. As I worked, I noticed the blood stain on the area rug where my father died. Kneeling beside it, I tried not to weep and fingered the irregular edge. The grief was overwhelming. I couldn’t cope with it, so I tried to focus on the task at hand. I finished picking up then stared at the area rug with its heartbreaking stain. Obviously I couldn’t leave it there, but what to do with it? Before I could make a decision, Nate and Xander came back. I can’t imagine what was on my face when I looked up at them, but suddenly Xander was on his knees by my side with his hands on my shoulders. His eyes met mine, and I saw a trace of the sadness that overwhelmed me every time I let my guard down. I sighed and glanced at the stain. He pulled me to my feet and led me to the kitchen.
There was silence as he and Nate rolled the rug up. I grabbed a rag to wipe the blood that had seeped through to the floor below. When the thought of whose blood I was casually mopping up started to rise, I stomped it down violently. The time for grief would have to be later. I was determined not to lose myself in it. Stepping back to look at the spot, the linoleum looked bare. We couldn’t leave it like that. If I remembered right, the old one was sill rolled up in the basement, so I went in search of it.
I came back upstairs with the rug tucked under one arm just as Monica began to rouse. Fear squeezed my chest as I desperately glanced around for the boys. I caught a glimpse of someone moving outside. I went the window to see Xander and Nate with somber faces as they stared blankly into the flames coming from the yard waste barrel—too manly to cry but too sad not to. Seeing no site of the rug in the house, I assumed they decided on a more permanent type of disposal. As Monica regained consciousness, her head whipped around so she could stare at me. The blood that poured from her nose had dried on her face, making her seem more malevolent. She kept waving her head side to side, reminding me of a cobra about to strike. Her eyes seemed to look right through me, and I felt my toes curl as I repressed the urge to shudder.
“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” she said to me in the same tone she used to ask me if I’d like lemonade. This time I did shudder. “I don’t know what you think you’ve accomplished, but you will pay. You and all your unnatural brethren will suffer before I'm done.”
“What makes me different from your own daughter, Mrs. Matthews? How is what I do any less natural than what your daughter does? Or what your husband does?”
Monica laughed, the sound making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “If it weren’t for you and your kind, there would be no need for them to do what they must. They exist to protect the world from you!”
“You’re the only one in this room who’s committed murder.” I said, forcing a careless shrug.
Monica snarled at me, and I turned my back on her despite every nerve in my body telling me to keep my eye on her. I went into the living room and spread out the new rug, nodding at the effect of it. The sound of Monica fighting her bonds came from the kitchen, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back in there. I fussed in the living room, attempting to delay the inevitable as long as possible.
The sound of movement behind me made me spin around ready to defend myself despite the fact that I had no real idea how. I almost sobbed in relief when I found myself facing Nate, his brown eyes full of emotion. Taking his hand, I felt sadness, anger, fear, and—protectiveness. Nate wanted to protect me? My heart fluttered. I knew he would feel it too, but I didn’t care. Nate took a step closer to me. His finger hooked under my chin, and I felt something else from him that mixed with my own emotions. I welcomed the longing wanting to feel anything besides for overwhelming sadness and fear. His face leaned closer to mine. A movement behind him caught my eye, and I pulled him out of the way as Monica swung the leg of the chair at us. There was no time for me to react before she crumpled to the floor. Evelyn leaned in the doorway with one hand thrown out toward her mother. I nodded my thanks to her and she gave me a weak smile while a fat tear streamed down her cheek.
Between the three of us, we finished cleaning the house pretty quickly. We sat silently on the couch with Evelyn curled up in the chair near the window with a cup of tea waiting until it was late enough to stage the rest of the scene. The day was already cloudy, but I had Nate encourage the storm we could both already feel coming. I was a little worried he’d overdone it as thunder rumbled in the distance. There was no turning back now. Xander grabbed the aluminum stepladder out of the shed and leaned it against the side of the house away from the road. He cleared a section of the gutters, so it would look like Peter had been cleaning them when lightning struck his ladder and threw him. None of us liked the idea of throwing him like that when he was already injured, but the thought of the punishment the Enforcers would inflect on us steeled our spines. I worried another bolt of lightning would probably kill him, so we decided Xander would stand invisible on the roof a few steps away from the ladder, then drop him as Nate struck the ladder.
The hardest part about our plan was figuring out what to do with Mrs. Matthews. Xander wanted to kill her outright; I felt my pulse race. Was my brother any different than the Matthews, killing to protect the people he cared about? Pushing the thought away, I forced my mind back to the topic at hand. After a lot of debate, we decided to leave her bound in our basement. There was no way she could go to the authorities because they’d think she was a loon. We knew she could eventually get herself free, so we didn't have to worry about hurting her.
I wound up standing on the sidewalk with my arm around Evelyn’s waist for support. Next to us stood Nate with Monica tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes—unconscious wit
h a half a roll of duct tape binding her. We watched as Xander went invisible and pulled Mr. Matthews up the ladder and onto the roof. Nate called down a large bolt of lightning that struck the ladder. Unable to look, I turned away taking Evelyn with me. Peter’s body made a sickening thud as it struck the ground. I squeezed my eyes shut and made myself take the first step towards home. Worry ate at my stomach, and I chewed my lip. Sadness washed over me as I realized it wouldn’t be home much longer. I balled it up with the rest of the emotions I wasn’t allowing myself to feel and walked on.