by Callie Hart
She shakes her head, her voice, rough with emotion, catching in her throat. “You think I’m that cruel? You don’t think I’m on your side? After everything that’s happened?”
Alex notices that I’m behind him. He moves an inch to the side, making room for me, but his eyes don’t break away from Maeve. “If you’re not complicit, then she’s fooling you too,” he says gruffly. “You know how bad she wants to keep him. She’ll do anything to make sure I don’t get Ben back.”
Maeve drops her head, her eyes closing for a beat. When she opens them, she doesn’t look up. She stares down at the keys in her hands, rubbing the pad of her thumb against a gold disc that’s attached to the fob. “I wish…that were true. If that were the case, it’d be simple. We’d track them down and find them. But…I was just at the funeral home, Alex. I…I saw Ben. It was him. He’s been there almost a week now. There was some kind of admin mix up. They couldn’t figure out who they needed to call.”
Alex backs away, shaking his head. He stumbles, barely bothering to correct his footing as he attempts a hasty retreat. “Bullshit,” he hisses. “Fucking bullshit. Jackie…she found a way to…I’m telling you, this is just Jackie…”
“This isn’t pretend, Alex. I’m not making it up.” Maeve sounds like she’s on the other side of the world, speaking down a really bad telephone line. My ears are trying to block out what she’s saying. “She was at the funeral home, too, okay? Her injuries were catastrophic. She…she didn’t make it, either.”
Alex stops, slumping sideways against the wall. He looks at me, a tiny frown marring his brow, his chest not moving, and my heart fucking shatters and breaks. I haven’t heard Maeve say it. I haven’t heard him say it, either, but the words are there, like an IED I’ve unwittingly stepped on, blowing up, and blowing up, and blowing up, the explosion never fucking ending.
Ben’s dead.
Something awful has happened.
Alex’s brother is gone.
DAY ONE
Idon’tknowwhattodoDadhejustkeepsstaringatthewallIcan’tdoanythingforhimIcan’thelphimpleasetellmewhatI’msupposedtodo…
DAY TWO
“Please, Baby. You’ve got to eat something. Can you just try? You’re gonna make yourself ill. Alex? Alex?”
DAY THREE
“They asked what you want him to wear. I can…I can go to the store and get a suit or something? What do you think? I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to deal with this, but they say they need to know…”
DAY FOUR
“I DON’T WANT A FUCKING PIECE OF TOAST, OKAY! JUST PUT…PUT THE BREAD DOWN, SILVER!
Fuck.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m…you shouldn’t be around me right now. You really need to go.”
DAY FIVE
“When will we have given enough? When will we have lost enough? There’s no one out there, keeping track of how much pain we’re dealt…how much we’re asked to bear…and that’s the most terrifying thing, Silver.
’Cause if there’s no one keeping track...
…then there’s no one out there to make it stop.”
DAY SIX
“I love you so goddamn much, Argento. I know you’re trying to help, but…please. Please go home for a while. I’ll be okay, I promise. I just need a little time to think.”
2
ALEX
One Week Later
I jerk upright, the sound of loud, obnoxious punk music splitting my head apart. For a bewildering moment, I’m so fucking turned around that I have no idea where I am or what the fuck is happening. The trailer’s popcorned ceiling isn’t where it’s supposed to be. The window to my right wasn’t there last night, when I collapsed on top of my bed sheets and descended into oblivion. The door opposite the bed has moved three feet to the left of its own accord…
Only…
…wait…
The trailer. I don’t live in the trailer anymore. I have an apartment now. I live above the hardware store. And Silver—
Silver.
The moment I think of her, other dangerous memories begin to creep back in. Truths that shouldn’t be faced right now. I sit bolt upright, the room see-sawing like a pitching ship as I try to get up from the bed and realize, belatedly, that I’m more hungover than I have ever been in my entire fucking life and I’m about to throw my guts up. “Holy…shit.” Scrambling, I’m all arms and legs as I try to make it to the bathroom. Luck ain’t on my side, though. I retch, bile blazing a pathway up my esophagus, and I am out of fucking options. I grab the first thing I lay my hands on and double over it, capturing the vomit that erupts out of my mouth.
It feels as though I’ve been repeatedly donkey kicked in the stomach by the time the spasms in my diaphragm quit and I can finally draw in a ragged, burning breath. Which is when I see that I’ve just hurled in my empty fucking guitar case.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.
I grit my teeth, wincing as the raucous, pounding music playing somewhere in the apartment intensifies to a deafening crescendo. There can be only one explanation for any of this madness. Somehow, I pull in a second, shallow breath, and roar at the top of my lungs, “ZAAAAAAANDER!”
A jarring screech interrupts the thrashing punk tune—the sound of a needle being egregiously dragged across the surface of a record—and the music cuts off. Steady thumping sounds follow. I can’t tell if it’s footfall or the reluctant, labored pumping of my own heart, but a second later Zander Hawkins appears in the bedroom doorway, clad in a pair of black boxers and bright red silk robe—the kind of robe bored housewives wear in soap operas while lazily considering whether or not they should try and seduce the pool boy.
Zander’s broad, shit-eating grin dissolves into open disgust when he lays eyes on me. “Dude. You desecrated your gig bag. Fuck’s wrong with you? You’re sitting next to a perfectly good trash can.”
I look to my left, in the direction that he’s pointing, and he’s right. I could easily have grabbed the trash can instead of my case a second ago, but I was too preoccupied with the fact that it’d felt like I was about to die on my bedroom floor. Still feels like I might expire any second now.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” I press a hand to my face. Fuuuuck. Breathing is so much easier with my eyes closed.
Alex? Where were you? I don’t like it here. Can you come and get me?
God…
Nope.
No fucking way.
A spiderweb of pain spreads its fingers across my chest. Quickly, I chase the sound of that voice right out of my head.
Zander lets out a scathing, “Ha!” I sense his approach, but I don’t bother cracking my eyelids. “You did this all by yourself, my friend. I told you to stop after your tenth shot, but would you listen? I’m gonna let you guess the answer to that one. Boy oh boy, you look like expertly hammered shit, my friend.”
I swallow, tamping down the urge to vomit again. “Tequila?” I already know— can taste—the answer.
“You took down that sexy Latina mistress like she’d just begged you to fuck up her shit,” Zander confirms. “I barely got a look in. Lucky for me I brought my friend Jack Daniels along to your sad sack one-man pity party. Otherwise I’d have had to watch you drink yourself into oblivion totally fucking sober. That would have been really lame, dude. It was bad enough watching it all go down while buzzed.”
I groan, which I instantly regret. The vibration of the air traveling over my vocal cords makes me feel like I’m about to implode. Or explode. Not sure which. “Pity party?” I pant.
Zander’s pronounced shrug is practically audible. “Don’t ask me. I haven’t got a clue why Alessandro Moretti, Destroyer of Worlds, came out to play. Not my job to pry. I’m only good for vague, surface emotions and drinking games. You did mention something about your little brother? And that woman who’s taking care of him. You called her…what was it? An evil, vicious cunt?”
Yeah. Evil, vicious cunt sounds about right. I clench my jaw, grabbing hold of my own wrist and squeezing it as hard as I can. I have to get the fuck out of here. My stomach complains resentfully as I heave myself into a seated position, leaning my back against the side of my bed. “Phone? Have you seen my phone?”
Zander chuckles under his breath as he slumps down beside me on the floor. “Oh yeah. I’ve seen it all right. Here.”
The light stabs at my eyes when I crack them open. Zander reaches into the pocket of his red silk robe and takes out a mangled piece of bent metal, placing it unceremoniously on top of my chest. I haven’t had the iPhone for long. Couple of months, maybe. I’d held out on buying a cell phone for the longest time, convinced I was never going to need one and the mere purchase of such a piece of technology was going to make my life infinitely worse. Then I’d met Silver and all that had changed. The phone quickly became one of my most treasured possessions, because it was my direct link to her. Now, its screen is shattered. The whole thing is warped, bent into a worrying curve. No way it still works.
“You were laying into it with a hammer when I got here,” Zander supplies, sticking the end of a vape pen into his mouth. He pulls on it, his cheeks hollowing out for a second, and then a thick cloud of white smoke pours down his nose and out of his mouth. The smell of cherries fills the bedroom, sweet and noxious. “I’ve seen some stupid shit in my time, but that particular act of wanton destruction topped the list. Those things are fucking expensive. How the fuck you gonna watch porn now?”
“I need to call Silver,” I groan.
“Unless you have her number memorized, I’m afraid you’re shit out of luck,” Zander says in a sing-song voice. His cheery disposition is hurting my goddamn teeth. “I could drive you over to her place, since you’re clearly in no fit state to operate heavy machinery,” he offers. “But I only just got the Thunderbird and you still look barfy. I’m not having you tossing your cookies all over the leather. It’s original.”
I can’t voice my displeasure at his comment in real words, but the guttural, wolf-like growl I force out does the trick. Zander sucks on his vape pen again, blowing out of the corner of his mouth, purposefully aiming the sickly-sweet billow of white smoke at my face. “Do that again, and I’ll shove that thing where the sun don’t shine.”
“All right. Touchy touchy.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Raleigh, anyway?”
Zander assesses me coolly. “Not unless the powers that be are now expecting us to attend that shithole during the Christmas break.”
“So you thought you’d blast the most offensive music I own as loud as you could, just to really piss off the neighbors?” I grumble.
“It’s six forty-five in the morning. There won’t be anyone downstairs for another two hours. At least that’s what you told me last night. I thought some upbeat tunes might help you wake up in a good mood. Gotta say, you’ve rudely dashed my hopes. And you used to be such a morning person.”
That is a blatant lie. Back in Denney, the juvenile detention center where Zander and I met, I was a walking zombie until I’d managed to bribe one of the screws into giving me a double serving of coffee. And Zander just said it himself: he sat and watched me put away a bottle of tequila last night. He knew full well I was going to have a sore head this morning. I calculate the energy it’ll require to twist around and thump him squarely in the jaw, but then decide the satisfaction of hearing him yelp isn’t worth it. “Help me up. I need a cold shower. Then I’ll be able to take the bike—”
“It’s too dangerous to ride, man. Fuck! It’s like an ice rink out there. And anyway, I took your keys off you last night.”
“You’re gonna give them back.”
“I’m not, actually. Friends don’t let friends do stupid shit.”
This time, I don’t bother to do the math. I spin on him and launch my fist into his side, grinding my teeth together as I make contact. Zander huffs out a winded breath, his silk robe slipping off his tattooed shoulders as he doubles over, groaning.
“Do I need to ask again?” I snap.
“No, no,” he wheezes, his eyes rolling up into his head. “That should do the trick.”
3
SILVER
It’s amazing how many times a person can stave off death and still not feel like they deserve to live. Every morning, I wake up with the same question burning in my mind: Why? Why me? Why have I escaped death, when there have been so many times I could easily have bitten it.
Leon Wickman’s Spring Fling party.
The shooting at school.
Being kidnapped and hung from the rafters of the Raleigh High gymnasium roof.
Eighteen people died at Raleigh the day Leon decided enough was enough. Eighteen. Sarah Gilbert did charity work every weekend. Charisma Wells spent last summer in Ghana, teaching English to children in poverty stricken remote villages. Lawrence Harding was one of the smartest kids in school. He’d already scored himself a full ride at Duke. He was going to be a doctor. Chances were he was going to cure cancer or something, but his bright and promising future was snuffed out with the simple compression of a random fucking trigger.
I’m nothing special. I’m averagely smart. On a good day, I’d say I’m not too hard on the eyes, but the world sure as hell isn’t going to change for the better because I’m not hideous. I won’t grow up to make the world a better place because I am in it.
So…why? How have I survived so many disasters and dangerous situations, when there are innocent eleven-year-old kids bleeding to death in the back of cars with five-star safety ratings?
Careful, Silver. Don’t fall. Don’t slip down that rocky slope. Don’t imagine his face. Don’t imagine his pain. Don’t imagine his fear. You won’t survive that.
The only thing frightening or shocking enough to pull me back from the brink of the dark precipice yawning open in my mind is the face of the boy who raped me. Sick that I have to resort to picturing him, but it works. The moment his smug, cruel smile flits through my mind, I shut it down, all of it—every tender and aching thought that’s been swirling around the inside of my head for what feels like an eon.
I’m left standing in my room, hovering in front of the full-length mirror by my bathroom door, staring at a black dress in my hands. God knows how long I’ve been clutching it to my stomach. God knows how long I’ve been standing here in my underwear, hip bones jutting out a little too far, face a little thinner than it ought to be, drowning in thoughts of death and misery.
I’m a sight to behold. Day by day, my body’s been repairing itself from the litany of injuries Jake inflicted upon me…but I’m far from healed. The sickly pale ghosts of my bruises still linger, a myriad of unsettling colors that stubbornly will not fade no matter how much arnica I slather on them. My ribs protest violently whenever I cough, sneeze, or breathe too deeply. I can’t laugh without having to double over and grit my teeth while I ride out the pain. Not that I’ve had to do that over the past week, of course. There hasn’t been much to laugh about.
I shake out the dress in my hands, stepping into the fabric and pulling it up my body, eager to cover up all of the marks and blemishes that still mar my skin. If I can’t see them, I can pretend they aren’t there. If I can pretend they’re not there, then I can pretend none of it ever happ—
“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Jesus Christ!” I slap my hand to my chest, bracing myself against my chest of drawers. “Dad! Quit sneaking! You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”
My father stands in the doorway, dressed in a formal black button-down shirt and heavily pressed suit pants. The thin black tie knotted around his throat shirt looks like it’s trying to strangle him. He’s never exactly been tan, but his cheeks usually hold a little more color than they do right now. At his feet, Nipper sits, his black coat scruffy and wiry, his dark eyes sad. He whines softly as he gets up and limps across my room, giving my foot a little lick with his
raspy pink tongue. Like me, he’s recovering from his ordeal with Jake, but he will probably bear the scars of his injuries for the rest of his life.
“I sang Sweet Home Alabama all the way up the stairs to let you know I was coming. You were in your own little world,” Dad says.
Jeez. Poor guy. He could have been blowing into a tuba and banging a drum as he approached my room and I probably wouldn’t have heard him. The world’s been slipping away a lot recently. “I don’t think it’s right, you two heading over there on your own. I think I should come with you,” he says, propping himself up against the door jamb. He looks like he dressed accordingly this morning, just in case.
I huff down my nose, trying to smile and failing miserably. Reflected in the mirror, my face looks comically contorted. If this is the best I can do at forging a simple smile, then it’s a good job I never wanted to pursue a career in acting.
“Stay here, Dad. Get some work done. I feel bad that you haven’t been able to make any progress on the book in, well, weeks now.”