by Callie Hart
Fuck.
Fucking fuck, Alex.
I close out of the video and come out of the Messages app, slipping my phone back into my pocket. Merl's still rambling on about the little girl who drowned, and the new 5G pole on the other side of Whitley Hill. “You stand on that deck a'yours, and you might just be able to get a bar or two if you're lucky. I wouldn't count on it, though. You need help for any reason, you just come on over here, okay? Don't matter what time it is. I'm awake 'til late most nights. Damn sciatica keeps me up. I don't mind answerin' the door if you find yourself in trouble, you know that.”
I give him a forced smile, collecting my groceries from the counter. Over his shoulder, a rubber, mechanical fish mounted on a wooden plaque turns its head to face me, glassy eyes staring, and begins to sing, “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”
“Argh, stupid dang thing,” Merle grumbles. “Never shuts up. I need to take the batteries out.” He turns away from me, swatting at the fish, and I use the distraction to make my escape. I feel like I can’t breathe. My eyes are stinging like crazy. Fuck, I can’t fucking breathe.
Outside, I dump the groceries onto the passenger seat and watch the video again, hands shaking, heart thundering in my chest. I have no right to be angry. Alex owes me absolutely nothing. For the next fifteen seconds, I fluctuate between anger and hurt, though, feeling utterly, completely stupid.
I tap out a message before I can stop myself. Not a reply to the video. A message to Alex.
Me: Congrats on your conquest. Zen always gets what she wants. Glad you had a good night.
Almost immediately, a bubble pops up with three dots—I wasn’t expecting a response from him at all, let alone so damn quickly, but Alex is typing out a reply. I sit there, staring at the screen, dread tightening like a fist in the hollow of my chest.
The three dots inside the bubble continue to shuffle, signaling that he's still typing, but then it just…disappears. I instantly kick myself. I've spent the afternoon telling myself there's no way I could ever be with Alex, and in the next fucking breath, I'm allowing myself to get sucked into this bullshit, letting myself sink into some sort of nasty downward spiral because he might have hooked up with Zen or Kacey. Or fucking both of them. God. Nope. I shudder out of the thought.
The phone chimes, just as I toss it beside the groceries on the passenger seat. I sit very still, trying to decide how I want to proceed here. I shouldn’t read the message. I should drive back to the cabin and put this behind me. It’s bad enough that I texted him in the first place. I should have ignored the video and fucking deleted it.
Then the phone chimes again.
Fuuuck.
I pick up the phone, hating myself.
Alex: Conquest?
And then…
Alex: Where are you?
I drop the phone, startled by the question. Why does he want to know where I am? He does not need to know where I am. I really am such a fucking idiot. I shouldn’t have said a word. I should have kept my mouth shut and pretended I didn’t care, even if the idea of him with someone else, especially one of my ex friends, did sting for a second. Now, I’ve tipped my hand in an awkward way that’s going to be difficult to talk my way out of.
Ignore him, Silver. Do not reply. Best way to handle this is to just pretend like it didn’t happen.
“Great advice, asshole,” I growl at myself. “You’re great at pretending, aren’t you? It’s your fucking forte.”
I scowl at the screen, the few brief words Alex sent my way blazing there in black and white, and I can’t think of anything else to do, though. I drive all the way back to the cabin, cursing at myself under my breath. When I check my phone, parked in the driveway, there are zero bars in the top left-hand corner of the screen, and I'm awash with relief. But even I know that it's stupid to be relieved, when I can't hide from him forever. This weekend might be a day longer, but Tuesday isn't that far away. I'm still going to have to face Alex at school. I delete the video, along with the text, so I can't torture myself with it anymore.
17
SILVER
“I’m not a monster, though I do sometimes work for monsters.”
I cram popcorn into my mouth, eyes glued on the T.V. screen. I can quote this movie word for word, but I still like to watch it with the subtitles on. Simon’s big reveal that he does, in fact, have a soul, does nothing to endear him to me, as I sip on a diet coke, digging my toes beneath the cushion at the end of the sofa.
I blink and see Alex, sitting on the edge of a lounger, staring at Kacey and Zen as they rub their naked, wet bodies up against one another. Apparently, it is not safe to close my eyes just yet, not even for a microsecond. I try to lose myself in the explosive action taking place on the screen. It’s not easy, but after a while, I’m suitably numb and warmed by the fire, and I begin to drift off.
Much later, I come to with a start, knowing that something woke me. The living room’s filled with the sound of static, and the T.V. screen is all snow, the DVD having switched itself off at the end of the film. All is silent. The patter of the rain on the sloped roof is even absent, and my ears seem to ring with the tense quiet.
Something isn’t right. Something…
There’s a loud slam outside, the sound of a car door being closed.
I leap up from the couch, my heart rate skyrocketing through the roof. Someone's here. Someone's fucking here. My pulse pounds at my temples as I run to the kitchen, not knowing what exactly I plan on doing when I get there. Shit, shit, shit. Dad would have told me if he was coming to the lake. Mom never comes here, period. She's too damn busy to take a break and make the drive. It's unlikely anyone would make the trek down the two-mile-long, narrow driveway, the trees pressing in on either side of the pot-holed dirt track if they were lost and looking for one of the Airbnb cabins located along the other side of the lakefront.
No, to find yourself at this particular cabin, you have to know it’s here, and you have to be looking for it specifically.
I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Hurrying back to the living room, I snatch up my phone from the couch, trembling as I open up the screen and—fuck! No fucking reception. What am I going to do? WhatamIgoingtodowhatamIgoingtodowhatamIgoingtodo?
Calm the fuck down, Silver. Just calm the fuck down right now. This is how people always die in horror movies. They panic. They lose their shit, and they wind up making stupid decisions, and then they wind up fucking dead. Do not panic.
Easier said than done, though. My thoughts are scrambled as I rush back into the kitchen again and look for something to arm myself with. Meat tenderizer? No. Pasta strainer? Fuck, no. Kebab skewer? Errrr no. Knife! Yes, a knife. I yank open the cutlery drawer, frantically trying to find a blade that isn't dull and pitoned with rust, but it's been a decade since we had a BBQ here. You wouldn't be able to pop a fucking balloon with any of the—
BANG!
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Fuck.
My ears are ringing. It occurs to me, after years of coming to the cabin and being entirely unafraid of the place, that coming here alone was a remarkably stupid move on my part.
Mom and Dad are used to not hearing from me when I’m here. They’re not expecting me back until Monday night. Two days away. How badly can a body decompose in forty-eight hours? Are they going to find me mangled and in pieces when they finally drive up here to find out what’s happened to me?
A huge weight is pressing down on me, crushing my chest, making it hard to breathe. I grab a knife, any knife, and tiptoe toward the front door, realizing, horror sending a shock wave of adrenaline through my body, that I didn’t lock the goddamn door.
Fucking idiot, Silver! FUCKING IDIOT!
I'm two feet away from the door when the floorboard beneath my feet creaks.
“Silver.”
The voice on the other side of the door isn’t posing a question, asking if I’m there. It’s a statement. A declaration. It belongs to Alex Moretti.
I sag against the wood, my heart giving a hard, painful spasm below my ribs. Recognizing who it is hasn’t helped, it seems; I can’t decide if the knowledge is even a good or a bad thing. I’m out of breath, panting, when I speak, even though I’ve barely moved. “What the…hell are you doing here?”
“Open the door.”
“No!”
“Open the door, Silver. It’s two o’clock in the morning. I’m freezing.”
My mouth falls open. Sure enough, when I look down at Mickey, his disproportionate arms confirms that it’s nearly ten past two. “What the fuck are you doing, showing up here at two in the morning, Alex? Are you fucking insane?”
“Probably. Open the door.”
I swallow, and the metallic tang of fear floods my mouth. I’m not afraid that he’s here, but my fight or flight response is still taking a second to cool its jets. “Go home, okay? This is not okay.”
Silence rings like a bell in my ears again.
“All right. I’m gonna go get in the car. I’ll wait five minutes before I go. Take a beat. If you really want me to go, then stay inside. If you wanna talk, then come out.”
“I’m not gonna come out, Alex. You’re fucking mad!”
“Like I said. I’ll wait five minutes.”
I hear him walk away, footsteps moving away from the door and down the steps that lead up to the cabin’s porch. A second later, a car door slams again.
Fucking psycho.
Why would he do this?
Why would he drive all the way out here in the middle of the night?
This was a bad move on his part. A stupid fucking move.
I turn away from the door and hurl the knife, grinding my teeth together. Now it’s not fear that I taste in my mouth. It’s just blood. I must have bitten the inside of my cheek.
“Urrgghhh! ASSHOLE!” I yell the insult, even though he probably can’t hear me. Of all the dumb, shitty, cruel things he could do…
I oscillate wildly between anger and relief as I pace up and down in front of the door.
A minute passes.
I gouge my fingernails into the meat of my palms, digging so hard my hands begin to throb.
Another minute.
Another.
I’m going to fucking kill him. Dad won’t be so pally-pally with him when he finds out that he came up here and scared the shit out me like this.
Another minute.
Not that I can tell Dad. If I do, I’ll also have to tell him that I was here alone, and then he’ll never let me come again.
Another minute.
The engine revs to life outside. Light floods through the living room window, throwing everything into stark relief, shadows climbing the walls.
Shit.
I don’t even decide to do it. I act without thinking, throwing open the cabin door and storming barefoot out into the night. Alex is sitting in the driver’s seat of an old Camaro, his hands resting on the steering wheel. His eyes lock onto me as I charge toward him; he remains expressionless as I pitch up at the side of the car, raise my fist and smash it into the driver’s side window. Pain explodes through my hand, sharp and breathtaking, stars spangling, flaring in my vision.
“FUCK YOU, ALEX MORETTI!” I spin around, mud squelching up between my toes as I shake out my hand, walking away from the car. Fuck, that really, really hurts. I cradle my hand to my chest, holding it there, waiting for the pain to subside, but it only seems to get worse. The car door opens and closes again. Alex doesn’t say a word, which is almost the most infuriating part of all of this. He doesn’t even ask if I’m okay.
“You know,” I hiss. “You know what happened. You know…what they did. You know how fucking frightening it would be…for me to have someone roll up here…in the dark, when I was alone…”
I’m crying, and I don’t know if it’s because my hand hurts so much, or because I’m still reeling from the fear and the panic of what might have been about to happen to me. Soon, I’m sobbing, and I can’t control it. I’m straining for breath, fighting not to collapse. I can feel myself slipping, drowning, tumbling, descending into some broken kind of madness that I have never allowed myself to succumb to before. Not even after it happened. Not even when my friends turned on me, and I found myself shunned…
I am breaking.
I am splintering.
I am finally shattered into pieces.
Alex is right in front of me, then. He’s holding out his hands, dark eyes calm and steady. “Va bene. Va bene. Respira, Argento. Respira. Shhhh.”
I want to smash my fist into his face, just like I smashed it into the car window. Instead, when he takes a slow, obvious step toward me, I fall into his arms and bawl into his chest. His arms wrap around me tight, and for the first time since that night in Leon Wickman’s bathroom, I cry as I am held. The smell of laundry detergent, pine needles, and Alex roars inside my head as I suck in breath after breath. My hands are fisting his t-shirt, pulling hard at the fabric, but he doesn’t push me away. Not even when I let go and slam my balled-up fist against his chest. Or any of the other five or six times that I hit him as hard as I can.
“Shhhh. It’s okay. Breathe, Silver. Breathe. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t fucking have me. None of this has anything to do with him, and yet I can’t manage to shrug free of him. It hurts too fucking much. God, I knew it did, I knew it was there, eating away at me, but I’ve distanced myself so effectively from the pain that I had no idea how crippling it would be when it finally overcame me.
I lose myself for a long time, and Alex doesn't falter. He stands firm, crushing me to him, whispering to me in both English and Italian as the out of control emotion gradually begins to ebb. After what feels like a lifetime, a dull, numb kind of calm settles over me, and I begin to feel stupid.
With shaking legs, I push away from him, wiping at my face with the backs of my hands. “I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. I think…I may have overreacted a little.” I try not to groan when I notice the front of his grey t-shirt is soaked, a unique Rorschach pattern of my grief staining the material. Alex's eyes are no longer calm. They're on fire, blazing, the muscles in his jaw jumping angrily as he looks down at me.
“Don’t. Don’t do that,” he growls. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Silver. I fucking…” He fists his hands into his hair and pulls, elbows crooked around his ears. He looks like he’s about to hit the car window himself. “I’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but I’ve never been this fucking dumb,” he mutters. “I didn’t even think what would happen if I just showed up on the doorstep. Of course you’d be afraid. I scared the shit out of you. I’m a goddamn moron.”
Under any other circumstance, I’d agree with him, but he’s so obviously furious with himself that I don’t feel the need. Still, that leaves me with nothing to say, because he did scare me…
He drags a hand down over his face, inhaling sharply. When he faces me, I realize that this is the first real sign of true, proper emotion I’ve ever seen on him. He looks like he’s about to lose his shit now. “I’m sorry, Silver. I’m a fucking idiot. I did not mean to do that.”
I feel small. Vulnerable. Honestly, I feel a little ashamed for having such an epic meltdown. “It’s okay,” I whisper.
He shakes his head, chewing on the inside of his bottom lip. “It isn’t. It’s not okay. None of it is. You’re allowed to say that.”
I can only sigh, suddenly exhausted, drained down to the very roots of my soul. “How did you even know where to find me?” I ask. Seems like the only pertinent question right now.
He looks off into the darkness, into the expanse of shadowy trees, his brows pulling together into an unhappy frown. “Halliday,” he says tightly.
“Halliday?” A sharp pain lances through my chest. What the fuck? It makes sense that he’d be on speaking terms with Halliday, since she was there in that video, just as naked and just as drunk as Kacey and Zen. It feels wrong that she’d be talking to Alex about me, though.
Out of all the girls, Halliday has been the only one who hasn’t made it her sole objective to make my life a living hell. It makes me feel awkward, uncomfortable in my own skin. Alex must see the look on my face.
“She’s been working at the Rock. The bar where I work. Your brother hangs out with her brother or something? He told her you were here. She gave me the address.”
Halliday, working at a bar? She looks mature for her age, but there’s no way she could pass as twenty-one. Makes no sense.
“Look, I really fucked up. I shouldn’t have come up here like this. I should have waited ’til you were home or something. You weren’t replying to my texts, though. I wanted to tell you—” He runs his tongue over his teeth, shaking his head again. I can feel his frustration from here. He was holding onto me a moment ago, comforting me, running his hands up and down my back, stroking my hair, but now it seems as though a gulf has opened up between us, yawning wide, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Fuck!” he yells, and the word echoes out into the forest. “I should go,” he says. “This was a huge fucking mistake.”
“You're here now.” I sniff, pulling the sleeves of my hoodie down over my hands against the cold. “Say what you came here to say. You might as well.”
He huffs. Looks like he’s battling with himself, trying to figure out what he wants to do next. What he wants to say. “I just…I realized after your text that you saw that video. Jacob’s been sending it out to everyone at Raleigh. He thinks it’s fucking hilarious for some reason. Kacey doesn’t even seem that bothered—”
“She wouldn’t. She uses her body like it’s a weapon. She gets naked at every available opportunity. She’s probably told Jacob to send it to me.”
“So fucked up,” Alex whispers. “Look. I know it looked bad.”
“It didn’t. It looked like you were having a great time, making new friends. Why would I care about that?” God, I’m so full of shit.