“Stop singing that f**king song!” he yells with rage and kicks one of my toys across the room. “Get your shit together and let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t,” she says through hysterical sobs. “What if someone saw us?”
“No one f**king saw us,” he says, shaking her like a rag doll. “I already checked the house.”
She glances around my toy room and I swear her eyes land on me in the dark corner. Does she see me? She has to. Is she going to tell? “Lean into me. Lean into me. Take. Help me. I need to understand. Help me. I can’t do this without you.” Tears flood her eyes over and over again and I start to cry to as he starts smacking her over and over again, the lyrics and slaps haunting my head as I wait for the monsters to find me. Hurt me. Because that’s what monsters do.
* * *
I wake up in a panic, like I always do, my arms flailing as I sit up, my surroundings distorted as that song echoes in her head. I gasp, clutching my neck, breathing loudly as I search the dark room, my mind searching for something familiar, and finally it lands on my teddy bear on top of my desk.
Luke sits up, rubbing his eyes as he places a hand on my back. He’s become so used to this it doesn’t even faze him anymore. He smoothes his hand up and down my back, allowing me to regain my breathing as I clutch the sheet to my na**d chest, telling my heart rate to settle. I have to work not to do it the way I’m so used to doing—by seeking an adrenaline rush through danger. I know that the only reason I’m not running to the window and contemplating jumping is because he’s here touching me. Calming me down. He’s the one doing it now.
After I settle down, he pulls his shirt over me, slips his boxers on and lies us back down in bed, wrapping his arms around me. “I wish you’d tell me what you dream about,” he whispers against my forehead as he kisses it. “Maybe I could help.”
“Talking about stuff doesn’t help,” I whisper with my hands on his chest. “And trust me, you don’t want to hear about it.”
He combs his fingers through my hair and I feel his neck muscles move as he swallows hard. “I have nightmares, too, sometimes about… about shooting up my mom… I actually really hate needles and doing that stuff… Well it still gets to me.”
“But you’re a diabetic?”
“Yeah, it’s a great inconvenience.” There’s forced humor in his voice.
I rack my head for something to say, but I can’t come up with anything. I could make a joke, create an elaborate story—those things are always easy for me to do. But he keeps telling me things about himself, without me even asking. Dark and screwed-up things, like the ones I’ve been holding inside me for thirteen years.
“It’s about that night,” I say and his muscles stiffen, but he continues to run his fingers through my hair. “I saw them…”
His fingers stop moving and he catches his breath. “You saw the killers.”
I nod, looking down at the foot of the bed. “I did, but at the same time not really… I guess it was more like I heard them… they were noisy fuckers.” My tone is light but everything else inside me feels like bricks tumbling down, crushing me, trapping me. “They didn’t know I was in the room, so they didn’t even bother to be quiet.”
“Did you tell the police this?” he asks.
“I told the police everything; what I could remember happening, the shoes the lady was wearing… I even described the sound of her stupid voice… the way it sounded when she sang that messed-up song.”
“She was singing a song?” he asks. “Really?”
“Yeah, it had some really fucked-up lyrics,” I say, summoning a deep breath. “ ‘Lean into me. Lean into me. Take. Help me. I need to understand. Help me. I can’t do this without you…’ ” I trail off. “It’s what I hear every night in my dreams.”
He’s silent for a while, the sounds of cars rolling by the only noise in our room. At first I think it’s because he’s taking in what I said, but then I realize how stiff he’s gotten and how it doesn’t even sound like he’s breathing.
I peer up at him, wondering if it was a mistake to tell him. “Luke, are you okay?”
“What the hell did you just say?” he whispers.
I definitely shouldn’t have told him. “That was the song she was singing.” I push up from his chest, trying to decide whether I should bail out before he throws me out. “I’m not even sure what song it is because I’ve never been able to find it anywhere.”
The length of his silence seems to stretch on forever. He doesn’t budge. Breathe. And I grow more panicked.
“That’s because she made it up.” His voice cracks and then he shoves me off him.
I roll to the side as he gets up and storms out of the room. I lay in the bed for a moment replaying what he said and what he could possibly mean. Who made it up? Does he know something about the song? Does he know the person who… Oh my God… I jump up and chase after him as he slams the bathroom door shut. I jerk on the doorknob but he locked it.
I bang my fist on the door. “What do you mean ‘she made it up’? Luke… Please answer me…” I hammer my hand against the door over and over again until it’s swollen and throbbing. “God damn it, please just say it again. I need to know… I need to know that I heard you right.”
He doesn’t answer and his silence is enough to know the painful, blazing, slicing, ugly truth. I sink to the floor as things start crashing around on the other side of the door. Glass. Walls. My heart. I wait for the truth to be revealed to me, just like I waited that night, hoping it’s not what I’m thinking. That Luke doesn’t know the person who was there that night my parents were killed, singing that god-awful song. But deep down I know I’m wrong.
Knowing the horrible truth and the emptiness that lies ahead of me.
Luke
I hammer my fist over and over against the wall, watching it fall apart, crumble against the tile floor, turn into a pile of dust. Then once the hole is big enough, I crash my fist into the mirror. Glass shatters. My skin splits apart. I bleed all over the floor, drops of blood staining the tile along with the broken fragments of glass. This can’t be happening. It isn’t real. I just want a f**king decent life without my God damn past owning me. Without her owning me. A hot burst of heat burns the inside of me and I crane my arm back and ram my fist into the nearest thing still intact, which happens to be the bathtub. The tile stays intact, but my fingers feel like they break. But it’s not enough. I need more. I don’t want to feel like this. I can’t… I can’t accept it… Tears start to slip out of my eyes as I collapse to the floor. I’m bawling like a f**king weak and pathetic loser, the kid who used to do everything he was told. I’m drowning in my past, drowning in the thought that I’m going to lose Violet.
I let myself cry until the tears stop, until I know there’s nothing left to do but move again. Sweaty, bleeding, and raw, I get to my feet, the glass cutting the bottom of them as I move toward the door. Violet’s sitting leaning against the door and she falls onto the bathroom floor when I pull the door open. Her hair is surrounding her head as she lies there in the middle of the pieces of wall and mirror, staring up at me with dry eyes.
“When… when did this happen?” It takes more strength than anything for me to ask it. “When did your parents die?”
She sucks in a slow breath. “Thirteen years ago… the night of July third… the day before my birthday.” Her eyes are blank, emotionless, worse than when I first met her. And I put that look there. This is all my fault.
I remember that night because it was the night my mother came back with blood all over her clothes. The night everything changed. The night that lead to a seemingly endless amount of days filled with drugs and madness.
“I think…” I clutch my broken hand as I tremble inside and out. I can’t even say it, which makes me the weakest person on earth, because she deserves to hear what I have to say. She deserves so much f**king more.
“I think I know what you’re going to say, so don’t say it,” she tells me.
“I can’t…” I struggle for words that’ll make this easier, but they don’t exist. “That song… my mother made up that song…” The sound of my voice hits me with invisible knives that stab at my lungs, my throat, my heart.
“She was… oh my God, was she there?” Her eyes flood as she starts crying, hysterically sobs ripping from her chest as she claws at the air, my chest, every single thing around us.
“I don’t know…” But deep down I think I do because I remember that night she came home with blood on her clothes. I don’t know what I should do. I want to help her, but it seems like I should be the last person to ever get to touch her. “I’ll fix it,” I whisper, crouching down beside her. “I’ll… I’ll tell someone…”
“That doesn’t matter.” Tears stream down her cheeks and drip down on the floor. “Nothing we do can ever fix this. Nothing. It’s all gone. My parents… you and I…”
The pain in my knuckles is nothing compared to the blinding, aching, pain in my heart as the meaning of her words slash open my chest. Tears pour out of her eyes and I can’t stop myself, unable to fully accept reality yet. I know I’ll have to let her go, because she’s not going to let me hold on to her anymore. Not after this. Things will never be the same. But I can’t do it just yet. I need a little longer before I let all of this go, my feelings for her, who I’ve become with her.
I bend down and scoop her up in my arms, ignoring how badly it hurts. She doesn’t protest, only cries harder, gripping me as if I’m the only thing holding her to this world. I carry her to the bed and lie her down and she pulls me down to her. I let her grip me, let her cry, let her sob into my chest, never touching her, letting her take whatever she needs and wanting nothing in return.
Eventually, she falls asleep in my arms and even though I fight the urge to get up, I stay put until finally the emotional drain catches up with me and I pass out with her balled up in my arms. It only seems like I close my eyes for minutes, but when I wake up the bed is empty. I get up and look around the room, noting her bear is gone and when I open the dresser drawers her clothes aren’t in them. I search the house and I can’t find her or anything that belongs to her anywhere. She’s gone. Everything is.
And it hurts, more than my broken hand, more than remembering, more than anything I’ve had to endure in my entire life. I didn’t even know how much I felt for her until now, when I can’t feel it anymore. I want the pain gone. I want it all gone. I need it gone.
I head to the fridge and take out a bottle of tequila. It takes a lot to get the cap off with my injured hand, but I manage. Then I tip my head back and put the mouth to the bottle, going back to the one thing I know will take everything away. I drench my throat with the burning liquid, letting it seep into every part of me, letting it drown me, until I’m so far under, I don’t even want to try to breathe.
Epilogue
Violet
“So things with lover boy didn’t work out, huh?” Preston asks as he drops the last bag of my stuff on his living room floor. Everything’s in plastic bags, because I packed in a rush, needing to get out of there before I threw myself out the window. I would have done it, too, because the idea of everything being over sounded far better than letting the one simple, good thing in my life go. But being around him would remind me of how I got to that point, how I got to be the person that would consider throwing herself out the window.
The worst part is I feel for him, care for him, want him to be the one sitting here with me, yet I don’t even think I could look at him without thinking about my parents’ murder and how his mom could be connected to it. Even as he held me and I cried, the safety that I once felt in his arms was gone and all I felt was hollowness.
“He’s not my lover boy… he’s not my anything,” I mutter to Preston, rubbing my eyes as I sink down onto the couch. My eyes ache almost as much as my heart. I’ve never cried that much. Never had a reason to. And I’m still trying to figure out if I was crying over the fact that Luke told me his mom was there the night my parents were killed or if it was because I knew I couldn’t stay there with him, not in the way we were just moments earlier before I sang that song and broke everything apart.
After Luke fell asleep, I’d gotten up, feeling the insane, uncontrollable need for adrenaline and I did the only thing I could think of that wouldn’t end badly, with one more death. I walked away and went to the only place that I have left. I’m surprised Preston even came to pick me up. I’m still not even sure why I went back to him or if I’ll stick around. But right now I’m too defeated and drained to do anything else. And I’m not ever sure I’ll get who I was back, the person I became with Luke, or even the person I was pre-Luke who could hold it together as long as I could shut down my emotions. Even after I tell the police. Even when—or if—they can finally make an arrest because in the end I’ll still be all alone.
After Preston stacks the last of the boxes onto the floor near the hall, he shuts the door and drops onto the couch beside me. I’m still in boxer shorts and I’m wearing Luke’s shirt that I can’t even remember putting on, but I’m glad I have it because it smells like him.
He drapes an arm around my shoulder. “So are you going to tell me why you look like shit or should I start guessing?”