“You weren’t supposed to remember.” There isn’t one thing about his voice that is the same. It’s him, but not him. There isn’t any rage or darkness gripping him. It’s the same boy but not the same voice, not the same eyes, not the same madness.
“You weren’t supposed to kill me.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You didn’t mean to?” My brain is wringing out the words, trying to find the meaning of them. But there isn’t any. “How do you not mean to do what you did? You hit me in the face over and over again. You dragged me around by my hair and ripped it out of my head. You kicked me so hard and so many times that there wasn’t a way to fix everything you broke. You murdered my hand. The bones were sticking out. All over the place. Do you remember it?” The last question is nothing more than a pathetic, strangled whisper.
“No.” The word is almost an apology.
“No?” I don’t remember what my hand looked like, either. I’ve only seen the pictures nobody wanted to show me. But he’s the one who did it. He should have to remember.
“Not all of it. Pieces.”
“Pieces? You did this to me and you don’t even have the decency to remember?” I don’t know where the word even comes from. I can’t believe I’m talking to the boy who beat me to death about decency. I can’t believe I’m talking to him at all. I’m supposed to be killing him.
“My brother killed himself.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m sorry? I said I’m sorry to this boy. I’m walking to school and smiling and saying hi all over again. No. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I forgive myself because it was automatic. I didn’t mean it. I gave him the words but I won’t give him sympathy. He’s looking at me like he can’t believe I said it either. I think I’m insane. I don’t know if this twisted conversation is real, but it must be because I don’t think I could imagine this.
“I got home that day and I found him. Found his body.” He’s talking like he’s rehearsed these words a thousand times in his head and he’s just been waiting for the moment to say them.
And so he does.
He gives me the mythical why. He tells me the story. At least what he remembers of it and I think how ironic it is that I’m not supposed to remember, but I do, and the boy who is supposed to have all the answers has a mind full of blanks. But he spills everything in a mad rush like he’s been holding onto it for years and he wants to get it out before I stop him.
He tells me about his brother. About the girl his brother was in love with who went to the same school as me. The girl who broke up with his brother and who Aidan blamed for the suicide, even though he knows, now, that she wasn’t the reason. The Russian girl. The Russian whore. The girl he went looking for that day. The girl he saw when he saw me. Just because I was there.
And then he says the words. And it isn’t possible for me to hate this boy more, but I do.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
My head wants to explode. This is not the way this is supposed to happen. He’s not supposed to be apologizing. He’s supposed to be evil and I’m supposed to hurt him.
My hands are fists without a purpose. I don’t know where my breath comes from, just that it still comes. I can’t hear any more of this. Because he’s stealing my rage and it’s the only thing I have. He can’t take that, too. He can’t make me not hate him. I’ll have nothing left.
He starts talking about his parents putting him in therapy after the suicide and about the guilt he lives under because he never told anybody about what he did to me. How he kept waiting to get caught and waiting to get caught but no one ever came for him. And he thought that he was being given a second chance; that I didn’t die and he thought I was okay and it was some sort of new beginning. It was. Just to a shittier story.
Words. So many words. I don’t need to know why he turned evil, just that he was. There is absolutely no part of me that wants to listen to him talk about his guilt and his therapy and his art and his healing. He doesn’t get to feel better. He doesn’t get to forgive himself. I won’t give him permission.
And yet I don’t think he does forgive himself. There is so much remorse and pain and self-loathing in his expression that I ache for him because I know what it feels like; and I hate myself for the aching.
He stops talking. I listened to every word he said and it’s my turn now. My turn to tell him everything I’ve needed to tell him since the day I remembered what he did to me. My turn to make him listen. But I don’t get the chance. Clay walks in before I can figure out which of the thousand words in my head I’m going to say first.
“There you are,” Clay looks at me. “Did you make it all the way through already?”
He turns to Aidan Richter who looks haunted and stares at me like I’m a specter. Some spirit from the past, come to claim what’s owed.
“Hi,” Clay says, and walks over to offer his hand. I want to grab it away and scream not to touch him. I know what those hands have done and I don’t want them anywhere near Clay’s. “Clay Whitaker. You’re work?”
Clay glances around at the walls which I’ve only now started to notice. This boy’s art is so different from Clay’s. There’s nothing remotely similar at all. But it’s amazing and I want to slap myself for thinking so. I despise him for the ability to create it.
And then I see it. And there are no words that exist to describe the hatred I feel for him. The painting. On the far side of one wall, all the way to the end, like a period or an afterthought. But it’s not a painting. It’s a memory that didn’t happen.
I don’t know anything about art so I can’t tell you that it’s watercolor or acrylic or that it’s on canvas or anything art related at all. I can tell you that it’s a painting of a hand, my hand, turned up and opened to the world and that it reaches into my body and rips out everything that’s left. Because in the palm, right in the center, is the pearl button I never reached.
Aidan Richter is gone and I’m still waiting.
I need to find him. He got to say everything and I said nothing. I won’t let him absolve his guilt at my expense. He doesn’t get to use me for that, too. He doesn’t get to make me question everything I’ve believed for nearly three years and then walk away without listening to me.
I want my turn to scream at him. To ask him if he knows that he’s a murderer. If he knows that, even though I lived, it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill me. Just because they brought me back, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t dead. Just because they restarted it, it doesn’t mean my heart didn’t stop. It doesn’t change anything he did. He killed the Brighton Piano Girl even if he didn’t kill Emilia Ward. And I want to tell him. I want him to know what I know. I want him to hurt. I’m frantic with unsaid words.
Maybe no one found him before, but I know who he is now. I know his name. I can find him like he found me.
And when I do, it won’t be random.
CHAPTER 54
Josh
When I get to Sunday dinner I’m hoping she’ll be there. With everything that happened last weekend, she skipped it and I don’t blame her. I would have skipped it, too, if I wasn’t desperate for even the slightest chance of seeing her.
My house is too quiet and my garage is too empty so I came over here early. Dinner isn’t ready, so Drew and I end up in his room because I don’t feel like standing around being polite and making small talk. But I have nothing to talk to Drew about, either, and we just end up sitting here in stupid silence.
Maybe I should have stayed home. Sunshine never came back after we talked on Wednesday. I thought it was a turning point but maybe I was just deluding myself again.
“Tell me what the hell happened between you two,” Drew finally demands. “And don’t say nothing. And don’t say you don’t know. I’ve gotten every evasive answer there is from both of you and I’m calling bullshit.”
“I don’t know.” I look up at Drew and stop him before he can interrupt. “That’s the absolute truth, whether you like it or not. I have no f**king idea. Everything was fine. Everything was good. And then it wasn’t. All I know is that, for like five minutes, I think I was happy.”
“Something had to have happened, Josh.”
Something most definitely did happen. I wage an internal battle over whether to ask him the question that’s in my head. I’ve always wondered how much she talks to Drew, how much goes on between them that I don’t know about.
“Did she tell you she was a virgin?
“What? No way.” He looks at me incredulously. “Seriously?”
I nod. He clearly didn’t know any more than I did. I feel like I’m betraying her by telling him. But I have to tell someone. I have to try to understand. I feel like I’m drowning.
“How is that even possible? She’s a virgin?”
“Not anymore,” I answer.
“And that’s what happened.” He sobers. It’s not even a question.
“That’s what happened.”
“Why would that break you up?” he asks, confused.
“I don’t know. I don’t get any of it. She said she was ruined and she was using me to ruin what was left.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I just shake my head. I have no answers. I asked her the same thing and she never gave me any.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing about her has made sense since the day she got here. She just wanted to pretend it didn’t matter. I did, too.” It’s the most I’ve ever said to anyone about her and when I hear it come out of my mouth I know how it sounds.
“You know she loves you, right?”
“She told you that?” I hate the hope in my voice.
“No, but—”
“I didn’t think so.” I don’t want him taking pity on me with false hope. She either said it or she didn’t. And she didn’t. Then again, neither did I.
“Josh—”
Drew doesn’t get a chance to finish because his mom calls us in for dinner, and I walk out before he can say anything else.
When we get to the kitchen, Mrs. Leighton hugs me and Drew walks away to pull a playlist up on the computer because it’s his turn tonight. Everything is like normal.
And Sunshine isn’t anywhere.
We’re just about to bring the food to the table when Mr. Leighton calls out from the family room where he always watches the news before dinner. Mrs. Leighton yells back that it’s time to eat and he needs to shut the TV off, but he calls her in again, and she must recognize something in his tone because she doesn’t question it this time. She just goes, and we all follow.
And this is the moment before. The moment when everything is still familiar and understandable. The moment before everything shifts. I’ve had a few of these moments in my life. The moment I walk from the kitchen to the family room is one of them; the moment before I see the face on the television in the Leighton living room at Sunday dinner.
I don’t even know why he called us in here until I follow everyone’s eyes to the television screen. And then I know everything. I can’t even hear what they’re saying because the picture is screaming at me so loudly that it drowns out everything else. Mr. Leighton rewinds the DVR and turns it up, but I still barely process the words.
High school student Aidan Richter was arrested this afternoon after confessing to the brutal 2009 beating and attempted murder of, then fifteen year-old, Emilia Ward, affectionately referred to by locals as the Brighton Piano Girl. The crime had gone unsolved for nearly three years until Richter, himself only sixteen at the time of the attack, arrived with his parents and attorney and surrendered himself into police custody earlier today. No other details have been released and so far no comment has been made by either family. A press conference is scheduled to take place at 9:30 tomorrow morning.