Put Me Back Together (35 page)

The story that started after that day in the woods was even longer than what came before. I told Lucas about waking up covered in my own blood from my head wound and then stumbling over something in the dark, the horror of touching the pulpy flesh and realizing it was what was left of Tommy. Then there were my screams ping-ponging around inside my head and the wild run through the woods and being found by the lady walking her dog—the look on her face when she saw me covered in blood—the discovery of Tommy’s body and the lies I told the police, and my parents, and Emily—oh God, Emily. I had a concussion and a broken arm and had to stay in the hospital overnight as the horror of Tommy Wesley’s death played out on the TV attached to the wall. My statement is what led to Brandon’s arrest, the first arrest of a twelve-year-old boy for murder the province had ever seen.

Then there was the media hounding my family every time we left the house, and the wrenching guilt as friends and neighbours poured out their sympathy, encircling me with a concern and affection I felt I did not deserve. Tommy’s funeral, which I attended under protest. A school year done and a summer of living under self-imposed house arrest. Then a new year began and I had to face high school as this new, darker version of myself, to withstand the looks that followed me everywhere I went. But they weren’t looks of accusation, only pity, only disgust at the mess I’d made of myself.

A year passed before the trial began and I had to relive that day in the woods all over again. Brandon’s lawyer tried to pin the murder on me, but I was too good of a liar by then. Too practiced. Too sympathetic. Brandon eyed me with silent hatred whenever I was in the courtroom, and I kept my gaze lowered, destroying my hands, praying I would get away with it. In the end he got the maximum sentence possible in youth court: six years in custody and four years’ community supervision. The papers railed against the fact that he couldn’t be tried as an adult, but he was too young, He was only twelve. Ten years was the best they could do. By the time he turned eighteen he would be back out in the world. I prayed that day would never come, that something terrible would happen to him in that place. Because I knew he would come for me when he got out and I would have to answer for my lies.

“But the day did come,” I said. “It was that day I called you over to help me watch Ethan.”

Lucas leaned his cheek against mine. “I remember reading the headlines. If only I’d known… Your freak-out over Ethan makes a lot more sense now.”

“He’s the same age Tommy was,” I said sadly. Though Ethan would grow older, Tommy would always be five years old. Tommy would never grow up.

Because of me
, I thought, then corrected myself.
No, Katie, because of Brandon.

I described my need to escape the Vancouver suburb, my home, which had, over six years, become a stifling prison. I needed to be somewhere no one knew I’d been a victim of the Kindergarten Killer. So I’d applied to art programs out east and picked Queen’s on a whim, moving across the country with my sister in tow to escape my past.

“Except it caught up with me,” I said.

Then came the hardest part: telling Lucas the whole truth of Brandon’s assault on me over the last two months, from the first Facebook message to the texts he’d already read to the break-in. Though it pained and frightened me to see his anger, I had to let him pace and rage as I recounted the worst of it. I had to let him express his frustration, his desire to rip Brandon apart, and believe he never would. It was almost harder than telling him about the murder itself. Watching Lucas’s muscular arms ripple with tension brought out a terror in me that was all too familiar.

He’s not Brandon
, I reminded myself.
Lucas is on my side.

But this truth was harder to swallow, because hadn’t Brandon been on my side, too?

When I told Lucas about the crumpled message in my bag and explained that he must have been in the coffee shop with us, his face went blank—with anger or fear, I couldn’t be sure—and he was silent for a long time. We sat together in this quiet, leaning on each other, holding each other. Even though he didn’t say a word, those moments of silence meant so much to me—almost more than any profession of love. I’d been sitting in the dark for so long. I’d never realized how much I’d been yearning for someone to sit there with me and hold my hand and let me feel his heart beating insistently under my palm, telling me I wasn’t in this alone.

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Lucas mumbled into my neck as we lay down together on his bed. “I’ll stay with you always. He won’t be able to find you behind me.”

He put his arms around me protectively, holding me tightly even as he drifted off to sleep. There was comfort there, but also dismay. Lucas thought he could hide me from Brandon, but I knew the truth.

Eventually he would find me.

21

When I woke up the next morning, Lucas was gone. I stared at the empty space beside me in the bed for a long minute, trying not to blame him for running. If anyone understood the urge to run, it was me. I sat up in bed with a heavy sigh.

“Morning, Hero,” Lucas said. “I got you a hot chocolate.”

Snatching my glasses off the nightstand, I turned my head to find a fully dressed Lucas sitting on the bare mattress on the other side of the room, a newspaper spread out in front of him. Not only was he awake before me, but his hair was wet so it even looked like he’d showered.

Smiling so widely my cheeks hurt, I padded across the room and kissed him on the side of the head before accepting my drink.

“Didn’t think I left you here, did you?” he said teasingly. Apparently my sigh hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“Not at all,” I said mildly. “I was just regretting the idea of sleeping over here in your pygmy-sized bed. The crick in my neck regrets it, too.”

“Agreed,” Lucas said with a laugh. “All future sleepovers will be conducted at your apartment where there is not only a double bed but also no roommates. Luckily for us, Danny is trying to spend all his free time with his girlfriend before she leaves for her internship.”

My brain snagged on the words “future sleepovers” and didn’t even take in the rest. My heart did a little flip at the idea that Lucas was still thinking of a future with me despite everything I’d told him. Then I remembered how many times he’d told me he loved me the night before and my heart did a double flip.

His attention drawn back to the newspaper, he held out a paper take-out bag from the coffee shop. “I got you a cruller,” he said as he took a bite of a raspberry danish.

I peered into the bag suspiciously. “No chocolate icing?” I complained.

Raising his eyebrows at me, Lucas grabbed me by the waist and pulled me down onto the bed in front of him, tickling me mercilessly. “Not even a, ‘Thank you, Boyfriend, for going out in the rain to get me a tasty breakfast?’” he said as I squealed and squirmed, crushing the newspaper underneath me. Then he leaned forward and gave me a kiss so deep that suddenly I didn’t feel much like laughing at all. “How can you stand that much chocolate so early in the morning, anyway?”

I gave him a look that was equal to the alarming nature of his question. “How much you have to learn,” I said, shaking my head.

As I hoisted myself up off the bed, I pressed my hand down on the newspaper, crushing it further. “Careful, I’m reading that,” Lucas said. As he straightened out the page, I looked down to see the front page headline.

Kindergarten On The Run?

I spun around, holding my stomach as it clenched painfully. Telling Lucas had not stopped the automatic reaction I had whenever I caught wind of a news story about Brandon.

Lucas took my hand and pulled me back around while simultaneously folding the newspaper over with his other hand. “There, it’s gone,” he said. Getting to his feet, he took me in his arms. I breathed in his scent and breathed out the bad memories. After about a minute of breathing like this and feeling his arms around me, my stomach had unclenched.

Like I said, magic arms.

“That’s why you ran away from Tim and me that day on campus, isn’t it?” Lucas said, putting it together. “I remember there was a news report blaring out of his ear buds. That idiot always plays his music too loud.”

“You remember that?” I said.

“Of course I remember it,” Lucas said. “About five seconds later you slipped and fell on your ass. How could I forget that?”

I pressed my hand against his cheek as his dimples popped. “That’s not what I remember,” I said. “I remember you picking me up.”

“I’ll always pick you up,” Lucas said. “I’ll always be there for you, Katie.” I closed my eyes at the sound of his lovely words and wondered if I would ever believe them completely without wondering why. “I promise I’ll throw the paper out right after I finish reading this article.”

“Deal,” I said, giving him my best half-smile.

Lucas shook his head, still looking down at me. “I still can’t really believe you’re ‘the babysitter.’ I must have read dozens of articles about you over the years. I think I even saw a picture of you once, but your head was turned away from the camera.”

I remembered that picture, too, and the way my father had torn it out of every newspaper he could get his hands on. He’d walked down the block ripping the front page off the newspaper on every front stoop until my mother screamed at him to get a hold of himself.

“Yeah, that was me. Being the sole surviving victim of a notorious child murderer sure can do wonders for your celebrity status,” I joked. I was trying to lighten the mood, but Lucas didn’t laugh. I think he could tell I didn’t really think it was funny, either.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “I hide the paper and then a second later I bring it up all over again. I shouldn’t be talking about my amazement like it’s important. It’s just a lot to get my mind around. But we don’t have to talk about any of it if you don’t want to. Not if it hurts you.”

I shrugged. “It’s a good hurt. I’ve been holding that day inside of me for six years. I have to get used to talking about it. Making the subject off-limits would just be more hiding.”

“So they know he left Vancouver?” I asked tentatively as Lucas picked up the folded paper. Though I didn’t want to read any details about the crime, which always surfaced in any article about Brandon, I definitely did want to be aware of a possible manhunt.

“His probation officer reported him missing when he didn’t show up for an appointment,” Lucas replied cautiously, watching my face for distress. “The cops are on it—if he left the province, it’s a violation of his community supervision—but they don’t seem to be aware that he’s in Kingston.”

I nodded, unsure how to feel about this news.

“Although,” Lucas went on, “they could know where he is if I anonymously tipped them off.”

Grabbing the cruller, I stuffed a piece of it in my mouth to stem my rising anxiety. Sugar beat panic, right?

“They’ll put together in about two seconds that I go to school here, Lucas,” I said as I chewed. “They’ll realize he’s after me and start asking why.”

“They’ll probably assume he’s just still blaming you for the whole thing,” Lucas said. “His lawyers did try to pin it on you. They’ll probably issue a restraining order to protect you.”

I swallowed the last bite of doughnut before answering. “I’m pretty sure staying away from me is already part of his sentence. ‘Stay away from the victims.’ I remember hearing it during sentencing. The only living victim right now is me.”

As those words sunk in, Lucas placed a hand under my chin, gently urging me to raise it instead of hanging my head in shame as I had been. “All the more reason to call in the tip,” Lucas insisted. “He’s already breaking two of the rules of his parole. They’ll have to take him back into custody.”

“Not before the press gets wind of it,” I said. “If they start digging even a little… It always amazed me that nobody ever saw the two of us together at the park. Six years is a long time for a witness to sit around wondering if they really saw what they did, to stew in their guilt. The right question from a journalist and the case could blow wide open again.”

“You don’t even know if this witness exists,” Lucas said patiently.

“I lied on the stand, Lucas,” I replied. “I lied with the whole country watching. We can’t take any chances right now.”

“You mean like the chances you’re taking with your life?” Lucas said, and I pulled out of his arms in frustration. I was beginning to realize that telling the truth came with some unforeseen consequences. Like Lucas’s opinions about everything.