Brightside (22 page)

I went for her desk, ready to tell Sharon to inject me, to make everything calm, like Rachel was in The Cabin.

“Joe, you need to calm down.”

My words to Rachel coming out of Sharon’s mouth.

I’m sorry,
she thought.

I saw my father’s face, that big, dumb grin. I yelled at her and pressed my thumbs into my closed eyes, shoving them back into my skull.

The door flung open.
Demarius
ran in, tackled me into the chair. Pinned my arms. I kept fighting.
Demarius
pulled tighter.

Enough!
Sharon thought.

I told you he was going to crack.

Sharon bent down, touched my face like I was a child.
No, he’s not. Isn’t that right, Joe?

I thought about Mom, rubbing butter on my face.

“Joe, what’s it going to be?” Sharon asked.

“Let’s just send this motherfucker to The Cabin.”

“Quiet.” Sharon forced my eyes to hers.

What’s your decision?

My father’s voice flowing through my brain.
Whatever you need.

I found myself ten minutes later in the lobby. I don’t even remember taking the elevator. People were gathered outside the double-doors. There were whispers about a death. I entered the fray wondering if they were talking about me.

Robert was four feet in front of me, his big black microphone held to his throat, the wire traveling down to the brown box at his waist. He said, “Hey. Joe. You. Know. What’s. Going. On.” The lack of inflection made it so you couldn’t figure if Robert was asking or telling.

“No idea.”

“Wayne. King. Escaped.”

The reason for the accelerated news, why Sharon and
Demarius
said we had to do this tomorrow night, the end of
Day
100. Their plan, my gun.

“I’m. Going. To. Catch. Him,” Robert said. “Want. To. Join. My. Team?”

Robert kept talking, but I couldn’t hear with the helicopter directly overhead. The woods were only a few blocks away. Part of me wanted to say fuck it. Take off out the cave. Sharon,
Demarius
, and Dad could eat a big bag of shit.

I hadn’t meant to think it so close to Robert, but his eyes widened, knew what was rattling around my head.

I started walking. The helicopter kept circling, scouring the town for Wayne. I kept thinking about taking off now, but knew I wouldn’t make it fifty feet before they caught me. I also couldn’t leave Rachel behind. Not like this. She deserved better. All she did was believe in me. Love me. Wanted to take care of me. And I repaid her by ripping out her broken heart.

I turned left, The Cabin up on the hill, its windows open, all warm and inviting.

Come on in, have a seat. Let your problems disintegrate.

Rachel’s building was up ahead. Sharon said to let her be, said I needed to get some rest. Sharon loved to talk. Just like Dad.
The two of them plotting and scheming to stick me up on this goddamn mountain.

I knocked on Rachel’s door, kept knocking until her neighbor, Frances, came out and told me to shut the hell up or she’d call the Boots. Frances looked like a man with her chiseled jaw and thick, bushy eyebrows. I almost told her to go ahead, they’d never show. But I just walked out and headed for the diner, then Oscar’s, then the park. I asked if anyone had seen her. No one had, except Nathan, the guy who proudly came to Brightside a virgin. Then he met Krystal.

“She wasn’t looking so hot,” he said about Rachel. “That was a couple hours ago, though.”

I thanked him and continued my search. I needed to find Rachel, apologize, beg her to take me back. We could escape tonight, leave Sharon, everyone in this fucking town.

I kept moving, never stopping long enough to think about anything but Rachel. She was going to be pissed, but I’d tell her all the things she needed to hear. I’d mean it, too. At least for the moment. That’d be enough.

Sharon had given me a special cell phone, one that couldn’t be traced. She told me to only use it if there was an emergency. I wanted to call Rachel, but she didn’t have a phone. No one did but me.

I wandered through the Square, even went back to Rachel’s place, but she still wasn’t there. I started thinking maybe she’d found some guy and they were busy getting sweaty paying me back.

I didn’t even notice the storm rushing in, but soon the sleet felt like needles. Thunder boomed.

It was midnight and I could barely stand. Freezing, wet, and weak, I headed back to my place. The hallway light fixture was filled with so many bugs I could hardly see, but my nose was working fine. There was a new smell. A little ripe, like sweat and something else. It grew stronger as I got to my door.

That smell.

The door did its usual creak, just a lot louder. The kitchen was dark, blinds keeping out most of the moonlight. I emptied my pockets onto the table, then locked the door.

A sliver of light lit the first bit of hallway that led to the bedroom where the blinds were always closed.

Everything looked normal, as normal as it can in the dark. It sounded like it should, too. Quiet. Everything was fine.

Except for the smell.

And that sliver. The tiny slice of light that made it hard to move.

Someone was here. My first thought, Wayne, but the door had been locked.

I went for the light switch, but it just flicked up and down.

I said Rachel’s name but it came out soft and pathetic. I said it again, louder this time. Rachel was the only one with a key.

No one answered. Just more nothing. Then the tiniest plop.

It took forever to move away from the door and get into the hallway. I stopped after two steps because the smell was all wrong.

The next step was the hardest. The next one after that even harder, the wall still blocking most of the bedroom.

The wall ended with my next step. My hand fumbled around for the switch. This one worked, threw light all over the room. I wish it hadn’t. Oh God, I wish it hadn’t.

A body on the bed. But lying the wrong way, legs hanging off the window side.  The plaid skirt bunched up around her underwear. Rachel’s favorite Love-A-Lot Care Bear ones she liked to dance around in. Her matching t-shirt that used to be white, the bear and its big heart drowning in blood.

The outfit told me it was Rachel. Rachel without a face.

The top of her head was gone, her hair clumped beneath the ragged, hollowed out bowl, a stream sliding down the comforter, onto the carpet.

I asked the stupidest question. “What the hell did you do?” I asked it again and again but the answer was right there.

I turned. The whole room was red, it started to spin. Slow then fast. I held onto the wall and it helped a little, but it was wet with something I wiped off without looking.

“Goddamn it, Rachel! What the hell did you do?”

Rachel didn’t respond, didn’t have a mouth.

But on the floor I received my answer.

The shotgun beneath her dangling feet, the stock lying in the puddle of piss.

The lightest rain fell from the ceiling. It drip, drip, dripped onto the bed, her body, what was left of her head. I wondered if the roof was leaking.

But it wasn’t rain. Up on the ceiling, Rachel left me a gift. She’d painted me the perfect Pollock.

I fell onto her body, my face smashed against that bloody Care Bear. Thunder boomed outside the window. I wondered if that’s what covered the blast. If someone had heard it, they’d be here.

The bracelet her daddy bought her was half submerged in a puddle by the pillow, the diamonds splattered crimson. They matched her ring, the only thing better than her diploma because the school couldn’t take it away.

Rachel didn’t have a pulse. I was stupid to check. Her wrist still warm, still soft. Her hand so small, not squeezing back to say everything would be okay, that we could still leave together, sprawl out on that beach.

Something creaked in the hallway outside.
Bootsteps
.

I pressed my cheek into the bedspread as if I was actually hiding. Like a child who doesn’t understand the physics of hide-and-seek.

More
bootsteps
. Muffled voices.

Rachel’s hand went back into the puddle. I pulled the rest of her closer. Saw her jaw. The lower half on Love-A-Lot’s smiling face. The top half shards on the ceiling.

I waited for the knock, waited to see their expressions when they saw me cradling Rachel without a face.

The light switch. I needed to turn it off, make them think I was sleeping, but I couldn’t move. Every neuron dead, just like Rachel.

The chair had a chunk of hair draped across the armrest.

The Boots getting closer.

I closed my eyes, squeezed Rachel’s chest, squeezing so hard I thought I might sink into her ribs, disappear forever.

Why did I ever come here? The Cabin was so close. All I had to do was walk in, and the nurses would take care of the rest. I’d never know about Rachel. Never…

Suddenly, the Boots were running, but not towards me. Each step softer, further down the hall until there was nothing.

It was hard to stand without one hand on the wall. I looked around, needing a way to explain this in case they came back. There was nothing on the nightstand, the TV, the bathroom counter. No paper, something that said no one was to blame.

But Rachel would never leave a note. That’s what she’d told me one night at Oscar’s. She said people only wrote them to
make other people feel better, which was bullshit. If she ever did it, she wanted everyone to know it was their fucking fault.

Why did they ever let you out of The Cabin, Rachel?

Sharon had to know she was unstable, that this was a possibility. She didn’t make the call on Rachel’s release, but she gave her recommendation. Was this part of the plan? What the hell did Rachel have to do with our escape?

I fell back against the wall, slid down until my ass was on the floor. Something was digging into my leg. The cell phone. I pulled it out, started to dial Sharon, but stopped. What if this was all a setup? She could just be waiting for me to call, so she could send Palmer and the rest of the fucking Boots.

But why tell me about the plan then? Why tell me about my father if it was just to set me up for Rachel’s death? She could’ve sent me to The Cabin. I even offered.

My father, the man who turned me in, was the only person I could trust. Laughter sprayed from my lips. I looked over at Rachel’s body, the blood and chunks of brain and just lost it, doubling over, cracking up because there was nothing left. I didn’t need The Cabin. I was already fucking gone.

But it finally lost its amusement. The awfulness settling back in. I started dialing.

“Hello?” Mom said.

I couldn’t speak, so tired, shattered.

“Joey? Is that you?”

I took a deep breath, wiped back my hair wet with blood. “Hi, Mom!”

“Joey, what’s going on?”

My whole body shook. “I fucked up.”

“Joey, come on, you’re scaring me.”

“Yeah, I’m scaring me too.”

“Tell me what’s going on. Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.” I sucked air through clenched teeth.

Mom sat there, breathing, waiting. We both did until she finally asked what I’d done.

“Oh…I don’t have enough minutes for that. Can I just talk to Dad? Please. I really just need for him to get on the fucking phone.”

“I’m going to call the doctor, okay. Is that what I should—”

“NO, MOM,” I said, my voice not my own. Wild and crazed like a man covered in his girlfriend’s blood. I took a deep breath. “I just need you to get Dad. Can you just move and fucking grant me this one simple—”

She sounded scared out of her mind when she said, “He’s not here.”

Big inhale through the nose. “Okay…when do you expect him? Soon?”

“He went…”

“Where? He went where?”

In the smallest voice, she said, “Fishing.”

I felt like the top of my head was going to eject like some fighter jet, like Rachel’s.

“He went…fishing?”

“Joey, he needed a break. Since you – since he…did this, it’s been eating him alive. He’s not well. It’s killing him.”

My father’s not well. I’m sitting on the floor covered in Rachel’s flesh, and my father needs a vacation.

“Joey, whatever you’ve done, can you make it okay?”

“No, Mom.” I laughed. “No, I don’t think I can.”

“Joey! Listen to me. Are you listening to me?” That voice from my childhood, the one that said if I didn’t shut my mouth she was going to smack me.

* * *

I was five years old, sitting in the back of the Buick, my face burned and peeling. We were parked out in front of the school, all the kids filing in, but I wouldn’t budge.