In The Dead of the Night

13 | shattered lies

The car didn't even stop rocking back and forth on its wheels when I pulled the car door open and flung myself onto the ground. My feet hit the frozen ground and a jolt went through my leg like a hot sword, and I was there again, standing in front of the creaking train all by myself, the time midnight like it was now, with a still unfamiliar cold stare trained on me and a distrust carried in my pocket. I glanced behind me, as if there was anyone but Shawn holding a palm to his temple and a car with a flat tire from a strip with nails attached to it laying across the ground. I looked harder, like maybe if I just focused enough I could see the clock with the broken glass striking midnight and my father's face mouthing something at me from behind.

"Shawn!" I yelled, running around to open his door and help him out of the car. "There's a flat tire! Someone put a strip of nails on the ground."

He looked around, as if experiencing a terrible dream. So quietly I could barely hear, he whispered, "This is the place where everything goes quiet." He looked at me, rubbing his temple, and said, "There's an extra with everything you need in the compartment under the trunk. Slicing tires wasn't uncommon in the part of the city my friends lived in." 

"Quick, help me, we don't know who did it, but they might be coming around soon."

He opened the trunk and reached into a compartment below the rubber mat, bringing out and tossing a spare tire, lugs, wrenches, and all kinds of things to the ground. I took the wrench and began loosening the tire as he placed the jack under the car and lifted it just enough so I could pull the tire off. The previous owners of this stolen yellow taxi had taken terrible care of it; the tire was so loose on the car that it should have fallen off days ago. Not that we did any better, and tightened the new tire only enough so that it wouldn't fall off for the next few minutes.

"Is that it?" he asked, and I nodded, tossing our things back into the car. "Let's get out of-"

"Stop!" a voice yelled. A flashlight blinded me for longer than it should have; I had become so accustomed to darkness I'd forgotten what light looked like. "I have a gun!"

As soon as his words hit my ear, I could see again, the man's short stature and long pistol. Shawn grabbed my hand and forced ours up, facing the man.

He shined his flashlight on me again, making my eyes burn with blinding lights. "What is your name?"

"Cabello," I said when Shawn squeezed my hand in approval. My voice shook, but only to the slightest extent. I had not spent my entire life learning how to not falter in the face of fear only to fail now. "Karla Camila Cabello Estrabao. Daughter of Alejandro Cabello. We are on your side."

"Alejandro Cabello?" the man, a farmer most likely, asked, his tone softer and curious. "As in the Alejandro Cabello?"

"As in the one who was murdered a week ago."

The man nodded. He turned his flashlight to face Shawn, and, for a moment, the light shook on Shawn's face before he dropped it on the ground.

"G-get away from me! I will shoot if you take a single step closer, you k-k, you killer!" the owner of the farm screeched, his cry sounding more animalistic than it did human. My eyes snapped to Shawn's face in something like shock, but the words coming out of the man's mouth left me feeling more numb than anything. "I should have had you shot down years ago for your sins!"

"You touch her and I will tear you apart with my bare hands," Shawn said quietly with a deadly edge to his voice and a dangerous glint in his eyes, stepping between me and the man, but I barely heard him. 

'You killer,' the man had screamed. That wasn't true. It just wasn't. But how could anyone fake that wrangled cry of raw agony and suffering?

No, that wasn't true. This man was acting delusional, he had probably gone mad in the head like many others when the war started. Because there was no chance in heaven or hell that Shawn was capable of doing something like that.

I dropped his hand. He looked at me, his eyes once more saying something that only I could understand, before looking away.

I watched Shawn as he stared the man dead in the eye. "I didn't kill your son."

"Liar! You were next to my son with a gun in your hand when we found him! You killed my son you liar! You son of the devil! I will shoot if you step any closer... I swear to the Lord!" Thick tears ran down the man's maniacal expression. Shawn, the boy who held me as I slept every night, the boy who comforted me as I cried into his shoulder, the boy whose lips were so soft and loving against mine. He was a murderer. 

I stepped away from him. Suddenly, the taste in my mouth grew bitter. The air grew colder around me and the hand he was just holding felt frozen to the bone.

"You," I whispered. My voice shook with anger. "You told me your worst fear was hurting someone, said the thought of being the 'bad guy' terrified you." The memories of that morning in the car, spent gently kissing and touching and talking— I wanted that memory to go down in flames. "And now I'm finding out you murdered somebody. And not even from you!" Tears ran down both of my cheeks. "You wanted to keep this a secret, pretend it never happened-"

"Because it never did Camila," he responded. His steady, quiet voice annoyed me. It was the same voice that used to whisper comforting words in my ear, but now only uttered lies. "That boy was killed, but not by me."

"You're lying," I snarled.

"Camila, I'm not." He stepped to face me and took both of my hands. I shook off his hands and put mine in my pockets. "I wouldn't lie to you about that. Look at me. I did not kill that boy. I swear."

"And why am I supposed to believe you?"

He stepped back and dropped his arms to his side. His expression was betrayed and his eyes were shattered in hurt. He didn't deserve to feel that way, I was the one that had been betrayed, betrayed by him, his lies, his deceiving manners, his thought that he could trick me into being on his side again.

"Did you not feel it? Back on that night when we swore we would die and you kissed me for the first time? Did you not feel my heart slipping into your hands right then and there?" He looked down and shook his head. "Do you not feel it shattering right now?"

"Stop it! Stop it with your manipulation! Stop lying to me! I am not yours to lie to and I never was yours to begin with! You are no better than your father!"

At that, I watched as a single tear slipped from his eyes and many streamed from mine, running to the driver's seat and starting up the car and driving away as fast as I could, my heart pounding in all its brokenness in my chest, nothing but his cries and his nightmares following me.