Ruby Red Marionette

twentyfive | carpenter

//: This chapter was rushed, as I'm sure you can tell. I will try my best to have two chapters up by Friday, but I have big tests coming up. New story on the 15th.

I went home that night without Isaiah.

I couldn't bear being with him. To know that he was standing next to me, alive and breathing while his friend wasn't, was torture. The entire conversation we had at the graveyard kept playing over in my mind, but there were three words that left a permanent impression on my mind.

I feel guilty.

We all did. We all had reason to; that's why everyone kept acting up. All of our individual attitudes, our peculiar behaviors, were rooted in the foul, parasitic guilt inside of us. The rest of them lived on their own. They coped with the repercussions of our one, collective action on their own. But I had to live not only with myself, but with the person who was suffering most from it all.

I thought staying with Isaiah was a blessing. But when he came home that night and his scent that I'd been smelling in his pillows filled the rest of the apartment as soon as he walked in—it was a faint fragrance, sweet and subtle like amber—I realized that being around him was not what I thought it would be. Being around him would not be the cultivation of a new, refreshing and reliable friendship. It would be an addition to the plethora of things that tugged down on my heart, that dragged me closer to the ground.

The emotions I experienced just thinking about the fact that I was here exhausted me. Two days passed. With every day, our speech became more and more scarce. We would have one concise conversation during the morning, afternoon, and evening. When night fell, sometimes he wouldn't even tell me good night. Last night, I told him that I needed to change the sheets since the bleeding had begun again and I left a stain on the sheets. He told me where to find the sheets and asked if I needed help to change them. I said no, and our conversation was over.

This morning, I wanted to leave the house. Something in my mind made me feel like I was seventeen. I wanted to dress like a classy prostitute and trick men into thinking I was going to have sex with them and walk the streets until my feet hurt. For a moment, I was going to do it. I took a shower and walked into the kitchen with a towel around my waist, prepared to stick my hand out the window to see what the temperature outside was. But when got there, Isaiah was standing over the stove, fully dressed, making porridge for both of us.

Then I remembered today's agenda—we had a date with the others.

"Why aren't you dressed yet?" He asked the question without looking at me, stirring the pot slowly and quietly.

"I will be soon." I said. I looked down so to hide my distaste for the task, but I'm sure he wouldn't have seen anyway.

"It's not ready yet. You should go get ready first." He replied. I looked at him, just to see if I would get a reaction. I wanted to see if he was actually upset with me about how I treated the group and how I talked about Carlos, or if I was just imagining it all.

When he didn't look up at me, I knew that it wasn't my imagination.

I turned around to walk away with a sour taste in my mouth and a burning sensation in my eyes. I was all the way out of the kitchen when he called me back in.

"Yes?" I went to him.

He turned off the stove, dropped the spoon in the sink, and leaned against the counter. There was a somber expression on his face, something mixed with solemnity and apology.

Isaiah stared at me for a long time, keeping this solid look in his eyes that almost made me want to cry. But then he relaxed; his eyes, shoulders, and hands went back to being the way they always were, laid-back and kind. "I don't want to go either, Geneva. I don't want to put you through this. I really like having you around and if something were to happen to you because of this, because of how shady you and Tyler are in this whole mystery, I'd die. I mean, I'm the one forcing you to go to the police and all. But you have to think about the other scenarios. You have to think about what would happen if the police cooperated with us and everything went well. We could help them solve this. They...they can help us."