"I'm Not Crazy"

XXV.

"I'm the one that shot Matthew. It was me."

Riley laughed at first. It was a sort of choked laugh, as if the urge had snuck up on him. His hand was still clasped in mine, squeezing slightly with his laughter.

He thought I was joking. It was funny. It was some type of dark humor. We were sharing in a laughable moment.

"Riley, I'm serious," I said somewhat forcefully.

Riley froze a little and made a face like he was forcing the laughter down. The composure didn't meet his eyes. They were still bathed in light, but he pursed his lips defiantly against them.

"Right," he said. "No, I get it. It's the same shit with my dad, though. Like you can feel guilty about it, but if people are hell bent on hurting themselves Charlie, you can't stop them. We couldn't stop them. Franklin told me Matthew was really depressed before that. Like he said he'd been doing steroids or some shit. They fuck people up—"

"Riley, I shot him," I repeated insistently. "I didn't just watch it. I shot him."

Riley's eyes lost their light. It was like a candle going out. He no longer found us funny.

"He was trying to kill himself," he asserted in a different sort of tone. "He shot himself."

"I squeezed his hand over the trigger," I said, in the same beat.

Maybe he was just shocked. I'd like to believe it wasn't intentional, but Riley dropped my hand. He tilted his head slightly and studied me as if waiting for the smile or the giggle that might assert the joke he was missing.

He opened his mouth and then closed it.

"I shot him," I repeated.

I didn't recognize my own voice. It had a haunted quality. It was saying words I'd never even allowed myself to think about saying. I hadn't said it to any doctors. No therapists. No police. I hadn't even allowed myself to believe it was real. I didn't shoot Mathew. Matthew didn't shoot himself. It was an intruder. It had to be an intruder. It had to be someone that wasn't us. There was a third party. There had to be another person; a guilty person.

"But... you didn't...." Riley attempted to speak again. It sounded like his mouth was dry. He sounded hopeful. He also sounded afraid.

"I..." I started. Then I swallowed down the lie. "I did."

"Did you mean to?" He asked timidly.

"I don't know," I answered.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" He asked. His voice had risen an octave. "How do you not know? Did you think it wasn't loaded?"

I wanted to say yes. I had always hoped the answer to that question was yes. For ten years, even while letting myself believe it wasn't me or Matthew or anyone real at all who had committed the act, I'd always had the underlying knowledge that choosing to believe the gun was empty had been a choice and a lie. I was a documented liar, and so I'd lied even in my subconscious where the truth was hiding.

And when Riley asked, I couldn't lie. It came out of me like a bullet before I could stop it. If I'd clamped my mouth shut to keep it in, the truth would have busted out my teeth to be told.

"I knew it was loaded," I admitted.

"And you shot him anyways?" Riley said.

Riley looked sick. He'd gone pale. His eyes were wide and fixed on me in disbelief. Even though he hadn't moved, he somehow seemed like he'd gotten further away from me on the roof. His body language signaled some type of retreat.