If We Survive The Night

Three

Casey

"Three bodies?" I look up from the phone. "They say three dead bodies were recovered from the house." It feels chilling, saying it out loud, even though for the last few hours I've been preparing myself for just that kind of scenario.

Jaden draws himself into a sitting position on the sofa, and runs a hand over his face.

"I'm so sorry, dude," he says. "But we expected... but still... damn, your whole family..."

I shake my head impatiently. "Not the whole family. Jen's in the hospital. They say her wounds aren't life-threatening." I guess I kind of buried her in my head already, together with my father and stepmother, so processing the fact that she's alive requires some mental adjustments.

"Oh? That's good news," Jaden says cautiously. "Aren't you glad?"

"I'm glad for her, yeah." I look at him, waiting for the penny to drop. "Three bodies," I remind him, and his face freezes.

"Hazel?"

I nod, and then we just sit there, staring at each other.

"Why... why would they..." he begins. "She wasn't even... Just give it to me."

He snatches the phone and scrolls through the article, his frown deepening as he reads. Then, slowly, he raises his eyes to me.

"They suspect... you?"

"Yeah. Crazy, right?" I take a shaky breath that somehow ends up in a cough. "We must call them. They think I did it and ran away."

"And you... didn't?"

That stops me in my tracks. "What?"

"Just thinking," he says, slowly. "There were gunshots upstairs. I didn't see anyone. You said you saw an intruder. I saw a car, but no people."

"What're you saying?"

"And then," he continues in the same slow, thoughtful tone, "you made me take you here. You wanted nothing to do with the police. I told you to wait for them. I offered to take you to the station, but you wanted to avoid them at all costs."

"Just for a while! Not because I did anything! I just wanted... come on, you were there! You know I didn't do it!" I spring to my feet, my knee immediately reminding me that I should treat it with more respect. "I jumped from the second floor! Why would I do that if someone wasn't after me?"

"I don't know. Wouldn't you? To maybe make it look like someone was after you?"

"Are you nuts?" I yell, abandoning all restraint. "And what about Hazel? Why on earth would I want to harm her?"

The mention of Hazel makes him deflate a bit. He hunches over his phone that goes dark in his hand. For a while, we're silent.

"I'd never hurt her," I say quietly. "I'd never hurt any of them."

"You wouldn't have had time," he says. "I left her in the kitchen, came back for you minutes later. You didn't have enough time to go downstairs, shoot her, go back to your room, jump out the window... it doesn't add up."

"Sure, it doesn't," I say, grudgingly. "Just to think that you considered that... gosh!"

He makes a vague gesture with his hand and sighs again. "But Hazel..."

I feel choked at the sound of her name. Even the news of my father being dead haven't had such an effect on me. Maybe it's that I've spent the last few hours believing he was dead, so there's no surprise, but there's more to it than that. Unlike Dad, Hazel had been nice to me. That doesn't make his death any less tragic, of course, but it does affect the level of grief, I guess. It's the people who were good to you that you're going to miss most, not the ones you're supposed to miss according to the social conventions. In the end, we're all selfish and just want the good ones to stay around, to continue making us feel better.