Guilty

Chapter 6

Before.

We were moving so fast.

Gavin was pushing ninety-five. The only teen driving I'd ever been allowed to experience was Tyler's in his shiny Volvo back and forth to school and he would start panicking if we were in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone and going fifty.

Violet added the radio to the pace of the car, turning on some sort of urban contemporary station, spinning the dial to a deafening volume. Every the windows had been slid down, the music slipping into the humid June night.

Disregarded somewhere between Ashley's disapproving complaints about me and Gavin's constant chuckling over it, I dared to steal a glance at the boy on the other side of Ashley. Blake was too focused on Violet ahead of him: her hair swept with the wind out the window in front of me, filling my nose with the scent of apple.

He was completely unaware that he might as well hand me a pair of binoculars. The sky of his eyes seemed to glow with the dashboard, exceeding the dark and branching off into their own world. Of course he'd rather be up front with his girlfriend (?). Alas, he was stuck with the wide-eyed freshman.

"Violet, I swear to God, you will regret this. I don't know if you, like, went insane over that Samara girl, but you cannot involve Tyler's little sister in this just because she used to be friends with her. If she committed suicide, she committed suicide. Don't you think if Darius Blecker had anything to do with it, the cops would've known?" Ashley shouted over the loud, frightening rap through the radio. The unfamiliar rhythm vibrated the car, and every chord change would cause both of us to leap out of our seats.

Darius Blecker?

The last time I'd seen him probably had to have been last year--tagging along with my father to get some groceries. My father had ordered me to his side immediately an charged into a different aisle. It was only a glimpse of him I had gotten: a bald man with green eyes that stuck out against his slightly wrinkled hazelnut skin. A strange, jagged scar rippled across the side of his face. Despite his reputation, his features were almost captivating.

We were soon zooming through and past the village of King.

Violet's glistening focus was on the only light in the night ahead of us--Gavin's headlights. The speedometer continued to hover over ninety-five. She spat a laugh. "No, you see, that's the captivating thing about suicide. It's not like other deaths. If some John Doe dies in a car accident, boo-hoo, it's sad. R.I.P. John Doe. But then if John Doe commits suicide, it's so much more than that. Then it's like, 'What the hell happened to John Doe?'"

Ashley inhaled a string of cuss words. "Holy shit, are you high?"

I closed my eyes and pressed my cheek against the cool window lightly, using my elbow to steady my chin.

Violet simply smirked at the question, pushing her curls off her shoulders. "You wish."

She was right. Samara's death forced me to wake up, I thought. And it had been a rude awakening.

I cleared my throat, and hopelessly gazed up at our leader, careful not to let my eyes wander over to Blake again. My voice was awkward and detached in the dark. "Um, Violet, where are we going? You, uh, never told me."

Gavin's joyful chortle exploded from the driver's seat and the car skidded into the empty lane next to us.

Our gasps were almost screams.

"GAVIN PATTERSON! WHAT THE HELL!" Ashley shrieked, shattering my eardrum. She squeezed her Coach bag for comfort.

The car straightened onto the lane, but Gavin couldn't help but continue his titter.