Love the Boys

Chapter Twelve

A clock was ticking, a rose was blooming, and time was running out. For what, I couldn't say, but it was the middle of the night, I was awake, and none of this was sitting well with me anymore.

I finally had things leveled out with Simon and they were holding steady, but I needed to deal with the rest of this before I could truly be happy. Who was the guy with the scar? Why was he stalking me? Where had I been when that first picture had been taken?

There was only one thing to do to get rid of these feelings.

I pulled myself out of bed and got out my painting supplies, setting up in the living room where I had more space. I dragged out all of canvases, searching for a blank one, littering my room with the ghastly abominations I'd been creating recently, and finally I found one that was blank.

I set to work, unthinking, mixing colors furiously. I painted the sky from my dreams, the black smoggy nightmare horizon, streaked with blood. Blood red hearts and roses in the darkness. I sought answers and nothing at all, then—

That was when it hit me. I saw a flash of something and the answer came.

I knew where that picture had been taken. I didn't quite remember it, but I knew.

I was in the woods, running through the trees. It was daylight, but I had wished for darkness. I was needing a place to hide, and that would have been easier in the dark, but I'd taken my chance to escape no matter the circumstances, and I had to keep moving.

Someone was with me. I could see him in front of me, holding my hand, pulling me on. He was wearing a hoodie and I couldn't see his face, but I prayed that he wouldn't leave me behind.

Abruptly, he stopped, turning back. I saw a light in his hand and realized that it was a phone. He held it up, steadied it, and took a photo of me. There was blood on his hand, and I looked at that as he took the picture.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He said something but I couldn't hear his voice, and then we were running again. We came to a graveyard, overgrown and nearly forgotten

I could see the road. A green sign. It said—TURNER'S CREEK RD.

I knew that road. It was near where my parents lived—hours away back in Tennessee. That meant that all of this had started much earlier than I'd thought. If the picture was taken there, that meant he had started to follow me a long time ago. From my hometown and after I'd moved, he'd continued to follow. This was unreal. I'd had no clue.

And there was something else more obvious: I knew him. I knew him enough to run through the dark, holding his hand.

My mind was firing off rapidly, searching for something I had forgotten, but nothing was coming to me. Why had I come to this town? Had I really moved here for the school, or was it something else? The answer was right there on the edge of my mind, the tip of my tongue, right at my fingers. I had to chase it.

I didn't care what time it was. I would skip work. I just needed to go. I had to get back to the place where that picture had been taken. This meant that I needed to get back home, and I had no way to get there, but knew there was one person I could count on. I grabbed my phone, my head already going through apologies for waking him up, but this had to be done. I needed someone with a car, and he was the only one I could trust with this.

The phone started ringing as I was buzzing through my apartment, pulling on jeans and a sweater, collecting my things. Finally, a scratchy voice came through, and I jumped at it immediately.