Guilty

Chapter 21

I'm outside again.

I know it's June and I know I'm supposed to be feeling the humidity encompass my blood-covered body even at night, but I'm numb. From behind my father I gaze down at my feet, my daily, worn-out, now red-splattered sneakers are replaced by my old gym shoes from the school year. Before hauling me out here to the closed river docks, Dad tossed my original pair in the washing machine to clash in the soap, water, and dump of what seemed like a pound of baking soda with the clothes I wore today, hopefully erasing all that damn blood.

The blood.

I trip on the gravel, guided only by the streetlights and an occasional gleaming bulb in neighbors' windows. Dressed in a clean t-shirt and shorts, I scan my arms and legs again. Because he's lying. He must be. Of course he is.

I clutch my uncomfortably wide iPhone in my cold, clammy hand

shaped like a gun?

and stumble along the glistening blackness of the recently paved road, feeling my knees collapse inward in a weak limp. I'm tired. Lord knows I'm exhausted and I keep wailing that claim to my father, but all it does is accelerate his march instead of slow him down. He keeps mumbling under his breath, panic seeping through his tone in the most subtle way possible, but I notice it because panic never touches him.

"Dammit Hayden. Goddamn it. He got to you. He got to Hayden. He got to my daughter. That son of a bitch. How could you let this happen?"

"Dad?"

Then he clears his throat, convincing me that he never said anything at all. That I'm dreaming and I shouldn't worry about it. His expression is stone-cold. He's a robot. All that was, well, it was a glitch. I'll understand in the morning. I just need to sleep.

...stone, like...

He's lying. Of course he's lying.

Just burn in hell, burn in hell and don't come back

The streetlights glow out of the corner of my eye, connecting the dots, connecting the houses, connecting the neighborhoods, connecting the miles, connecting the city to King and King to the woods and the woods to the dead body that I am responsible for and that I will die for and that I will be damned for.

"Go to hell."

"See you there."

I will. I'll see them all there.

And then I wonder if I made a mistake. If I really shot Darius Blecker, if the fire of the gun actually came from the gun my hands. If Violet shot me instead. Maybe the hesitation lasted too long, and I'm dead, and my dad is leading me through the emptiness of hell. Maybe the street lights that burn above me are really fireballs that will begin to rain upon me any second now so I could crumple to ashes and drip through the tiny cracks of the blacktop and dissolve into nothing. Nothing at all....

Hell is the feeling of nothing. Hell is this.

And then there's the damp grass perking up from beneath pebbles under my feet by the river. The pebbles blanket the ground surrounding the dock, sizing up as they spread closer to the water that flutters to the surface, brightly reflecting moonlight. Against the night sky on the other side of the water is the chunky, inked-out figure of the woods.

On that side is the man I turned to stone.

My phone is a heavy weight, but I grasp it as if the light breeze will knock it out of my hands and it will fly away.