The Boy Next Door

ｔｗｅｎｔｙ

~Rachel~

Colton took me into a dark room.

Once we were both inside, he shut the door, he told me that there was a "secret pathway" inside of the closet that led to a room in the basement. He said that you couldn't access the room from anywhere except that specific closet. I looked inside the closet I saw nothing. At first, I didn't believe him, but he opened a little hatch in the wall. It wasn't noticeable from the outside unless you knew it was there. It was crazy.

The opening was small but was bigger once you got through it. Colton wanted me to go through first. I crawled through the hatch. The ceiling was higher so I could stand. There was a platform for me to stand on before a flight of stairs that led to the room he was talking about.

"Go down there. I need to close this door and there isn't enough room for us both to be on this platform together." He whispered from the outside.

I walked down the creaky stairs. I couldn't see anything in front of me but could sense Colton walking behind me. The room below was dark. Colton found a light switch to turn the lights on. A few strands of white Christmas lights turned on. The walls were a light brown color. Lots of blankets and pillows were scattered around on the floor.

"Nikki and I used to disappear for hours at a time. My parents would always wonder where we went, but they never figured out about this place. We used to love it down here. We called it our secret spot." He told me.

"Who is Nikki?" I asked.

He sighed. "I haven't told you about her... She was my younger sister."

"What do you mean by was?" I asked.

He sat on one of the blankets laid on the floor and leaned against some of the pillows. I sat next to him. "She died."

I wasn't sure what to say to him. "I'm sorry." I placed a hand on his arm. I saw an emotion on his face that I have never seen before. He looked sad and hurt, almost on the verge of tears.

He ran his hands through his hair. He took a deep breath in. "It was my fault."

"What do you mean it was your fault?" I asked

"I was very careless and nothing really mattered to me and I just did what I wanted throughout my first three years of high school. I did lots of stupid things. On this night specifically, we, Nikki and I, were at one of my friend's parties. We had to get home because we had snuck out that night. I had a lot to drink and so did she. She didn't have her license yet, so I was supposed to drive us home. No one stopped us from leaving even though we were both drunk and shouldn't have been driving. We should have just stayed the night at the house and gotten in trouble the next day. I couldn't walk straight and my head was spinning. So, if I couldn't walk or see, I should not have been driving.

The accident itself surprisingly wasn't my fault. We were on our way home when the car coming from the other lane on the two lane road our lane. They hit us head-on. Nikki wasn't wearing her seatbelt. She went straight through the windshield. She was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. I am lucky to have survived the crash it was so bad. I was wearing my seatbelt and only ended up a concussion and a broken arm. After I was fully recovered, my mom, Hanna and I moved back to California and my dad moved to England for work. This is all my fault. I should have been the one to die. Not her. I was the one who was so concerned about getting home."

He looked like he was starting to cry, but was trying to hide it. I hugged him. "You may have made some mistakes, but don't blame this on yourself."

"But, I am the one who was driving the car. I am the one who insisted that we leave when we did. Just a few minutes later and that accident wouldn't have happened. I miss her so much."