ROUGH DRAFT of Loser || WlW

Seventeen

I'm staring at the envelope Grace found at the Motel 6 when something crunches outside my window. Probably a neighborhood cat. No one is dumb enough to rob us. The risk isn't worth the twenty-three cents I have in my sock drawer.

I swallow hard and rip into the envelope. There's a single sheet of paper with a printout of someone's Twitter feed. At the top of the page is a picture of my dad's car from my Freshman year. The one that broke down in the parking lot when he was trying to drop me off for my first day of high school.

Under the picture, someone wrote "What a fucking LOSER".

I roll my eyes. I was sitting in the library that afternoon when a jock knocked my books off the desk and called me a freak. I'd been labeled.

I glance at the name of the person who posted it. Mia Bradley.

My eyebrows pull together. Mia; the girl who died last year.

My heart beats in my ears. The one Trevor dated.

The one we were trying to link Trevor to so we could pin him for Claire's murder as well.

I remember the black spray paint on the ugly wallpaper at the motel.

Stop looking for answers you're not ready for.

I throw the paper on my desk as if getting the document out of my hands can erase the sudden realization that whoever is fucking with me is trying to tell me I had just as much motive to kill Mia as Trevor did.

I'm standing in the middle of my room, unable to move, the only noise coming from the cat outside. My hands are shaking but I don't know what to do. Tell the police everything? Tell my dad I'm as crazy as my mother? Get rid of the evidence?

Something crashes in the backyard.

I wipe my palms on my pants and take a step toward the window. It's dark out. I can't make out any shapes in the backyard until something slams into the glass. The wall trembles as I stumble back and catch myself on the corner of my bed.

A woman stares back at me, her eyes buggy and wild. Her curly brown hair is knotted and tangled into a frizzy mess around her neck and her cheekbones are protruding from her pale skin. She slams her palms into my window again, this time leaving a trail of blood as she squints to get a better look at me.

My throat is dry. I can hardly force out the word, "Mom?"

She slams her palms into the window again. A splintering noise cracks through the room as she ducks out of sight.

I let out a shaky breath when the door behind me flies open, crashes into the wall. She's here. In the room with me, swinging a knife around and closing in on me. She grabs me, her gray fingernails digging into my skin.

I'm screaming but I can't get my muscles to move. I can't fight back.

"Jo! What's going on?" Zachary is holding my arms, gently. His eyes dart around my face, trying to read my expression.

"Mom's here, Zach. I swear to god, she's here." I push him away from me, rubbing anxious tears from my eyes. "She was banging on my window."

His eyes go wide. "There's no way."

I nod, "Zachary, I fucking swear. I saw her."

He darts from the room without another word. "Hi, yes. I need information on a patient. Yes, my mother. Yeah, okay."

I move over to the window, glancing at the empty backyard. Mia's Twitter feed is still sitting on my desk so I cover it with my Calculus notebook.

"Jo, what's going on with you?" Zach asks as he rushes back.

I cross my arms over my chest and suppress a shiver. "What do you mean?"

"Mom is accounted for. She's all strapped up in her hospital room." Zachary leans his weight back and watches me as I stare at the window. "Maybe it was someone else."

I can't make eye contact with him. Instead, I stare at the dark glass. Where the bloody palm print was, where I could have sworn she had shattered the window, but there's nothing. My eyes flick back to the envelope on my desk.

My voice is almost a whimper as I admit, "I think I'm turning into Mom."