Treadmill

XX.II

REBECCA

Alright, this is weird, right?

I feel like the order of this is off. Maybe it is. Or maybe, it's 2 AM and I'm super tired and a little bit tipsy while I write this. I also just watched seven episodes of Will & Grace and so if I start writing like Karen Walker talks, don't think too much about it.

Or maybe Jack. Am I a Jack McFarland when I'm tipsy?

None of you know who I'm talking about. That's fine. I'm going to get on with things now.

So, she was arrested. Arrested for killing a dude, which sounds super strange to type out in a real sentence, but there it is. She was arrested, because of the information that I gave to Leo Lutz. Because I was a snitch in every sense of the word, and because I had told the truth. I shouldn't have felt guilty about that. But I did. I really, really did.

Do you ever do something that you know, deep in your gut, is technically the right thing to do? But in a less deep part of your gut, it makes you feel like a rotten person for doing it at all?

Maybe I should have been blaming the person who put me in a situation of this magnitude in the first place. Maybe I should have been blaming the person who lied and cheated and killed and did everything possible to ensure that they wouldn't be the one to blame for any of it in the long run.

But I didn't. I blamed myself.

And maybe that's why I acted the way I did.

><><

"This is a collect call from the Clemson Police Jail. Would you like to accept this call?"

Rebecca felt as if her heart was about to leap out of her chest, hit the floor, and then sink through the floorboards, through the apartment below hers, and then deep, deep into the ground below that. Clemson Police Jail. There was only one reason that she would be receiving a call from Clemson Police Jail, and it was a call she had been wondering when she would receive for the preceding two weeks. Day and night, night and day, Rebecca Eaves had been waiting for that phone call.

And now that it was coming, she wasn't quite sure how to handle it.

She made note of the time. 10:50 AM. Monday, November 30, 2020. She felt like this was a time she was going to remember for a long while.

"Yes." Rebecca responded to the question, the single word scratching in her throat as it came out. "Yes."

She could hear noises on the other end of the line before a voice that she hadn't heard in weeks came through.

"Rebecca?"

Kennedy Abrams didn't sound like Kennedy Abrams anymore. Just the one word coming from the other end of the phone had lost all of the confidence that Rebecca had come to expect from Kennedy. She sounded like someone with the same amount of love for herself that Rebecca had exuded when Kennedy had first met her—and that was hardly a good thing whatsoever.

"Yeah, it's me." Rebecca replied. She wasn't sure if she should feign confusion at why Kennedy was calling from jail, or if she should admit upfront that she understood what was going on, or if she should just...completely ignore the entire thing.

She decided on the last option and waited for Kennedy to speak again.

"Rebecca, I don't know what to do." Kennedy's voice broke on the second word she spoke, and Rebecca could hear her sniffling as she tried to speak again, "I...I got arrested. And I...I don't know why this would have happened."