Bruised Innocence

Chapter 32

"Ar! Baby! Say something!"

I looked up at mom. She was standing at the door of my room. I felt as if I had just surfaced from the dizzying depths of a river.

It was all so overwhelming. Lacey's insistent barks, mom's hysterical cries, the horns of traffic blaring down the street; everything came to me at once.

I shut my ears with my hands and closed my eyes. "Stop it!!" I shouted.

Lacey jumped up on the bed and whimpered. The weight shift on the bed beside me told that mom had also taken a seat near me.

"It's not true!" I said.

"Ar---"

"It's not true mom! It just can't be! Grant isn't like that. He is a good--- he is my friend!"

"I wish it wasn't true, Ar! But it is! They found the tracks of his car in the woods and he was also absent that day. Detective---"

"I refuse to believe it, mom!" I cried out.

Someone must be framing him! Maybe it's one of those at the school. Perhaps it's that boy, Andrews or maybe Pencer.

"Ar, son! It was him, all the evidences point to him and he might as well have admitted it himself when he apologised to you."

That got me. Tears threatened to fall down my eye. Yeah, why would he apologise? Unless ---

"He might have been forced to,  mom! Someone might be blackmailing him!" I argued.

"Oh Arwin!" Mom broke out in sobs at that. She looked crushed. There was a nagging sense of awareness in me that it was somehow my fault that she was crying,

but she needed to know that she was wrong.

Lacey barked at mom and moved to snuggle around her while looking at me with mournful eyes.

This suddenly reminded me. Lacey always growled at Grant.

What if he knew something? What if they were all right? What if Grant really was the red eyed monster of my dreams?

I felt myself fall back on the pillows on the headrest.

Was it all a lie, then?

His friendship? His concern? All this time he was just-----What even was he doing?

The pillow below me felt wet. I could faintly hear mom sobbing nearby but all I could think of was, Grant and his parting words.

"I am sorry Arwin."

I closed my eyes.

******

"That spawn of a fuc*ing pig! I am going to cleave his---"

An angry voice jolted me awake. I looked around in the darkness, disoriented.

"Shhh! Keep your voice down, Ev! Ar is sleeping! He had been crying all day!"

I looked at the silver of light coming in through the opened door of my room. So, Dad was home and he knew.

"How can I? This---How do you even expect me to just not do anything? That's my baby boy! That fuc*ing bastard rap---"

"I know, I know Everett! And to think that he had been around Ar all this time! He even used to drop him home, Ev! Why would he--"

"Because he is a messed up rascal, Del, why else? He is deranged and God help me if I ever see him again!"