The Collision

To everyone at our California high school, Leon is just the lazy, unbothered varsity football captain. He's my childhood best friend who lives next door, the guy who climbs my porch trellis in the dead of night to sit in my vanity chair and talk me down whenever the panic attacks from my past kidnapping hit me in the dark. For years, he's been my safe space.But I didn't actually know him at all.I didn't know about the dark room he kept locked in the back of his mind since he was fifteen-the calculated, violent thoughts he built up after his father abandoned him. I didn't know he spent hours planning hypothetical murders just to burn off his rage. I didn't know he had been completely, helplessly in love with me for four years, forcing himself to slouch on my couch and wear an easygoing mask just to keep from scaring me away.Then, my old captors came back, tearing me away from the country club head table right after Leon finally blurted out the truth.The second I was gone, the high school athlete disappears. Leon doesn't call the cops, and he doesn't wait for the highway patrol grid. Armed with a black canvas backpack, a roll of ace bandages, and a jagged piece of rusted iron, he starts checking empty houses on the east border completely alone.While I was locked in a dirt cellar listening to three hours of non-stop, agonizing screaming from the floorboards directly above my head, Leon systematically dismantles the men who took me. He handles the crime scene with a gas can and a box of matches, turning the entire house into a pile of ash before the sirens can even reach the driveway.Now, we're walking across the high school field for graduation, our fingers locked together in front of the crowd. I am desperately praying that what happened in that basement was just a temporary, one-time psychotic break. Because the neighborhood boy who used to share my fence line is gone, and the person who took his place loves me enough to execute anyone who steps into our lane.