Page 13 of Soul So Dark

Oh yeah…I completely lost my shit in the cafeteria and then cried into Alex Barrera’s chest.

I don’t even know what to do with that right now. Colson didn’t say anything after school, so I don’t think Alex told him about it, and I hope it stays that way.

“Are you sleeping alright? I think Colson’s sleeping better now,” she muses, glancing across the living room at the staircase.

I think it’s her way of saying that she doesn’t think Colson will try to bust down my door in another unconscious fit of rage. Before that night, I’d never heard my mom sound so frantic. She’s not high-strung, and hearing her yelling at Colson and pounding on his arm to let me go was just…weird. Then again, no one in my house was ever high-strung or tweaked out until the last couple of weeks. Colson’s not high-strung so much as just psycho. He’s a relatively calm person, but if something sets him off, he can be really scary. It’s why I’ve never had to worry about anyone bothering me at school.

In fourth grade, I told him the meanest kid in my class made fun of my Care Bears Crocs. The next day on the bus, I heard that two boys—a tall one with dark red hair and another with sandy brown hair—walked over from the middle school, hung him upside down from a basketball goal on the playground, and the fire department had to come cut him down an hour later.

No one ever ratted them out, but I can only assume it was Colson and Mason because after that, the kid never spoke to me or even looked in my direction ever again.

“Cowards don’t like when you out-crazy them.”

It was surprisingly profound for seventh-grade-Colson. And that’s all he ever said about it.

“Yeah, I’m sleeping alright,” I reply, because it feels like the only reprieve I have before waking up to the devastating realization that I’ll never see or speak to Evie again.

My mom nods in acknowledgement. “One day at a time. Let’s just make it through Saturday, yeah?”

Saturday.The funeral…

I’m suddenly reminded of what happened at lunch, trapped in the restroom while three bitchy girls talk about my sister like she’s week-old roadkill and then debate whether my brother and his friends are down to fuck.

But Evie’s still not here. Scott and my mom will still be calling Canaan, calling whoever, trying to find out what happened. Colson will still be the one who found Evie in the woods. And we still won’t know how she ended up there or why. Like Alex said, everyone else will move on and we’ll still be here, stuck in this moment where everything changed and won’t ever go back to the way it was.

Why am I down here again? Oh yeah, headphones.

Fortunately, Colson’s black Civic is still parked in the driveway. My feet feel like they’re set in cement and all I want to do is go back upstairs, lay on my bed, and space out. I don’t even feel like playingWitcher 3tonight. All I can hear is Colson’s voice telling me I’m not enough of a prick. Maybe I should be. Maybe if I was, I would’ve taken a page from his book, kicked down the door of the bathroom stall today, and laid waste to the three girls standing in front of the mirrors.

Easy for Colson to say. He’s huge and imposing and everyone respects him. I’m just…me.

I throw open the door and lean into the passenger side seat of the Civic, searching for my lost headphones, which I eventually find sticking out from between the seat and the console. I grab them and slam the door with a huff before turning to trudge back up to the house. But when I do, my breath catches and I come face to face with a tall blonde girl standing on the driveway in front of me.

“Hi, Dallas,” she greets me in her lyrical voice.

“Hey, Sydney,” I exhale with relief, glancing down at the two large paper bags in each of her hands.

“I brought you all some food. There’s lasagna, meatballs, pulled pork…” Sydney peers into the slit at the top of one of the bags, “and maybe a couple of quiches.”

“Did you make all this?” I ask, eyes wide as I examine the size of the bags.

Sydney shakes her head. “No,” she chuckles, “not all of it, anyway. There’s a pan of brownies with fudge icing. I did make those.”

“Thank you,” I reply weakly, silently looking forward to said brownies.

“It’s all frozen,” she explains as I take the bags from her, “so it’ll keep for a while.”

She’s so kind, and part of me wishes she was dating Colson so she’d be the one coming over to our house to hang out instead of the random girls I bump into whenever mom and Scott go out of town. But it seems like she and Colson are just friends, so I’m left with only seeing her in the hallway at school and in my driveway bringing bags of food over to my family in mourning.

“I’d ask how you’re doing, but I probably already know the answer.” Sydney’s also very perceptive and has a way of being blunt without being off-putting.

Everything doesn’t have to be fine, only good enough so that people leave you alone when you want them to.

“How about you?” I ask with a slight smile.

She brushes her hair behind one ear and turns back to me. It’s odd seeing Sydney with short hair. Until recently, she had long icy blonde hair that made her look like an elf from the Woodland Realm in theLord of the Ringsmovies. One day I saw her at school and it was gone, replaced with an asymmetrical bob that framed her fair skin and silvery blue eyes.

But I heard a rumor, the same one weaving its way in and out of the hallways at school, that Sydney didn’t just wake up and decide to get a haircut. A couple of months ago, I knew something was wrong because Colson didn’t say a word on the way to school. And when I met him in the parking lot at the end of the day, he, Mason, Alex, and Aiden were standing at his Civic speaking in hushed tones, their faces awash with rage. To this day, I remember exactly what Aiden said as he walked back across the asphalt to his black Lexus.