Page 6

Dallas

SHELBY (12:52PM): Where were you at lunch?? I thought you said you were back??

ME (12:58PM): I needed a break. Too many people all at once.

It’s not a lie. There’s no way I was going back into that cafeteria after what happened. I couldn’t even keep it together enough to get food in the lunch line. I miss my friends, but what will they say when I finally face them? I need to quit being such a wimp.

SHELBY (1:04PM): I was worried I thought something happened to you

ME (1:05PM): Like what?

There’s a long pause and a few minutes pass before Shelby responds.

SHELBY (1:10PM): Have you heard anything from the police yet?

I can read between the lines. She thought I was next—hunted down and murdered, just like Evie. And why shouldn’t she? No one’s heard from the police. No one knows who did this to Evie or why. And because of that, I just have to put my phone down.

Scott and my mom speak in hushed tones to one another, sometimes on their phones and other times to Colson. I kind of wish Colson would start going out more like he used to. I’m not used to him being here all the time. He skulks around the house, stopping in my doorway and lingering for an awkward amount of time, staring off into space and then making small talk like he wants to hang out but doesn’t know what to say.

At least my TV isn’t cracked anymore. I came home from school today and there was a new TV mounted on my wall. My doorknob and lock were replaced immediately, the day after Scott kicked it in, but until now the TV’s still been a smashed sheet of black glass on the wall. That’s also about the time I realize my headphones are missing. I can’t remember if they were in my backpack or if I was wearing them when I came home.

I let out a groan, heading downstairs. They probably fell out in Colson’s car. On my way past the kitchen, I stop to ask my mom where the new TV came from.

“Scott went out and got it today,” she replies softly, like she doesn’t want anyone to hear.

I glance over my shoulder, spying Scott unplugging his phone from the port on the table lamp. If he’s not on it, then it’s plugged in. I turn and make my way across the living room. Arriving at his side, I wrap my arms around his torso like I always have. Even now that I’m fully grown, my head still barely comes up to his chest.

“Thank you,” I say into his t-shirt that smells like shaving cream and coffee, “for the TV.”

He hesitates for a moment, like I caught him off-guard, and then wraps one arm around my shoulders, holding my head against his chest with the other. He doesn’t say anything, but presses his nose into the top of my hair and stays like that for longer than usual. And I don’t let go because I don’t know what else to do.

Scott’s always been my second dad. I love my real dad, of course, but he still lives in Colorado and I’ve lived with Scott since elementary school. He’s always done things with us that dads are supposed to do, but suddenly I don’t know how to act because it’s always been him who comforts us when we’re upset, not the other way around.

Finally, he gives my shoulder blades a quick rub with his palms and pulls away. He turns quickly, but I hear him sniff as he heads toward the garage, not daring to look at me before shutting the door behind him. Back at the kitchen island, my mom is pouring boiling water from the electric kettle into her mug. She tosses a tea bag inside and presses the top on as I approach.

“How are you holding up, love?” she exhales with a weak smile.

“Alright.”

I don’t want to talk about feelings. I’ve had enough of them for now. I think I gushed them all out into my pillow over the past few days and then into Alex’s shirt today at lunch.

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 playing Witcher 3 tonight. 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 the Lord of the Rings movies. 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.

“I’ll put them in the ground. One by one…”

I want to know what happened, but I don’t have the nerve to ask Sydney. I also want to talk to her about Evie. They were friends, I think.

“You’re friends with Evie, right?” I blurt out, unable to bring myself to refer to her in the past tense.

Sydney hesitates, gazing pensively across the driveway before answering. “Yes.”

“I—” swallowing hard, I try to keep my emotions in check so I can try to have a normal conversation, “I just want to talk about her with someone—someone who’s not my family.”

Sydney nods and steps past me, turning to lean against the back door of Colson’s Civic. She glances over her shoulder, at the thick line of trees that separates our property, before settling against the glass.

“She was one of the first friends I made after I moved here,” she says with a slight smile, “I think Colson had something to do with it.”

Probably. He seems to have something to do with everything.

“I remember when I first met you. Evie busted into my room and told me we were going next door to meet the new girl. ” I chuckle at the memory. “It was October and I had no idea you even lived there.”

Sydney lets out a laugh. “Yeah, I guess I wanted to forget that part, too. I heard Evie yelling at Colson once, telling him he should invite me out with them more. He didn’t tell her there was no point, he just promised her he would.” Sydney pauses in reflection. “Colson and Evie are good people, even if not everyone around them is.”

“Is that why—” I hesitate, but I’ve already opened my mouth and committed, “does that have anything to do with why you cut your hair.”

Sydney has an amazing poker face, but when I say the last part, her face twitches for a split second, so fast that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been staring right at her, waiting for an answer.

“Yes.” She’s also not a liar.

“I heard about what Aiden did. Not from Colson, but other people.”

Sydney looks down and presses her mouth together, considering her next words. “Yeah, that was…fun.” Then she shifts her gaze back to me. “You’ve known Aiden for a long time, right?”

“Define know. ” I roll my eyes. “He’s not my bestie or anything.”

She nods, chewing the inside of her cheek. By now, she should know that very few people actually know Aiden beyond what he allows people to see. If she wants to know about Aiden, she needs to ask Colson about him and not me. But, for some reason, I feel the need to give her something.

“Aiden’s a creep,” I finally say, “but I think he does it on purpose.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, but then cuts herself off. “Never mind, I know what you mean, but what makes you say that?”

“Like, when he comes over, he’ll come up behind me, grab the sides of my face, and kiss me on the cheek. And if my bedroom door is closed, he’ll jiggle the doorknob as he walks by. I guess it could be worse, I’m kind of used to it now.”

It used to really freak me out, enough that I got pretty good at knowing when Aiden was in the house and actively avoided him. But I know Sydney can’t do that. I’m Colson’s sister, and there are certain protections that come with that title.

The look in Sydney’s eyes says she knows she isn’t afforded the same kind of courtesy. She’s the prey, constantly looking over her shoulder with a target on her back—from all directions. I don’t know how it ended up that way, she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. But, somehow, she managed to cross the wrong people’s paths and the exact wrong time.

“It’s weird, though,” I add, “Aiden hasn’t done any of that stuff in a while. It just kind of stopped.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since you moved here.”

Sydney’s jaw tightens and she looks down at the asphalt. When she lifts her head again, her eyes dart to a tall figure approaching us.

“Hey, Sydney,” Colson’s voice hitches in surprise as he saunters over to us, his key fob dangling from his fingers.

“Hey, Col,” Sydney sighs with relief, “what are you doing?”

“Meeting Aiden, Mase, and Alex,” Colson replies, giving her a once-over before tugging open his car door, “what are you doing?”

“She brought good food.” I flash my eyes at Colson, secretly relieved he’s leaving and won’t devour everything in these bags before anyone else has a chance.

“You’ve been busy,” he glances at the bags hanging from my arms, “got any other plans tonight?”

She doesn’t answer right away, but instead peers at Colson suspiciously. He glances across the grass to the thick woods separating our property from hers.

“Relax, lady, I’m not going to tell on you,” he chuckles, “I’ll always give you a head start, even though he’ll just find you anyway.”

The look in her eyes is a volatile combination of dread and fear. It’s a look she’s had since the moment I met her. Beneath the glowing eyes and radiant smile lies a haunted girl dragging demons and curses behind her.

She should be afraid.

I feel terrible for Sydney if Aiden, of all people, has decided that she deserves his undivided attention