Page 73 of The Lies We Steal

Stolen.

“You take your meds?”

Rook’s voice brings me back to the present. Reminding me that we have a very short window of opportunity which didn’t include me daydreaming and him asking about medication.

Silas looks up to him from behind the desk, his hands full of papers as he searches through the drawers, dropping his head a bit as if to say,Are you really asking me that right now?

“Don’t fucking look at me like that. It’s twelve pm, if you don’t take them now you’ll forget after you eat. You always forget after you eat.” Rook argues as he pulls books off the built-in shelf.

“I don’t have them on me, I’ll take them later.” Silas grunts.

I’d worried for months after that night if he’d ever look human again. If the bags beneath his eyes would retreat and he’d change back to his normal tan skin instead of the nasty pale he was sporting.

We all took turns sitting outside of his door, sliding food inside, water, medicine. Just waiting.

Three weeks.

We waited three weeks before he came outside of his room.

Feeble, noticeable weight loss, and a demand to figure out what happened to Rose.

When we agreed to help, it was like we were giving him something to work for. Maybe it was wrong of us to do this. Maybe we were making it worse by opening up a can of worms we didn’t need to but it was helping him.

He started eating again, he gained muscle back working out in the gym with me.

But even then, even now as I look over at his eyes, I can see it.

His eyes had gone cold the night Rose’s heart stopped beating.

Rook abruptly stops what he is doing, as if we have all the time in the fucking world. Walking over to his book bag and unzipping the side pocket. Revealing a little baggie with two white pills inside of it.

“You’re joking.” Silas remarks as he watches him approach the desk.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Rook challenges.

Rook Van Doren, the only one of us who could leave this town and actually become a decent person. Parts of me felt guilty that we fueled his chaotic side so much, his father’s words having some truth among it.

Rook was already screwed up, but instead of telling him to cover it up like everyone else, we made him embrace it.

Depending on how you looked at it, that could be good or it could just be doing more damage.

“Okay, Nurse Jackie,” I butt in, “Take your goddamn pills so we can finish what we came here for.”

Silas takes the medicine, mumbling a low thank you.

We had searched every nook, underneath rugs, beneath the couch cushions and were coming up empty-handed. Tensions were high as we were headed towards what looked like a severe dead end. If we couldn’t connectGreg Westto Rose, we didn’t have much else to go on.

And we couldn’t go around breaking into every single teacher’s office. So that would mean Rose’s murder would go unsolved. With no police to investigate, no lead to follow, her death would sit on our conscious, on Silas’s conscious forever.

Short of having Thatcher kill him just to kill him, we were screwed.

I watched Silas flip through pages, eyes scanning for anything, the smallest hint of something to give us an excuse to visitGreglate at night. Using whatever means necessary to get the information we needed.

He was desperate for answers and I thought, was the knowing worse? Knowing now that she was murdered, but still not being able to catch her killer.

I couldn’t help but wonder if we should have just left it alone in the first place. If we should have told him no and let him grieve. Then again, we would have been getting dressed for another funeral if we did that.

Silas, in his head, didn’t have anything else to live for besides Rose. This hunt, it gave him another reason. I wasn’t going to be the friend to take it away, just to have him kill himself moments later.