He reaches out for me with bloodied fingers. I stumble back, the tips of his fingers brushing against my cheek, then he’s past me, tipping over like a falling tree.
Time stops. Or maybe it goes really fast. I don’t know. I lose track of it as I stare at Mr. Werner. And then it’s like my mind suddenly returns to my body and I start gasping again, oh god, what just happened, is he okay, no, he’s obviously not okay, he’s got a BRANCH THROUGH THE EYE.
“Mr. Werner?” I scramble over to him and grab his arm. As soon as I touch him and feel his warm flesh, it hits me. This is Mr. Werner. My English Lit teacher. Holy shit. Holy SHIT. “Mr. Werner! Get up. Get UP!” I cry, shaking him harder.
He coughs. He’s alive. Relief rushes through me. Thank god.
I loop his left arm around my shoulders, take a deep breath, and try to pull up. He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a gasp and a strangled scream, his limbs flopping around. He’s heavy as hell. A guttural, animal grunt rips out of me as I lift him right up.
“Hang on, Mr. Werner. We’ll get you to a hospital,” I babble, staggering forward. One step. Two. I think he nods, or maybe that’s just his head lolling forward. I try to remember everything I know about first aid. Keep them awake. I start babbling, the words tumbling out so fast, I barely register what I’m even saying. “Hey, Mr. Werner, you’re a real asshole, you know that? Wake up, Mr. Werner. Please. Hey, um, what was the thing you said about Lord of the Flies? The one about the pig’s head.”
How far have I walked? Where’s the parking lot? Everything around me looks the same. Just trees and more trees. Warmth dribbles down the side of my neck and onto the collar of my shirt. Blood. Mr. Werner’s blood.
“Mr. Werner, the car—do you know where it is?” I can’t look at him. I can’t bear to see that thing sticking out of his head. I keep walking, but with every step, more of his weight settles on me, until it feels like I’ve got an entire world leaning against me. My legs are trembling, my arms are noodles, my back is screaming with pain. I take another step. And another. I trip over something. The forest floor rushes up to meet me, and I land with a thump that knocks the breath out of me. Mr. Werner’s weight very nearly crushes me as he falls on top of me. I struggle to get back up, but all I manage to do is push Mr. Werner off my back. I can’t stop sobbing.
“Mr. Werner, please, I need your help. I’m lost. I—”
There’s no answer. He’s lying very, very still. Unblinking. His one remaining eye, that is. Although the other one’s probably not blinking either.
Suddenly, I’m crying. And screaming. At some point, I must’ve vomited as well, because my shirt is really wet and smells like hell, and I can’t seem to stop screaming.
I’ve killed a man.
When I run out of air, I sit there for a while, staring blankly at nothing. What do I do? I should…turn myself in? Yeah. Probably that. It was self-defense. Self-defense is not murder. Thing is, that sounds an awful lot like something a murderer would say—
My phone rings. My heart explodes. For one ridiculous moment, I’m 100 percent sure it’s the police, like they’ve got some sort of super-sense which alerts them to murders as soon as they’re committed.
I take it out of my pocket. Ibu’s face is on the call screen. Right. Ibu. That makes a lot more sense than the cops calling me. I take a couple of deep breaths and then hit Accept.
“Hello?” My voice comes out wobbly with tears. I close my eyes. I suck at sounding okay. In my defense, I haven’t had much practice trying to sound okay after killing someone.
“Lia? Are you okay?”
I don’t trust myself to speak, not with tears choking my throat, so I just go, “Mm-hmm.”
“I miss you, baby girl,” she says, and oh god, please don’t make me cry right now, because I will never stop. Luckily, she rambles on and says, “Wah, I have so much to tell you. Auntie Janice actually replied to my messages on the family chat. She said you look so pretty, so grown-up—”
I close my eyes again and let myself sag, sinking into the comfort of my mother’s voice as she fills me in on the family gossip. I can’t believe it’s only been a month since I left home. My old life seems like someone else’s. God, what I wouldn’t give to go home and forget everything about Draycott. I just want to go home, and put my head down on Ibu’s lap, and cry forever while she strokes my hair and tells me everything is going to be okay.
Except it’s not, is it? Here’s Ibu, so happy one of my paternal aunts has deigned to reply to her messages after years spent snubbing her. What will it be like for Ibu when the news breaks, when everyone learns that her daughter has killed someone? She’s been through so much already. And what if I get tried as an adult? I don’t know how that works, why some teens are tried as adults. But the odds aren’t good. Me, a half-brown girl, killing a white dude. Nope, definitely not great odds.
It’s as though my heart stops beating. My brain shuts down. Blood stops flowing through my veins. It’s like my entire being has hit the reset button. My mind is a complete blank, devoid of every thought. One thing remains. Ibu’s voice, now happily telling me about her side of the family and how one of my myriad cousins has gotten engaged and how we’re going to go back to Jakarta for the wedding next summer. I can finally wear her old kebaya, she says, the one she saved from when she was seventeen. It’s emerald green with gold detail.
My mind clears. When I inhale, my breath’s no longer shaky. I straighten up. “Ibu, I’m sorry, but I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, be good!”
Too late for that. I hang up and stuff my phone back into my pocket. I know now what I must do.
The body. I need to get rid of it.
The thought makes me ill, but I force myself to keep going down this path. I need to survive this.
Okay. How do I get rid of it? The river? If I could just push it uphill and throw it over the cliff, it’ll go a long way before anyone finds him.
He’s right where I left him. His good eye remains open, and I notice now that there’s a drop of blood on it, spreading across the whites. Oh god, no. I gag and turn away. Okay, just gotta—just gotta do it.
Still averting my eyes, I put my hands under one of Mr. Werner’s arms and pull.