Pieces of Truth

Chapter 18

Warehouse

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I emptied my backpack so the rounds fell to my feet and onto the ground, in the old dilapidated warehouse. The ground was bare but covered with dirt. As I looked down, I thought about how the ground was just like my life, covered in filth. I kicked the ground at my feet, and a small cloud of dust whipped up and around my shoes. I stared at the dust taking over my feet, like the way the lies had taken over my heart, and I dropped to my knees, and began to sob. The tears fell steadily from my face and hit the dusty, dirty ground, making it look spotted. How fitting was this? I was in a place covered in grime which felt cleaner than the turmoil in my head. The darkness in me would stay forever.

Why does this keep happening to me. WHY?

I scrunched up my hands that were resting on the filthy ground, and then I screamed. I screamed so loud and for as long as my lungs would allow me to do so. I screamed for the love I had just lost with Clint, and the pain I would always feel because of it, and I screamed because my body craved release in any way I could manage.

I began to feel light-headed from all the screaming, so I just shut my mouth and started to inhale deep, life-giving breaths back into my body through my nose. As if I was on autopilot, I moved one of my hands over to my backpack, and pulled out my Glock. I cradled it in my arms as I tried to breathe, trying to let oxygen find its way through my body to keep me moving, as if I still had a heart. I grabbed one of the rounds and loaded it into the weapon, and then I took aim on one of the many glass windows on the ceiling of the warehouse, but then my hands flinched and I turned the barrel to my face so I could stare head-on at the weapon. One pull of the trigger and I would never have to think about my pain or all these lies ever again. I could be with my mother in peace. My fingers twitched even more at the idea of eternal serenity. Such temptation in the thought that this could all be over if I just pulled a little tighter.

My mother must have been there with me, because I felt a hand resting on my shoulder. Was it a sign? Should I do it? I wanted to be with her so badly. I had had enough. I had reached my limit. I was weary of my father’s world, the Lappell, the heartbreak, the lies and the pain that would haunt me for an eternity and more. Nothing felt real any more. Everything felt wrong. Nothing felt right.

The hand on my shoulder tightened. The feeling suddenly made me calmer and I released my finger from the trigger. “Norah, put the gun down.” In that instant I dropped the weapon. The voice brought my head out of the clouds and back to earth and to what I was doing. I opened my eyes and looked up to see green ones staring back at me. Compassionate and always so caring.

“Josh, how did you know I’d be here?” Josh sat down on the dirt next to me, his pants already stained by the grease and filth of the warehouse floor.

“Because this is the place I brought you when we were in high school. The first place you used a gun. This is where you found some kind of peace. After what happened with Clint, I just thought you would somehow gravitate here, like you needed to be somewhere that gave you time out, even if it was for such a short period. Places like this one stick with you when times get rough, although I didn’t think I’d find you with a gun pointed to your head. Why would you even consider...” Josh trailed off, not even wanting to complete the rest of the sentence.

“It was just a thought Josh. Nothing more. I would never have pulled the trigger.” Josh studied me closely, probably wondering if what I said was true.

“How did you lose your Dad’s men?” His eyes looking behind us, like he expected them to burst in at any moment.

“It’s not that hard. I could always lose them if I wanted to.” That was true. As much as I hated the constant watch of my Dad’s men, it also made me feel safe too. I also knew it was something I couldn’t change about my Dad, and had to accept his ways or be forced to accept them. But some of his men weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, and were on occasion, sloppy and stupid. Escaping their watch was easy if you knew how. I had a lot of practice giving them the slip when I was with Samuel.

“Norah about what happened...” Josh tried to bring up the truth or dare party and Clint, but I quickly shut it down.

“I don’t want to talk about it Josh!” Josh moved closer to me, trying to be comforting and understanding.

“OK, I get it, you don’t want to talk, but what are you going to do now? Are you going back to your apartment?”

I stiffened at that idea. “F*ck no! I can’t go back to living with Clint, and there is certainly no way I’m living with my Dad again.” I hadn’t thought about where I would go after this. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I didn’t know what my next move should be. Perhaps I should leave New York, take Tess up on that offer of Europe.

“Stay with me.” Josh broke my train of thought.

“What?” I said, shocked by his suggestion.

“Stay with me until you figure out your living arrangements. C’mon Norah, I insist.”

Stay with Josh? In his apartment, just the two of us?

What were my options? I wasn’t going back to Clint’s place, or my Dad’s, and the ticket Tess had given me was somewhere in my apartment, and I couldn’t think of anything else.

I shrugged my shoulders. “OK Josh.”

Josh let out a relieved sigh. “Wow, that was easier than I thought.”

We got up off the ground and I stared at Josh. “Well, I guess I should know a good thing when it’s staring me in the face.”

Things got weirdly quiet between us. Did I mean to imply something else? It certainly sounded that way. I shuffled my feet as I waited for Josh to say something. Anything.

“You should do what you came here to do first, Norah.”

“Huh?” I wasn’t really sure what I had come to do. I looked at the Glock on the ground and remembered how I put it to my head. Surely Josh wasn’t referring to that.

“Get it out of your system. The pain, the anger, the hurt.” Josh reached down and picked up my Glock and put it in my hand, aiming it at one of the windows along the roof. “It will help. It has always helped you,” he said, and stepped away from me.

I understood now. It felt like the first time Josh had brought me to this warehouse and planted a gun in my hand. Firing the gun was the first time in a long while I got some kind of peace from the constant screaming in my head. Josh had found a way to help me vent, and I wasn’t hurting myself or anyone else.

I started firing my gun, over and over, bullet after bullet, round after round, into all the corners and cracks of the warehouse. Josh just stood behind me and waited patiently for me to finish. By my final round I was breathing hard as the adrenaline from the shooting finally kicked in. Before I finished, I pulled out my cell phone and fired at least three shots into the small metal object, smashing it to pieces. “No calls from anyone and no traces!” I yelled at the pulverized metal. I had decided that my relationship with cell phones would never work out. We just didn’t see eye to eye, and they did nothing but complicate and make matters worse.

After the final bullet was in the ground next to fragments that were once my cell, I stood staring in silence, waiting for the echoes of the bullet shots in my head to stop. I felt Josh take hold of my hand, pulling me gently towards him. “C’mon Norah, let’s go home.”