“You might not wear a cut anymore…but you’re still a fucking bastard,” he said on an exhale, a deep burst of laughter exploding from his mouth in a puff of smoke.
“Haha, fuck you,” I spat, as he continued to laugh.
There was a question I’d been wanting to ask him since I’d gotten back that popped back into my head. “Remember the night we were talking about hearing Preppy?” I asked.
King nodded. “Yeah, the night we lit up Eli and his crew.” The vein in his neck started to pulse as he recalled the night I was tortured.
The night he saved my life.
“Yeah, that would be it. I was just curious. Do you still hear him?” When King raised an eyebrow I clarified. “Prep. Does he still talk to you? Do you still hear him?”
“All the fucking time man. He grew quiet there for a little while, but as we settled down with the kids it’s like he’s back with a vengeance. Sometimes when Max and Sammy are screaming at the top of their lungs, I think he’s even louder than them. Like a fourth kid who broke into a case of Mountain Dew at nine pm and instead of sleeping has decided to run laps around the living room.” King turned to me. “You?”
“Yeah. All the fucking time. Especially when I’m fucked up. Or fucking up. Or when HE seems to think I’m fucking up. You think that’s weird?” I asked, knowing damn fucking well how weird it really was to live with a second voice in your head who chimed in when he saw fit.
You flatter me, Care Bear.
“You mean do I think it’s weird that we both hear the voice of our dead friend talking to us?” He smirked. “Naaaahhhh.”
“Well when you put it that way.” I hit the joint again, holding the smoke in my lungs until it burned.
I pressed down on the gas and sped down the road towards the rotting bodies of Thia Andrews parents.
But all the hurrying was pointless.
We were too late.
We were WAY too fucking late.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thia
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. I’d meant to LEAVE. But when I found out that yet another door had been locked, trapping me inside, I couldn’t help but to listen when I’d heard voices on the other side.
I don’t care about the girl.
When Bear said those words they shouldn’t have stung like a hornet to the heart. I already knew he didn’t care. It wasn’t until after they’d already pulled out that I remembered what Chop had said about the ring and about Bear’s making up the whole biker promise as a joke.
This was probably all still a joke to him. They probably weren’t going to Jessep. They were probably in the truck on their way to some sort of badass tattoo convention where Bear would tell everyone about the stupid trick he played on a kid who actually fell for his stupid lie and came back years later, still holding onto a ring that had meant everything to her growing up and nothing to him from the moment he’d placed it in my hand.
I knew he didn’t care about me. Not then.
Not now.
So why do I feel like someone punched me in the gut?
After my brother died, my dad always told me that under the weight of great tragedy, came great responsibility. I took this to heart and as the years went on I took on more and more responsibility at the grove so my dad could tend to my mother who was slipping further and further into her delirium. Before the Sunlandio Corporation cancelled our contract I was seventeen and running the grove full-time, often skipping school to meet with vendors or make sure that orders went out on time. One night during an extremely rare frost I rallied the workers and we spent all night hosing down the oranges so we wouldn’t lose them to the cold.
Under the great weight of that tragedy I took responsibility, but under the weight of the new trudges was too much, too heavy, and it was crushing me before I could make any rational or responsible decisions.
Why did I even leave town? Why didn’t I just call the sheriff myself?
I know why. I panicked. Panic and fear clouded any sort of logic, but as logic started to once again take over so did the gravity of my loss. I loved my father. He taught me how to tell when the oranges were ripe for the picking from the way they smelled. He taught me how to fish. He’d let me sit in front of him on the tractor when he mowed the field behind the house, the only space not taken up by orange trees. I don’t think losing him was something I would ever be able to move on from. My brother had died when I was young and although it hurt like hell, what hurt worse was seeing my parents hurting.
I loved my mother, but I wouldn’t miss her. Not in the same way I’d miss my dad. She hadn’t been my mother in a long time. My father picking up her slack on days she refused to get out of bed, refused to take her medication, or after Jesse died, refused to acknowledge she still had a remaining living child.
The night she killed my father she’d been more manic than I’d ever seen her. The look of death swirled in her eyes.
I had no choice and my only true regret was not getting there sooner.
Not being able to save my dad.