“We understand perfectly!” Nick barked, standing up. I copied him, stating the same words besides for the “We” part.
“You don’t care about me!” Nick screamed.
“You don’t care about Nick!” I screamed.
He has control over me.
I believe Nick.
“You only want to feel good about yourself! I’m not playing your stupid games!” Nick bellowed. I followed suit, except angrier. I was fuming. My nose started bleeding from how tightly I was clenching my jaw. I felt it drip down my face and onto his floor. I didn’t stop yelling, though. I’m not entirely sure what I said or what I did because I was just following Nick. Soon I was out of the office, slamming doors and frightening people. When I walked out of school, I was alone again. Nick was gone.
Stop leaving me.
Suddenly, there was this burst of energy. Like power surging through me that I needed to release.
I took off running.
I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going. My lungs felt like they were going to give out any second, but I pushed myself. Cars honked as I crossed the road. Birds flew away at the sight of me. People on the street stopped and whispered to each other. I was sprinting at this point. My feet found grass but kept going. My heart was about to burst. Trees swayed past, and I crushed branches underneath me. I stopped and realized where I was.
“Hey, man, get away from me!” I screamed at Nick. His eyes followed me, red with anger. I could see the steam coming from his ears, and I knew I was in trouble.
“No! Why would you say that to her?” he barked at me, pushing my chest. I felt his fist and my temper run out of patience. I looked at his hand before looking him in the eye. His were focused on mine, and I knew we were in a fight.
“She deserved the truth,” I said.
“BS!” he fumed. “You told her lies!”
I don’t know what happened next. Calling me a liar triggered something within me. I used my hands and placed them on both of his pecs and pushed him as hard as I could. I watched as he lost his balance and fell backward. Before his head hit the ground, there was this loud noise. A gunshot. It blasted through my ears, and I had to cover them, or else I would’ve gone deaf. I looked around me and saw no one.
“Damn hunters,” I muttered under my breath.
I looked at Nick and watched as the blood came pouring out of his skull.
But here he was, standing in front of me. Not lying on the ground, bleeding to death. He was five feet away, standing where I pushed him.
“Push me,” he ordered.
“No.” I fought back. He walked closer to me, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, then bouncing back. I watched as blood stained his clothing.
“Push me!” he yelled louder. I shook my head, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to stand still. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He just screamed in my face, his breath forcing itself onto me. I could feel his spit fall onto my eyelids. When I opened my eyes, he was nowhere around me. I was alone again in the forest.
I ran over to him and watched as his eyes followed me. He knew he was dying. I saw that his head landed on a rock. The top part of the stone couldn’t be seen, so it must be lodged in his head. I watched the thick blood come rushing out, and I tried to cover it with my hands, but there was nothing I could do.
His eyes stared into mine before the blood from his head came pouring down his forehead and covered his eyes. I tried to wipe it away, but it was no use. It was all coming down, and it was coming fast. I watched as his lifeless body lay there; no Nick left any more. I knew what I had to do.
I ran.
“Why did you leave me, Kyle?” he begged behind me. I turned, expecting to see Nick. But when I looked, it was a little boy. His features were the same as Nick’s, and I realized this was Nick when he was younger. The little boy’s eyes stared into mine, pleading for his life with them.
“It was an accident.” I cried. I fell to my knees. “I’m sorry.”
“No!” Nick screamed. “Please don’t kill me!” I reached down to him and grabbed his shoulders to calm him.
“I didn’t!” I sobbed back. “I won’t hurt you!”
Nick ran from me, pulling away from my grasp. He started screeching at the top of his lungs, calling me a murderer. Screaming for his mom. Calling for his dad to save him.
I fell on my knees, weakened by the boy. He pained me in a way I didn’t know existed.
“Please!” I begged. “Come back! I won’t hurt you.”
I started sobbing. I couldn’t help it. The tears came out uncontrollably, and I started to choke on them. I started wheezing; my lungs couldn’t keep up.
“Yes, you will,” a voice harshly whispered in my ear. “You killed that boy.”
I turned around and grabbed whatever was speaking to me. I felt something, someone. But they pulled away. My eyes were filled with tears; my vision was impaired. I couldn’t see who it was. I couldn’t tell whether it was my head messing with me or if it was real.
Was it real?
“Please.” I sobbed. “Kill me.”
I started begging for the thing or human to kill me. I begged Nick to kill me. I begged the little boy too. I begged anyone that was listening to kill me.
“I deserve it!” I pleaded. “Please!”
I lay on the forest ground, sticks and rocks shoving themselves into my back. I lay there until the sun went away and the night fell. The trees became more lifelike, and nearby noises filled me with fear. I lay there until I knew that nothing was going to kill me that night.
Except me.
~
There was one person I needed to talk to. One person who would understand. I walked the whole way to their house with my head low. I felt ashamed, and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. It swung open with ease, and a voice called out to me.
“God, you look awful.”
I looked up to be met by Marie. I didn’t know who else I was expecting, considering I walked to her house. Her black curly hair was out and all over the place. She was wearing pajama shorts and a T-shirt that said multiple swear words on it.
“Don’t just stand there like a weirdo; come in,” she said, pulling me inside the house. Her house wasn’t at all what I expected it to be. Everything was white and gold; crystals lined the chandelier. There was a bar with barstools in the hallway.
Her room, however, was exactly how I pictured it. Black walls with posters everywhere. Clothes flung around the room, empty containers, and wrappers on the floor. The radio and speaker set sat on her desk with a bunch of albums. She even had a guitar.
“Why do you look so gross?” she asked after pulling me inside her bedroom. “Seriously, did you roll around on a farm?”
I looked down in response. I felt the mood shift and her worry appeared. I sat down on a chair that was stained with some sort of liquid.
“Are you okay?” she asked, the concern in her voice rising.
“I need a favor,” I whispered. She walked closer to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I need you to tell my mom and dad that I love them.”
“What?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
“And tell Noelle that I love her too.”
Realization hit her, and she opened her mouth to speak. I hushed her before she got a chance to say anything, though.
“And Luke. Please tell him that he gets dibs on anything in my room. He’ll probably donate it all to charity, but it’s whatever—”
“Kyle, are you asking me to say your goodbyes for you?” Marie cut me off. “As in, you’re killing yourself?”
I looked up at her with tears in my eyes. I expected a laugh or a mocking tease or some joke that I’m not doing it without her. But her face turned soft, and she sighed instead. She climbed onto my lap and held my head in her arms.
“You aren’t doing anything, Kyle. I’m not going to let you,” she promised. “What happened to Nick isn’t your fault.”
/>
“I killed him, Marie,” I confessed.
“No, you didn’t.” She fought back, stroking my hair. She sat up and started playing with it. “It was an accident. It’s not your fault.”
I closed my eyes to let myself breathe. Marie didn’t see me as a monster that deserved to die. And she knew everything. She didn’t want me dead.
I opened my eyes to see Nick standing in the corner. He was smiling at me, blood dripping from his mouth. The dent was back, and it looked like he was smashed by a semi-truck. His clothes were ripped and bleeding from the holes. His legs were covered in dark bruises. There was one gash across his whole face. It lined from the top left of his forehead to the bottom right side of his jaw. Just barely missing his eye. He started to move his hand across his neck and pointed at me. He opened his mouth to speak, and when he did, I heard him right beside my head.
“You’re next.”
Marie must’ve noticed me shifting in my seat because she stood up and faced the corner I was looking at.
“Is he over there?” she asked. I nodded, gulping a lump in my throat down. The taste of bile appeared.
Marie walked over to the corner and stood there. Nick moved to the side to let her pass through. She looked at me and asked, “Where is he?”
“Next to you.”
“She can’t see me,” Nick said, staring at me as if he was reaching right into my soul.
“You don’t scare me,” Marie barked. I turned to look at her, expecting her to be facing me. But she was staring right at Nick. He looked at her and tilted his head to the side, confused as to why she was talking to him.
“Is he listening?” she asked. I nodded. “Good. Listen here, Nick, go away because you are making my friend here uncomfortable. And me as well.”
What is she doing?
She’s talking to air.
Nick looked taken aback. The bruises from his legs disappeared, along with the cuts in his shirt.
“You aren’t real!” Marie screamed.
He’s not real.
He isn’t real.
Nick’s blood seemed to have dissolved from his body. His mouth had closed, and blood wasn’t pouring from it.
“Now go away,” Marie finished, staring at the wall.
It’s just a wall.
“Go away!” I demanded at the boy. Tears burned through my eyes. I looked at the spot where Nick had been, and there was only a wall. Just a plain wall.
Marie looked back at me and whispered, “Is he gone?”
I nodded, sitting on the floor. Exhaustion pounced on me like a tiger. My eyes were so heavy; I just wanted to lie down on the floor and sleep. Marie sat next to me and smiled.
“You better now?”
I shook my head. “I still killed him.”
“Then you need to tell the police,” she stated. I would’ve sat straight up at that, but I was so tired I couldn’t move. “Explain to them what happened, and maybe they will take it easy on you.”
“Easy on me?” I scoffed.
“They probably won’t even believe you,” she offered. “But it will help you if you confess. You won’t be like this all the time.”
It made sense, what she said. That’s what scared me. If that was my only way out of being stuck with a bloody Nick for the rest of my life, then I had to take it.
I was going to confess.
16
Day Twenty-Four
“How dare you say that to her?” I barked. I felt my hands reach up and push the person in front of me. I watched as Nick’s eyes ran out of patience. They glowed red. I narrowed down on him, anyways.
I was fighting with Nick as Nick.
He’s gonna kill me.
“She deserved the truth, alright?” Nick said.
“That’s a load of crap!” I fumed. “You told her lies!”
I could tell that I triggered him. He placed his hand on my chest and used so much force to push me backward. He watched as I lost balance and fumbled with my feet. I fell back, about to land on a rock, when a noise went off. A gunshot. My head hit the top of the rock, and I could feel it crack my skull. Nick looked around us, tracing the woods.
“Damn hunters,” he muttered.
I watched the blood pour out of my head and reach the leaves on the ground. I watched as Nick ran over to me, fear growing within his eyes. He placed his hands on my skull to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. There was too much. He stared into my eyes until blood covered them. He wiped away what he could, but he realized that he had just killed me. He took one last look at me before taking off running.
“It should’ve been me.”
I sat up in bed, tormented by what I just saw. I couldn’t help but break down crying. Was Nick still alive when he hit his head? Did he watch me run away? Could he tell how sorry I was?
My breathing became heavier and harder to catch. Tears streamed down my face. I could feel butterflies flapping their wings inside my stomach, but worse. Their wings were made of razors and poison. That’s what it felt like.
I turned to my side and turned my light on. I looked around my room, practically saying goodbye to it. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see it again. I only had one part of my day planned; the rest of it was up to the cops. They could arrest me on sight.
Can they do that?
I checked the time, and it was only four in the morning. The panic of not knowing ate me alive. The sting of bile burned the back of my throat. I couldn’t handle it any more. The fear and anxiety of not knowing what was going to happen to me was killing me. I pulled my phone out and I sent a quick text to Marie.
To: Marie
I can’t wait any longer. I have to go tell them now.
I knew it was too early, and I knew she wouldn’t respond, but I thought I would let her know. So when she woke up and thought about going to see me, she’d know it was too late. I got out of bed and noticed Nick standing there. His body was sitting straight up, his head almost cone-shaped because of the dent in his head. His clothes were torn, and the blood was back. He was holding an old action figure of mine. One that I let him borrow, and he never returned.
“You won’t be here for much longer,” I told him. “I promise you that.”
He pouted his lips before laughing.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Not real.
I walked away from him and trailed downstairs. I grabbed a jacket and left Mom and Dad a note. I told them that I was sorry, but I had to leave to do something. I told them that I was okay and I would see them soon. I walked past the basement to see if Henry was up. His light was off, so he was either out or sleeping. I left the door, closing it as quietly as I could.
I can’t take this any more.
I have to confess.
Each step made my stomach churn even more. Made my thoughts louder than they were before. I knew I was doing the right thing, but was it the wrong time? Did I wait too long? My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I ignored it.
I made my way to the police station, heading up the stairs. I didn’t want to stop and think because stopping and thinking would lead to me leaving, and it would only make it worse in the end. I pushed away my gut telling me to run and turn back. I went against every instinct telling me to stop.
There were only three officers on the floor. They didn’t even look my way when I walked in. A lady at the front desk was signing some papers when she glanced up and finally saw me.
“How can I help you, sweetie?” she asked, putting her papers to the side.
“Uh…” I blanked. I thought about it one more time. Leaving and never coming back. But I knew if I did, the guilt would claw at me until I gave in.
“I wanted to talk about Nick Walter, the missing—” I corrected myself. “The boy that died.”
Two of the officers were looking at me now. One of them stood up and waved me over. She looked nice, and she had a smile on when I walked over. Made it easier to confess.
“Hey, kid,” she gr
eeted me, telling me to sit down. I sat in a black fold-up chair that was placed in front of her desk. “What’s going on?”
This is it, Kyle.
Just tell her, and you’ll be free.
“Nick Walter was my best friend,” I started explaining.
She gave me a look and patted my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, kid.”
I nodded and went to continue my confession when the doors slammed open. Both doors hit both sides of the walls and got everyone’s attention.
I guess I could’ve done that.
Marie stomped into the station. The lady behind the desk was about to scold her when Marie’s eyes settled on me. She shushed the lady and came running over to me. The officer I was with stood up and placed her hands on her hips.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
Marie grabbed my arm with one swift motion and smiled at the officer. “I’m so sorry about this. He’s my brother, and he hasn’t been taking his crazy pills like he’s supposed to.”
“What?” the officer and I said at the same time.
I pleaded with her. “Marie, stop I—”
“So, whatever he told you, please disregard. I just found out he hasn’t been taking them for a while now, and he gets loopy and says things he doesn’t mean and that aren’t true.” She rambled, holding me up. “We have to get going now; Mom’s waiting.”
Marie pulled me out of the station, saying goodbyes to everyone and apologizing that her crazy brother disrupted their morning. When we were finally out by the street, away from the building, she let go of me.
“What the hell, Marie?” I asked, pulling away from her.
“I just saved you, that’s what,” she remarked. “Nick died from a gunshot.”
What?
“No, he died from a head collision because I pushed him!” I argued back.
“Sh!” she yelled, pulling me further from the street. We were in an alley. “I went to your house when I got your text to see if you were okay, but your mom said you left to do something. She said she woke up from the sound of your door closing.”
Believing Lies Page 16
