Stronger

by Blue Ashcroft

  Geoff was right, Josh is my type. I’m comfortable around him, and he smells nice, and he’s gorgeous. I open my locker to take out fresh clothing for my date, and something flutters to the ground. It’s faded and crumply and white. Looks like a note.

  A creepy feeling runs up my back as I open it. I read it and drop it in shock. I scramble to pick it up, trying to stay turned away from Geoff, so that he doesn’t see it.

  “I’ve missed you. Tell lover boy his sister was a nice lay.”

  I clutch it in my hand, so tight. It’s my worst nightmare, brings so much hate and rage that my head swims. How confident can he be? How can he be like this? So sure that he will get away with things that he’d openly admit it? How does he know Camille is Geoff’s sister.

  It has to be Mike. It has to be. No one else could be missing me. I send a quick look at Geoff, failing to hide the alarm on my face, and he comes over quickly. He takes my hand and tries to get the paper.

  “You’re white as a ghost. What is it?”

  I clench my hand tightly closed, till my nails dig into my palm. I can’t let him see it. I can’t. I haven’t figured out how to stop him from killing someone yet. I don’t have enough of a hold on him. If he opens this, he’ll find Mike, and he’ll kill him, and I’ll never be able to see him again.

  I don’t want that.

  Even worse is realizing that Mike is an actual rapist, a monster of the kind I can’t understand, and it’s my fault he’s not put away. I have to deal with this myself. Tears well in my eyes but I manage to keep my hand shut. “No, you can’t see it, it’s not for you.”

  “What is it? Is it that sick—”

  I turn away from him, put it in my mouth, and try to swallow it. It’s gross. It’s stupid, but I can’t let him see it. I can’t. I cough it back up into my hand but shove it down the back of my pants. I need to put it anywhere, anywhere he can’t get to it. He backs up, eyes wide, posture defensive.

  “Amy, I wouldn’t have forced you.”

  “I know,” I say, falling to my knees as tears fall more freely. “I just, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve had a bad day.”

  He kneels, takes my shoulders. “Are you serious? You look like you’ve been shot.”

  I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Like hell,” he says, face handsome and concerned. The face I love most. “No one is allowed to make you look this way, feel this way. No one.”

  I shake my head. “I’m just overreacting. It’s not a big deal.”

  He lowers his head. “You still don’t trust me?”

  I don’t know how else to get out of this, so I nod. “Yeah, I don’t trust you. Josh is a better protector. Just stay out of it, so I don’t end up like Camille.”

  His face goes pale and hard, and he stands up and pushes away from me, visibly hurt. I can see the war happening inside him again, as he tries to understand if he really blames himself or not, but this time I can’t rescue him. I need him to feel impotent, at least until I figure out what I’m going to do about Mike.

  Maybe I can trap him or something. Maybe Josh can help.

  “Fine then, I’ll stop bothering you,” Geoff says, eyes dull and dark as he turns away and walks out of the guard room. I sigh and relax. For now, the danger is over.

  And I’m always with Josh lately anyway. I’ll be safe without Geoff, I don’t need him. I stand slowly, propping myself against the locker, and see Geoff going into Knight’s office. Knight appears, and he pokes his head out of his office, looking in my direction. He disappears back in. I grab my stuff, trying to get out before Knight can come over and ask what is wrong.

  I’m tired of people interfering in my shit. Sure, for a while I was less afraid of Mike, but now I’m more afraid, and more guilty, and I just don’t want to deal with this. I don’t want to hear another person say that I should have told on him.

  Knight’s headed this way with Rain right behind him.

  I send her a pained look and turn away to leave out the back door. I look over my shoulder and see they are picking up the pace, with Rain running ahead.

  She reaches me, pulling on my shoulder as I exit out the back. I don’t want to stop.

  “Amy, hold on. What the hell is wrong?” She whips me around and stares into my eyes with her beautiful blue ones.

  “Nothing,” I mutter. I glare at Knight over her shoulder. “Nothing he can know about. Or Geoff.”

  Her face gets solemn. “You want me to get rid of them?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, embarrassed that the tears have started up again. “Only if you could keep a secret from Knight.”

  She looks hesitant, and brushes her brownish blond hair back behind her ear. “What kind of secret?”

  “A big one,” I say. “But he can’t know, he can’t.” I pull away and continue to my car, knowing I’m growing slightly hysterical. On the way, I remember that Josh is supposed to be here. I look around the lot and don’t see him, so I text him real quick that plans have changed and I’m going home.

  “Amy, what’s wrong?”

  “I, it’s big. I don’t know who to tell,” I say, swiping tears away. “I’ve never been more scared in my life.”

  “You? You’re never scared,” she says, pulling me in for a hug and rubbing my back gently.

  I hold her tight. She’s warm and soft and gentle. “I’m just bad at showing things.”

  She laughs. “Well, seems like that’s about to change, if you’ll let it. Let me come over, I promise not to tell Knight anything.”

  I nod against her shoulder. She’s taller than me, and a total ice queen at work. But we’ve been friends a long time, and I get to see more of her warm side than other people. She’s almost like an older sister.

  “I’ll drive,” she says.

  Once I’m in the passenger seat I take out the paper. It’s still readable, though it’s been in my mouth and smashed in my pants.

  Rain gives it, and me, a weird look, but then turns back to driving. “Should I call Allie over? You two are close. Maybe she could help.”

  “She’s been so busy with Ryan,” I say. “I mean, it would be nice to have her around, but I know she’d overreact and freak out as much as any of the guys.”

  Rain nods. “Well, let me know if you change your mind, and I’ll call her over.”

  When we get to my place, I stumble out, feeling dead and out of it. I want to show my parents, but how do I explain the whole story? And I’m not a kid anymore, to go running into their arms.

  I stumble past them where they sit chatting in the living room, ignore their concerned eyes, and go to my room, leaving Rain to deliver any apologetic looks as necessary.

  I flop on the bed, and just breathe for a minute, staring at the pink comforter that always feels like home. It calms me a little, and I need that right now. Just breathe in, breath out.

  After a few minutes, I feel Rain’s hand stroking my back. Who knew she could be so nurturing? I’m the nurturing one. I’m not the freaked out one, I’m not the one who doesn’t know what to do.

  “Rain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I like Geoff.”

  “I think we’ve all known that for a while,” she says gently. “I just don’t know if it’s a good match. Knight says he’s a good guy, though.”

  “He is,” I mumble into the blanket. “Way better than he lets on. I’m so stupid.”

  “Why?”

  “I just, I always fall for the wrong people. I have horrible taste in guys.”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as you think.”

  “He wants to kill someone.”

  Silence. Rain’s hand stops. Someone else being alarmed seems to finally calm me, so I sit up and rest against the headboard. I grab one of my pillows and squeeze it in my lap, a guard between me and the world.

  “You know what happened to his sister right?”

  “Camille?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” she says, moving h
er hand to a knot on the comforter and twirling it around.

  “Does it bother you to talk about it? Since it’s Knight’s ex?”

  Her eyes snap sharply up to mine, and she shakes her head. “No. It bothers me because she didn’t deserve to die, and she should have gotten more help, and because it’s just so sad all around. But what does that have to do with why you’re scared?”

  “I’m um…I’m being stalked.”

  Her eyes glaze over in recognition. “Damnit, Knight…”

  “What?”

  “I knew there was a reason he was having Geoff walk you out and messing with your shifts. He should have told me. Who is it?”

  “Um, you remember that guard party when I was attacked?”

  “Mike? Yeah…”

  “Yeah, Mike sort of, well, never got over it.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  I clutch the pillow tighter. “What would I say? He just shows up here and there and acts a bit creepy. And then he showed up at this party where Geoff was, and Geoff threw him out, and he hasn’t dared to get close since. And then I guess I got distracted, getting to know Geoff, and being with Josh.”

  “Is he the hottie I’ve been seeing around?” she asks, giving me a warm smile. It’s out of place in the mood of the room, but still welcome.

  “Yeah, an old friend.”

  “Nice. Two guys to choose from. Never a bad place to be.”

  I let out my air in a shaky breath. “You’d think so. But one won’t commit, and the other just isn’t as exciting, and is a bit condescending, and well, I probably just always want what I can’t have.”

  “And which can’t you have?”

  “Geoff.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is insane,” I say.

  “Amy, that’s not nice. I mean, he’s been through a lot, sure, but that doesn’t make him—”

  “He’s obsessed with finding Camille’s rapist. He plans to kill him. He’s been thinking about it for years. I don’t doubt him when he says he’ll do it.”

  She swallows. “But, Knight seemed to think he was so well adjusted. He was jealous.”

  “He went to therapy. At times he can be really adjusted, and mature, and hot, and just, yeah. But other times, there’s this look in his eye, like he’s so angry that nothing can stop him.”

  “Hot, hmm? That sounds nice. He’s kinda got that whole bad boy thing going.”

  “And here’s the weird thing, sometimes he almost seems able to forget it. Like, for months while guarding, he could have come to me for information he was looking for, if he was really serious about finding Camille’s killer. So why now?”

  “Maybe because this situation brought it back for him. Maybe he was able to put it aside here and there, but it came back. Grief is like that.” She looks away, eyes slightly glossy. “And sometimes we do really stupid stuff to make sense of what happened. I know I did. But sometimes it takes the right person to shake us out of it. Even if at first they just make us feel even more firmly entrenched.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t really know how to explain. I’m not great at giving advice, like you are. I want to help, because without Geoff, Knight and I might not even be together. He was there for Knight when no one else was, and if you ask me, inside that gluttonous, crass shell is a boy who is way older than his years, just waiting to come out.”

  “I see,” I say. But it doesn’t make any sense.

  “All I know is, I was denying myself good things, until Knight came along. He was the first person to make me consider breaking my promises. Dumb promises. I felt guilty, and I pushed back, but when he kept pushing, he helped me realize just how stupid it was. Just how much I wasn’t allowing myself to live.”

  “Oh.” It’s finally dawning. Why he hides that he got into good schools. Why he understands the people he grew up with but lives apart from them. Why he doesn’t do commitment, but kisses me like he can’t stand to ever let me go.

  He thinks he isn’t worthy because he blames himself for Camille’s death. Rain is right, she isn’t usually great at advice, or psychological things. It must have been agonizing for Knight to hang on like that while she fought an invisible wall and rejected him.

  It’s not easy for me to hear Geoff say that it’s fine if I make out with him and date another guy.

  Oh no, I keep seeing his face when I told him I didn’t trust him, that I didn’t want to end up like Camille. Why do I know exactly how to hurt people in the worst way possible, and why can’t I be smart enough to think before I do it? I just needed him far away, but I didn’t mean to do so much damage.

  “I’ve really screwed up,” I say. “I said the worst things. I said I didn’t trust him. He’s been wanting to help with Mike, and I said I didn’t want him to.”

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Because,” I say, taking out the note and handing it over. “Because he was trying to get me to show him this, and I can’t. I can’t show anyone this.”

  She holds it up, and the room goes silent. I can hear my own heartbeat, and I’m sure she’s experiencing the same right now. The person who hurt both the men we love, and the woman they loved, so badly, is right here, on that note in the middle of the bed.

  The person who attacked us both and has been stalking me. “What are the chances? I mean, it was probably helping me with Mike that woke Geoff up and made him crazy about vengeance again, but I didn’t think he’d turn out to be him. I even agreed to help him find the guy, by trying to figure out who was at the party that Camille was at, and I even looked through my yearbook.”

  She just nods, fingers and face white, and sets the note back down, staring blankly ahead. I know the feeling. “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “No one else has been watching me. It’s exactly the type of thing he does. He likes scaring me.”

  “I see.”

  “I mean, when I agreed to help Geoff I was hoping that we could keep it vague and look into possibilities. But I thought it was impossible that we would actually figure it out. I mean who would admit it?” I swipe the note off the bed, then, because I don’t want to lose it, pick it back up. “That’s probably the worst part of all of this, that it’s so hard to catch the damn fuckers, and they know it, so they can just taunt us.”

  I put my hand up to my face to stop the tears. “It’s my fault. If I’d just turned him in, somehow got him arrested, then Camille’s rapist would be in jail. Safe, where Geoff couldn’t touch him. And Geoff would be safe from being a murderer.”

  “Geoff still might be safe from that,” she says, still looking ghastly and pale. No wonder Geoff was worried, if that’s how I looked. “I mean, give him some credit. He has control. He’s a strong person. A good person, as you said.”

  “You haven’t seen how he looks when he talks about it,” I say, wondering how I could still be producing tears. “I just needed more time, then maybe I could have helped him see it’s not the way.”

  “I’m sure Camille wouldn’t have wanted this. Why does he think this is the way?”

  “He just says that’s how it is. He says Knight feels the same.”

  She touches the note and then recoils like it’s poisonous. “I hope not.”

  “So what do we do now? You can’t tell Knight, you promised.”

  “I know. I won’t. But I think we should.” She points at the paper. “Do you think this is actionable? If we took it to the police?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either. But it seems to me like either way, there’s going to be a confrontation. It’s unavoidable.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think we could trust Josh with this?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Maybe we could take Josh, and Allie and Ryan, and go confront Mike. Get him to admit something. I don’t even know what the point would be, but maybe something.”

  “This is all so awful,” I say clutching my
head so it can’t burst into a million pieces.

  “Now hang on,” she says, bouncing over the bed to hold me close against her chest. Nice. “He’s a coward. He might not show up at all.”

  “I know,” I say. “But he could.”

  “But, we both just need to calm down. He’s a rapist and a coward. He likes hiding in plain sight. If he just wanted to attack you, he could have done so by now.”

  “I know.”

  “So don’t go anywhere without one of us. And just keep Geoff at arm’s length until we figure out what to do.”

  “That’ll be easy. He won’t want to come near me. I hurt him so bad. I said exactly what he hates most in himself. That’s always the worst thing to hear.”

  “People say mean things to each other. From what I hear, Camille and Geoff didn’t grow up with great parents, I mean the one now is okay apparently, but the one back when Knight and Camille were dating, he doesn’t sound like a good person. I’m pretty sure Geoff has a thicker skin than that.”

  “You’d think so, but in some ways, even though he’s so big and tough, in some ways he’s really wounded.”

  “I know, but you can’t do anything about that. Not now. You just need to take care of you, not Geoff. And let Josh help, because you can trust him not to kill anyone, right?”

  “Yeah.” Sadly, I’m a bit unimpressed by it. I haven’t yet seen Josh passionate about much of anything. “So I just wait it out?”

  “I don’t know what else we can do. I mean, we could have Knight try to confront him, but now that you mention it, I don’t want my boyfriend committing assault. If someone hurt someone I loved like that, I’d want to kill them too.”

  Levelheaded Rain talking about killing someone, who knew?

  Oh Camille, did you know that you had so many people that loved you? I wish you hadn’t left.

  “I feel like this has to end with me,” I say. “I feel like he can’t keep going. He can’t keep hurting girls. Who knows how many there are? And none of us came forward?”