Page 64 of Save Me

I could easily have blown the rest of my afternoon lessons after that, however, being at home would only have me sinking further into my own dark thoughts. Thoughts of literally gutting Oliver Lawrence while I watch on in some sort of sick pleasure. So, with little other option, I go to class with Rein. The poor guy tries his very best to lift my spirits before calling me a moody fucker, then turns away to chat up the girl on the other side of him. As soon as the last bell rings through my ears, my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I check the caller ID, I waste no time in answering it.

“Talk to me!” I answer rather abruptly.

“Got some stuff for you, Xander,” he says with little warmth in his voice, “but I’m not going to elaborate over the phone. Meet me over here at about seven.”

“Sure,” I reply, then hang up just as quickly.

I let Casey use the car today, meaning that I’m forced to ride my bike along the coastline to my uncle’s house. Normally, she would be getting a lift from Kyle seeing as they recently slipped back into bumping uglies again. However, after only two weeks, the asshole has already cheated on her, and with one of her friends no less. I would be over there beating the shit out of him but knowing my sister, she’ll simply sleep with someone else as payback before getting back together with him again. What’s the point in me trying to defend her pride when she doesn’t have any for herself?

She’s a sucker for a popular muscleman like him, and for some reason, the two of them together make for a dream team. Lord knows why people care about stuff like that, but with any luck, she’ll grow out of it. In fact, she’ll most likely cringe with humiliation when she looks back on it in years to come.

I’ve never attempted to fit into all of it, but I was naturally accepted as one of the ‘cool kids.’ I’ll admit, it goes to your head to be fussed and chased after. I’ve played my part, been the cocky little heartbreaker with a confident swagger in my step, but I’ve never set out to hurt people. Girls have always known the score with me, and apart from Mary Jacobs in second grade, I’ve always been casual with them. Mary and I were married at recess and broken up by lunchtime the following day. She still scowls at me. I guess playing kiss chase with her best friend was not my smartest move, but I couldn’t resist Amy’s dimples and cheeky attitude.

Beth reminds me of my little attraction toward the girl who went for what she wanted. She, too, couldn’t care less about fitting in or looking cool in front of the popular crowd. Beth, however, caught me the moment she told me to leave her the hell alone the day after Casey’s party. Sure, I had found her attractive when I first set eyes on her, but when she looked at me with such derision, I don’t know; the girl turned me inside out. Then, when I saw her at the beach, really letting herself go, dancing with Bodhi on the sand with that smile, and her real laugh, something just clicked. It took over me and turned me into a complete sap for her.

Thinking about Beth almost has me riding straight past my uncle’s place, which is not hard to miss with its grand Mediterranean aesthetics, as well as its sheer size from the main road. You often catch people passing by, stopping to marvel over it, no doubt sighting it as their dream home. Personally, I never liked it much when I was younger. It may look amazing from the outside, but inside it houses a shrine to my late Aunt, who drowned while on their honeymoon in Egypt. Sailing on the Red Sea had been a dream holiday for them, but it soon turned into their nightmare when the luxurious yacht capsized. It ended up killing two of the passengers, Shelly being one of them. Stephen was never the same again. Instead, he became a hollow shell of a man who couldn’t move past the tragedy that had taken away the love of his life. A girl who had been with him since middle school.

Back then, I never understood why he kept so many photos of her all over the walls, why he wanted to surround himself with sadness. I remember having to stay over there one night and feeling a sense of dread while I sat in the back of the car as my parents drove anxiously to drop me off. Casey was sat next to me, screaming over her broken arm after having fallen from her bike. I was literally left on the doorstep with the bell rung, and them bolting for the hospital with my sister in tow. To be fair, it had stuck out at an angle in a gross, but completely fascinating way.

Stephen was already tipsy when I had shuffled in as an eight-year-old guest for the night. The evidence of tears in his eyes was as clear as day, even to a child. As an adult, you’d feel sorry for the poor guy, but as a kid, it only made him seem more terrifying. He’d shown me into a huge bedroom, one of the few spaces to not have multiple photographs of him and Shelly decorating the walls. Without any further words, I had slipped straight inside of the bed with an eerie feeling that I was being watched by the ghost of my dead aunt. A woman I had been too young to know.

Of course, what terrifying ordeal would have been complete without a good thunderstorm to set the perfect backdrop? At some point in the middle of the night, a clap of thunder, together with the raging sea, which is but a stone’s throw away from the place, had me running for my life into Uncle Stephen’s room. I crawled in next to him and trembled in a little huddle, waking him almost instantly with a snuffled snore. When he discovered his nephew trying to hide from the imaginary monsters all around him, he had chuckled and tucked me in while telling me how awesome my dinosaur pajamas were. He stopped being frightening at that point and simply turned back into Uncle Stephen. He was a guy who looked like my mom so had to be the next best thing in her absence.

When I woke up the next morning, he had already left the bed, always having been an early riser, so I turned over and buried my hands beneath the comfy, soft pillows to fall back to sleep. But as I felt around, I found something, a card of some kind, so I pulled it out to have a look. As soon as I saw what it was, I instantly threw it back onto the bed, wishing I could scratch the image from my mind; it was that disturbing. It was a photograph of my aunt looking pale, lifeless, and very much dead from the consuming waters that had claimed her life.

Stephan came back at that moment with OJ and a bowl of sugary cereal, the kind that most kids at that age like to hoover up without a single care for cavities. He caught sight of my discovery before I could hide it and immediately closed the gap between us. He chucked the tray of goodies to one side, then shoved the photo back from where it had come from. His face had drained of color, much like Shelly’s in the picture. The horror behind his eyes had me believing he was going to hit me, or at the very least, shout at me. However, what he did next seemed so much worse at the time. He held me close and cried like it was the first time he had allowed himself to do so since he lost her. Being only eight years old, I had no idea what to do, so I just sat still while he emptied his pain and grief onto me.

Our shared moment, no matter how awkward it was for me, bound us together, and I became the son he never had. He still spoils Casey, and never shows any less love for her, but I’m the one he talks to, the one he shares his passions with. He taught me how to fight, much to my mother’s disapproval, and in turn, I talked to him about school, whatever arguments I have had with my friends, and now, Beth.

Two years ago, Stephen asked me to come and work with him at his office during the summer break. He showed me the ropes, as much as he could in the amount of time that we had, but enough to give me a hint as to what lay in wait for me when I graduated with a degree in journalism. I’ll never forget the first day I walked into the buzz of his office. I was so excited, I must have looked like a complete idiot, complete with a ridiculous grin all over my face. However, over years of traveling with Stephen to interviews no apprentice in my position would ever dream of attending, I saw the shitty side to it all.

Stephen specializes in investigating all the dirty, underhanded crap that happens in the city, so I began to have doubts. One meeting that will always stay with me was with the wife of a politician, one who my parents had voted for. She still wore the wounds of his handiwork, having just returned from the hospital after he had beaten her senseless. And her crime? She had found out that he was dealing in flesh with dangerous gangs who thought nothing of killing a girl if she refused to comply. Being the upstanding fundraiser that she was, she confronted him, only to be answered with three cracked ribs and a fractured skull.

Of course, nothing came of it. He gave out too many backhanders and had too many people in his pocket, much like the asshole who Beth is now bound to. The very next day he appeared on the front of every paper in the state, waving his fat hand with a radiant smile for all his potential voters. People gushed over his large charitable donation to a local women’s refuge, together with his promise to help the homeless off the streets and back into work. We never did publish the story for there wasn’t sufficient evidence to back up our claims. I don’t know; maybe ignorance is bliss.

The door is already open when I step up to the front porch, which is not that uncommon when it comes to Uncle Stephen. Neither is the fact that I can smell whiskey on his breath when he comes over to greet me. He’s not drunk yet, just happily buzzed and numb to everything, which tends to be his favorite place in which to reside. He offers me a ‘stiff’ drink as we walk past the many pictures of Shelly that still line most of the walls. I politely decline, not wanting to stay over and watch him drink himself into oblivion like he does most evenings. The guy must have pickled his body so much, he no longer feels the effects of a hangover.

Stephen never remarried. In fact, he hasn’t had the inclination to date anyone much past the length of a one-night stand. I bet if I was to look underneath that same pillow, Shelly’s picture would still be there. With that in mind, it’s probably a good thing that he never chose to find someone new. For who would want to find out their new boyfriend was so hung up on his dead wife, he keeps a death mask of her.

The echo of my shoes on marble fills the otherwise silent walk toward his large, minimalistic living room, where two white, leather couches sit opposite to one another. A huge plasma screen hangs on the wall at the end, with the only soft touches being those of the numerous photos of him and my aunt together. I still find it eerie, but I’m no longer scared of it. It’s just who he is, and it appears to give him comfort.

“So,” he says, not quite slurring yet, “things have come to a head with this little investigation of yours. I’m sorry, Xander, but I can no longer help you.”

His words have me leaning forward to rest my elbows upon my knees, meeting his concerned expression with a crease of my brow. I’m most likely looking completely shocked because my uncle has never said no to me.

“What the fuck do you mean?” I ask quietly, trying to rein in my anger and frustration which is getting ready to erupt all over his pristine, diamond-white sofas.

“I got paid a visit yesterday from your guy, Oliver Lawrence,” he explains with a sad sigh. He pauses to take in a gulp of Dutch courage while he eyes my tense body language with a sorrowful expression. I can tell it pains him to deny me his help, but it doesn’t make me any less pissed-off about it. “He threatened you, your parents, and your sister. Not to mention, he warned me that he could easily bury my business, thus making hundreds of people lose their jobs, Xander. He promised that if I continue to look into either him, your girl’s grandfather, or Mayfield, things would be put into motion. I can’t risk that, Xander, and neither should you.”

We stare at one other in a weird sort of face-off before I jump up in a rage and begin pacing, all the while rubbing my hands furiously through my hair and around to the back of my neck.

“You expect me to give up on her?” I shout at him, shooting him a venomous look that’s unfair, but no less hateful.

“I do,” he replies quietly, then drops his face to the floor with a look of guilt over his admission. “But…”

“But what?” I cry, becoming desperate for any kind of hope he might be able to offer.

“I know that if you feel half of what I felt for your aunt, then there is no way you’ll give up, so I’m giving you this.”

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