Page 23 of False Idols

“You’re going to pay, Nevaeh,” Jordan calls out to me in a sing-song voice that shouldn't scare me, but does. “The Reaper is going to pay you a visit.”

I ignore him and take off running in the direction of my dorm. I have to make sure Sunny is safe.

9

BEAU

They would have killed Nevaeh if I wasn’t there. Not that I think Andy, Mike and that dumb fuck Jordan has it in them to actually do it themselves, but they would have left her out for The Reaper to find. I know they would. The girl he killed when he stapled that fucking note to her was a freshman when I was a sophomore. Get Home. Get Safe. It’s probably not the smartest to use a murder’s words as a mantra to stay safe, but the people in Bloom are idiots. But so am I, because I let Nevaeh go. I made sure the football team knew not to fuck with her because what was done, was done.

I shouldn’t have let her go. I could have left with her then and used The Reaper as cover to play with her. No one would have come looking for her for hours. Not with a killer on the loose.

That’s where I fucked up.

I look down at the practice sheet they handed off to me. It has all the times and dates for my training for the next few weeks. Jordan was lying. The spot on the team is not second string, it’s third. But even that’s generous for someone who hasn’t played in years. I fucked around in prison when there was a pick up game, but not really. It made what I’d lost too fresh, so I stayed away from the games unless I was bored out of my mind. I’m going to be riding the bench for the season and that’s fine with me. With the training I’m going to be doing, my time is already more divided than I wanted it to be.

I’m here for Nevaeh, not fucking football. I don’t give a shit about football. That was the old me. The one with a future and a soul. The only thing I have is revenge and my goddamn obsession with Nevaeh. I toss the practice sheet on the table in front of me and start pacing. I can see the pretty pink blush that spread over her cheeks when I told her to get on her knees. She liked it. Even though she was scared, she liked it. She didn’t run either. She wanted to, but she kept giving me more time. She kept listening to me like she didn’t have a choice. And when those motherfuckers came crashing down on us, I’m the one she crawled to for safety.

She knows I’m going to break her and she still came to me. This is going to be more fun than I realized. Outside a siren blares. It’s close to the tornado siren that goes off when shit is getting bad and we need to shelter in place, but this siren is lower and shorter. It goes off in a series of four blasts before it sounds again.

The sirens are the signal that it’s not safe. To stay the fuck inside if you want to stay alive. They started playing this my junior year when some kids threw a “Don’t Fear The Reaper” party because he killed a girl on Senior Day and they refused to give up their party. The Reaper paid them a visit and they never found the hands for two of the bodies.

I go to the window and look out. It’s a ghost town. The only movement is from the police car that’s patrolling. It’s driving the block in 10 minute intervals, which doesn’t seem safe as the killer they haven’t caught is notorious for stalking his victims. The police really shouldn’t give him a pattern to follow if they want to actually do anything, but I know it’s all a show. They aren’t going to keep us safe, not really. Because he’s too smart. He’s so smart that he delivered the knife he used on Carrie to the police station with a fucking red bow on it and no one knew who left it. He was on their doorstep and no one saw him. Idiots.

They’ll never fucking catch him.

I take out my phone and start scrolling through my socials. It’s a flurry of notifications. I turned my accounts back on after I got back from prison. My mom kept them inactive after the trolls wouldn’t stop commenting about how fucked up they always knew I was and how my entire family was going to hell. She couldn’t take it, but she also couldn’t bring herself to delete the profiles either.

I’m glad she didn’t delete them, because now I can keep an eye on what’s going on on campus a lot easier. The amount of friend requests I’ve gotten since yesterday is overwhelming. The damn apps froze up at one point and I had to turn my phone off for a while, but being home with The Reaper is as good of a time as any to start going through them. I start to tap on the profiles and approve them one by one. It’s mostly girls, so many pretty college coeds who have included message like, “I’m so sorry that happened to you” and “I always knew you were innocent!” But there’s also the more direct messages of nudes and offers to fuck me, no strings attached, whenever I want.

Those I pause over, because it’s been four fucking years. The last girl I was with was Carrie. We got drunk and high that night and fucked like we normally did at Bloom Point. I should pick a girl that looks like her out of the friend requests I’ve gotten and take them up on their offers to “suck the soul out of me,” but I won’t.

I want Nevaeh.

I take a deep breath and tamp down that feeling. No one is going to cut it but her. Pussy is pussy, but Nevaeh? Now that’s going to be worth waiting four years for. Willing or not. She’s going to be the first thing I put my dick in. Judging from her reaction to me, she’s going to want it.

A message request hits my phone and I almost ignore it but then I see the message preview. Nevaeh. I tap on the message and nearly throw my phone, because the message isn’t from Nevaeh, but someone talking about her.

I saw you talking to Nevaeh today. Everything okay?

The message is from Ali, the girl from our Psych class. I should have known she’d be paying attention to what I was doing the second class was over.

Everything is perfect. Just checking in with her that she’s okay.

The image of Nevaeh trying to fight the football team off, twisting and kicking her legs even though they had her off the ground, dances through my mind. She had zero chance against them, but she was willing to fight. Did she fight the person who hit her the night before? The one she said got to her in the shower?

I frown and open my app to start looking for Nevaeh. There’s another message that comes through from Ali, but I ignore it. She can fucking wait. I don’t care what she wants. I find Nevaeh’s profile a second later because, even though I didn’t have this account in prison, I did have access to a burner account I made.

NotHeaveN is her username. She hasn’t changed it since she got the account. There isn’t any new activity on her page, but I do see she’s online from the little green dot next to her name. Ali messages me again and I send a message to Nevaeh.

Are you home?

I have to know. I told her to get home and she’s a local, same as me. She knows the rules. Still, I need her to tell me where she is, which annoys me. I’m going to put a tracker on her. That roommate of hers is trusting enough she’ll let me in. I’ll put a camera there, too. I tuck my phone into my back pocket and go into the kitchen to look for something to eat for dinner. I’m in a loft my parents picked out for me because they didn’t want me in a dorm room. My mother took one look at them and immediately hated how small they were.

“This looks like a bomb bunker. We are not putting you in here after where you just were.”

It’s a rule that freshman live on campus, but the school made an exception for me because of course, they fucking did. They’re up to give me whatever I ask for while I’m a student. They don’t realize the only thing I want is something they can’t give me, but that’s fine. I’m taking care of that myself. The fridge is stocked full and for a second I freeze. I haven’t had access to a kitchen or a fridge like this on my own for years. I wouldn’t even try to cook something if The Reaper hadn’t shut the damn town down.

Motherfucker keeps ruining my life. First prison, now I can’t even get a pizza delivered. I ought to cut his fucking head off and see how he likes it. I grab a steak and some potatoes that look like you can cook right in the container and start to work on them, but my phone buzzes. I know it’s not a message from Ali.

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