Page 44 of Worse Than Wicked
But here we are, and I have everything, and I’m still moping around like a little bitch.
Even Olive wasn’t mad at me. She was happy to see me, like I never hurt her at all. If anyone has something to be pissy about, it’s her. But she’s happier than ever, like she doesn’t even remember. Like she doesn’t miss her sister at all.
I’ve been torturing myself over it for a year, and she doesn’t even care.
I open another beer. Somehow I’ve gone through the whole six-pack already.
At first, it felt like a miracle that she wasn’t mad. She didn’t care at all that I could have killed her. But now it’s starting to feel like a punishment. I know it’s sick, but I want her to be mad. I don’t deserve to get off the hook that easy. I wanted to show her how sorry I was, to earn her forgiveness, but she didn’t even care, so there’s no reason to. There’s no reason to be here, to see her. She doesn’t miss me. She was perfectly happy without me, off living her big New York life with Royal and Harper.
Maybe not everyone gets to be happy. At least Olive deserves her happiness. I don’t deserve shit.
The ghosts creep in, whispering in my ears, reminding me of what I’ve done, why I will be forever seeking, chasing, never content until the day I die.
Dawson.
Dad.
The man who fucked Mabel.
Blue.
Olive wouldn’t forgive me so easily if she knew.
This time, when I go to the refrigerator, I bring a whole six-pack back to the table with me. I’m smart enough to knowthis isn’t going to make me happy either, but I keep going anyway. At least it can make me numb.
I don’t know how the others deal with the guilt, the ghosts that visit in the night, that linger in every corner, whispering warnings. Harper and Royal seem fine. Happy, even. Crystal and Devlin were there when we left Dad in the burning building. They’re fine. They’re still making babies and raising more, kids who will never know that their parents are murderers. I don’t know what happened to Gideon and his brother. If I wanted to find out, I could call their dad and ask, or go to church and see if they were there, but I don’t want to see them. We were never friends, and I haven’t talked to DeShaun or Cotton since we graduated.
I talk to Baron, but he doesn’t understand. He can’t because he never would have let that happen. Family is everything to Baron, even the bad ones like Dad.
Like me.
He forgives me, even when I can’t forgive myself, even when I don’t deserve it, even when he would never have done what I did.
Patricide.
That’s the word for it. Killing your own father.
Baron would no more do that than he’d kill me. People think he’s a psychopath, but he’s better than all of us. There’s no shades of grey to him. It’s black and white. Simple. You don’t kill family. He doesn’t make excuses or exceptions. He knows it’s wrong, so he wouldn’t have done it.
I wish I had that kind of clarity. But I can’t find the border between good and bad, between black and white. It’s all blended into a dull grey fog, where nothing feels good and pure anymore. Even Olive, who was the last good thing I had, the one pure and simple part of my life after we killed Dad, when Baron was gone, has been perverted by what everyone’s said to me. Even afterMabel told me that I was probably okay, I can’t stop worrying. I can’t hug her without wondering if someone is going to think I’m a sicko, can’t hang out with her without wondering if they’re right, because what kind of person wants to be friends with a kid?
The people I should be most comfortable with, who share that dark secret, that terrible bond, can’t be trusted because they don’t trust me. They poisoned my mind against myself, and I can’t get the venom out. It’s part of me now, the doubts, the fears, the questions that circle around and around in a never-ending, claustrophobic spiral.
I stumble from the table, needing to get out, to breathe, to leave my head that’s closing in on me. The beer isn’t enough. I need Alice.
I’m out, but I know where to get more. I grab some clothes from the hamper in the bathroom and stumble outside. A low, sluggish layer of clouds hangs over the town, trapping in the heat. The air hits me with its choking suffocation, oppressive and ominous. I hurry to the car, feeling the ghosts close behind. I don’t dare look back.
In the car, I’m shivering but I turn the air on full blast, needing it to suck away the dread that curdles in the heat, the vapors. I don’t know why I ever wanted to come back here. Faulkner is a curse, a scourge on the world. I want to burn it all to the ground, leave it obliterated, wipe it off the face of the earth like Chernobyl.
I take out my phone and thumb it on, correcting when my wheel goes into the ditch. I clip the mailbox, then jerk the car onto the road and give it some gas. In the rearview, I can see the post jutting from the ground at an odd angle, like a crooked headstone.
My phone connects to the speakers as I hit call. I have to try three more times before he answers, sounding annoyed.
“What do you want?”
“I need some shit,” I say.
He sighs. “It’s three in the fuckin’ morning.”
