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I wish you’d just answer me. Well, Jamie wished you’d just leave him alone, but that didn’t happen, did it?
What is it? Are you too good to talk to me? You think you’re better than me? Is that what this is? That was the point at which he started to get angry. There were lots of seemingly innocent, yet extremely unnerving messages in between, but you could tell he was upset just beneath the surface after the better-than-me message. It was shortly after the restraining order, when he was struggling to convince himself he could still win Jamie over. It was past the point that Jamie had grown more than wary and would no longer talk to him or look at him at all. He was panicking because he knew Jamie was slipping even further out of his grasp.
And then I showed up. So you can talk to him but not me? Why is he so much more special than I am? You have to have someone stereotypically good looking? I never thought you’d be so shallow. And his hair is horrid. Ok, first off, it most certainly was not. And second, in case it wasn’t clear, Wally didn’t like me much. I supposed he had a good reason. After all, I was just waiting for an excuse to beat him all the way into the ground, to leave him begging me to stop and swearing to never look at Jamie again. Unfortunately, I waited too long for that excuse. I’d never regretted anything more in my life. I should have killed him long before and taken the punishment. Sitting in jail instead of that courtroom would have been worth it, if Jamie was safe.
I’m sorry. You can talk to whoever you want to. I just wish you’d talk to me, too. He knew he’d fucked up, and he tried to backpedal. Nice try, you piece of shit. If he’d have tried to talk to Jamie in front of me after I knew all about him, that would have been more than the reason I’d been waiting for. Luckily for him, he’d seen me, and he knew better. He knew what I would do to him. Not so lucky for Jamie, though, or for me.
Hey, why don’t you come with me to my hometown? I swear you’ll love it. Just one weekend. We’ll have a blast. There it was again. But he’d never told Jamie where his hometown was, like it was a secret, some hidden place just for them. It seemed to be close enough for a weekend trip. Was it so close it didn’t need an overnight, he just wanted a whole weekend with Jamie? Or was it far enough they’d have to stay? Even if it required only a weekend, it didn’t rule out the surrounding states. It could have been anywhere with a coastline in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, or maybe even Mississippi or South Carolina. Unless he was suggesting they fly there. The messages weren’t helpful in narrowing it down.
I had a feeling it was the scenario that had played out. He’d mentioned his hometown more than enough. It was obvious he wanted Jamie to go there with him. I was pretty sure he hadn’t taken his victim on a plane, so it would rule out anywhere beyond a handful of states. That didn’t help a whole lot because that still left a lot of area to cover. I had a feeling he’d been planning it all along, and that was the real reason he’d never mentioned the location.
Jamie’s phone was gone. They hadn’t found it. They’d tried tracking it, but the location was lost less than a mile from where he’d disappeared, in the direction of the highway on which they could have gone either way.
I’m getting tired of you ignoring me. I know you’re seeing these. I know you can see messages without them showing read. I’m not stupid. Great, man. Then why didn’t you just take a hint? Why couldn’t you get it through your head that Jamie would never love you? That he never even liked you? That he didn’t want to talk to you, and just wanted you to leave him alone?
All I want to do is get to know you. I think you’d really like me if you knew me. Why won’t you just talk to me? Because he didn’t want to talk to you or know any more about you than he already did. Because you’ve always been creepy AF.
I’m not a bad guy. But you’re going to force me to be one, aren’t you? It was the first one with an outright threat. And apparently, Wally felt that his arm had been twisted into it. I knew he still blamed Jamie for the whole thing, even if he wasn’t admitting to any of it. He had basically said, though not in so many words, that if Jamie didn’t want to be kidnapped, raped, hidden away, and tortured, that he shouldn’t have been so attractive.
“Mama, I did something bad…he…I loved him…he wouldn’t listen…he wouldn’t listen, and I kept fighting him to just make love to me, he made me do something bad…” I closed my eyes and swallowed hard in the courtroom, trying to block out the words on that recording, trying not to focus on what Jamie had been through after he disappeared.
I looked back down at my phone. He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t care like I do. He doesn’t even show you off. I’d shout it to the world. I’d show you off to everyone. His Facebook page still says single. Please, just one drink with me? Well, that one consistently flared up the guilt. It was one of those times I’d made a decision, or rather multiple decisions, and later realized they were all terrible ones. I never meant to hurt him, but I’d never been ready. I was trying, I really was. I wanted one more chance. I’d tell everyone. I’d get up on the tallest building and scream out my love. I’d go on TV and jump up onto a couch declaring my feelings on a talk show. Anything. I just wanted another chance.
I knew Jamie had never minded hiding it at school. He was patient, just like he’d promised he would be. But some part of him must have felt that he wasn’t quite good enough, or that my heart wasn’t all the way in it like his. That thought broke me almost more than anything else.
I guess I’m going to have to make you see what kind of person he is, and what kind of person I am. And that was exactly what he’d done. What he’d meant by his message wasn’t at all what he’d accomplished, but he’d definitely reached his goal. He’d proven what kind of people we both were. As it turned out, I was a desperate fool in love who was nothing without Jamie.
That was the last message. It had been sent to me like the others, but it had taken too long for me to see it. It was sent to me in another panicked message that had me rushing with everything I had to get to him, but it was already too late. It was the message that found Jamie already gone.
The messages had all been spread out over time. Sometimes there were periods when Jamie would think that Wally had finally given up, only to get another one out of nowhere. Or he’d show up out of the blue, or just be standing outside, watching.
The cops had called him a classic stalker. It was a case of someone wanting another person so badly they’d rather see the person dead than with anyone else. They’d profiled him as that person. Hell, it sounded like he’d told his own mother he was that person. Everyone believed it, even Jamie’s family. They’d mourned and cried and had their own memorial. I’d been at that one, as well, even though I hadn’t felt any more settled about it than I had at the school’s memorial. His mom had hugged me, told me she was sorry even though she was mourning, too. She knew I was carrying guilt along with the pain. She told me it wasn’t my fault, but they all knew. They all knew I should have stopped it.
The memorials did not give me closure. The courtroom wasn’t giving me closure, either. It didn’t sit right with me, none of it. We were missing the most important part. We were missing Jamie. There were no more search parties, though. The police were looking for a body, or parts of a body, if that man’s incoherent story was to be believed. There were still signs up all over. His smiling, happy face looking out from a poster asking for information on his whereabouts. Every time I saw it, it broke me all over again.
I clicked my phone screen off and looked up. I was going to get the truth out of that bastard up there. I was going to find all the answers that hadn’t been given. I was going to find Jamie, and I was going to get closure, one way or another. Or I was going to kill that man.
Chapter 5
September
Jamie wasn’t in calc on Thursday, and I didn’t see him in the quad that day, either. I got a little shit from my coach at practice that afternoon for missing the previous day, but nothing like the lecture Jeff made it seem like I’d get. I managed to land a stick to Brad’s shins and trip him once, making both look accidental. Brad didn’t buy it, but I didn’t want him to.
All day Friday, I kept trying not to think about Wednesday afternoon, even though my mind kept wandering back to Jamie and the first time I’d really talked to him. I tried not to think even further back, to Gavin. I couldn’t think about any of it right then, because my head was already all over the place. I didn’t want to think about the night that was coming, either, but it wasn’t for the reasons I’d been trying to tell myself. I knew, deep down, that it was going to make it hard to keep everything tied up in the box I’d crafted with the neat little bow holding it all together. The part of me in that box was a part of me that no one was ever allowed to find, a part that I was never allowed to explore again, hidden away so that I could keep the outside perfect and shiny and no one would ever wonder what was inside. I wasn’t completely confident that I’d be able to keep it all together so perfectly after all was said and done. I seemed to have been hitting some snags lately, and Jesse’s birthday party was going to be the icing on the cake.
My friends were all excited. Even Jeff seemed cool with the whole thing. He was planning on going out to party and have fun with our friends, getting drunk while watching dudes dance nearly naked on a stage, and that manly man was somehow okay with all of it. Jesse and Caitlin were excited for obvious reasons but excuse me if I was dreading it.
“Go get ready, man, we’ll have fun,” Jeff said, patting my arm as we parted ways in the quad, thought I wasn’t sure what was supposed to be fun about it when I was already breaking out in a cold sweat. I took off toward my dorm. Jamie had been back in Calculus that day, and I spotted him walking in the opposite direction, looking at his phone. He seemed to be distracted and kind of rushed, too.
Even though he wasn’t looking at me I said, “Hey,” as we passed by each other.
He glanced up, locking eyes with me. To my relief, instead of narrowing his gaze like he had in the past, he gave me that little smile. “Hey,” he said, and my heart swelled. Then he looked back at his phone. He was obviously voice texting because he gave me a little wave goodbye as he held the phone up toward his lips and said, “Can’t. Have to work. Wish I could, though.”
I wondered who he was texting, but it wasn’t really any of my business. He was gone, anyway. I headed back to my dorm to try to figure out what a completely straight guy would wear to a gay strip club.
Jesse was ready to go and waiting for me when I got back. We’d let him in on the plans that morning, deciding to surprise him with enough time to choose his clothes accordingly. He never would have forgiven us if he’d underdressed for the occasion. He already had his own plans for me. He tried to get me to wear some of his…bolder clothes to make me a little more flamboyant. “No.” He pouted at me, then tried to pull the birthday-boy card, but I wasn’t having it.
“But you’re so hot, Caden,” he whined, “The guys will cream themselves. You have to look a little bit gay.”
