No!I internally warn again, hating the whiny voice in my head cautioning me that Dexter will die if I don’t do what she is suggesting. I don’t want him to die, but there must be another way I can save him that doesn’t involve removing my clothes.
Ignoring the other voices in my head calling me names, I pace to the window box on the opposite side of the room. Perhaps if I put some distance between Dexter and me, the crazy thoughts will stop, and clarity will form in its place.
I should let him die. Dexter isn’t like Nick. He’s evil.He’s bad. He doesn’t love me with every fiber of his being. He was just using me as a means to escape.Wasn’t he?
You’re so stupid!
No, I’m not!I pound my head, teaching the snarky voice a lesson about what happens when you’re mean to me. The rattle of my brain against my skull shuts them up right away.
I’m not stupid. I am merely confused by Dexter’s attention. He brings out my reckless side, the side not worried about the wicked thoughts in my head. The evil in his eyes encourages my evil to flourish. We are similar, yet different, if that makes any sense?
Although my life would be less complicated without him in it, I can’t help but be drawn to him. It isn’t just his wild spirit. It is something much deeper than that. For years, I thought my heart was broken. It still ticked, but its beat was slow and out of time. Dexter reset it.
Imagine you’re looking at a heart monitor. See the flat, bland line? That was my heart two months ago. Now imagine a massive surge of electricity jolting through my chest. The flat line spikes up high on the graph before it returns to a standard, rhythmic beat. Dexter is the surge. Nick is the normality.
I return my eyes to Dexter, grateful for the surge but frightened by what it means. He is still shuddering. The purple bruise around his wound is barely distinguishable since his olive skin is pale and blue.
Stop it!I shout at the voices in my head, my demand accompanied by ripping out several chunks of my hair. I’m sick to death of the stupid things they say every single day.
Do this.
Do that.
That puppy would look better without its tail.
Nick will never forgive me if I sleep with another man. For that alone, I can’t listen to them.
Wanting to silence their snarky comments, I slide a pill bottle out of the pocket in my dress. These tablets are the ones the doctors prescribed after I informed my teacher my father had killed my mother. He told everyone I was sick. That what I saw wasn’t true. I thought it was, but within a few months of taking these pills, I began to wonder if I was mistaken.
Maybe my dad didn’t stab my mom twelve times until her pale blue dress turned into a sea of red. Maybe he didn’t leave her sleeping in their bed for six months until the smell of her decaying body became so unbearable he had no choice but to bury her. I was certain he hid her in our barn because he didn’t want anyone to know he had killed her, but maybe I was wrong. These tablets do make me confused. They make me doubt everything and everyone. But at least they numb the pain.
I tap three tablets into my palm. The voices in my head will never be fully silenced, but my prescription calms me down so much, I barely hear them. It is a double-edged sword. If I don’t take them, the pain in my heart won’t stop. If I do take them, my daddy was right: I am a Grade A lunatic.
I should take them. The memories surfacing in my head are more violent than usual. I’m not surprised. The blood streaming from Dexter’s wound matches the stain I scrubbed from my parents’ mattress the day after my mother was buried. His painful screams when I poured the whiskey over his wound were as vocal as my mom’s before my dad silenced her cries with his blade. I hate feeling confused, but the pain in my chest is too intense to ignore. I have no choice. I can either be medicated or believe my father murdered my mother as callously as I killed Bryce.
Preferring to pretend neither of those events transpired, I raise my hand to my mouth. Here it comes—a blackness so dense, it doesn’t just numb my thoughts, it freezes my heart as well.
