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Chapter Seven
This is How I Win
Danny was taken aback by what he saw. He stood up quickly with a gasp and nearly fell over his chair trying to distance himself from what was in the box. I was frozen, my hands trembled where I stood and I couldn’t willingly move a muscle. I peered at the horrifying message he was sending with dead eyes, a feature I wanted him to share with me soon.
A million thoughts streamed through my head. At first, I wanted to run, to grab Jules and run with her, somewhere far away, somewhere only we know, somewhere he could never find us.
In that instant, she became my only dream, my only wish for the future. I cared about nothing else and no one could stop us, not when every fiber of my flesh wanted nothing else but to be with her. My immediate reaction was flight until I realized he would never stop looking. Jesse was no longer the friend I remembered him to be. He hadn’t been for awhile. If we had vanished, I knew he would try to find us and I was so scared to imagine him still out there waiting for his opportunity again, striking when we least expected, when he thought we were comfortable.
He would wait until our thoughts of him were a distant memory for us. I cringed. He had to be stopped, now. That flaming box, came back into focus. I wanted to scream out, to tear what I saw into a billion pieces. I suddenly wished I’d never told Danny. I wish I had opened it on my own so the motive for the murder I was going to commit because of it wouldn’t become so apparent.
“I have to kill him,” I accidentally said aloud.
“No!” Danny screamed, grabbing my shoulders. Breathing deeply to steady his calm, he said, “I know you don’t mean that son! Elliott, I’m gonna’ get who did this.”
I gained control of my neck and turned my head toward him, “You’re going to arrest Jesse immediately?”
“Elliott! We haven’t found reason for him to want to do something like this. This is too advanced for him.”
“No,” I scoffed, “it’s not. You don’t know what he’s capable of. Growing up I always knew he had a little bit of an evil streak, I just underestimated it. He’s a lunatic Danny. You’re wrong.
“Look, it obviously took two people to do it Danny. How do you explain that? Huh? Taylor must have taken the picture for him.” I pointed to the picture hanging off the edge of the table. It showed the frame of Jules’ bedroom window.
“Maybe he used a tripod Elliott, I don’t know for sure but for the sake of argument, say I am starting to believe your theory. I have no evidence that he’s done anything.”
I stared hard at the two photographs in front of me. It was him, I could tell, in the shape of his body, in the way his fingers grasped at the blade he held at my sleeping Jules’ throat, in the way his eyes bore into mine through his dark ski mask. I knew it was him and if Danny couldn’t prove it, bad things were going to happen to him. He pushed through a really dark line with me and was begging for a reaction. I’m guessing he wouldn’t like what it was and I also guessed how much he underestimated me.
The second photograph was Jules’ hanging painting. The letters Y.O.U. dripping in red paint. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the photographs. I stared into the small harmless cardboard box that contained them and noticed that the filling inside was torn canvas.
“Danny!” I yelled.
“What?!”
“The, the.......painting! It’s shredded in the box!”
I was starting to feel nauseated. I knew what the painting represented to Jesse. It was Jules. He was going to kill Jules and soon.
“Okay Elliott. Listen,” he said, trying to calm me down, “we need to get back to your grandma’s. We’ve wasted enough time here. Just let me lock all of this in the evidence room and I’ll call Julia’s parents and..”
I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to downplay it, like it was something that could happen to just about anyone, but I knew. I knew that this was probably one of the sickest things he’d seen in Bramwell.
“No!” I interrupted. “Jules’ parents can’t know. They’ll leave Bramwell if they hear of this.”
Danny looked on me with pity.
“I can’t Elliott. They need to know. Think of the danger that Julia is in? Is it worth her life? This has spun so out of control. It’s too serious to take the risk.”
On our way back to my grandma’s and granddad’s I could barely keep two thoughts in my head. I was reeling in physical pain. My entire world was about to crumble on top of me and there was nothing I could do about it. I walked into the house and everyone was cheery and happy and full of life.
“Mom,” was all I could mumble off my tongue.
She could tell something was wrong. She ran up to me and hugged me and I hugged her back. I felt like I was seven again, and I’d skinned my knee and ran to my mom for her to make everything better, to make the wound disappear but this hug couldn’t make it all better. It was just a reminder that nothing could fix the pain but a locked away or a dead Jesse. I didn’t really want Jesse dead I just wanted the monster that was doing this to die inside him and for him to be at least somewhat normal again.
“Let’s go into mom’s room Shelby. I need to talk to you,” Danny said.
Everyone watched with solemn eyes as I nearly toppled over trying to get to my grandparent’s room.
“It’s okay everyone! Granddad? Can you put on some music?” My dad said before closing the door to the bedroom behind him.
