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“It’s true,” she says quietly.
“Well, I don’t know how long it was between you locking the door and the fire catching hold, but when people began to realise, panic spread faster than the flames. It was chaos.” I pause and take a massive gulp of my drink. Sweat beads at my temple and begins a slow descent. I swipe it away with a trembling hand.
“Why did you lock us in?” I ask, stalling for time.
“You had to pay for Lizzie.”
“But you have to know that we didn’t bully her! We had nothing to do with it!”
“Everyone had something to do with it. You were the princes of the school, all-powerful, and you all dated her for a while. Why didn’t you protect her? Why didn’t you stop it?” Her questions reveal the anguish and heartbreak she’s unable to hide.
“We didn’t know. I didn’t know. I swear. You have to know that,” I beg. Tears prick the corner of my eyes but I don’t try to hide them; there’s no shame in crying, showing emotion, feeling.
“At the time I deemed everyone guilty by association. I was blinded by rage. You all had to pay.”
“Then why the unlocked door?”
“Because I loved you,” she states simply with some kind of crazy fucked-up girl logic that I just don’t get.
My brain registers her use of the past tense, but my heart ignores it, soaring in my chest. She loves me! Loved, loves, whatever…I’ll take it.
“So then what?” she prompts.
“Chaos, as I said. People panicked. There was a lot of inebriated people in that small space. Everyone flocked to the back of the chapel where we were still playing cards, oblivious of the time or your absence. As soon as we realised what was going on, we sprang into action. Jax took charge. He sent Ace to find an exit but I stupidly thought I could get through the front doors. The flames had spread from the right side of the door, all along the pews, but the doors were unblocked. He tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen. I elbowed my way through the crowd and tried the doors.”
“Your scar.”
I glance down at my injured hand and curl it into a fist.
“Yes. The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before, though it soon paled in comparison to the pain of losing you.”
“Oh,” is all she says. That almost hurts as much as the fire. Oh? Oh?! That’s all I get is a fucking oh?
“I managed to wrench my hand free. I never knew that the shock makes your muscles contract, so it was some sick kind of torture that I couldn’t let go. And even over the smell of the burning wood, I’ll never forget the stench of cooking flesh.” I shudder. “So I fight my way back to the guys, and find Jax is ordering people out through the back, Ace had found an exit. Rebel is carrying the people who have been hurt in the crush, and I fall to helping him. Some people are too drunk, or high, or out of it to realise what’s going on, so we help them out too.”
“Once everyone’s out we try to do a head count, but it’s pretty dark, and it’s bedlam. People won’t stay still, they’re hysterical, racing back to the school. And when I finally get to regroup with the guys, we immediately notice your absence.”
I look over at her and see big fat tears streaming down her face. She looks broken. And I’m doing that to her; my words, the story, filling in the blanks of what she missed. And it doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as I thought it would. Wordlessly I reach for her and pull her up into my lap. I cradle her against my chest and continue.
“I’ve never known fear like it; the moment when we realised it had been ages since we’d seen you. Ace was beside himself, racing through the trees, asking everyone if they had seen you, calling out your name.”
“Jax started working on a timeline, trying to ascertain how long it had been since you left us. But Rebel and I weren’t interested in counting the clock, we worried you were still in there. Maybe trapped in the toilet. So we went back in, even though we know you’re not supposed to. As if we were going to patiently wait outside for the fire brigade to get to us! We didn’t even know if they’d been called at that point…”
“By the time we got back into the main chapel, the blaze was so fierce we couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t stop us searching for you though.” A sob interrupts me as it wracks her body and causes her to shudder from head to toe. I can’t help but squeeze her tighter. “Eventually the services came. We were still inside when they arrived, though I think we were both pretty useless at that point. I remember coughing so hard it hurt, being unable to see a thing, then being forced into the back of an ambulance and given an oxygen mask. I don’t remember how I got from the chapel to the nearest area a vehicle could reach. I remember several firefighters having to hold Rebel back as he roared and fought to go back in to find you.”
“Jax calmed him enough to get through. He told him that he was risking your life further by keeping the firefighters outside, when they needed to be inside looking for you. Only, he said your body…like it was already too late.”
“It was the longest night of my life. A bit of a blur really. We refused to go to the hospital to get checked out, and we remained on campus in the dining room, awaiting news. It took them over eight hours to get the blaze under control, and a further twelve before they could go in and search for bodies.”
She trembles in my arms and I feel like such a dick for continuing. But she asked. And now I’ve started, it’s like I need to finish. I have to see this through to the end, she has to know. If we’re to stand any chance of moving forward we have to be brutally honest with one another.
“And of course they never found any. It was a relief, and also a lead weight. Like a blessing and a curse all rolled into one. No bodies, no casualties, the only injuries were minor burns and smoke inhalation. In a twisted kind of way, it probably saved a few lives because they were forced to stop the party early and some kids were well on the road to self-destructing that night. But that didn’t help us.”
“We were beside ourselves. It didn’t make sense! You’d vanished without a trace. We spent days going back through the rubble, looking for your body, or any clues that the firefighters might have missed. We searched the woods, the local hospitals...everything. Of course, students fled campus in that limbo period. The school could barely keep track of who was around and who had gone. And then the body washed up on shore.”
Her sobs now are noisy, uncontrolled. All I can do is hold her and rub soothing circles on her back with the palm of my good hand. My scarred hand seeks out her perfect one to hold.
“It was horrific. Sickening. They wouldn’t even tell us if the body found was male or female. It felt like days stuck in a void, desperate to know, aching to never find out. It was the worst day of my life when they finally told us the body belonged to a male. I was elated that it wasn’t you, but at the same time, I despaired. Because, if that wasn’t you, where were you?”
