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I swallow, feeling a ball lodge in my throat that won’t go down. Neo shoves me back, apparently not wanting to end my life tonight. For a second, I was certain he’d kill me with his bare hand.
I cough and sputter, then finally shout, “Get out of my room!” The words sting as they climb up my throat. “Get out!” I cry carelessly, rubbing the sore spot of my neck. “You’re demented! Who does this shit?”
“I do!” He jabs his thumb to his chest. “I do, because you’ve pushed me to do it. Ya know,” he shakes his head, “for a second, I thought maybe, just maybe, I was overreacting, that it was all a coincidence. Then I find this.” He holds up the paper and I can only assume it was planted here, whatever it is.
“Wait!” That paper. It’s the one Jagger dropped on the ladder going up to the cabin. “I know where that came from. Jagger dropped it and it was in my coat pocket.” I immediately eat my words, hoping I didn’t incriminate Jagger in some way.
“Why the hell would Jagger have my sister’s investigation report?”
His words take me by surprise. “Investigation? I didn’t know there was an investigation. Maddie fell.”
"Did you read it?”
I shake my head, while trying to process all this.
Neo bolts at me, shoving the paper in my face as he seethes. “Did you read it?”
“No,” I answer honestly, “I never even opened that paper. I took it out of my coat and sat it on my dresser.” But now I want to. I go to snatch the paper from his hand, but he pulls it back, causing it to rip down the center.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“Fuck you! And when we catch this asshole, I’m asking him for some of those mood pills for you, so you can start acting like a normal human being! Now give me the damn paper.”
“You don’t deserve to read this. You don't even deserve to breathe the same air as Maddie.”
His words hurt, but it doesn’t stop me. I get off the bed and grab for the paper again. He doesn't give in, so I grab him by the arm and clamp my teeth down, biting into his bicep. He curses and shakes me off, but the harder he fights, the harder I bite. “You rabid little cunt!”
Finally, my teeth drag off his skin, the taste of his blood seeping onto my tongue. I gag a couple times, but while he’s babying his wound, I snatch the paper from him and I run like hell to my bathroom, slamming the door and locking it before he can get to me. His fists immediately begin pounding and as my body slides down the wooden door, I can feel each thrust against my back.
I spit out any leftovers of Neo’s bodily fluids and grab a dirty shirt off the floor, rubbing it across my tongue.
Once I can’t taste him anymore, I read.
“No,” I whisper, “this can’t be.”
My hands tremble as I hold the paper out in front of me.Maddie was pushed?
Neo finally stops pounding, knowing it’s too late.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I choke out, loud enough for him to hear me.
“Because you already knew.”
I lick away the tears falling on my lips, fighting for breath. “You think I did this? All this time, you thought it was me?”
He doesn’t respond, but I keep talking. “You blame me for Maddie’s accident. You blame me for your mom’s death. And now you blame me for the broken bonds between the three of you guys. You think it’s all my fault.”
The door rattles, and I feel him near. His response, a confident, “It is all your fault.”
I ball the paper up in my hand, tossing it across the bathroom. “I’d never hurt her, Neo. I’d never want anything bad to happen to anyone in your family—even you. How could you ever think I would?”
“You wanted her gone. She was the only thing standing in the way of you being with Crew.”
“That’s really what you think?”
“It’s what I know.”
“Yes. I left Maddie at the top of the mountain to come down herself. All this time, I thought you blamed me for her injury because I didn’t go down with her. But that wasn’t it at all.”
