AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I hate everyone. Most of all, I hate myself. I want to die.”
Lori didn’t say a word.
“It’s all toxic bullshit. The fucker promised to be there with me… promised.”
Again Lori said nothing. Just continued to cling and rock soothingly.
“I should have killed myself like I intended to do before those words I needed to hear stopped me. Said I’d never be alone. Fucking fucker lied. He lied. Like everyone else in my life. Liars and abusers. Why? Why me?” Worn out by her feelings, Jess went limp. Lori helped her lay back against the rumpled pillows that she quickly flipped.
Smoothing the pitiful girl’s hair away from her face, a fleeting thought entered. She noted that Jess’s hair lay soft and thick curls surrounded her head. She’d had a shower since their last meeting and smelled clean if not a bit antiseptic. Lori grabbed the box of tissues close by and held them for Jessica who took a handful.
Wiping the breakdown’s results from her face, blowing her nose, and letting her limp body sag, Jess shook her head back and forth in denial or maybe distrust. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because I’ve never met a more needy person who I felt deserved to be hugged, loved, and even admired.”
Shock flew across the girl’s face. “Me? We’re talking about me? The idiot who believed a fool’s words and followed every direction even though I hated everything asked of me. I knew it was wrong, to go to the school with a rifle and hurt people. I’ve never done anything like that before in my life. But when the explanation – that they deserved to die after the way they treated me – made me see the light, I became mesmerized by those words, like I was hypnotized.”
“Howdidthey treat you?”
“Like I was filth. No one ever gave a fuck about how or why I lived that way.”
“Chrissie Jordan tried. Why didn’t you let her be your friend?”
“Because friends don’t pinch their noses when you get close to them. They don’t look at you with only pity. She’s popular, normal, we had nothing in common. I could never live like her. I knew it.”
“Didn’t this person feel the same about you? Cover his nose? Hold his breath? He’s rich, can afford all the things you couldn’t. Why him?”
“Ray’s been good to me, bought me things at the mall and took me for meals when I didn’t eat. Never turned a nose up at me. Instead, Ray promised Herbie would be paid back for all the rotten things he did to me. But I said I wanted that privilege myself. When it came down to it, I couldn’t go through with the plan. My family might be miserable specimens for human beings but it’s because they don’t know better. They’re like animals who just want to make it through another day.”
“Why did you stay with them?”
“Where could I go, except to the streets, and that’s worse? I know. I tried running away. I came back with a knife. Once Herbie backed off, feared for his little prick I said I’d cut off if he ever touched me again, I had the closet. At least it was warm and dry.”
“Why didn’t Ray take you to live with him?”
Suddenly, Jessica stiffened. “Who said… Ray?”
“You did. Said that Ray had been good to you.”
Confusion rippled across Jessica’s face, and she clamped her mouth closed.
Lori knew it would be better not to push, but time was of the essence, and so she tried to get more information. “Jess, since your incident, there have been two more school shootings, one every day. In the second event, I talked to the kid with the gun, and he mentioned that Ray loved him just before he shot himself.”
“No! Oh, God no.” Jessica covered her eyes, her hands pressing, hurting… violent.
“It’s true. In the shooting last night, the boy with the gun was recognized by the man he killed. Before he died, the teacher told the paramedic the kid’s name was Billy, and that he lived in his neighborhood but didn’t attend the same school. He’d seen him on the street, even talked with him. Said the boy looked lost, lonely, and rather slow-witted. But no one at the school recognized him from the videos taken at the time of the event. Now Billy’s missing, escaped before the cops arrived. Took the rifle and ran. We need to find him before he hurts more people or kills himself. He’s young, maybe your age… and Jessi, he’s terrified.”
Jess flopped her hands limply to her stomach, arched away, and closed her eyes. She spit words out stiffly, curt words filled with distrust and pleas. “I need to sleep now. If you care about me like you said you do, you’ll leave instead of trying to pump information from me I don’t want to share.”
Being tested in this way was something that Lori understood. But frustration almost beat out her sympathy. Yet, if she pushed now, she might ruin any chance of getting Jess to talk later.Christ.A vise squeezed her stomach and chest. She bit her lip to keep from screaming her need at a kid who couldn’t take much more of that treatment.
Thankfully, training kicked in and she patted Jess’s arms, brushed hair back from a frozen face, and whispered, “I hope you’ll talk with me soon, honey. Because I do care, I’ll wait like you asked. The guard outside in the hall has my number.”
Surreptitiously, she picked up the greeting card, pretending to place it back in the vase with the flowers that she moved to the far table. Instead, she palmed the square and headed for the door. Once on the other side, she saw the guard had returned. She showed him her ID and gave him her phone number so he could text her if at any time Jessica wanted to talk.
Walking to the exit, she noticed Beau lingering, waiting. “I thought you were going to come in and lay on your Walker charm, get her to talk.”
He answered lightheartedly, no doubt to cheer her up, tease her out of her gloom. “Looked to me like you were doing just fine.”
