AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Empty.
Cold.
“Soldier Mason?”
I looked up at the man in a police uniform through eyes that couldn’t stop tearing up. “Y-yeah?”
Maybe it would’ve been more respectful to stand. But I didn’t have the strength in me. Not after I’d watched my closest, longest, oldest frienddiebeneath my pressing hands.
So, the cop sat beside me instead.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quietly, folding his arms over his knees.
I just nodded, unsure of how I would ever look at Billy’s mom again.
God, who’s going to tell his mom?
I imagined her receiving the news, imagined her pain and screams and tears, and I started to cry again, unable to find it in me to care that this cop andall ofthose people against the fence behind me were staring.
“My name is Officer Sam Lewis. But you can call me Sam if you’d like.”
I didn’t call him anything as I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them.
Fucking hell, Billy.Youfuckingidiot.
“Look …” Officer Sam laid a hand against my back. “I know the last thing you want to do is answer my stupid questions. But you know Ihave toask them.”
Somewhere beyond my realm of thinking, a little voice told me to run and to not stop until every person in this shitty town forgot my name. But there was no forgetting a guy named Soldier, and that was just another thing to blame my mother for.
“So, do you think you could answer a couple of questions for me, Soldier?”
I lifted my head and watched as the ambulance,voidof its siren, drove away with Billy in a body bag. A second cop car drove closely behind it, and I presumed they were on their way to deliver the heartbreaking, life-changing news to Billy’s oblivious parents. They would blame me, and they would hate me, and they wouldn’t be wrong in doing either.
It was all my fault.
And it seemed that Officer Sam agreed.
“Don’t you have to take me down to the station or something?” I asked quietly, sniffling.
“Nah, not yet. We can chat here for a couple of minutes … as long as you’re cooperating.”
I pulled in a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“So, you have a lot of pills in your car,” he said. “Are they yours?”
My brain worked quicker than it ever had before. If I said no, he’d ask whose they were. I could tell him they were Billy’s, but Billy was dead. I had killed him, and whether he was here to fight for himself or not, I couldn’t do that to him. I refused. No, I’d have to be honest and tell him they were Mom’s. She’d be arrested—oh my God, they’re going to arrest me—and she’d go to prison. But Mom wouldn’t survive jail … butIcould. I was younger, stronger, more resilient. Mom would let it break, destroy, kill her, and I couldn’t live with that.
I was supposed to save her after all. It was all I knew how to do.
So, with a shaky breath, I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yes.”
“What were you doing with all that stuff, Soldier?”
“I was going to The Pit.” It wasn’t a lie. That was exactly where I’d intended to go. But I wasn’t going to sell them all. I’d wanted to get rid of most of them. All I’d wanted was to make enough money to pay the stupid fucking rent, and the rest would be gone. Thrown in the lake, flushed down the toilet—gone.
But Officer Sam didn’t know that.
“That’s where the high school kids hang out, isn’t it?”
