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He pushes me backward as he releases me, and I stumble, breath heaving as I grab at my throat.
“Devon?” It comes out as a question. His icy blue eyes look through me with nothing short of disgust. I want to throw myselfat his feet and fucking beg for his forgiveness, even if I don’t deserve it. “Devon, I’m sor—”
“Don’t you dare finish that fucking sentence, or I really might kill you. Go home, Ally. Get the fuck out of here; I’ll deal with you later.”
I rush past Devon and exit the gym, then run down the hallway and out the door into the rain. I walk through the parking lot toward the transit stop just as I see my bus coming up the street and make it on board just in time.
I feel eyes on my back the entire time. He’s there when I sink into my seat and peer through the window—in the doorway, watching me.
But how?
I shift uncomfortably, noticing something wedged in the small space between the cushion and the side of the bus. I reach down, remove the small handbag, then look around to ensure no one is watching before I open it and start rifling through its contents. I take out the cell phone, power it down and remove the sim card, then find an additional sixty-seven dollars in the wallet. I put both in my duffle bag before returning the small purse to the space where I found it. I don’t really need to do it anymore, but it’s hard to resist when it’s this easy.
It isn’t a long ride to my stop—not long enough for me to think about it and not even long enough for the dread to truly settle in. I walk the remaining two blocks from the bus stop to my aunt’s home. It’s your typical cool, misty Pacific NorthwestOctober night. I welcome the barely-rain as it settles silently on my skin, waking me up and reminding me that there are worse things waiting for me at the place I call home—worse than anything Devon West could ever do to me—and I have to be alert.
If he was even real, maybe I did make him up.
Could he really hurt me? Would he? I know that he hates me; I deserve that. But it wasn’t long ago that it was something else, even if the last few months have felt like a torturous eternity.
I pause only for a moment before entering the home. Walking through the front door always sets my nerves on fire. It’s hard to be in this house. After my mom was arrested, they told me my aunt and her husband had offered to take me in, then brought me to this house on Black Rock Island, and I thought…maybe it won’t be so bad. The neighborhood was like the ones you’d see in movies: peaceful, upper-middle-class suburbia complete with a picturesque island backdrop—rocky shores, a small downtown with a beach boardwalk as its focal point, a place that runs on tourism in the summer and lives for Friday night football in the fall.
But I should know better than anyone by now that looks can be deceiving. Everyone everywhere is dirty. Places like this just make it easier for them to hide, to get away with it. The sickest parts of humanity go undetected in places like this. People look the other way, and theywantto. They don’t really care about the dirt as long as it doesn’t get on them—as long as they don’t have to look at it, to be aware of it. What gets us in trouble is when they can see iton our skin, seeping from the walls of a rundown house in a bad neighborhood, or in the eyes of the woman who’s been working all day and selling drugs at night so that she and her daughter don’t have to go back to living in a car.
Sometimes, the worst thing a person can be is desperate. That’s something I know better than anyone now, too.
It’s dark and quiet aside from the TV in the front room. My aunt sits alone with a glass of wine in hand. At least there’s that. At least he’s gone and will be for a while.
“Your mess just won’t go away,” she says as I close the door. I hear Devon’s name, and my eyes dart to the television. My bag slides down from my shoulder and hits the floor with a distinct thud before I drag myself over to the armchair and let my suddenly heavy body collapse into it.
“The case against West was dropped shortly after police received this video from the backyard camera of a neighboring home. The original investigation missed the camera due to its location and the house being used as a vacation rental, with its residents only present for small periods of time throughout the year. We want to warn our viewers—what you’re about to see may be disturbing.”
The video shows a dark—but clear enough—view of a man emerging from the wooded area behind Devon and Darci’s house. He’s carrying a girl over his shoulder. Long, light-colored hair hangs down his back toward the ground, swaying along with her lifeless arms with each of the man’s purposeful strides. Both wrists are lined with bracelets. It’s Darci; I knew it when I saw her, butthat alone is enough to confirm it. You could always hear her coming before you’d see her with those. And the man…well, he’s not Devon.
But of course, I always knew that, too.
He walks out of the camera’s frame for a few minutes before we see him heading back toward the woods from which he came, now empty-handed.
“The video was enough to get the case against West dismissed, and sources say he was released from custody last night. Experts put the man in the video at around 5’10″ and 200 pounds. West is 6′1.5″ and weighed 175 pounds when he was taken into custody. Though wearing a hat, you can see that the man in the video also has his hair cut quite short compared to West’s hair in the mugshot photo days later. This video has also given police a more accurate timeline of when the crime was committed, which they hope will help them zero in on potential suspects who may have been in the area at that time…”
“You better hope this isn’t a problem for us,” my aunt says. “They’re going to start bringing this up again in the debates. It better not cost Mark the election.”
I don’t respond. I know better.
The good Christian republican congressman taking in his poor, orphaned-by-circumstances niece did look good on paper. It was great for his image. For those first couple of months, they paraded me around at events, dressed me up for newspaper photos, andgraciously accepted praise from others at church for their good deed.
Then, everything changed.
“West became the primary suspect in the death of his stepsister after witnesses reported he had threatened her with a knife at a party the night of her death. Connelly was badly beaten and left for dead in the family’s pool, where she was found the following morning. Police were unable to corroborate West’s alibi at the time, and there was reason to believe the two had a sexual relationship.”
I cringe at that last part and bite down on the insides of my cheeks to try and hold in the feelings it brings up. Grace snatches the remote from the table, and the television screen darkens. I know I should move, but I don’t. I can’t.
The remote flies across the room, slams against the back wall, then falls to the ground. I hear the batteries roll across the hardwood floors in the dark. Then, she’s in my face.
“You haveruinedmy life,” she says. “You and your whore mother.”
Still, I don’t reply. My mom was a victim. We were victims. She got pregnant when she was sixteen, and her Baptist family threw her out of the house. They never spoke to her again—her older sister Grace included. Growing up, I never even heard the name.
We lived with my dad until I was four, and then he left, too. He never even said goodbye. That’s when things really got complicated.
