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AGED 18
I stare at the gun in my hand. One bullet. One shot. My sweaty palm grips at the metal, and my heart beats in my ears.
Is this how she felt before she took that razor blade to her wrists and cut herself open? Was she scared? Did she fear what comes after?
The gun feels much lighter in my hand as the guilt piles heavier in my chest, and I think that her last thought would have been me.
Why couldn’t I have just listened to what she had to say? Why did I have to be so cruel to her?
AGED 16
“Please talk to me,” Beth bursts into the workshop where I’ve been hiding, not just from her, but from everyone. I’m fed up with the world still spinning and ignorant people carrying on as normal.
I pull myself up from where I’m sitting on the floor so I can get away from her. I don’t want to fucking talk. Right now, I can’t even look at her.
“Please, Caden, you can’t shut yourself off from me. I need you,” she pleads, and when she grabs hold of my arm, I immediately shrug her off.
Her touch fucking burns. Just being close to her makes my skin itch.
“Leave me alone, Beth,” I warn through my teeth, picking up a hammer from the workbench so I have something to clutch while I try to breathe myself calm. There’s an anger rooted inside me now, one that's never been there before, and I don’t think I’ll be able to contain it for much longer. No one's safe from it, not even her.
“You’re the only one who understands,” she speaks so weakly, and the pain in her eyes begs for me to find some compassion, but I can’t. I’m too fucking mad at her.
I spin round in a temper and slam the hammer I’m holding down on the work surface.
“That’s where you're fucking wrong. I don’t fucking understand. And that’s your fucking fault.” I grip the workbench with both my hands and moan from the pain swirling through my body. I used to think I was weak, but just lately, I’ve felt like I have the strength of an army contained inside me. I swear I could pull the thing off the floor it’s bolted to if I tried.
“We have to find a way to deal with it.” Beth’s bottom lip quivers, and when Foxy pushes his snout through the door and trots over to sniff around her feet, she bends down to pick him up and snuggles him into her neck. It’s what she always does when she needs comfort.
I hate the fucking mutt. He’s the source of Rick's control, something he gifted her with, so he’d have something to take away. And now I’ve become one of Rick’s tools too.
“I can’t live like this. I can’t stand the fact you won’t look at me. Do you know how much I love you?” She reaches to touch my arm again, but I swipe her away.
“If you loved me, you’d have listened to me. And I wouldn’t be standing here suffering. Fuck off, Beth, and take your mutt with you.”
They were the last words my sister heard from me. That’s part of the reason I haven’t spoken much since.
I look at the duffel bag on the table. There are wads of cash and a good stash of coke and weed that we took from the crack house we raided last night.
Did it feel good to blow the brains out of Timothy Jones's head? Yeah. But I’ll bet it’ll feel a hella lot better to blow ‘em out of mine. Maybe then I’ll stop hearing her voice. I’ll stop seeing her every time I close my eyes, and my tortured soul can crawl to hell where it belongs.
Cody calls all this our fresh start. When we got released from the cuckoo cage three months ago, he knew he couldn’t take me back to Dallas.
So I guess this is his big plan, moving from town to town to keep the hunger fed inside me.
My brother always did have an overactive imagination. He thinks driving across the state and taking out scumbags like Timothy makes us some kind of heroes. It’s all bullshit.
This ain’t just for me. Cody needs it too. We’re twins. I can sense the hate inside him. He just covers it up way better than I do.
He’s angry at the world for what happened to Beth and too damn fucking loyal for his own good. He should have let the fuckers in white coats drag me away and got on with his life, but instead, he got himself banged up right alongside me.
Yeah, my brother’s got a dark side. He embraces blood and havoc, but he doesn’t fucking rely on it. I do.
It’s gonna really suck for him to be the one who finds me gone. The day we found Beth will be etched inside our brains forever. The memory can strike at any time. While you’re driving on the highway, while you're working out, or even while you're fucking. It’s pinned to the back of your eyelids, so every time you close them, you see it. I hate that I’ll haunt him the same way.
Having to call up Mama and tell her she’s lost another kid is gonna be brutal for him. And one day, I hope he understands that I did this out of my love for him.
I can’t be his burden forever. It don’t matter how upbeat he tries to be for us both, my life ended with hers, and I ain’t ever gonna see this world in any color other than black.
