I. Marley

Chapter Twenty Three

I don't even think my feet are touching the floor.

I've been beyond elated this past month, I've even held conversations with Ellen. Thanksgiving break was very quickly approaching, as well as my birthday. Caesar, although busy with the started basketball season has given me all his free time. Ellis is preparing to audition for a big role in the school play, they haven't even released what production their doing and she's already excited.
Besides Izzy not sitting with us at lunch anymore, things were pretty much the same. Although West found out I don't truly hate him and has thus been trying to get me to prove it.
Even therapy wasn't seeming so bad, I just wished I listened to my gut this morning and stayed home from school.

Peter waves Ellis and I off as he peels out of the parking lot. Which is already deserted, I look to Ellis confused and she only shrugs. "Are we late?"
I ask just as we push through the doors. All our movements immediately stop.
The entire senior class and some lower class man are filling any available space in the hall. And their all staring at us, I lean over to Ellis. "What.the.fuck?"
"Don't ask me, I have no idea what's going on." She whispers back.
What was wrong with them? Openly staring. I try to ignore it until we reach my locker. West and Caesar are standing there seeming to be having a heated conversation. When Max see's us approaching he taps the both of them.
"What's going on?" Ellis ask, Max rubs the back his neck while West will look anywhere but at us. Caesar seeming to find immense interest in the floor and his sneakers. No one answers Ellis, but people are still staring and I can feel my skin start to crawl. Like something is looming over me, casting a shadow.
Trying to shake it off, putting in my combination I tug my locker open. And it flows like an endless River. Dingy looking newspaper with our schools logo bled across the top in its signature red.
Standing over the dozens of paper I look down, they all have the same headline.

Teen murders brother and father in wreck.

The words feel like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on my head. Bending down I grasp the first paper I can reach. Vision blurring as I read over the words.

New student to Red Sicily, Marley Mason, has been revealed to be the cause of death of her younger brother Miles(17) and Monroe(36) Mason in a car wreck. Along with another victim with whom was in critical condition before dying in surgery. Marley's background is one of drug abuse, childhood trauma having stem from a rehabilitated drug addicted mother-

I'm no longer in the school, not in the hallway.

Instead I feel the weight of the seatbelt on the chest as our car is thrown to the side. Dads wide and panicked eyes as he grabs for the wheel I'm losing control of. Miles shouting in the background before his entire body is chucked from the back seat.
My dads head smashes against the dashboard with a sickening crack and I remember the pain I felt fire work through my head as it hit the window, then the pain that erupted as the air bags deployed cracking against my nose.
The front of the car starts to smoke immediately and I cough against it, trying to push away the air bag. "Daddy." I call out, shaking his arm. We need to get out of here, but he's not waking up and I can't see past my tears and the searing pain in my throat.
"Marley?" His voice croaks and I know it's Miles, I squint past the smoke, angrily trying to wipe away tears from my throbbing face. A few feet away from the actual wreck my little brothers body is twisted at a weird angle and the scream that rips through my body is unlike anything I've ever heard.