I remember something like hope fleeting through my head at that moment. Something white, and innocent, something filled to the brim with something sweet and pure. Something I had very literally never felt before.
Someone was sitting next to me, promising they would never leave. That was the essence of sweet hope.
Just as soon as it came, doubt came crashing down. The big black cloud of doubt crushed the hope under it’s foot. I frowned, “Why?”
He just shrugs before starting the car moving again. “Because,” he pauses. “Because I believe you.”
My head whips to the side so fast I’m pretty sure I just gave myself whiplash.
“What?” I ask in total disbelief.
He sighs. “I believe you.” He repeats.
I just shake my head. “Why?” I can’t even fathom why he would believe me.
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Have I ever told you about my sister?” He glances over at me and I shake my head, wondering where this is going.
He looks back at the street, and I notice we pass my house and keep driving. I guess this is a pretty long story.
“My sister was about three years older than me. We were like best friends. Yeah, we fought a lot, and teased each other, and flicked each other in the head, but at the end of the day we were best friends.”
It’s times like this I don’t even need to see people’s eyes to know what they’re feeling. It’s plain in the pain in their words.
“She had this friend, who had this incredibly sick sense of humor. She would text me from Katrina’s phone when Kat was driving, and tell me that Kat had crashed and was in the hospital, or that Kat was dead.”
I suck in a breath. Who would do something like that?
He nods at my gasp. “Yeah, she was messed up. Kat befriended her because she felt sorry for her because the girl didn’t have any friends.”
I mutter under my breath, “Gosh, I wonder why.” Knox chuckles.
“Anyway, she would text me those things, and the first few times I panicked. I would actually drive down to the hospital before her friend would text me telling me it was all a joke. I got so mad every time. But eventually, I started ignoring them, ya know? She was like the boy who cried wolf. It ended the same way too.”
He breathes in and out. “So, one night about two years ago, I get a text from Angela, Kat’s friend. It says Kat had crashed her car and was currently in the hospital. But I’d heard this crap before. So, I texted Angela back, saying not to text me anymore, that it wasn’t funny. I keep getting all these texts from her, saying it wasn’t a joke. But, then again, she’d done that before.”
I grip my hands on the seat, figuring out where this is going.
“Angela called me, about fifteen minutes after she sent that first text. She was crying. I remember thinking this girl was going to a heck of a lot of trouble to freak me out. And then, she told me Kat was dead. And I kept trying to tell myself she was wrong. That she was messing with me. I remember screaming at her to quit lying to me, that it wasn’t funny anymore.”
His face has become impassive. Undecipherable. He’s had a lot of practice to get his face like that so effortlessly.
“She really was dead. I drove to the hospital, and they told me they had done all they could to say her.”
I put a hand up to my mouth in shock. That’s something no one should ever have to go through.
“If I had believed Angela the first text she sent me, I could have maybe at least said goodbye to her. But I didn’t believe her, and I never got to say goodbye to my best friend. The last thing I remember saying to Katrina was that she needed to go to the store because we were out of oranges and light bulbs. The last thing I said to my sister was completely meaningless.”
YOU ARE READING
Irised
Teen Fiction"That's Knox Parker, Rae." "Thank you Captain Obvious. I know who he is," I roll my eyes and buckle up. "What's wrong?" "That's the biggest jerk at school. He's popular and he knows it, he's good looking and he knows it, he's funny and he knows it...
