The McKay Boys

7| latibule•

"I thought I saw the devil, this morning. Looking in the mirror."

Chapter Theme Song: 'I'll Be Good' by Jaymes Young.

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Amelia: 2019

My eyes fluttered open to the faint voices in the distance. There was a throbbing pain in my skull and my throat felt sore as though I hadn't drunk water in decades. I looked around the familiar surrounding and as my head began to clear up, made out where I was.

In my room on the gold sheets of my bed. The grandfather clock on the wall showed that it was nearing midnight, the hour hand rested between eleven and twelve. I felt dizzy and my eyes were blurry as I listened in on the conversation happening on the outside.

"I don't understand this." Meredith's voice was confused and hushed, and I could see the shadows of her feet under the nooks of my door. "Wasn't Jacob with you boys? The last I checked you all were in the pantry and now Mr. Whitaker can't find him?"

"Mother, we went into the forest because he dared us to. He got freaked out after we heard something in the bushes and ran away."

Kanan's voice made my body run cold as tapes of the traumatic incident reappear in my thoughts. Now my reaction to the gore was completely different. I was numb...in a bubble of haze and disorientation. Lifeless. Emotionless. Broken. My brain needed fixing, and I didn't think that was remotely possible. How can one scrub their minds free from blood and slime?

"He said he would be going back to the house, I don't understand; he's not here?" Khalil had asked next, and I felt a ball of nausea stirring within my stomach. I slugged it down and tried to sit upright. My body was trapped in a globe of fever and my mouth tasted insipid. It had only been three hours since the horrific incident, but I felt as though my life had been changed completely. The girl I was one hundred and eighty minutes ago was gone. And maybe forever as I didn't see how one would remain completely normal after the things they'd just witnessed.

Scarred. The boys had scarred me acutely. It felt like only yesterday we were still innocent. Running in the green fields and chasing the tails of each other. But now they had evolved into figures and personalities that I could not recognize.

Ha. Innocent. It was a mockery. Maybe I was the only one innocent the entire time. If I could have gone back to that day in the old Child Services' Building, I would have begged that fat lady to make me stay. But I tried my best, didn't I? Please tell me I tried my best. Adam would have thought so too, wouldn't he?

"They will continue searching for him tomorrow." Meredith sighed. "What's wrong with Amelia?"

"She said she wasn't feeling well," Khalil answered, all too fast.

"What's wrong with her?" I heard the gripping of the knob shadowed by an anxious retort from Kanan.

"She ate something bad; I would suppose."

"You boys go to bed." She pushed the door open, and I stiffened as my eyes met the three blue pairs behind her. The hallway was scarcely lit, but I could still differentiate between the three motionless figures. It came easy as the years had progressed. Keegan was always emotionless; it was his underlying quality, but Kanan and Khalil's eyes were now just as unreadable and impassive. But what terrified me the most was not the obscurity of their gazes but the care and adoration I still felt for them at that moment. Despite what they did to Jacob. Despite cracking someone's head open and leaving them to bleed out on the cold ground. Then throwing their body in a lake with a smile of accomplishment.