There are ways of dying that do not end with a funeral. Types of deaths you can't see, feel or smell. Because death, just like love, has a mind of its own and some things can't be prevented.
What started as an innocent high school quest in search o...
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I think I can honestly say that I've never felt suffocated in Jade's room. No matter what went on, her room had a calming sense on me, making it possible to forget and get lost – escape from the claws of reality. But I do now. I can feel my throat getting more and more constricted by each second that passes. I don't even know where to start.
"Collin, you're scaring me." Jade's voice travels across the room as I pace around in somewhat of a half-circle around her king size bed. "What's going on?"
The truth will never be easy to tell. How could it be? But practice makes perfect, right? And telling it more often should count for practice, shouldn't it? It definitely doesn't feel like it. It doesn't get easier. It always burns at the tip of my tongue, itching to run free but never really making it past my lips.
Everyone seems to be asking me all these damn questions I have no idea how to answer tonight. I need someone to answer them all for me but they just won't shup up and stop asking me.
Inhaling a deep breath, I halt abruptly, murmuring as I focus on the carpeted floor beneath my feet. "He raped her."
I hear Jade suck in a breath from the bed. "What? Who?"
She knows we're talking about Courtney because she knows that's where I've been, so I don't need to clarify that. Slowly, I raise my eyes to hers. "Timothy. She told me everything."
A painful expression crosses her face, and she draws up her legs, hugging her knees to her chest, almost as if she was instinctively curling into herself, bracing for what's to come. "What did she tell you?"
Sighing, I cross over to the bed, taking a seat far enough from her. I run my hand through my hair, looking off at her door instead of directly at her face. I don't need to see her reaction once I tell her this. "She didn't tell me how it happened, not exactly, anyway but. . . she told me I was part of the reason why the case never made it to court."
"But. . ." she starts but apparently changes her mind, not uttering another word.
"I don't know why but I didn't remember this. " I go on, still keeping my eyes on the door as it could magically save me from having to admit the terrible, mortifying truth. "Not until she told me. But I was there. Passed out in the bathtub. Doing what I do best. You know the drill. She came in after it happened right in the next room and bumped into me when she was puking her guts out into the toilet."
The memory flashes in my mind, clear and vivid now, making a heat of anger surge through me. I can't stop my fists from clenching hard. "She was crying, totally traumatized, and I couldn't even get a fucking word out. That's how thoroughly fucked up I was that night." Too many nights. "But that's not even the best part yet. Because that would have to be this – she came to me in the next few days and told me she was reporting him and taking care of it the lawful way, because that's how rape should be taken care of. She knew Timothy's family had connections though, and she didn't, so she begged me to testify as her witness, to make the case stronger because after all, I was there. I saw it happen."
