College Fiend [A$AP Rocky]

Sixteen

The way I managed to hop into the passenger seat at full-speed and close the door without slamming it onto my leg was beyond me, but it happened anyway.

Before I could even reach for the seatbelt, Quincy smashed his foot against the gas and we were off. He didn’t need an explanation; anyone could tell by the way I ran that things were serious.

For a few sacred, good moments I was happy and content that he didn’t ask me any questions. I was also grateful that he drove so fast with so much skill—maybe he’d been in a chase before. Either way, we were away from the campus in no time with the only sounds being the tires on the road, my (still) heavy breathing, and the heartbroken voice of the man singing country music from the radio.

But then I heard another voice. His.

“Tell me what happened.” Quincy demanded. I swallowed and closed my eyes, feeling tears coming. Why did he have to ruin it? Why did he have to make me come to terms with what I’d just done? I squinted harder, but the tears came anyway. The worst part was that they didn’t even roll down my cheeks, only swelled up in my eyes and burned me with sorrow, regret and “how stupid can I be?”

“Sabine, tell me what happened right now!” He punched the steering wheel as he yelled.

“What do you want me to say?” The burst of my voice surprised me, and if it surprised Quincy, he didn’t show it. “I fucked up. That’s it!”

He swore under his breath and closed his eyes with no regard for the fact that we were driving. It didn’t matter, though, for we were on an empty dirt road next to a farm in the middle of nowhere. A cow mooed suddenly, as if mocking me—mocking us, Quincy and me and our mixed-up feelings—so I screamed. I opened my mouth and bellowed until I was weak, until I had to grip Quincy’s hand, until there was nothing left inside me. Not even tears.

“The way those cops looked at you, Sabine,” He said hoarsely. “I should have known I couldn’t trust you.” Then he let go of my hand.

“What are you talking about?”

“Hunter told me, dammit! He told me everything. After I came back from the holiday, he told me the whole, raw story of the murder. We all thought you had something to do with it, as if you went in there and spoke to Wayne just to get Jaamani into the living room for someone to come and kill her. Everyone always thought it was a setup that you were involved in, but when I met you I thought that I was wrong, that you were only some innocent girl whose life was turned upside-down. But now, I don’t know, Sabine.” He paused and brushed his face roughly with his hand, and then turned to look at me slightly. “Do you know who killed her?”

“I cannot believe you—

“Do you know who killed her?” Quincy shouted. A short, startled gasp escaped me, and then I covered my mouth and sobbed. Life, at that moment, was not adding up.

“I don’t know who, Quincy,” I was barely audible. “It may be a girl named Neffie, because she’s the reason I just ran out of the university. She found her way into my dorm somehow, posted a fake diary entry that consisted of me killing Jaamani up on my wall, and then left the door unlocked for anyone to come inside and see. I don’t even know if anyone did see. But I left the paper in there, and now a girl named Flo will show the police, and they’ll think I did it. I’ll be in jail until my hair goes gray, Quincy.”

I cried onto his shoulder, well aware that he was making no effort to console me. I didn’t care. Consoling wasn’t what I needed, anyway. I needed an ‘erase’ button so that I could erase everything, from the moment I even applied to the University of Alabama. Or maybe even erase the decision I made to keep my mother’s secrets from my father. I should just erase my existence as a whole.

But most of all, I wanted to erase what Quincy would say to me next.

“Sabine, I should kill you right now.”

My mouth wouldn’t open to let me scream.

“Do you know what this means? Huh?” He asked as his two firm hands gripped each of my arms and shook. I pulled my lips in and made a thin line with my mouth, and then closed my eyes. Maybe this way, the world would go away. Just block it all out and it’ll disappear.

Everything sounded muffled.

“They’re tracking you down! And when they find you, they’ll find me, and I’m damn near North America’s Most Wanted!”

A con man shouldn’t be that worried. Quincy, as far as I knew, didn’t con people hugely enough to be North America’s Most Wanted, if such a person even existed. But that’s only as far as I knew, and more and more the possibility became realer that he could be someone I didn’t know at all.

Without wanting to, and without knowing how, I wriggled myself free of his hold and scrambled to the back of the van. He stayed up front and banged his fists against the staring wheel again and again until I was sure that his knuckles were calloused. And then all was quiet. He stopped punching and I think I stopped breathing. Quincy stood from the driver’s seat and hauntingly came to the bed. I stood up and leaned against a wall, pushing myself as far away from him as this space would permit. He only came closer and closer.

I didn’t want to die. Despite the subconscious suicidal thoughts that I’d been having, my life meant a lot to me. I had so much more to do; everything was incomplete for now. Quincy couldn’t take me away yet.

Right before he came close enough to look me in, I ducked and swiveled around him, and then pressed myself up against another wall.

He didn’t say anything, only looked at me with white eyes that seemed to shone in the dark. I glanced over to the key in the ignition, trying to signal to him that the car was still running and we were wasting gas. Maybe then he would go and turn it off, and I would somehow escape. But he stood right where he was and looked at me. He didn’t have to speak; I could read, and hear, everything his eyes were saying. They were yelling loud with anger.

And then my balance was somehow reduced; I felt lightheaded. For a hot, stinging moment, I couldn’t tell what was going on around me. I couldn’t see.

But then I opened my eyes and realized it. The hot and stinging sensation was from my cheek, from the hard slap Quincy just delivered to my face.

I cried like a baby who’d just been beaten by her mother. The tears blurred my eyes shut, so I couldn’t see where Quincy was standing, what he was doing, how he was feeling. Even with my eyes open, though, I couldn’t tell anything about Quincy. I thought I could, but I was just fooling myself. He was a monster at heart and I should have known all along.

A few minutes later, after some gasps for air and stroking of the part of my face that hurt most (he always wore a pinky ring which was unfortunate for me tonight), I felt some monstrous kisses trailing up and down my cheek. Miraculously, the stinging stopped. I wanted the kisses to stop too, despite how comforting they felt. I raised my hand to push him away but he only took it into his and stroked it with an apologetic thumb, moving his soft lips from my cheek to my earlobe, and then to the crook of my neck.

I couldn’t stop him.

Still crying, I wrapped my arms around his neck and allowed him. I allowed him to kiss me, to hold me, to whisper sorry millions of times into my ear as he treated me like a princess, like he loved me. And all the while, I felt content. The tears were gone, the case was gone, Sheena’s suicide was gone, Neffie was gone. It was only him, me and the van.

We didn’t love each other, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t make each other feel good. Feel better.

And in the end, we drove deeper into nowhere and his criminal heartbeat was my lullaby.