Murderer

Chapter 7: Brendon

Red, blue, red, blue, red, blue....red...blue...red...blue...then red again...and blue...red...and blue again.

I was laying on the couch in Ryan's living room, watching his dad talk to the police at the front door while the lights of the police car shined through the window, blinding me. Which I was okay with, I didn't want to see a world without Ryan. His smile gave me warmth and confidence, something I needed these days to keep me going. Without him, I am a lone wolf, and I'll have nobody to share my darkest thoughts with. Nobody to keep me from going insane from the stress that is given to me from school.

Sitting there, I kept rethinking what had happened in my head. I kept hearing the terrifying screams of what could have been Ryan. He was alone, scared, weak, and now he was probably hurt. Or worse. I tried to keep my cool but I could always feel my lips forcing a frown, and my eyes would flood with tears every few minutes that I sat there with my thoughts on rewind, as if I videotaped the whole thing and I was pressing the replay button.

This is taking too long. I needed to find Ryan, now. Now. Now. Now. NOW. NOW. NOW. I jumped up from the couch and pushed everyone aside as I stepped out the door with a flashlight in my sweaty hands. There wasn't even a confirmed crime scene yet...there has been ZERO progress on this effort to find Ryan and I wasn't going to have it. I turned on the flashlight and began trying to trace the path Ryan would take to his house. I let the light beam on the sidewalk, then onto people's yards to see if I could find anything unusual.

House after house, I searched behind trashcans left on lawns for garbage pickup, I searched in flower beds that were made to surround young trees, and I made sure to check the road in case something fell out of the car. When I was about four minutes away from his house, I saw something rectangular in the path. The notebook. Ryan's notebook. It was spread open, the secrets that were hidden inside were fully exposed to any aimless person passing by. My mind began to race when I remembered the way he choked on his words when he asked if I wanted to see just a single song that he had written. He wouldn't have wanted anyone to see his writing except me. I ran up to the notebook and closed it rapidly as if the words were going to fade away if it remained on display.

I let my hand rub against the smooth leather of the notebook before hugging it close to my chest. I was closer to finding him, and I had found the scene of the crime. Except there was one problem. There is no way that I'm going to let the police read this journal. These were his private thoughts, and it probably made him uncomfortable with just a small thought that somebody would read it. I decided not to tell the police about the notebook, it's not like it had the location to where he was taken hostage to anyways.

I pulled out a pen out of my pocket, and placed it approximately where I found the notebook. I would just tell them it's his pen. That's believable, right? Then I thought about it again. It could just be anyone's pen, they'd call me crazy.

I took out my chemistry note packet from class today and I sat down on the sidewalk, picking up the pen I had previously set down. I sat there, filling in the notes that I should have taken earlier but didn't. Soon after I wrote "Ryan Ross" on the front of the packet. After writing his name, anger boiled inside of me. I used this anger to crumble the note packet just a bit to look like he was most likely struggling for freedom, which he probably was. I placed the note packet down with the pen, letting a gust of wind fling the pages open.

I'm messing with the police now, making this false evidence. I knew there was a chance that they wouldn't believe this shit, but they desperately need to find evidence, and here it was. I was never going to let go of the one thing that made us both happy for the last time before he retreated into the woods.