GONE GIRL » Billy Hargrove

0.32 » a rainy saturday night

I spent the weekend working on some illustrations for another children's book. Cameron left early on Monday morning, leaving me some more pages from his script that just kept growing bigger and bigger. I was glad to see him back at writing as much as he used to, and the story seemed like it could actually become a success. He'd asked me to design some detail art for the chapter titles as well as a possible book cover.
I came up with a few variants of the detail designs during classes that week.

There were no further notable incidents with Billy and Co., but the judging, gloomy stares were almost constant.
At this point I chose to ignore it altogether.

Steve had caught a bad head cold and was staying at home for a few days so I just hung around Nancy and Jonathan, who didn't pay much attention to me which I didn't mind.

It was a rainy Saturday night and I was sitting on the living room floor, reading through the new pages that my cousin had sent in the mail. Loki was laying on the carpet in front of the small fireplace I had lit up for the first time that night.
I felt myself drifting further away from reality as I was reading, feeling tears well up in my eyes.

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the front door and I jumped, setting the manuscript aside. Loki looked after me as I walked towards the door, opened it slowly and my stomach dropped.

Standing there, drenched in water and blood running from his nose and mouth, was Billy. I stared at him in disbelief for a moment before stepping aside.

"Couch," I ordered him as he staggered past me and I closed the door, rushing to the bathroom to grab some towels and the first aid kit.

When I came back Billy was sitting on the couch, staring into the fire, while Loki had sat down next to him. Careful not to startle him I sat down on the edge of the sofa, wiping his face with some tissues.

He was silent the entire time, but I could see tears glistening in his eyes, reflecting the flames.

When I had cleaned his face as much as possible I started disinfecting the cut through his eyebrow, putting on a bandaid afterwards.

I handed him one of the towels so that he could dry his hair, but he remained frozen in his spot. Letting out a sigh I shuffled back to the kitchen to pick up something cold from the freezer that he could use for his black eye.

While he held onto the bag of frozen vegetables I dried his hair with the towel, silently wiping away a single tear that escaped him in the process.

What the hell am I even doing?

I shook my head as I helped him get out of his jacket and shoes, pulling him back up onto his feet and escorting him upstairs to the bathroom.
"You shower, I'll go grab some clothes for you," I said, leaving the bathroom but staying outside of the door for a few moments. When I heard the shower curtain close and the water running I nodded and went over to Cameron's room.

Rummaging through the drawers I picked out some sweatpants, socks and a t-shirt, heading back to the bathroom. I knocked at the door and opened it slowly, spotting a pile of clothes on the chair next to the bathtub and exchanging Billys wet clothes with the fresh ones.

Walking back downstairs I pulled a chair close to the fireplace and hung up the clothes to dry. I moved the shoes to the hallway and hung up the leather jacket as well, before sitting back down on the floor, picking up the manuscript yet again.

Loki placed his head in my lap as I gently ran my fingers through his fur. Cameron's writing had improved a lot just throughout the whole process for this one book - I imagined going over the first few chapters would be the most work when editing it.
When I finished the last page I had so far I picked my sketchbook back up and skipped to the pages with the cover designs.

Looking back at them now, some seemed way too cliché and possibly cheesy, so I flipped over to the newer ones. It seemed that with every new chapter that I got the theme grew a little darker - ominous even.

Considering that they still didn't know where he was … I titled my head and stared at an older sketch of
Ethan. I'd only known him from very early family visits and, of course, all the stories that Cameron told me. From what I deduced those two had had a friendship that I would compare to what Steve and I had. Unconditional trust.
I was curious to see how my cousin would continue with the story - if he would turn it into a supernatural thing, or keep it a mystery … or what else he chose to do.

It took me a while to notice that Billy had sat down on the couch behind me, and when I did I jumped a little, being too lost in thought.

"Why?" He asked and I raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I was kind of lost in thought and you just appear out of nowhere behind me-" - "That's not what I meant," he interrupted me, teeth clenched.

"Then what do you mean?" I asked, turning around fully to look at him.
"Why are you helping me? You have absolutely no reason to be nice to me."
I shrugged, tugging at the sleeve of my sweater.

"You're right. I don't. But I sort of still owe you big time for helping me back when- … I was in a similar situation."
"Must be nice not being anymore," he spat, staring into the fire with a bitter smile. "Must be real nice to just … be free."

I let out a bitter laugh. "It's not that easy."
Billy shot up onto his feet and pulled me up by my arm. "Your father is locked up. What else could you want? You have it all now!" I felt the blood stop flowing through my hand and I tried to withdraw my arm from his grip. He only held on tighter; I felt a lump form in my throat.
"Don't act like you're still a victim."

"Everything reminds me of him," I whispered and his grip loosened slightly.

"I come back home from school and I see the carpet in the living room and all I can hear are the gunshots. I look at myself in the mirror at night and I see him standing behind me. I see my mother and how she just watched it all happen. In my dreams I- … I keep reliving the very first day this whole fucking nightmare started. I keep seeing his face when the judge announced his sentence. I keep hearing his voice in the back of my head. Every single day."

I fixed my gaze to Billys eyes and tried to ignore the tears that came up.

"This is never going to end."