Survival of the Unfit

Chapter 39

April

I woke up maybe forty minutes later, and his eyes were already open when I opened mine. Nothing had happened to us, nothing had changed about us or our situation. I wanted to think that sleeping fixed it and maybe that entire letter and message in blood was a hallucination, but I can’t fool myself that well.

“Morning,” Levi said, yawning.

I yawned too and stretched out onto my back. “Morning.”

He squinted open an eye and looked to me, one arm behind his head. “No French toast?”

I laughed and put my hands behind my head, eyes closed again. “I need to makeout with you beforehand.”

He laughed and looked up at the sky with me. “You’re so full of shit.”

But then we talked for a while about everything except the killer and the situation, like normal teenagers would. Teachers and school and celebrities and laughed until our stomachs hurt, sleepy and mentally exhausted. It hadn’t really sunken in how vulnerable we had to be at that particular moment in time, where we were. But I wasn’t thinking about that now, not currently with someone so wonderful in my presence. And no one kills on Sunday. The killer had adhered to that.

He took me back well before my parents got home and we hung out there for an hour or so. He left an hour before they were to be back to be safe (in which the reprimands for having a boy when I was home alone would be infinitely worse than wine). He didn’t ask for his hoodie back, didn’t say a word about taking it back. I clutched the sleeve and watched his car pull out, inhaling the faint scent of him in the threads.

And I didn’t want to go back upstairs and make my bed again, lie in it alone for the night without him between the sheets. I didn’t want to lock my window either. I wanted company. I wanted Brandy knocking on it, or a text from Hailey. I didn’t want to be alone, ultimately, and it wasn’t just for my own safety; it was because I had forgotten how much I craved company. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to do, but maybe I’d be dead in a week and it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Nah, that’s no way to think. But…oh god, what am I to do? She’ll take Hailey hostage again, or kill Levi or my family, or his family, or flat out kill me like she had stated several times. Her options were endless. There’s no way she hasn’t got a backup plan if I just don’t come. And then, how could I win? She has to be invincible by now. Brandy’s leg strength would be dangerous, very dangerous. Was there any hope of negotiation? Could I just stand her up?

I don’t remember much of what happened in the next two days, Monday through Tuesday. I didn’t do all of my homework. I talked to Levi throughout it and we conversed about theories and game plans a little bit. He believed I could win the fight, and I let him. If I told him I was scared and prepared to die anyway, I knew he wouldn’t let me go and he still wasn’t 100% yet. At least he kept saying he didn’t want me to go, but we went to the gym together Tuesday. He mostly messed around on the equipment to entertain me while I worked out. I didn’t mind that. It was more of a date than training, and maybe that’s why he came with me.

It’s weird, because I didn’t know whether to feel prepared to die or not when Wednesday rolled around. Because as Saturday grew closer and closer, I had this unrealized determination start to well up inside me, a burning desire to simply stay alive. I still considered running and every other possible way out, but I hadn’t ever been one to back down from anything. That’s how I got myself into this mess in the first place, and it would be how I’d get out.

Personally, I think the determination lies in every human, no matter how ready you might be to let your life end. The will to keep going. It’s stronger than spider web silk and Kevlar, it’s the strongest force you’re faced with. Even though I didn’t ever kill anyone in my patrol, when I did threaten them with death, they bargained everything. They were willing to give up everything they possessed to live, and I started to see that I couldn’t just give up. If those shitty people had every will to live, every right, then I did too.