"Pretty girls like you get lost in these woods all the time, Alexa."
On the night of Sebastián's annual Beginning of Summer Bash, amiable and adventurous Melody Tryniski went missing. What might have appeared as a juvenile escapade - a casual incide...
Christopher Shaw's house October 12, 2018 9:40 p.m.
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"HOW IS IT YOUR fault?" Christopher whispers, grabbing me by the hips to turn me around. "If anything, it's my fault. I shouldn't have --- I shouldn't have left you alone."
I try not to concentrate on his hands on my hips, his eyes on my face, the piece of heaven brushing my exposed skin. "It's my fault and you were right. I should've told the police as soon as I found Melody's first letter. I should've told you about U's note," I say without taking breaks to breathe, my voice breaking. "It should've been me, not you. I'm sorry."
"Alexa," he whispers, placing a bruised hand on my cheek. With his thumb, he caresses the skin around my lips. "Please don't blame yourself. If anyone deserves this, it's me."
"I just can't bear the thought of you getting hurt and left unconscious in the woods," I whisper, casting my eyes down. "It breaks my heart."
"I wasn't left in the woods," he mumbles, grabbing my chin and tilting it up. "They dragged me to some place. I couldn't see where."
"They?"
He clears his throat. "There were two of them, I think," he mumbles in a voice so low that I almost don't understand him. "They kept me in a... room for several days. Beat the shit out of me some more."
While he was being tortured by Melody's killer, I was safe in my house, thinking about what he was doing and where he was at. It never occurred to me that he was suffering in the most gruesome way. As for me, I was so selfish these past couple of days. All I could think about was how he couldn't love me and how he wouldn't love me and how I fitted into his life. Meanwhile, he was thinking he could die at any moment. The thought makes me sick. What's even worse is the fact that the killer had time to place another threat in my bag, while holding Christopher as a prisoner in God-knows-where. Once again, my hormonal teenage problems get in the way.
"I know this is hard right now, but I need you to think. Okay?" I say, brushing some strands of his blonde hair off his forehead. "What did the room look like?"
Melody's clue talked about a place with a golden eight and a hideous painting. Maybe that's where the killer took him.
Christopher furrows his eyebrows. He looks cute when he's confused. "My vision was blurry after they took the bag off my head," he mumbles, furrowing his eyebrows even more as he tries to remember. "It was... maybe a basement? Humid, dark, dank."
That doesn't sound like the description that Melody gave as a clue.
"Was there anything distinctive about this basement?"
He shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine. I'm transfixed by him. "It looked like a normal basement to me, the kind you find in some of those old, summer houses. Like Sebastian's basement, but it wasn't his."
