Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79374 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79374 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
I should have said no.
I was nervous, I pulled out into the road without looking and a car hit the passenger side. It didn’t even feel hard but when I looked over, Mellie’s head was all awkward and she was bleeding from her mouth.
The car isn’t even what killed her, it was the air bags. Freak accident. But if she was driving it would have never happened. It was all my fault.
Our parents got divorced a few months after she died. My dad tried to keep a positive attitude, but he couldn’t. Neither could I. He rarely ever came home early from work, and I stayed out all hours of the night doing whatever I could to get my hands on what would help me forget.
Soon a bunch of kids I was hanging out with suggested a road trip. There was a ton of us that piled into this van and headed south, but after a few months the drugs grew stronger and the party was over for everyone but Conner and me. The rest of them went back to their lives and I just couldn’t. I mean, I tried a few times, but every time I was about to get on a bus or a plane or hitchhike, I just…couldn’t.
Conner. You wanted to know why I wanted you to keep him alive. Conner was Mellie’s boyfriend. They met when they were in kindergarten and were inseparable. He couldn’t cope and neither could I, and I guess I let him rough me up and toss me around because I felt like I needed to be punished for what I’d done. I needed to make it up to him. And in my mind, there was nothing he could do to me that I didn’t deserve. Until it was all too much, and I took my dad’s final offer and the bus ticket. That’s when I met you on the tower. I stayed because I felt like I deserved it.
Plus he funded this little adventure. Well, at first he did, until his credit cards were all maxed out. That’s when we started forging or stealing or doing whatever to buy more drugs. I kept saying yes. Not because I wanted to keep going, but because of the guilt.
“It’s bullshit you know.” Preppy said, pulling me back to the present. I was shocked at how easily the story had flowed out of me.
“Guilt doesn’t feel like bullshit. It feels like a rock on my chest. It hurts like it’s real.”
Preppy looked at me, studying me with intensity. He turned away and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out, but if I had to guess it sounded very similar to “I fucking know the feeling.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
PREPPY
PRESENT
“Looky here,” I said, snapping my fingers, “It’s the fucking bell boy. Has my luggage arrived?” That question was met with a blow to my jaw that rattled around in my head before everything went black.
When I woke up with a headache that seventy party patches couldn’t cure, I heard whispers on the other side of the wall. Female whispers.
“Is someone there?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m here,” a meek voice responded.
“Who are you?” I manage to ask as I set myself upright.
“Nobody. That’s why I’m here.”
“Nice to meet you, nobody. I’m Samuel Clearwater. My friends call me Preppy.”
“I know who you are.”
“Well then, this is a fun game. You know me, but I can’t know you,” I said, letting my head fall back against the wall.
“It’s better if you don’t.”
“It would also be better if I weren’t in some biker’s homemade torture chamber, but we all can’t get what we fucking want, now can we?”
She sounded better off than me, her voice clearer, although not by much.
“Are you always so comfortable around other people?” the feminine voice asked, reminding me of the question Dre had asked me when I’d taken her to Billy’s place. “Is your glass always half full, even in here?”
I laughed and then coughed, “Lady, right now my cup is half dead so stop shitting on my parade and take your torture and rape like a fucking man.”
“Why do you think you’re here? Why do you think he’s doing this to you?”
“Shits and giggles?”
“Power. He could have killed you, he could have let you die, but he let your friends think you’re dead and keeps you teetering on the edge of life and death because he loves power above all else. What better way to gain power than to take control of the lives of others? Besides, now every time Able pisses him off, he can come in here and beat on his friend or kill you or torture you. But that’s up to him. That’s what he feeds off of.”
“And here I just thought he was a sadist and went and jerked off with a belt around his neck after he delivered his beatings.”