Page 24 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
Next video file: Nash comes back in, changes into a new set of clothes, and stands to assess the state of the room. He looks satisfied—well, as satisfied as he can be for a guy who just killed his girlfriend.
Then, he scrunches up his face, like he’s thinking deeply about something or he realizes something important. He slowly tilts his head up until he’s looking at the smoke alarm in his room, the smoke alarm where my spy cam is. In other words, because he’s looking at the smoke alarm, that means he’s looking directly into my hidden camera. It’s like he’s looking directly at me.
It’s unclear whether he’s figured out there’s a camera there or if he’s just thinking about something else.
There’s a gentle knock on my bedroom door.
I slam my laptop shut.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey, it’s Oscar. Victor had to take a piss, so we came in. We tried knocking on your front door for a long time, but you didn’t answer. Sorry, man.”
I stay in my chair. “How’d you get in the house?”
“Your brother let us in.”
I sit here, frozen. I don’t know what to think, how to feel, what to do.
“Hey, Hunter,” says Oscar, “you okay?”
I don’t answer.
“Hey, what time you wanna go to the Verizon store tomorrow?” Oscar asks. “I told Victor to come with us because his cousin works there, and if you need to get a new phone she can get us a discount.”
I don’t respond.
“Hey, Hunter, you and me: we cool, right?”
I don’t say anything back.
Then, I hear Victor: “Dónde estáHunter?”
Oscar: “In his room.”
Victor: “Y por qué no sale?”
Oscar: “He’s sick or something.”
Victor: “Seguro se quedó conlos cojones llenos de leche.”
Victor laughs.
Oscar: “It’s not like that. I think there’s something wrong with him.”
Victor: “Asere, está así porque se quedó en esa.”
Then Victor speaks, this time louder. “Hey, Hunter, I know how you feeling, man. You get all excited that you gonna bang your girl. And then she get all I-don’t-know, and you got a load all backed up. Sucks to be a guy, man. ‘Cause women got all the power when it comes to banging.”
After a silence, Oscar says, “Let’s go.”
Victor: “Bye, Hunter.”
Oscar: “See you, bro.”
I hear them walk down the stairs.
After waiting a few moments, I open the bottom drawer of my desk. In it is an old survival knife, the kind that folds openand shut, that my brother gave me as a birthday present when I was in middle school, back when we were still kind of close and back when my family would go camping together every few months. The knife is now unfolded in front of me, the blade gleaming.
