Page 87 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
It’s Nash. He’s drenched in sweat. A huge dried blood stain covers almost the entire front of his shirt.
“Nash?” Patricia says from inside the car.
“Is everything all right here?” asks Darin. Apparently, he and Henry have abandoned their plans to go home and have caught up to us.
Nash ignores them, and he doesn’t even look at me. He points at Oscar.
“Oscar!” he yells. “You’re coming with me. Nikolai wants to see you.”
37
Double
Oscar takes a step back. “I ain’t going anywhere, dude.”
“I’m serious, Oscar!” snarls Nash. “Come with me.”
I hold up my palms. “What do you want with him?”
“Stay out of this, Hunter. I’ll deal with you later. But right now, I need Oscar to come with me.”
Oscar shakes his head. “I’m not gonna do that, bro.”
“Tell us why!” I scream.
Nash grits his teeth. “Nikolai wants to see Oscar. And we all do what Nikolai says.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “The video, the argument, the murder: it was all fake. But what about the drugs in your dorm room? What about Perpetual Sunset? What about Twyla and Fatima? What about Nikolai and his organization?”
“All of that: my side hustle, Perpetual Sunset, Nikolai. All of that is real. Everything in the video is fake, but everything else is real. That’s why this situation is fucked right now, Hunter. Doyou understand who Nikolai is? Do you know what he’s capable of?Ido. So I’m not messing around here. Oscar needs to come with me right now.”
If Nikolai is really some kind of crime boss, then this does not bode well for Oscar.
“Oscar was defending me,” I say. “Nikolai was going to shoot me.”
“No, he wasn’t. He knew about the prank I pulled on you, and he just wanted to scare you.”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?!”
Nash gets out his phone. “Remember that text Nikolai sent me when we were in the SUV? When he had the gun on you?”
“Yes.”
Nash holds up the screen of his phone. “Look.”
I carefully take a few steps forward. The text from Nikolai to Nash reads: “Let’s keep joking with little brother. I pretend I want to kill him.” Then: a winking-face emoji.
“How did you get involved with Nikolai?” I ask. “When did you start dealing drugs? Going to sex parties? This is insane. You have this whole double life. This secret life. Mom and Dad think you’re like the perfect son. But you’re like a criminal. They treat me like shit because I’ll never be better than you. But the ‘you’ they think you are is all alie.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you. I don’t owe you anything, Hunter.”
For some reason, tears are falling down my face. “You’re my brother!”
“You want to talk about a double life, Hunter?” says Nash. “You want to talk about a secret life? Do your friends know you’re afag? Does Oscar know you’re sexually obsessed withme?”
I look down to the ground. I can’t look at Oscar. I can’t look at anyone. I want to die. I seriously want to die.
Suddenly, Nash lunges at Oscar. Oscar jumps back. He turns around to run away, but slams into the back of a truck.
