Page 151 of A Dead Man's B-Side
I held up the paper with a cocky smirk. “Ninety-one percent. You can kiss my attendance goodbye next semester.”
“I–” His features flattened into a deadpan stare as he poked his tongue against the side of his cheek with a shake of his head. “That wasn’t funny.”
I held up two fingers to my hairline in salute and walked away, turning to face him, my feet taking me away backwards. “Wasn’t meant to be, Cass.”
I didn’t mean for the words to slip out, but once they did, Cassius was unable to miss the ring of familiarity surrounding his name. And yet, a sense of regret didn’t seem to fill me.
I was happy to finally be free of my past’s shackles.
Well, not entirely.
You see, with my words seemingly falling on Cass like bricks, the last of his expressions I saw before bolting out of there to leave with Wolf back to America, I feel as though I’m forced to confess this.
It is because I am returning to America that I feel that I am compelled to finally tell the truth.
I had been the one to kill Alexei Andreeva. I burned his corpse along with those other young boys, and to this day, I don’t regret a single thing.
But perhaps, for salvation’s sake, I should have. Regretted, that is.
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? We were all being punished for our sins. But mine was greater and weightier than the rest of The Founder’s Society. And maybe we were all being punished for it.
Flashback
Circa 1980
He locked the doors and bolted the windows. He cut the phone line and turned on the stove. He threw the match onto the shirt drenched in rubbing alcohol, watching for barely a second before shutting the bathroom door. In the dead of night, he didn’t linger. He knew how quickly homes burned down, and he knew how quickly fire ate at the oxygen of dry wooden walls.
He slipped out of the basement window with struggle, the tight space too small for anyone larger than himself to fit through. And then, as calmly as when he’d started, he sat heedfully. While everybody else had been swept away to whatever dreams or nightmares awaited them, Alexei Andreeva watched from across the street as a flicker of orange flashed in one of the front windows. It grew, slipping over to the second window and then reaching the second floor.
It wasn’t long before a window popped, a woman screamed, and the fire smothered. Through it all, Alexei watched.
It was therapeutic, he found. Watching everyone who hurt him, everyone who allowed it, everyone who averted their eyes when he limped into the kitchen for breakfast or walked in the other directionwhen he hunched over himself and sobbed out in the far corner of the yard.
The screams crying for help calmed him. With each one, another ghostly shackle broke, and with each breath, he felt lighter.
He was a coward, afraid to fight back.
But no more.
It didn’t take long for the firefighters and police officers to arrive. As Alexei had predicted, his social worker still hadn’t made it to the scene, still blissfully asleep, he assumed.
When the small child offered up his innocent excuse of being locked out for returning after the streetlights came on, no one seemed to bat an eye.
“This was a boys home.”
“Ah.” The officer nodded in understanding, at least trying to look remorseful.
As if it were normal. Typical. Believable. Not any loss to the human race.
Where was he? Oh right.
Alexei Andreeva was a coward. And Alexei Andreeva was now dead.
“And what did you say your name was, son?”
“My name is Alexandr Miroslav, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
