Page 18 of Apathy
“Why’s that?”
“Seriously?” She laughed. “He just attacked you, told God knows what to Skylar, and was so high that he didn’t even realize what he was doing until Skylar jumped him. Do I look like I want him to be my friend?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged and straightened myself up. I flexed my hand reflexively against my throat, wincing from pain.
“That’s gonna bruise,” she mumbled. “If you were a girl, I would tell you to cover it with some concealer, but since you’re not a girl—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”
The day was already getting darker and as the lights around Lauren’s house started turning on, I knew I should be going as well. But I wanted to know more.
“Does this happen often?”
“What? Kane?”
I nodded. “It just seems that none of you were as fazed about this as I was.”
Hailey crossed her legs and turned fully to me before she started talking again. “Kane and Skylar are… complicated, to say the least. You’ve been here for one day and you’ve already managed to piss him off, and I gotta tell you—you need to be careful. Kane might seem like a spoiled brat, he might act like one, but people in this town are never what they seem.” Don’t I know that. “He was never my favorite person, but it’s like a switch was flipped and he became this…” she trailed off. “I don’t even know how to describe him now. He has an unhealthy obsession with Skylar who doesn’t really give a shit about him. It would be funny if it wasn’t sad. But what happened with his brother…” She suddenly stopped, her eyes widening, looking around us. “I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”
“Well, the guy did try to kill me, so I’m pretty sure that I would love to know everything there is to know.”
She looked behind me, then to the side, as if she was checking if anybody was listening.
“Okay, look, I like you. You seem okay, and you didn’t grow up here, which in my book, is a major plus right now. But you didn’t hear any of these things from me, because if they find out that I told you—”
“Don’t worry.” I placed my hand on top of hers. “I won’t say a word.”
Her face showed the battle she was waging inside her head, but when she spoke again, I knew I had her.
“Okay. Three months ago, Kane’s brother went missing…”
* * *
Pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into their rightful place once Hailey explained what happened three months ago in Winworth, and Kane’s idiotic behavior. I was told stories about this town, about these people, these kids my age, but seeing them interact with each other was a completely different thing from everything my uncle ever told me. Listening to Hailey talk about the nightmare that fell over their town was another thing entirely.
I heard what happened. The entire world heard what happened here, but I wanted to hear it from someone who was close to them. Someone who could give me more insight into their fucked-up relationships and depraved shit they were throwing themselves into. Information was power, and how you used it could make or break whatever you had planned.
I feigned shock as she described the gruesome details, the heartbreak and panic; the soul-shattering event that changed their lives forever. It took everything in me not to react as she talked about it as if it was the first time for something like that to happen in this town. Though, I had to admit, I was surprised that somebody from the St. Clare family was taken, which also told me that this time it was different.
This time, the game had changed and none of them were ready for what was about to come. I left as soon as she finished telling the story, explaining that I had to catch dinner with my family. Danny and Rowan offered to drive me home, but I preferred walking. If I could help it, I would like to keep them all as far away as possible from my brother and my uncle.
I stopped on the bridge connecting the West and East Side of Winworth, staring down at the river coursing underneath, darkened by the night that has already fallen on the town. Winworth was founded on blood and tears, and secrets so deep that even a thousand years of trying to dig them up would result only in uncovering more secrets and more depravity that has wrapped its filthy hands around the roots of this place. I was told the story of Winworth more times than I could remember. My uncle made sure that my brother and I knew where we came from, and why we had to leave.
Once I remembered the night that changed our lives, he told me everything, leaving Sebastian, my brother, out of it.
Five founding families fled here in the fifteen-hundreds when they couldn’t handle the church that was hunting them and burning all their sanctuaries to the ground, anymore. Blackwood, St. Clare, Maddox, Lacroix, and my own, Crowell, settled in between the two mountains, in the valley of the river coursing below me now. The elders here loved spouting lies to the young ones while talking about the history of Winworth, excluding all the gruesome details.
But we knew better.
Those five founding families created the disease here, letting it spread all over the town, its people and all the surrounding areas. I wasn’t sure if Emercroft Lake, the town separated from Winworth just by the mountain, had the same history, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to dig their claws in there as well.
My family was almost completely destroyed twelve years ago—only my brother and I survived. I was six years old when the unholy inferno came barging into our house, swallowing everything in its path. I was six when I came face-to-face with true evil, hiding behind the mask of a kind businessman.
They destroyed our lives and now we were going to destroy their sick world. The plan was already set in motion, and their kingdom was going to fall.
I stepped away from the rail and started walking toward the darkened street. There wasn’t a person in sight, and I knew why. The East Side of Winworth was not a place where you wanted to find yourself in the middle of the night. Doors were shut, windows enforced with the metal bars and even the local police force didn’t dare to come here if they didn’t have to.
Local authorities abandoned the people here, and I knew that my family was one of those at fault for that.
