Page 15 of Apathy
“I just explained what happened,” she huffed. “Not even a minute ago.”
She did?
“I-I’m… I’m sorry, L. I guess I wasn’t listening.”
She came closer, taking my hands into hers. “It’s fine. This might not be the same situation, you know? So, get that out of your head. I can already see those wheels turning, connecting this with what happened to…” She stopped herself before saying his name. “You know what? Let’s just get out of here. My parents aren’t home right now, and the pool is heated.”
She started pulling me toward the school, and I tried ignoring the stares and whispers around us. I focused on the brightness of her hair and the presence behind me. Ash trailed behind us without saying a word, and I could only assume that Rowan, Danny, and Hailey followed.
Lauren said everything was going to be okay, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to assure me or herself. Four months ago, all our lives were turned upside down when the first disappearance occurred and to this day, none of us could understand what exactly happened. None of us could explain the body they found that night, after the fire swallowed the entire cabin.
We only knew what they told us.
The body belonged to Zane St. Clare—Kane’s brother and my boyfriend.
Ash
When I was about nine or ten years old, I fell off my bicycle and managed to cut open my knee. There was only one other time when that kind of pain took a hold of my body, and as the blood kept dripping down my leg, the onslaught of memories attacked me, making me remember what I was trying to forget. Or, well, what my mind was trying to shield me from.
That day was the first time I saw my uncle cry, and the first time I learned the full truth. That was the same day my uncle told me not to wallow in pain, but to use it to focus and change things. And I did.
I lived for the moment when we would come back to Winworth, to right what went wrong, but I didn’t expect her. I didn’t expect to feel anything but the burning anger, and yet I did.
Skylar Blackwood used to be just a name on paper. She used to be the face in the dark I would think about when the pressure of what we needed to do would become too much to bear. The first time I saw her picture was the first time I knew what hatred felt like.
Brilliant, white smile and silver eyes filled with promises of paradise. She had everything, while my brother and I had nothing.
So, she became my obsession. My little secret, and even though she didn’t know who I was, I knew more about her than she wanted me to. I knew how she looked with a smile on her face, and how she looked with tears streaming down her cheeks. I knew everything because she became my job. She became the golden ticket, and to get to them, I had to get to her first.
But I didn’t expect to see this version of her. No, I expected the same smiling girl my uncle showed me when I was eleven. I expected the brightness in her eyes, not the apathy flickering around her body like a protective shield. She was just a pawn in this game we were playing, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel sorry for a Blackwood.
No. The poison running through her veins was enough to remind me why we were doing this and what was at stake. She was just another privileged brat who couldn’t know how fucked up life could really get.
Lauren swam toward the edge of the pool, pulling me back from my thoughts as she started speaking.
“You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” she asked, looking right at me. If only she knew.
You’d be surprised at the amount of information you could get just by being quiet. People tend to overlook the quiet ones, thinking that we either aren’t paying attention, or we aren’t interested. But those assumptions were the ones that helped me gather necessary information when they least expected it. Take for example this situation right now.
I was here for less than a day and I could already see that Danny wanted to have something with Lauren, while she avoided being alone with him. I could also see that this group of theirs was as unhealthy as it could get. I wasn’t sure if it was co-dependency or if it was because they were just thrown together and decided to run with it, but whatever it was, none of them wanted to be here.
With the exception of Lauren and Skylar, who seemed to get along much better with each other than with the rest of them. Talking about Skylar, she seemed shaken by whatever took place back at the school.
I didn’t think that the girl they were talking about was part of their group, considering that all of them here, except for Hailey, belonged to one of the original families, and Megan definitely didn’t. No, there was something else eating at her insides, and as she kept staring at the darkening sky above our heads, I wanted to know what was happening in her mind.
What happened to the smiley girl I remembered from those pictures?
“You can’t take your eyes off her,” Lauren started, pulling my attention back from Skylar to her. I tilted my head, taking in her wet, auburn hair and dark twinkling eyes. She looked like a regular girl, but every single one of them here was unknowingly bred for the depravity waiting for them. Whether they knew or not wasn’t my concern, but I wondered what pushed people to turn vile.
“You should go and talk to her.” Lauren smiled.
“And why is that?” I leaned down, holding a bottle of beer in my right hand. “Why should I talk to her?”
Another interesting thing about Lauren was that she never knew when to keep her mouth shut. I was certain that she wanted only the best for her friend, but right now, she didn’t know that the information she was feeding me with wouldn’t help Skylar.
“There are… things about Skylar no one knows.” She looked at her. “Hell, I’m her best friend and I don’t know everything. Truth be told, I don’t think any of us know her at all. I’m not sure if she knows herself.” Interesting. “This past year has been hell on her. What happened three months ago…” She took a deep breath and looked back at me. “Look, I think she just needs someone, and seeing you two together today makes more sense to me than her and Kane.”
“Is he her boyfriend?” This conversation was getting interesting.
