Page 68 of Apathy
“Stop!” I thrashed and thrashed, but he didn’t stop even when my head started getting woozy and his masked face started getting blurry. “Please,” I wept, feeling the blood dripping from my arm.
My head started falling, and unable to keep it standing, to keep fighting, I closed my eyes when he began cutting me again, drawing line after line over my arm.
As the edges of my vision darkened, I just prayed that he wouldn’t drop my body somewhere in the woods. I didn’t want to be found like Megan.
Ash
I couldn’t get last night out of my head. No, I couldn’t get the entire day out of my head.
Skylar’s frightened face, her holding that girl against the lockers, Skylar touching me in the woods, and then leaving the car without a second glance. And another body was found. Yet another victim of this sick game they were playing, and no one would ever know why she died.
And that fucking note I saw yesterday, with their symbol embedded on top of it, glaring at me, mocking me even from the paper. But the text, those clues left for Skylar, those weren’t written by people from The Order. No, it was glaringly obvious to me that she didn’t know what her family was involved in. Then who would leave such things to her?
If she was being initiated, she wouldn’t look so spooked when I saw it.
I spent the entire night going over the words I saw, thinking about all the people that could’ve left it for her, but no matter how much I tried to uncover the person that could’ve given it to her, I came up blank. A sleepless night, and no clues on how to fix this shit.
Not to mention that I wasn’t even close to uncovering the way to enter the catacombs, or that the lines between what I had to do and what I wanted to do were on opposite sides. The battle raged inside my body, both sides fighting for dominance. I had to avenge the death of my parents and what they did to us, but I wanted to take Skylar, my brother, and get us all out of here.
Indigo’s words were on repeat as well—his warnings, his advice, but my brain was too fried from the lack of sleep to even try to make sense of anything that was happening around me. I avoided my uncle as soon as I got home last night. Sebastian was out of the house, so I didn’t have to deal with the full Spanish Inquisition.
Then why couldn’t I look my uncle in the eyes? Why couldn’t I tell him the truth? I lied to his face when he asked me about Skylar and our plan. I lied because she wasn’t just a pawn anymore. She wasn’t a girl I hated, or somebody I just wanted to use.
She wasn’t just some face in the photo, the privileged spoiled princess. She was so much more.
Everything I did lately, I did it with her in mind. The sky, the river, the silvery blue color of my shirt, it all held pieces of her because I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Even now as I puffed out the smoke from my cigarette, staring at the sunrise on the horizon, I only thought about her.
I thought about her soft skin, that small smile she so rarely gave… I thought about everything, and I shouldn’t have. Maybe I needed to be reminded about our mission here. Maybe I wasn’t the right person for this job.
Maybe getting involved with her was the wrong way to approach this, but if I told this to my uncle, he would question me. And how could I tell him that Skylar Blackwood managed to sneak inside, hiding next to my heart, because she wasn’t who I thought she would be?
This war we waged was meant to have casualties, but I never thought that one of them was going to be the one I couldn’t bear to see hurt. I couldn’t bear the thought of her hating me, and she would. After all of this was done, she was going to hate me.
She would never want to see me again. She would never let me touch her, and I would have to learn to live with it. Or I could stop right now.
I could go downstairs and tell my uncle that the plan we had was wrong. But how could I have her without betraying the memory of my parents?
I couldn’t, that was the problem. I couldn’t have one without betraying the other one, and I just had to figure out which one was worthy of betraying.
Was I going to let the ghosts of my past control my life, or was I going to take the reins and decide what I wanted to do without this revenge hanging above my head?
Think, Ash, fucking think, I thought to myself.Which one was a lesser evil?
“Ash?” I almost jumped up from the chair when my brother’s voice tore through my thoughts.
“Jesus, fuck, Sebastian,” I groaned. “I almost jumped over the fence.” I turned around looking at his tired face.
“Dude, I was woken up, thanks to your phone.” He yawned. “So, trust me, I’m tempted to push you over the fence myself.”
“What do you mean by my phone?” I looked around, noticing for the first time that my phone wasn’t anywhere near me.
“This phone.” He lifted the device with a black cover and threw it toward me. “It’s been ringing nonstop for the last hour. You left it in the hallway, right in front of my room.”
Shit.
“And if you don’t mind, some of us are not psychopaths like you, waking up at an ungodly hour.”
I didn’t bother telling him that I didn’t sleep last night, and the only reason I was outside on the balcony was to clear my thoughts. Before I could utter another word, he turned around and walked out of my room, leaving me alone again, with my phone lying in my lap.
