Page 52 of Violent Skies

You know how she feels.

I stop, eyeing the one on the end that stands out from the rest, and pull my phone out to shine a light on it. It’s been folded more than once. The lines down the picture create tiny cracks of white that spread across the background. It’s the photo we took three weeks before Koa died. Cress is staring up at him like he’s the moon and we’re laughing about something I can’t remember. I swallow tightly and look around, tempted to pull out my phone and ask Cress if she’s been back in here, but I know she hasn’t.

Murphy and Rafe have been keeping tabs on her—GPS and in person. Rafe hasn’t taken his eyes off her since she showed up. He follows her to work, follows her home. The only time he does is if he knows Murphy is watching.

Someone else was in this house.

They left this for me to find.

I pull the photo off the wall and out of the frame, following the folds and staring at the picture with me removed from it. Just the boys, Birdie, and them. It should have been me. I blow out a huff of air and rage stings at the corners of my eyes as I realize. That day, he wasn’t trying to kill himself. He was trying to kill me.

“Fuck you, Koa.” I shove the picture in my pocket and keep searching the house for anything that will tell me who was here in our absence. Murphy will have to check the neighbours’ cameras again, or hopefully he’s been keeping an eye on the house. Maybe someone stopped by and he assumed it was Cress… I’m rationalizing a hundred thoughts but none of them seem to be making any sense.

The bedroom smells like her, and it soothes the tension I’m carrying in my shoulders as I push open the door and flick on the light. At first I’d been careful, not wanting to draw attention to the house, but they wanted us to find it, me, Cress. They expected someone to come home and they’re watching anyway, so I might as well give them a show.

The dresser is lined with more pictures of her, Koa and Birdie. I ignore them and the feeling of jealousy that bites at my heart as I move across to her closet. I inhale her scent and check that everything is in place, nothing is strange… no one is hiding. I shove my hand through the clothes, tapping the back of the closet with my knuckles. I smile at the Louisville bat beside her bed, the one with the nicks out of the base. That thing has to be twenty years old.

There’s a shoe box on the end of the bed and it’s not necessarily out of place, but there’s an energy to it I can’t explain. Like it’s begging to be opened. I set my phone on the bed beside it and pull off the top.

Inside is all sorts of trinkets and photos, only it’s not Koa’s or Cress’s.

It’s mine.

It’s full of gum wrapper origami hearts, peppermint, Cress’s favorite. There are some rings I thought I’d lost years ago. I grab the stack of photos tucked under an old ripped Monroe Motors t-shirt and swallow roughly. I flip through them, and the more I look, the more desperate I become to be out of this house. Every photo is of Cress and I, long before Koa became something more to her. These are from when we were young. I don’t even remember half of them being taken.

The last is folded, crumpled and flattened back out, in similar fashion as the one I found hanging in the hallway, only this time it’s a photo of the three of us and Koa has been completely erased from it with a dark permanent marker. I stare at it and remember exactly how I felt the day it was captured. It was the week after he asked her to marry him. We threw a party for them, and everyone came. Koa spent the entire night making conversation while Cress made sure everyone was happy and fed. On the back is scribbled in thick, capital letters.

THIS IS MY FAMILY.

Fuck. The fear that builds tastes like poison.

I set the photos aside and see what was nestled beneath them in the box.

I reach in and grab it, twisting it in my fingers and holding it up in the light. It’s the ring. The one he took that day, safe and sound in the box. The rage is undeniable. I keep digging inside only finding more crap that makes no sense to anyone but me. It’s just garbage, every last thing in the box is useless and fucking pointless.

I dump out the box on the bed, pushing around the quarters and the gum wrappers to make sure I didn’t miss anything. What is the point?

And then I see it.

“How the hell did you get here?” I whisper. My fingers grip the wooden fox from the kitchen window sill. I flip it over, checking to see if it’s identical, and along the bottom is the tiny chip in the tail. I threw it out the window on the way home from the funeral, stopped the car, walked a mile back and forth until I found the damn thing, and it’s been on the window ever since.

My heart is racing because this means that someone has been in our home. In the kitchen. I chuck it back into the box angrily, fear consuming everything rational. I clean it all up, check the time, and realize I’m going to be late for that race if I don’t move my ass now. I tuck the box under my arm and flick off the light before leaving the house. I chuck it in the back seat and tear away from the house, leaving more confused than when I arrived.

The creek is dead. There’s not a single other person here as I pull up the road and stop the car. The silence is eerie. It sinks into my bones and echoes like it’s trying to teach me a lesson in humility.

This is my family.

It vibrates down my spine.

They were in our fucking house.

I reach over, pop the glove box and pull out the gun to set it on the passenger seat just in case, before checking the place and time on my phone once more. I’m where I’m supposed to be, at the right time, but it’s like I was the only one that received the message.

I survey my surroundings, and get ready to climb out when a set of headlights appears in the distance. I can’t tell at first, but as it approaches, it’s clear whatever they’re driving is old muscle. It rumbles along the gravel and its curves blend seamlessly into the darkness like it was made to drive in the shadows.

The windows are tinted and I can’t see who’s in the driver’s seat, but everything about this feels wrong. My hand flinches toward the gun beside me as the passenger door opens and a young girl who resembles Birdie climbs from the car and saunters over to my side.

“It’s up to the pass,” is all she says as I roll down the window. “He says, don’t lose,” she adds when I open my mouth to ask her who I’m racing and why I was brought here. She watches me for a moment longer before backing away from my window and standing between the cars.