Interim (15 page)

You betrayed me
, his eyes flashed.

But you betrayed me first!
her eyes shot back.

The message was loud and clear. In an instant, he disappeared.

***

He knew she was a bright girl, but he gambled with his chances anyway. After all, how much thought would she really put into learning about his tattoo? Why the hell would she waste her time on it at all? He knew she’d go home that night and look it up. She told him she would. That’s why he didn’t bother to explain it to her at the garage. Now he wished he had. She learned too much. She figured things out she shouldn’t have. And that pushed him into limbo all over again. Either that girl had to trust him for good or he’d have to take care of her. He shuddered, thinking about how to “take care of her.”

He waited beside the abandoned property—the one he knew she’d pass on her walk home from soccer practice that afternoon. He leaned against the rusted chain-linked fence then pushed himself up. He dipped backwards on his heels again, letting the fence bow and cradle his body, wondering if it would hold him or give way completely under the strain. It didn’t. He pushed himself to a standing position once more, and then leaned back again until he found a suitable rocking rhythm.

Time passed slowly, and he watched the corner of the street for her arrival. He didn’t consider that she may have driven to school today. That would ruin everything. He had to talk to her before she told someone. This morning was a close call—too close—and he knew eventually she’d squawk. He wouldn’t entertain the idea that she already had.

She rounded the corner and froze when she saw him. He watched her back pedal a few steps before hesitating, looking side to side for something. Someone. He didn’t know, but he was instantly angry at her sudden fear of him.

“Why?” he called to her.

She shook her head.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

She said nothing.

“You weren’t afraid of me yesterday when you came to see me at work. Remember? You brought me cupcakes, for Christ’s sake.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“What have I done, Regan?”

He pushed himself off the fence a final time and walked in her direction. To his surprise, she walked toward him, too. They met at the corner of the abandoned lot, and he watched her swing her soccer bag in front of her chest, positioning it like armor. What the hell did she think he’d do to her? Punch her in the gut?

“I know you learned about my tattoo,” he said. He wanted to get straight to it.

“You’re damn right I did,” Regan replied.

“How long were you at it?”

She snorted. “Too long.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I learned a lot more than I wanted to.”

“You still think I’m a lunatic planning to shoot up the school, don’t you?”

“Partial verse, Jer. Okay? That’s a partial verse etched into your back.”

Damn. She really did do some studying.

“And don’t tell me the other half wouldn’t fit. I’m not an idiot,” Regan said.

Jeremy shook his head slowly.

“You’re not asking God to avenge you. You wanna avenge yourself!” Regan cried. “Yeah, I figured that shit out! You lied to me! You made me believe you were some lonely, pathetic victim when all this time you still plan on MURDERING PEOPLE!!”

He instinctively grabbed her hand and hauled her toward the empty house. She dug in her heels.

“Let go!” she screamed.

He did when they were safely out of the street view behind the dilapidated screened-in back porch.

“Did you tell anyone?” he demanded.

She fumed. “Maybe.”

He lunged for her, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her hard.

“Don’t play games with me!” he roared.

“Let go! You’re hurting me!” she cried.

He released her and backed away, spitting on the ground beside her feet.

“Did you tell anyone?” he asked again.

Silence.

“Regan . . .”

“No! Okay? I didn’t tell anyone! But I was planning on it!”

“Why didn’t you?”

Familiar conversation. He already knew her answer: “I was scared.”

“I don’t know,” she confessed.

He inhaled sharply then breathed out slowly, trying to expel his aggression. He chose his next words carefully.

“I knew I made a big mistake,” he began.

“Wha—?”

“Not telling you about my tattoo yesterday. I shouldn’t have let you go home and look it up. I should have known you’d freak out and start believing a bunch of garbage about me shooting classmates.”

“You said it was your motto! Do you even know what a motto is? I mean, do you have any idea the enormity of that word? And that’s the word you chose! You chose to tell me it’s your
motto
!”

He glared at her.

“I know what a fucking motto is,” he said.

“There! Right there you’re admitting you want to kill those people—”

“I do wanna kill those people!” he yelled. “I told you that already! I also told you that I’m not a killer! Yeah, I have the desire. Guess what? We ALL do! But I would never act on it! How many different ways do I have to convince you that I’m not planning anything?”

“But your back is telling me something else!”

“I got this tattoo over a year ago! When I was lonely and desperate and in need of something to make me feel strong! It’s got nothing to do with a school shooting!”

He turned his back on her and walked toward a shed on the far end of the property. Regan followed.

“Then please explain it to me,” she said softly. “I . . . I’m freaking out over here, Jer.”

“Don’t say my name.” The words were cold and distant, the way he needed them to sound.

She fell silent in an atmosphere of raw tension. She was offended, and he didn’t give a fuck.

He turned to face her. “I discovered that verse a few years ago and wanted to understand it. So I looked it up—” He paused and looked her over. “—exactly like you did last night.”

Regan dropped her bag and folded her arms over her chest.

“I liked the message of a powerful god avenging someone who’d been wronged. It seemed right to me. It seemed just. So I adopted the verse—” He paused again, deciding how much detail he wanted to share. “—but not in its entirety.”

Regan opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

“You’re maybe a little too smart, Regan,” Jeremy said. “You read
waaaaay
too much into the fact that only half the verse is tattooed on my back. It doesn’t mean I left God out of it. It doesn’t mean I plan to take my own revenge. All it means is that I wanted the first part of the verse tattooed on my back. That’s it.”

She screwed up her face in concentration.

“So, you don’t want to get back at your enemies, but you want God to?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Not anymore.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“But your tattoo . . . what does it mean then?”

“It’s just a desire to see justice done. Doesn’t mean I plan to dole it out. I’m just gonna let the universe take care of it.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Regan asked.

“Yes.”

“So what? You’re into karma now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think what goes around comes around?”

“I hope so.”

“You don’t sound very convicted for a guy who has permanent ink on his back,” Regan pointed out.

“That’s my point. You read too much into it.”

Regan sank to the ground, pulling her legs in Indian-style. Jeremy followed suit, sitting close beside her.

“I can’t keep going back and forth,” she said finally. “I have to trust you, or I’ll go crazy.”

The words shattered his heart. Shattered his hope. There was no way to plant a permanent seed of faith inside her. He realized that now. He would fail at nurturing it, and it would die. Over and over and over, running them to exhaustion in a never-ending circle of doubt. He couldn’t live in constant fear. It wasn’t fair for her, too, either.

He made a decision and took hold of her hand. She jumped but didn’t pull away.

“I wish I knew how to make you trust me,” he said softly.

His thumb moved slowly over the back of her hand, and she shivered. She thought it an uncharacteristic move and wondered where he found the courage to do it.

“I . . . I maybe exaggerated the meaning,” she said. “Like you said: reading too much into something that was never there.”

He nodded, though he didn’t believe a word she said.

“I’m completely at your mercy, Regan,” he admitted. “Do you understand that? You have all the power over me.”

“But I don’t want power over you,” she argued.

“Then you have to believe me. You have to believe I’d never hurt anyone. If you don’t, I can’t live. You understand that? I can’t live except in constant fear, thinking every moment someone’s gonna come to arrest me.”

She turned sharply, catching his eyes and demanding silently that he not look away. He acquiesced, recognizing that this was the moment he’d dreamed about for years. He could do it, and she would let him. Why? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps out of sympathy. Maybe out of mutual desire. Maybe as an apology for what she knew she’d have to do next: turn him in. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just knew that the moment may never again present itself, so he had to take advantage of it.

He leaned into her, moving his hand from hers to cradle the back of her head. He laced his fingers in her silky hair to encourage her submission. She relaxed—an invitation to proceed. Explore. Connect. He pressed his lips to hers—glossy soft—and waited for her response. She kissed him back, sealing her fate.

His hand left her head to rest on her right shoulder. His other hand moved to her left.

“I always wanted to be your friend, too,” he said into her mouth, and he felt her smile against his lips. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked.

He took hold of her throat—squeezing tightly—cutting off her air supply in a flash, feeling her mouth go wide in shock and panic. He heard the first desperate gulp for air—a faint wheeze—and felt her hands on his trying to pry apart his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But I can’t trust you. I’ll never trust you.”

He pulled away and looked into her eyes—black and terrified—then turned away at the first twinge of sympathy. Her feet kicked out, and he knew she may discover that superhuman strength to survive. She would knee his face and break his grip, giving her the few precious seconds she’d need to run and scream for help. He couldn’t let that happen.

He forced her onto her back, providing leverage to use his upper body against her—more power than he realized he possessed. He squeezed her throat harder, listening to the pathetic attempts for air—gurgling and sputtering and hissing. Her eyes streamed. So many tears! One by one they rushed down her temples, pooling in her ears and soaking her hair.

Her nose oozed. Her lips swelled—parted wider—and he watched her tongue dart in and out, desperate for air. Saliva spilled over both corners. These were the signs of unwilling submission. He knew in a moment it would all be over.

She jerked and strained, fighting now with her arms. They flailed about uselessly, every now and then striking his cheeks gently. Her strength waned. Her face turned blue. Her tears stalled.

“Jeremy,” she mouthed. A plea for mercy.

He almost relented. Almost.

Her body shuddered, and he imagined the rotors of her heart spinning slowly to a stop. Five o’clock. Quitting time. No need to show up for work tomorrow.

One final jerk—the body’s last desperate attempt to survive—and then she lay still. He studied her face. Lips parted. Eyes open—glassy and unseeing. No movement. She was a frozen princess. He cupped her icy cheeks and bent his forehead to hers. And then he cried into her dead eyes, spilling his anger and all the horror of his actions. He killed the girl he loved. He killed the girl who defended him all those years ago. He killed a good person. He killed in order to kill again . . .

“
NO!!!!
” he screamed under the truck.

Roy sprinted to the vehicle, terrified the jack collapsed and smashed Jeremy.

“What?! What is it?!” he shouted, running around the truck taking hasty assessments. Nothing appeared out of order.

Jeremy shot out from underneath, face streaked with tears and grime, chest heaving under his heavy hands.

Roy dropped to his knees. “Where are you hurt? What hurts?”

“My heart!” Jeremy cried, shivering uncontrollably.

Roy pulled his cell phone from his back pocket. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”

“No!” Jeremy said.

He was breathless with fear, unable to determine what was dream and reality. Did he do it? Did he kill Regan, leaving her body cold and alone in an abandoned lot? How long before someone discovered it? Discovered him?