The water pelts down on me, but I don’t really feel it.
I’m nowhere closer to the answers I seek.
Who killed Cass?
Was it because he knew too much?
Was it because he was gay?
Was it something deeper?
Was it less sinister?
Yang was murdered, this much I witnessed.
Who killed her?
Was it the stuff she found?
Where is the information she found?
After my shower, I sit in a towel, wanting my old goth garb. I want my fishnets and combat boots, the black eyeliner, pink contacts, and my toxic green hair. The need to feel like myself and not some half-assed pretense overwhelms me as I stare in the foggy mirror.
Swiping across, I see the black strands, the pale skin seeming even more so against the stark charcoal. My eyes stare back at me, Cassidy’s eyes, and tears well in them, knowing how hard it is to just simply see myself through the lens of others.
While thinking of all the things that have made me who I’ve become, I sob.
The desire for self-harm isn’t like what the therapist explained. She told me it was an impulse, something that came and went if I’d only distract myself long enough to allow the time to pass, I’d be okay, I’d move on, and I’d head for my first step.
I haven’t cut since after my wedding.
I have put it off, like she directed.
But right now, as my life crumbles, the only thing sounding peaceful is pain. It’s a distraction, a desperation for emotions to be bled free.
My heartbeat decelerates somehow, and maybe it’s because I’m breathing unnaturally and slower, but I want to take a blade to skin and free my demons, even if only for a moment.
I need something.
Toweling off quickly, I put on a pair of sweats and an NF hoodie, smelling it and wishing it smelled like Cass still.
All the NF clothing I had was his. Before he died, his obsession with Nate convinced me to listen to his music. Then I randomly stole his hoodies, and somehow, one is here.
I miss you, Cass.
Shuffling out of the room, I meander through the halls. This place is big like the other estate, but something about it feels homelike. It’s not barren of what makes it a home, if anything, it’s welcoming.
Cold tile meets my feet as I hit the kitchen and my stomach rumbles. How am I hungry again? I guess I didn’t eat a ton today and my body seems to need more.
Let’s not even get started on the fact that I haven’t had any water all day.
“Where’s everyone?” I ask Mortem when I spot him sitting with a laptop placed on the counter. He’s wearing glasses and it’s almost adorable how they’re lower on his nose like an old man.
Guess he technically is.
I never got to know him… my father. It hasn’t hit me yet, not really. When you are raised without someone for so long, it’s hard to know what it’s like with them in your life.
“Ten is missing,” he grumbles. “But I have a feeling I know exactly where he is.”
“Where’s that?”
As if realizing he said something he wasn’t supposed to, he peers up to me, his face a little solemn. “Sit,” he directs. It’s not mean or callous, if anything, it’s like a parent who caught you smoking a joint in the house and is about to reprimand you.
I take the chair nearest to him and rotate. He takes off his glasses and closes his laptop, turning so we’re face-to-face.
“There’s so much I want to get off my chest,” he surmises, and I want to know things and ask. But much like every guy here, his intentions are unclear and that’s enough to keep me from getting any closer than what we are right now.
“Talk, that’s the only way any of this will get cleared at any rate,” I explain. “I lived my entire life not knowing if you loved me, let alone knowing you were a part of this. My moms raised me to be honest, but that’s not something they ever—”
“Did you say moms… as in plural?” he interrupts me, and instead of being agitated as I usually am, I get defensive.
“Yes, women can be together and married,” I argue, but before I can rebut some more, he grips my shoulders. His bright blue eyes drilling into mine like a magnifying glass for tiny words lost in a book no one can decipher.
“That’s not what I mean, Colt. Your mom… well, she’s completely heterosexual.”
I shake my head, thinking of Moms, the woman who kissed my forehead and hugged me, the one who raised me more than my own mom. My eyes prick as I picture her and Mom together and how mean Mom always has been. The way Moms looks at her with love and me with the same but it’s not mirrored in Mom’s eyes.
My mind travels to the wedding photos and how Moms seems happy and Mom seems indifferent. I’d always thought of her as someone who just didn’t feel like the rest of us, it’s really not that much of a stretch. But maybe it was never love?
For Mom, at least.
I try to think of my childhood and I’m stuck merely on pictures I’d seen in picture frames. My head attempts to wrap around times where they were together and happy, but really, was there ever a time, and why can’t I remember it?
“What’s wrong with me?” I ask instead of addressing the elephant in the room that he’s placed here. My hands shake as bending my mind to will doesn’t work. “Why can’t I remember key things?”
Cass, think of him.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes, traveling to memories of us but they’re foggy. They don’t make sense and they’re overwhelming.
Tears leak from me, the frantic way my heart pounds scares the fuck out of me.
“Come on, Col, let’s go to the treehouse!” Cass calls out to me, running out the back of the Edgington Estate. He’s giggling and Mom left us here for a while. If we get caught, we’ll be in trouble.
My feet tap as I chase after him, feeling myself slide a little on the marble flooring. Mom only left me with my ballet slippers and not any tennis shoes. Cass doesn’t look back as he chases the high of escaping this place.
I don’t know why our moms leave us here, but it always seems to make me sad somehow.
I’m not sure how far I ran out in the open field, but the treehouse we found is there. It’s big—almost too big—and at first, climbing the ladder scared me so much.
Now, as I notice Cass scaling to the top, I decide not to let him win and call me a baby. Reaching the bottom of the ladder, I suck in a deep breath, hoping I don’t fall.