Page 97 of Borden 3

I stared at him hard. I couldn’t be sure he was telling the truth. Nothing he said made sense. Why would he take the bag back? To whom? Whose blood was on the floor? I had spent all week thinking about it, trying to make sense of it, trying even to defend Theo, but more doubts crept in.

“Please believe me,” he implored. “Please, Emma.”

“Why did you go there in the first place?” I tried again, wondering if he’d keep his story straight.

“I told you. I was buying some weed.”

“From that guy in the basement?”

“I thought it was him I needed to buy it from, but it was another dude.”

“Whose blood was on the floor?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d you get the bag?”

“When I went down to the basement, I saw it lying there.”

“Then you’d have seen the blood.”

He paused. “I did see it.”

“And you just took the bag even though there was blood on the floor?”

“I did. I took it.” He shrugged. “I…I thought there was obviously some kind of altercation, and you know, these guys are bad, Emma, right? They’re really bad, so if something bad happened, it’s not like they’d call the fucking cops or anything. They’d just clean it up and…I don’t know, leave the bag behind in their rush to hide shit.”

I stewed on his words, trying to believe him.

“Please, Emma,” he begged now. “Come back to Neverland with me. I miss you.”

“Why should I?” I asked. “You’ll just beat more people to a pulp there. You know you could have hurt Curtis, right? He hasn’t been able to leave his house, the last I heard. You could have stopped.”

That fight still startled me.

A lot of things Theo did startled me, I realised.

It was only when I was away from it all that I had begun to reflect on it.

“Guys fight, Emma,” he simply said, shrugging. “I didn’t jump him. It was mutual.”

And it was.

And I hated how much sense he was making.

Still. He could have stopped.

“I miss you,” he added, quietly, like it was a hard admission. “Em…I need you. You make the bad go away, you know? I never feel lost when I’m with you.”

I sighed, the fight leaving my body as I took in his sad face. Defeated, I patted the spot next to me. He took a seat there, his hands clasped together tightly as he looked down at me, waiting for more. I shook my head at myself, at how weak this boy made me. I reached a hand out and forced his hands to unclasp. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed it back, and before I could say another word, he fell back on the bed and forced me down with him. My breath let my lungs in a whoosh, and I let out a short laugh as he pressed his head against mine. He watched me, this content smile spreading on his lips.

“Nightcrawler, you make me happy,” he whispered.

You make me cry.

I forced a smile. “Theo…”

Theo, this needs to stop. It’s hurting Granny. It’s hurting me.

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