Page 56 of Rot

“You think you want to go to school today? It’s okay if you want to skip. I’ll call it in.”

“Yeah. I think that might be best… if that’s okay?” I wanted to seem unsure, not like I’d already decided I wanted to stay home.

Aunt Maggie gave me a soft smile. “Of course, honey. I’ll call the school and tell them to give Elias your homework.” She got up to leave—but before she did, she bent over the bed and gave me a kiss on my forehead, AKA the strangest thing I’d ever experienced.

My mother would never. Never, ever. And my grandparents certainly hadn’t. Forehead kissing was not something that was real to me. It seemed fake, just like love between family members.

But I guess forehead kisses were real, as was loving your family. It just depended on what family you had.

Aunt Maggie left my room, closing the door behind her. I watched her go, the feeling of the supportive kiss on my forehead lingering. For just the quickest of moments, for a fleeting few seconds, I let myself wonder what I’d be like if I’d been born to Aunt Maggie instead of my mother.

I’d be a Whitenbaker… and Elias would be my brother.

Hmm. Maybe it was a good thing I was Penelope Karnagy’s daughter after all.

Chapter Nineteen

Elias left for school, and Aunt Maggie left the house shortly after that. That left me alone with my mother—though she found some excuse to leave the house at about ten o’clock. I’d ventured downstairs to the living room to watch TV, so I’d seen her scurry to the front door, holding onto her purse so hard her knuckles had turned white.

Going to a bar? Going to buy some alcohol? Or maybe just going somewhere that wasn’t here. Anywhere. It wasn’t so outlandish to suggest my mother hated being alone with me, so she’d rather not.

I didn’t know why she hadn’t called the cops the night she’d discovered me in the hall, hands full of grandmother’s blood. I didn’t know why she helped me clean up and why we had to run. If she hated me so much, that could’ve been her way out of this, an easy way to get rid of me once and for all.

My mother was a mystery, I guess. A weak woman, but a mystery. For someone to hate me so much, for her to be so fearful of me, you’d think she’d leap at the first opportunity to rid herself of me.

Whatever. Let her spiral. Let her lose herself to drinking. I didn’t care. I didn’t need her. The only person I needed was Elias.

Elias.

Thinking about him, my thoughts turned to the arrow tucked away safely beneath his bed, stained with blood. Would he ever talk to me about that day? Would he ever tell me the truth about the accident with his father?

Was it an accident? The more I thought about Elias, the more I doubted it. If it wasn’t an accident, Elias and I were truly more alike than we were different.

What would I have to do to get him to confess to me? I wouldn’t be able to absolve him of any of his sins. No, but together we could revel in them. We could share our sins and commit new ones together. We could be a force like nothing this world had ever seen.

My mind wandered as the day wore on. I sat there on the couch, daydreaming about Elias and what he’d look like covered in blood. How he’d kill. What he’d say while doing it. Whether he’d take enjoyment out of it. Color me crazy, but the thought of Elias doused in the blood of someone else was perhaps the sexiest image my mind could whip up.

I got up to make myself lunch around eleven. My mother was still gone, who knew where, and I hummed as I strode barefoot into the kitchen. I opened the freezer to look for pizza rolls or something simple to make, but something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

Just outside, at the base of the driveway, a black car sat, idling… the same car I’d seen at school yesterday.

A strange kind of curiosity took over, and I inched toward the window, peering out. Perhaps it was my imagination. Maybe it wasn’t the same car and it was just someone pulling in the driveway to turn around or something.

But the moment I saw the man sitting behind the wheel, thick black sunglasses on his face, I knew there was no possible way it was a different vehicle. It was the same car and the same man.

Who was he? Why was he here? I’d never seen him or the car before in my life, before yesterday. What he could want was beyond me.

I tore my gaze away from the car and the man, returning to the living room. I picked up my phone, calling Elias. Not my mother. Not Aunt Maggie.Elias. He didn’t pick up, of course, so I had to leave a message.

“Elias. It’s me. There’s someone outside the house. I don’t know who he is or what he wants, but I saw him in the parking lot at school yesterday. I think… I think he might be following me, but I don’t know why.” I lowered my voice to a bare whisper when I added, “If you get this, come home.”

I hung up the phone and went to the windows in the living room, peering out to find the car had pulled up and the guy was in the process of walking to the front door. Something told me this wasn’t good.

Aunt Maggie would be at work for a while, at least all day, and my mother was God knew where. She would be of no help to me. If this guy started trouble here, it’d be up to me to handle it.

Well, me and Elias, if he got the message and left school.

Could I have called nine-one-one? Yeah. Of course. But when you called the authorities in a situation like this, your hands were tied. What if, for instance, this man knew things he shouldn’t? What if he was someone my mother knew? I had heard her on the phone not too long ago, talking about getting more money.

---