Page 29 of Better Watch Out

A groan leaves me, and I drag my laptop onto the bed just as Sitka hops up, circling around on the foot of the bed before throwing herself down with a dramatic groan that makes me snort lightly. “Yeah, okay,” I tell her. “Your life is just so hard, isn’t it Sitka?” She pricks her ears at me, tail thumping on the bed when she knows she has my attention.

“Poor thing. You had to stay in the kitchen for what, six hours?Withfood, water, and the bed Boone got you? I bet they gave you treats too, didn’t they?” Even down here I’m careful how loudly I speak, not wanting to somehow make the one noise that’ll manage to wake up the guys.

Part of me wants to call my dad again, and convince him to somehow change the weather and clear all the roads himself so I can get the fuck out of here. I’m not sure how I’ll survive staying here for any longer. Especially after today. But I know rationally there is no escape until after the weather changes and the snow melts at least a little.

God, I’ve never wanted an unseasonably warm Christmas like I do right now. I want the opposite of a white Christmas. I want New York’s firsttropicalChristmas instead, just so I can get out of here.

Once on my laptop, it’s easy for me to find stories on the internet from last year’s triple homicide, and immediately my frustration builds. I can’t find names, only ‘Illinois residents’ or ‘former SIU students.’ Which is too vague for me to really go on.

Especially since I don’t speak to anyone from my college anymore. Even reading about this is enough to make the memories twitch to life in my brain, and I find myself having to take breaks and pet Sitka in order to not overwhelm myself.

But it doesn’t really help when I keep searching through articles. More and more my brain drifts back to my senior year, my heart twisting as the same feelings of humiliation, embarrassment, shame, and self-loathing shoot through me.

I absently rub my throat, remembering the burn from when the pills I’d swallowed had tried to come back up. Remembering how it felt when I finally had enough of the looks, the laughs and, worstt of all, the way I’d felt about myself afterward.

“Crap.” I sigh, finally just closing my laptop and sitting back. This is getting me nowhere, and it’s only tanking my mood harder. I want to find out who these former SIU students were. I want to find outwhythey killed them. But I can’t do it in a way that’s going to trigger my trauma.

But they havepictures.I hadn’t really looked at them the first night, and it dawns on me that maybe I should’ve. Though I haven’t seen them since Boone had them in his pocket, and I know they could be anywhere at all in this house or property. Hell, Boone could’veeatenthem for all I know. That seems like something a feral asshole like him would do.

“Please sleep for like ten more hours,” I mutter as I get up and pull on my thick, fleecy leggings and boots. I don’t love wearing these boots, especially without socks, but I’d rather wear them than have snow-covered toes and frostbite.Again.

Since I’m not planning on being outside for long, I toss on a hoodie over my t-shirt before opening my door slowly, just in case one of my stepbrothers is waiting to pounce. But they aren’t on the first floor, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve come down at all. If they catch me walking outside, it won’t be a big deal. I can just tell them that I’m letting Sitka run around since she was caged in the kitchen for half the day. I’ll play the guilt card about her being a husky who needs to run, instead of telling them any version of the truth.

She zips out the door the moment I open it, and once again I watch myself on the stairs so I don’t have a repeat of yesterday morning. Instead of taking the stairs at all, I hop off the side of the front porch, my steps crunching in the snow that’s hardenedto have a crust of ice over the top of it that I have to break through with each step.

Once I’m in the driveway, though, surrounded by the yard and trees on both sides, I can’t help but stop to admire the snow, and the way the ice on top of it looks like a field of diamonds outside the house in the light from the garage and moon.

God, I’ve missed winters here. It was easy to forget how much I love this place, how much I love the snow and the way I can see my breath in the air in front of me. I love the mountains, the lake, and everything else about this place that I got to experience growing up.

I even love my memories of trying to learn how to snowboard, even though almost every attempt ended up with me face down in the snow and my nose streaming from the cold. The thought brings the smallest hint of a smile to my lips and I make myself keep walking, barely paying attention to Sitka as she gets in touch with her inner snow loving husky.

“Please be unlocked,” I whisper to myself, glancing up at the windows of the second floor. Thankfully the bay window where they sleep faces the backyard, and the blackout curtains are drawn over the windows facing this way. Sure enough when I tug on the driver’s side door of the charcoal-silver truck that I totally should’ve slammed my car door into the other day, it opens easily.

Fletcher isn’t careless, but Boone is. So I figure he must have come out here sometime during the day to get something out of it after driving Cheryl’s Jeep home.

The only bad thing about going through their truck in the dark is that the cab light is bright enough to both help and hinder me. I have no idea how to turn it off manually, or if I even can, so instead I just try to hurry before one of them spontaneously looks out the window. I don’t knowwhythey would, sure, but with my luck they justwould.

There’s no sign of the photos in the truck. No box, no envelope, no printed out pictures themselves. I check the entire cab once, then again, making sure to look under seats, in the console, and in every possible space available to me. But there’s nothing here.

“Crap.” Sliding out of the truck, I close the door just hard enough to make sure it’s actually shut, and glance up once more toward their window. The curtains are still drawn, thank God, and the cab light blinks out a few seconds later, causing me to let out a breath and my shoulders to relax.

Now I’m back to having the plausible deniability of just walking Sitka. I whistle for her and the copper and white husky plows through the snow, her markings almost invisible in the dark. The sun has long since set, and the only lights are from our garage and the moon above us bathing the yard in just enough light to create that white diamond field I love so much.

Before I can go back in, an idea hits me. I veer off course and trudge toward the backyard instead, hands shoved absently in my pockets. There’s nothing suspicious about this. At least, not for now. But it does put me at an angle where I know the two of them like to sit and look out over the trees.

The thought of them catching me makes me hesitate when I stand in the middle of the snow, eyes on Sitka as she goes from one interesting smell to the other and tears up the smooth, untouched surface of white. There’s still plausible deniability right here.

But there won’t be in about ten more steps.

The shed they locked me in sits sturdy and waterproof near the treeline. It’s been there since I was a little kid, and Dad used to keep quite a bit of yard equipment in there. At least, until it started spilling out and Cheryl convinced him to get an expansion built on the garage for him to store things. Ever sincethen it’s been more of a home for odds and ends, for things that are mostly forgotten and not used so much anymore.

But it’s still snowproof, still maintained, andstill here.

Fletcher and Boone know that I’d never go in there just because. I haven’t been in the shed at all since they locked me in it, and I’ve always been pretty vocal about the fact it would take an act of God to get me in there again.

Or an act of murder, apparently.

“Don’t get caught,” I whisper to myself, looking up at the bay window. It’s empty, with no sign of either of my brothers sitting or leaning up against it. So I jog across the yard, only to come to a fast stop at the door of the shed as I twist to look behind me.

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