Page 87 of Haunt Me

Not defending me.

They get my grandfather to come down from Boston urgently, and once he gets here, the school expels me within two days.

…

“I know it’s not true, Isaiah, I know they’re lying.” Grandpa’s voice is shaking.

I can’t talk to him. I can barely look him in the eye. I am numb, in disbelief.

“Everyone knows it’s lies,” he continues. “Everyone who knows you, or has even seen you. Even that dumb principal knows, and he is lying through his teeth. Stay strong, my boy, it will blow over soon. No one can touch you, do you hear me?”

He is holding me by the shoulders so I don’t fall on a heap on the floor. We’re back in Boston, at my empty house. Mom is flyinghome from New York tomorrow. James hasn’t been told what’s happened yet.

“Look at me, Zay,” Grandpa says, shaking me. “Let me see that you’re ok. We’ll beat this thing.”

I can’t reply. I just listen, and when he stops talking, I go to my room.

Where are you, Eden? My mind screams as I try for the millionth time to call her. My hands are shaking so badly, I nearly drop the phone twice.

‘The number you are trying to reach does not exist.’

No! Eden, where are you?

Eden! Help. Help me, please!

Save me, dammit!

But she doesn’t save me. No one does.

The next day, they talk about me in the local news—they even divulge my first name, but not my last. Technically, they could—I am no longer a minor. That’s the last time I watch, listen to or read the news. Ever, in my life. I just stop looking at it. Completely.

My brother comes home from Julliard, looking gaunt and haunted. He takes one look at me and swallows down whatever he was going to say. I guess he wanted to say something stupid like ‘it’s going to be ok’. But it’s not. And he can’t say it—it’s gotten too horrible. In the end, he says nothing.

Both Yale and Harvard withdraw their acceptance.

We just stay inside the house, Mom, Grandpa, James and me, and wait for a bunch of lawyers or the police to show up and drag me to court. The principal made it sound that serious. The colleges too.

The phone calls we’ve been getting. We hide and we wait. Grandpa contacts our family lawyer, and he stays with us on the phone twenty-four seven.

But nothing happens. No one contacts us. No one follows up.

I don’t hear anything about the news mentioning me again either, but by now I’ve stopped watching and I have zero interest in asking James if I am still a ‘story’. Time stands still. We exist in limbo for two days. Nothing happens. It’s as if I am a ghost, my name deleted from the school and from the colleges I was supposed to attend.

From Eden’s phone.

From the news.

My existence erased.

No one is coming after me, but no one is coming to save me either.

What do I do now?

I have nothing to run from, but nothing to run to either? Confusion, anger and inaction don’t mix very well. I feel as if something big is coming, something even worse. But what could be worse?

My heart is broken, my future stolen, my family destroyed. My sanity is hanging by a thread. I can’t even begin to understand what is happening and why. Why?Why why why?

WHERE IS EDEN?

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