Page 40 of Taste of Addiction

I can see his silhouette in my head but no clear face.

Flash.

James burst into the scene and got me out of there. But we were being hunted down. This was not a hit-and-run because someone was drunk. Instead, this was a premeditated car accident to keep us from going to the police with the information.

It was on purpose that we got hit. It was vehicular manslaughter.

However, me surviving was probably never in the plan. Not remembering helped me move on without the haunting of the truth. Instead, I’m being haunted by the unknown.

I squeeze the bridge of my nose and lean my head back to look at the ceiling of my closet. How could I get these facts so wrong for so long? It is like my brain completely shut out the truth.

It was all my fault for getting James involved. He was the collateral damage. The sacrificial lamb that went to slaughter—decades before he was supposed to die. And I will carry that burden the rest of my life. There is no overcoming it. There is no getting better. I just have to learn to live through the pain of the realization that if I would have either not gone to the stupid party or not have called him, then he would be alive.

Or maybe I would have been the only victim.

Tears flush out of my eyes, and I close them to keep them at bay. I lie beside the box and curl my body around it. It is like I have a piece of James inside. His tattered clothes that were cut off him. His favorite ball cap.

After several tremors that shake my entire body, I pick myself back up to dig further into the box. At the bottom, I find the tree air freshener, which has lost all of its appeal. James loved those stupid things. He always said that they spiced up even an older looking car. Next to it, I find the blanket we would keep in the backseat, often using it as a pillow on longer trips. I brush my hands across the fleece fabric, only stopping whenever the specks of blood halt my caress. The spots are so small that I am not even sure if I am actually seeing them or if my mind is playing tricks on me. I move my hand away swiftly, knocking into a cold metal object. I pull the object out of the box, staring at it in my palm for what seems like an eternity. A Swiss Army Knife?

It looks so familiar, yet I cannot remember it. Where did it come from? It’s pink. Pink? James would have never been caught with something pink. But out of all the things in the box, why can’t I find a connection to this one object?

I swing open the blade with a flick, examining the sharpness against the pad of my thumb. The heat from the metal jolts my arm away, dropping the knife into the box with a thud. I jerk away from the box and then quickly slap the lid on and kick it into the corner.

Fuck.

What the hell just happened? I squeeze my eyes shut and can picture the knife inside the cup holder of the car. The same car that—

I can see James’s eyes on me. I can feel them. In my memory, I glance back at the pink shell of the tool, forcing myself to piece together the flashes to—

Pink knife.

Car.

James. Me. James driving. Me crying.

James is upset and—

Do I want this? Do I really want to remember that day?

No. It is night.

I see flashes of another guy. The one from the party. And then the bloody forehead and eyebrow from where I cut him. I was trying to get away from him and I used the knife on him. The same one he used to threaten me.

The knife is not mine.

It ishis.

9

After we buried James, I lost my will to live. It was during that time I started to cut my legs, not so much to kill myself, but as a way to gain control of a situation I had little control over. It wasn’t until I started investigating what happened to him that I found my purpose. While I never figured it out, and the police never took any of my testimonies seriously enough to conduct their own investigation, I was pushed into a new academic track once I restarted my freshman year at River Valley U.

And here I am, five years later with a clue that I overlooked the whole time. If I can find the owner of the pink Swiss Army Knife, I can find the man who killed James and tried to rape me.

I crawl on all fours back to the box and fish for the dreaded knife. I am afraid that the memories surrounding the knife will cut me deeper than the blunt force of it ever could. Maybe I have resisted remembering the night of the accident for all of these years because all along the truth would have put me in grave danger.

I am tired of not having the answers. I am tired of living with the dull ache in my heart that never quite goes away.

I turn the knife over and over in my hand and open the blade. There are blood dots on the shiny metal, and I wonder if I can get a private laboratory to analyze the results and then run a background check on the DNA to see if it matches anyone who is in the database.

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