Page 159 of Switch!
I doubt it.
I’m still too jittery to try. I leave the bathroom to check on the others. Caleb and Trixie are seated on one of the beds while talking. I hear Raymond’s name mentioned, which makes my stomach twist with guilt as I go to the tiny refrigerator and take out a soda.
“Anybody thirsty?” I ask.
“Me!” Trixie says.
“Yeah,” Caleb echoes.
“I’ll get it,” Trixie tells him. “What do you want?”
He’s fine with whatever, so I grab two more cans of cola. When I turn around, Trixie is invading my personal space.
“Somethings wrong,” she says so quietly that I probably wouldn’t have understood if we weren’t standing so close together.
I glance over at the bed. Caleb is ignoring us while digging through his backpack. “With?”
Trixie’s face scrunches up in confusion. “A lot of what he says. I’m not good with half-truths. You better get into his head.” She takes the cans from me, and at a normal volume says, “Thanks!”
I stay by the refrigerator as she brings Caleb his drink. Half-truths? What could he be hiding from us? I’ve already been in Caleb’s head, but only briefly while we were running, and I haven’t had time to process the deluge of memories since. I sit on the end of the other bed, facing away from the others so my expression can’t be seen, and try to search for relevant information. It’s all a jumble. Brief flashes of sound and imagery. Emotion too. Maybe if I was still in my original body, it would make more sense.
Or maybe I’m avoiding unpleasant truths, like what Raymond did to Caleb, and how I forced him into that situation. Time to face the facts. I start with the night in question. Caleb was roused from sleep. I can remember the way the mattress had shifted with someone else’s weight, and how Caleb felt a pressure on his leg, like someone was squeezing it affectionately. He had opened his eyes to find Raymond sitting on the mattress next to him, the older man smiling in a way that made his skin crawl.
“Can I get into bed with you?” Raymond asked. “It’s cold. We can warm each other up.”
The night wasn’t cold. Summer was still blazing outside, and the air conditioner in our apartment never could keep up.
“Go away,” Caleb said, kicking the sheets off and getting out of bed. Then he pushed past Raymond and locked himself in the bathroom, where he remained all night, coming out only when my mom knocked on the door the next morning.
“I had a weird dream,” he told her, shooting Raymond a glare. “A bad one.”
It had been a traumatizing event, no doubt, but not the one Caleb described to us. He claimed that Raymond had touched him in a way much more invasive and disturbing than a squeeze on the thigh. I don’t want to experience that, even through a mental flashback, but I need to figure out what set Trixie off. And maybe it’s fair penance for putting Caleb in that situation to begin with. I brave myself and sift through the memories, confused when I come up empty.
What about the night he was arrested? That’s much easier to locate, due to the intense emotional impression it left. Caleb had taken two of my mom’s pills, ground them into a powder, and mixed them into a beer that he poured for Raymond. He brought this to the man like a peace offering.
“Sorry I freaked out the other night,” Caleb said when handing him the beer. “I’m just not into that kind of thing.”
“You haven’t tried yet,” Raymond replied. “Did you say anything to your mother?”
“No.”
“Good. As long as you don’t, we can still be friends. Understand?”
There was an underlying threat in those words. I don’t know if Raymond went as far as Caleb claimed, but the guy was still a creep. I experienced enough to know that much is true. Caleb had sat on the couch with him that night, waiting for him to finish the beer before rising to get him another.
“Grab one for yourself,” Raymond had said, voice already slurring.
Caleb did, chugging it down to work up his courage. He knew what he wanted to do well before it happened. I see flashes of violent fantasies, each more graphic than the previous. These are laced with anticipation and excitement. Part of Caleb was looking forward to it while waiting impatiently for the right opportunity. He wanted to see Raymond suffer. Extensively. I would rather run away, like I did, but I can’t stop events. I can only relive them.
The pills worked as intended. Raymond passed out after the second beer. Caleb shook him by the shoulders. An incoherent mumble was the only response. Next he slapped Raymond, as if wanting to help him regain consciousness. When there was barely any reaction, Caleb grinned. Then he swung a leg over Raymond’s lap, as if finally giving him what he wanted, and while facing his intended victim, he started swinging. And didn’t stop. Punch after punch. No matter how bad it hurt his own fists.
Raymond tried defending himself, but he was too drugged up and weak. Caleb kept hitting him, and when his knuckles began to swell, he used his elbow instead, not relenting until Raymond’s face was a bloody screaming pulp. This wasn’t a desperate act of self-defense. It was premeditated violence. The detectives must have concluded the same, but I can see even deeper than their deductions. Calebenjoyedevery minute of the brutality, giddy and laughing by the time he finally relented out of exhaustion rather than mercy.
“What the hell! Get off me!”
Trixie! I snap back to the present, and when I look over at her, my blood runs cold. Caleb has her pinned to the bed, his knees on her shoulders. She’s kicking and squirming, but she’s even smaller than I used to be. I scurry to my feet, intending to knock Caleb off of her, but I freeze halfway there when I see the glint of metal. Trixie goes still too as the knife presses against her throat.
“What are you doing?” I manage to croak out.
