Page 204 of Ominous: Part 1
“There was a sharpener fastened to the wall. Kind of old-fashioned bullshit since most people use pens or their tablets.”
I step closer to him. My fingers curl over my biceps. I want to touch him, to keep him talking. I want to know.
Tell me, tell me, tell me.
“And Eli, out of nowhere, smashes the head of some poor, unsuspecting kid against the desk, and breaks his goddamn nose.” Dom sniffs, his eyes dropping to lock on mine, and my heart thuds violently in my chest. “Then he takes his pencil, right, and jams it into the back of the guy’s neck.” He laughs then, suddenly, a twisted little sound, and I don’t think I’m breathing. “Turns out, he really did need to sharpen the damn thing. It was dull, so the kid probably has a scar, but he doesn’t have a hole in his neck.”
I picture the cruelty in my head. It isn’t hard to imagine.
And for some reason… it isn’t hard for me to accept it as part of who Eli is.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, even though I know. We’re so close, I see his chest rise and fall. I glance at the base of his throat, and I think it’s his pulse there, moving violently beneath his skin, not so different than mine.
“Of course, Eli, being Eli, isn’t a criminal, you know.” Dom’s smile widens, and he looks unhinged. “He’s a poor little rich boy, and he doesn’t get charged with anything. No, Eli gets flown first class to Idaho.”
Idaho?
“He gets admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and he stays there while people volunteer to look for my sister’s fuckingcorpse.”He’s angry with the last word, and I’m almost relieved. Anger is a more appropriate emotion than the creepy smile he had on his face a moment ago.
“You think he’s hiding something,” I say, because it would explain all of this anger. “You’ve been thinking about this all week, and you think… you think he murdered her. Do they have a cause of death? Do they know… if there were injuries?” I can’t seem to stop talking, even though I know I’m crossing the lines of societal expectations on grief here. I lift my shoulders in a shrug, eyes darting from the ground to Dom’s face, to the door at his back. “What happened to her, why do you think—”
“Once upon a time, Eli told me he’d squished three white mice between his fingers when he was a kid, just to watch them bleed.”
I think about his text this morning. About blood not bothering him, but I’m still jumping from one thought to the next.
“So yeah,” he says, “I think he’s fucking hiding something.”
“But you were all there, weren’t you?” My mind darts to Eli telling me about the fact he was the last person, presumably, to see her before she disappeared. Maybe the last to see her alive. “If he’d done something, wouldn’t you—”
He closes the small space between us, his hand going to my bicep, fingers splayed over my skin. His touch is hot, like a brand, and bordering on painful, the way he squeezes.
My instinct is to jerk away, but I override it. I want to know.
“You ask him about those footprints?” His words are a whisper. I vaguely remember this, from the last time Dom and I were here together.Footprints.“It waschaosthat morning,” he keeps going, leaning down into my face. The scent of alcohol is stronger, the closer he is. “He said those prints were from when he was helping look for her. The problem with that was his shoes. When he was helping search, he was in sliders, what he usually wore to the lake. But the footprints, they were his Converse. You know, the white ones he always wears? There was mud on them too.”
I don’t know what to say. I never did ask. I forgot, after our fight in that kitchen. It just… never came up again. Or maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe a part of me wants to keep Eli innocent inside my head. But if there was proof of anything, the investigators would know. If there was evidence, they’d—
“Do me a favor,” Eli’s cold voice startles us both. “And back the fuck up off my girl. I really don’t want to ever have to tell you that again.”
I yank away from Dom, and he drops his hands from me as I spin around.
Eli has a chef’s knife dangling between his fingers carelessly, and I don’t know if it’s to use as a weapon, or… if he was going to cut up fruit, which is what I’d like to believe, but the look in his eyes is a little empty, and it unnerves me.
I take a step back, into Dom.
Eli smiles.
“Hi,” I say.
His lips curve higher.
Dominic says nothing at my back. The dying light streaming in through the front doors glints off of the silver blade, and Eli’s grip is so loose around the handle, I wouldn’t be surprised if it slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
I kind of hope it does because I remember what he said to me. About killing Dom, if I ever let him touch me again.Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I need another drink.” I blurt out those words. It’s probably true, considering the situation I now find myself in between these two boys, but I just say it to corrode the tension.
I can feel Dom’s heat at my back. Wisely, he keeps silent.
