Page 16 of Heart of a Killer

As I continue to push around my food on the tray, Brie and Alex talk about how the staff nurse hit on him again. It makes me grind my teeth. He is so sociable here, a completely different person than I knew, and I wish he would look at me like he did before. When I look down, the mashed potatoes are pushed to all the corners, and the peas are scattered throughout. My stomach growls loudly.

“Everything okay, Skylar? You haven’t even touched your food.”

“I’m not hungry,” I say, pushing my tray away and slumping deeper into my seat.

Brie’s eyebrows bunch up as she looks at me skeptically but lets it go. Alex watches me curiously over his plate, stuffing his face with mashed potatoes. He’s so boyishly cute that it makes my chest ache and fill with longing.

Once he swallows what’s in his mouth, he remarks, “This food sucks, but you should at least try to eat, or the staff will catch on.”

The look in his eyes makes me queasy. What does he know about what the staff would do?

I can’t participate in their camaraderie. I desperately want to be a part of the friend group they’ve created here, but too many memories of Alex leak into my brain when he looks at me. Especially when he catches me sneaking glances at him. He gives me a slight lift of his lip before I steal my gaze away. My cheeks burn.

“Okay, time to go, everyone! Lunch is over! Get to your respective classes!” one of the staff members bellows.

“Ready to go make pretty pictures to help us feel better about our lives?” Brieanna says sarcastically.

I’ve grown fond of her over the past two weeks. We try to follow each other’s schedules and sit with each other every chance we get. Even Leland—Alex—sits with us in the cafeteria. He still doesn’t seem to remember me, and the longer I’m around him, the more I believe he did forget about me. I’m not sure I’m happy about that, considering everything we’ve been through. At the same time, it’s a relief. I don’t need him to remember that I killed his mom, ran away, and my best friend stabbed him in the back. Though he deserved it after he hunted me down and broke into our house in the middle of the night like the crazed stalker he is.

All I needed was the space he wouldn’t give me. Now that all I get is space, I don’t like it.

The farther we get from Alex, the less anxious I feel. I can talk more freely with her when he’s not around.

“What? You don’t think art therapy works?” I can’t help but laugh at her reaction. I give her arm a little shove before chiding her. “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. At least they aren’t making us seek god here.”

“You know they wouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because they know we are nothing but a bunch of sinners, and some of us are here because our families don’t want us.”

Brieanna makes a complete stop in the hallway and looks at me with an expression that I can’t read. I’m taken aback by her sudden mood change. Pondering her words, I think about my dad, who, in fact, does not care about me. The only reason why I’m here is that I can’t afford to go anywhere else. And because of Nicole. She wanted me to go somewhere,anywhere, to get help and made me promise that I would try.

Feeling a little defensive at Brie’s words, I snap at her. “Okay, then why is a rich girl like you here?”

“Who said I was rich?”

I shoot daggers at her and cross my arms under my breast. “Who said I was trailer trash?”

“Eh, okay, you have a point,” she admits while nudging my arm to get us moving again. “Well, my nanny wanted me to get help, but we needed to find somewhere that neither my parents nor the media would ever find me.”

“The media?” My eyebrows arch up so high that they have probably vanished into my hairline. “Oh, you are definitely getting called a Rich Bitch all the time now.”

And Brie pushes me nearly so hard that I almost fall into a large trash can on the way to the art room. She’s not mad about it. We’ve grown this friendship now that we can pick on each other, but sometimes her moods swing from one end of the spectrum to the next.

“Yes, Sky. I’m that rich, but I never wanted to be. It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. You know?”

“You’re going to have to paint a picture for me because it looks pretty nice to me on this side of the tracks.”

She furrows her brow and stops walking again in the middle of the hallway. She’s highly intense and earnest about this. Did I hurt her feelings or something?

“Look, Brie, I didn’t mean anything by it. I honestly don’t understand. Would you explain it to me?”

Her eyes soften. I think she is considering telling about her life, but instead, she shuts down.

“Let’s just say, Sky, that money can’t buy everything. It can make you happy for a moment, but in reality, it can’t buy you happiness.”

She continues walking to our art class, leaving me in the middle of the hall to think about what she said. My heart aches for her. She’s right. I always wanted money because it would help me reach my dreams faster, but it’s not what I need in the end for my happiness to bloom.

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