“Who?” Preppy asked, tracing lazy circles around my belly button.

“My stepsister, Amelia. I called her Mellie. That’s who I was writing the letter to. I really wasn’t trying to kill myself, just unburden my soul. After the cemetery and Conner and everything, I didn’t know what to do so I just started writing.”

“You said you don’t have anyone. Why didn’t you try calling her?”

“I can’t,” I admitted, choking down a sob. “She’s dead.”

Preppy nodded in understanding. “People die, Doc.”

“They do,” I said, inhaling a shaky deep breath, “but she’s the only person I’ve killed.” And before I could convince myself that it was a bad idea, I was rubbing the scar on the side of my face and was telling Preppy the story that’s haunted me since the day it happened. The story that started and ended it all.

I don’t drive.

I never learned how. Well, I never finished learning.

My stepsister. She was older. She was eighteen and just about to leave for college. She was going to be gone, she didn’t need to be nice to me, she didn’t even need to ever see me really. We were only going to be living together in the same house for a few months.

She was pretty. Tall, blond, huge blue eyes. She turned down modeling contracts because she wanted to focus on her education. She wanted to be a doctor, not just any doctor, but one of the ones that traveled to other countries and treat people without access to medical care. She was a good person and that’s what makes this all so much worse. If she was a bad person, someone like, someone like me, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad but it is and every day it hurts more, even though they say it’s supposed to hurt less.

I’d just gotten my driver’s permit. My dad was supposed to take me driving that Saturday, but he called and couldn’t make it. Work stuff. When Mellie saw how disappointed I was, she volunteered to take me.

We went to this abandoned parking lot next to the highway. She was so patient and I was such a brat. Nervous laughter. But then I got the hang of it, or so I thought I did. We sang along to the radio and must have gone around that damn parking lot a hundred times.

We were almost out of gas. I put the car in park and reached for the handle so we could switch and go get gas. Mellie said that it was close and I could drive.

I should have said no.

I was nervous, I pulled out into the road without looking and a car hit the passenger side. It didn’t even feel hard but when I looked over, Mellie’s head was all awkward and she was bleeding from her mouth.

The car isn’t even what killed her, it was the air bags. Freak accident. But if she was driving it would have never happened. It was all my fault.

Our parents got divorced a few months after she died. My dad tried to keep a positive attitude, but he couldn’t. Neither could I. He rarely ever came home early from work, and I stayed out all hours of the night doing whatever I could to get my hands on what would help me forget.

Soon a bunch of kids I was hanging out with suggested a road trip. There was a ton of us that piled into this van and headed south, but after a few months the drugs grew stronger and the party was over for everyone but Conner and me. The rest of them went back to their lives and I just couldn’t. I mean, I tried a few times, but every time I was about to get on a bus or a plane or hitchhike, I just…couldn’t.

Conner. You wanted to know why I wanted you to keep him alive. Conner was Mellie’s boyfriend. They met when they were in kindergarten and were inseparable. He couldn’t cope and neither could I, and I guess I let him rough me up and toss me around because I felt like I needed to be punished for what I’d done. I needed to make it up to him. And in my mind, there was nothing he could do to me that I didn’t deserve. Until it was all too much, and I took my dad’s final offer and the bus ticket. That’s when I met you on the tower. I stayed because I felt like I deserved it.

Plus he funded this little adventure. Well, at first he did, until his credit cards were all maxed out. That’s when we started forging or stealing or doing whatever to buy more drugs. I kept saying yes. Not because I wanted to keep going, but because of the guilt.

“It’s bullshit you know.” Preppy said, pulling me back to the present. I was shocked at how easily the story had flowed out of me.

“Guilt doesn’t feel like bullshit. It feels like a rock on my chest. It hurts like it’s real.”

Preppy looked at me, studying me with intensity. He turned away and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out, but if I had to guess it sounded very similar to “I fucking know the feeling.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

PREPPY

PRESENT

“Looky here,” I said, snapping my fingers, “It’s the fucking bell boy. Has my luggage arrived?” That question was met with a blow to my jaw that rattled around in my head before everything went black.

When I woke up with a headache that seventy party patches couldn’t cure, I heard whispers on the other side of the wall. Female whispers.

“Is someone there?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m here,” a meek voice responded.

“Who are you?” I manage to ask as I set myself upright.

“Nobody. That’s why I’m here.”

“Nice to meet you, nobody. I’m Samuel Clearwater. My friends call me Preppy.”

“I know who you are.”

“Well then, this is a fun game. You know me, but I can’t know you,” I said, letting my head fall back against the wall.

“It’s better if you don’t.”

“It would also be better if I weren’t in some biker’s homemade torture chamber, but we all can’t get what we fucking want, now can we?”

She sounded better off than me, her voice clearer, although not by much.

“Are you always so comfortable around other people?” the feminine voice asked, reminding me of the question Dre had asked me when I’d taken her to Billy’s place. “Is your glass always half full, even in here?”

I laughed and then coughed, “Lady, right now my cup is half dead so stop shitting on my parade and take your torture and rape like a fucking man.”

“Why do you think you’re here? Why do you think he’s doing this to you?”