“I don’t know,” he insists.
“I swear everything that comes out of your mouth is nothing more than lies. I’m so fucking sick of them. Don’t ever contact me again. Try harder to disappear from my life this time,” I say as I hang up and hand the man his phone back.
Without a word to him, I step out into the hallway and yell “FUCK” into my bunched-up shirt that I press against my mouth. I just… I just fucking don’t understand. I thought our life was good. But he wanted something so much different. So much more.
The door opens and I jump, expecting it to be some gunman who has come to see what I’m screaming about, but instead, it’s Leland.
“You look like you want to punch something or cry. Depending on your choice, I’ll either help you or send Jackson in,” he says as he watches me warily. Apparently, he’s as bad with tears as Tavish is… maybe even worse.
“I’m fine,” I state as I stomp down all of those stupid emotions. He doesn’t deserve a damn one of them. With my mom and sister safe, all I need to do is devote them all to worrying about Tavish. “Thank you so much for helping me.”
“You know you don’t have to be fine, right? You can be pissed, angry, sad… whatever you want to be. You can curse the sky and the sun and the moon. Or you could just punch something.”
“The last option sounds painful and a good way to break my hand,” I say.
“I’ll teach you the proper way to punch someone. And then you will graduate to shivving. And then it will just snowball from there. I can teach you how to kill a man with a snowball. Best part is that the evidence will melt.” Leland slings his arm over my shoulders. “But once you know the Murder Song, everything will feel better.”
“Yeah?” I ask, not sure that’s true, but willing to do whatever he mentions just to focus on something else. Anything else. “How’s the Murder Song go?”
We step outside where there’s some man lying unconscious on the ground. I eye him, but Leland just steps on him before continuing his walk. Clearly, there were still some people hanging around.
“It goes a little something like this:Murrrrrder… we’re gonna commit some muuuurder. We can’t murder Tavish because Ellis isn’t as savage. But we could go get a smoothie and watch a movie and hope Tavish figures it out himself! Yay!”
“I feel like that entire song was about you trying to get out of saving Tavish and had nothing to actually do with murder…”
“You’re right. Let me try again.Muuuuurder here, murder there… I wanna murder a bear…Fuck, you’re right. It’s aboutTavish again. I just keep thinking of all the ways he’s irritated me. Alright. Let me try again.”
“Please stop trying to make his ears bleed,” Cassel shouts from where he’s waiting near the vehicle. “No one wants to hear your awful singing, Leland!”
“Muuuurrrder… murdering your friends is wrong but what if they’re a dingdong? Blood. And gore. And violence! Oh my!”
“I swear it gets worse every time,” Jackson mutters.
“GASP. Jackson. My love. What was that?”
“I said your voice is like a songbird,” he says, sounding like a monotone robot.
“Yeah, maybe one infesting your ears,” Cassel mutters. “Jeremy is out on a call so he couldn’t slip out but told me to be careful, and if I have to, use Leland as a shield.”
“That’s okay. We have Micah and Everly,” Leland says. “As we were leaving the prison, I called Everly up and was like ‘I know you just left from helping me, but I have someone fun to shoot.’ And he was all like ‘Do I get to shoot you?’ and I was all ‘Ha ha!’ And then he got into the car with a really big gun.”
“Leland, why do half of your friends feel violence toward you?” I ask as I’m escorted into the vehicle.
“It’s because they’re jealous,” Leland explains, which makes the new guy nearly choke to death. Leland grimaces a little and I realize that maybe the joke between them isn’t as much of a joke as it is with the others.
“Tucker found me someone with a boat. I know it’s not as fast as a plane, but sneaking a plane onto an island isn’t the easiest of endeavors, where with a boat, we could have a better chance of getting close before we get noticed. We also are phenomenal at boating.”
“Didn’t you two sink the last boat you were on?” Micah questions.
“And they didn’t drown?” Everly asks.
“No, I had to save them. They were… singing instead of trying to save themselves… and… I still have nightmares,” Micah informs him.
“That’s understandable,” Everly says.
“So Tavish got himself abducted? What a weakling,” Micah comments. “I would never do that.”
“I swear one of the times I dealt with you, we had you tied up,” Cassel says, and Micah has nothing to say about that.
