Page 24 of Shade
Ricky: I’m about an hour away. I will though.
You’d think I should feel better, right? I don’t. I won’t until someone goes over there. She could be playing me. She could. This could be her payback for me telling her I was done. But what if it’s not?
What if it’s more?
Rolling my lip between my fingers, I scowl at my phone. Deciding. Ricky wouldn’t be in time. Auden could be.
8:46 p.m.
I call Auden back.
He answers, slower this time. “Goddamn it, dude. C’mon. I said I’d go later.”
I pace the same path by the windows, the night alive and rushing with excitement like the blood in my veins. “I tried Ricky but you’re closer. Go over there and check on her. Now.”
“How many more times are we going to try to save her, huh?” he shouts back at me, his words filled with frustration. “She’s fuckin’ with you again. She does this shit because she knows she can get your attention.”
I lean into the wall again. I’m spinning out of control, the room with it. My stomach burns and my throat feels like it’s on fire. As I pace, images of Rhya rush through my mind so quickly I can’t see them, but they’re there. It’s flashes, years of what she’s done, moments of the other day and what we’d become and what we might have been if not for the darkness that hangs over her.“I get it. You’re pissed at me, but I need you to do this. Something’s up. I’m fucking begging you here. I wouldn’t do this to you on a night like tonight, but something is really fucking wrong this time. Please go over there.”
“Okay, okay.Jesus.” He snorts as if he’s not buying it. “I’ll do it. Just hold on.”
He hangs up on me and I pace the room, my stomach lurching.
9:08 p.m. He calls back.
I swallow, excessively trying to clear the lump in my throat. Nothing works as I bring my curled fist to my lips, bouncing my knuckles off my lips. I’m tentative, but I rush out the words, “What the fuck took you so long?”
Auden’s breath blows through the receiver, he’s climbing stairs. “I had to finish what I was doing.”
“You meanwho?”
“Yeah. Hold on.” He’s quiet, seconds pass, and then I hear him knocking, calling out her name, pounding on her door like I had the other day, but there’s no answer. No sounds.
“Come on, Rhya. Don’t do this to him.” He pounds again, this time harder. “Just open the goddamn door so you can tell him you’re fine and I can go home.”
9:13 p.m.
Nothing.
Still no sound.
And then it happens.
An unmistakable bang bellows through the receiver. You know that sound. Everyone does. It’s unquestionable. A noise heralded by death and destruction. It’s a sound, but it reverberates through my ears, halting the rapid thump in my chest.
Silence follows. Disturbing silence.
Did you jump? Do your ears ring like mine? Did your stomach tighten? Do you know what she did? Do you feel that warm rush of your blood to every part of your body like I do?
She wouldn’t, right?
Wrong. The ones who do it. . . the ones capable of ending their own life, they don’t tell you they’re going to do it. They just fucking do it.
I start shaking, hard, and I think I feel my chest moving, beating, and it stings. It fucking boils, bursts into flames. Only. . . it’s not beating fast enough. It can’t keep up with my breathing.
I think I’m screaming, or maybe it’s him screaming, yelling out her name, screaming no, just fucking screaming. . . .
Inhaling quick gasps of breath, I stop pacing, mind scrambling for a different outcome to the ringing in my ears, the only sound that particular pop would make.
