The Runaways

Chapter 22

Caleb

Somewhere in the middle of things that morning, I stopped trying to live.

Didn't matter that my dad was hurting and hollering, sold cold that I'd killed the loves of his life. Didn't matter that I couldn't see him from where I was, or that he couldn't see me, ‘cause I heard the threats in his cries. The fire in the promise that somebody was gonna pay for what happened and that somebody was me.

The two-bit cop standing in my kitchen couldn’t hear that anger like I did—he didn't know how to listen. He picked my dad up off the floor, like there was something to be sorry for, like he was a guiltless old man with a tragedy on his hands.

There wasn't anything on those dirty old fingers but his sons' blood. His were no different from mine.

Jack left without a fight. Limped out the door and crumbled into the back of a cop car like he didn't care where he was going.  I stood in the hallway and listened to the tires tear up the gravel driveway ‘til there was nothing left to hear.

It was just me and the quiet for a while, and when we're together for too long things get bad. This time was the worst. All I thought about was Marcus, didn’t matter how much I wanted to stop, I just kept thinking ‘til I damn near drove myself crazy.

Even in the middle of all my sadness, he would’ve told me to get my head out of my ass and keep going. But dead people can't talk, and living people don't listen, so I gave up on trying.

A cop walked into my house and ten minutes later I didn't have my brothers anymore. It was that quick, that easy, and I was just supposed to keep going like it would fix things. The police put half my family in the ground and I was supposed to keep going.

My dad wanted me dead, and I was supposed to keep going.  A girl I didn't know twenty-four hours ago was ruining me, and I was supposed to keep goddamn going.

But when it came to her, I thought I could. I thought by just being around her things could be better somehow, but I was wrong about all that.

Marcus tried, Cillian tried, everybody tried to warn me about her, but there's been something wrong with me for as long as I've been breathing, and I’ve never been good at listening to anybody.

But I listened to her. I chose to follow her and left Marcus alone. He bled and died so I could keep going. Now, I was bleeding out my eyes for him. Crumbled on the hallway floor, digging my nails into my face ‘til everything turned red.

After a while, when the quiet tugged its noose nice and tight around my throat so I couldn’t cry anymore, I lost who I was. It was that easy, that quick. Like my soul snapped clean into pieces smaller than diamond dust.

Dad used to tell me that he could pick out the weak men in this world by looking at the lines in their faces. Softies didn't have any 'cause all they did when it came to trouble was cry to somebody who'd listen.

But the tough guys, the real gritty kind, they had trouble in their blood. They kept quiet and let it run through ‘til it scarred and carved stories in their faces.

So I hung up my soft skin and all the bruises I’d painted it with, strung up my weakness, and left it to choke. I wouldn't cry or talk to anybody anymore—just let my blood poison me ‘til I earned my scars. I felt them coming, and they'd be deeper than graves.

                                                                       ***

I went looking for Hailey. Didn't matter that I was bleeding through my shirt just trying to get to her, 'cause the new, dead, me had some things to settle with the girl who'd screwed up everything.