Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(35) Cold

I was moving in slow motion again. I was starting to think that it was a reflex of my mind when something horrible happened, when it happened so quickly that I couldn’t think things at the right speed and I had to watch the world go by so slowly. It was like wading through water, trying to press through it by taking big steps, but it was soaking into my clothes and pulling me down. I forced myself to take the steps up to the building that Rebekkah and Alexander once attended, where their memories of childhood together felt so innocent next to what they hadn’t known was going to happen.

I looked around at all of the people, wondering how many of them are going to turn out like Rebekkah. Like Alexander. How many of these kids or their children or their children’s children are going to turn out like Rebekkah, like me—the bad guys? How many of them are going to turn out like Alexander, like Jonathon—the victims?

They looked innocent. I looked around as I walked through the door and I saw them standing around in groups, in cliques. They were all talking about something, laughing. Some of them didn’t have friends gathered around with them, but they were leaning against their lockers reading a book or doing homework that had been due for three days and they couldn’t come up with another excuse.

I watched their lives go on, uninterrupted. They had their lives and they repeated everything, again and again. Sleep, school, eat, repeat. They went through their lives without having to think about a thing, and I wished I had that kind of freedom.

It was staggering sometimes to know that life went on without you. That, in the end, you are only human.

I made it to my locker and leaned against the cool metal. My knees couldn’t hold me up anymore so I slid down to the ground, my skirt gathering up underneath of me. It felt like my eyes were being forced wide open when I looked around. It felt like my skin was tightening on my face, over my bones, thinning out and so fragile that it was going to snap. And that’s what it felt like, living with this secret—that I could blink, and I would turn to dust and ash.

I didn’t even know why it mattered anymore. Maybe it would be better this way.

I was terrified of seeing his face. I didn’t know if I would be able to control my expression or if he would see that something is wrong. If he asked me, I didn’t know what lie I would tell him. Would anything be good enough to explain away all of my horror, my anger, my sadness? Would he realize that my lie isn’t good enough?

I hated to think that he wouldn’t notice anything. He might not know me well enough.

My heart felt heavy. My heart was like a boat, and it was bobbing, but it was taking on water in the storm. I couldn’t use pails to get all of it out. I was going to have to accept that, sooner or later, my boat was going to sink.

My heart was going to go down to the bottom of the ocean, and maybe one day, it will be discovered again long after it stopped beating.

Maybe they would wonder who once belonged to that heart. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Who was I kidding—I didn’t have a heart to sink. I didn’t have a heart for them to find.