alright ↠ dylan o'brien

seventeen.

She never asked me once about the wrong I did

When my time comes around

lay me gently in the cold dark earth

No grave can hold my body down

I'll crawl home to her

~Work Song by Hozier

Dylan

It was silent when I got back home. I knew that Mom and Stephen had most likely forgotten that it was Christmas Eve until after I left and that Julia was probably still awake.

We used to be close, Julia and I. Circumstances brought us close until we were inseparable. We'd take beatings for each other and always made sure we'd take the other's place in bad situations. However, my mistakes drove us apart. Just one night changed the fate of us, and she's never been able to forgive me. Neither have I.

Growling came from my stomach, telling me I needed food. I ignored it and opened the door to my room. It held no light—just darkness. Julia sat up in her bed the moment I entered. "Where were you?" she asked instantly.

"Out," I replied, dismissing her. I went over to my dresser to get changed.

"You say that every time," Julia complained, laying back down.

"Because it's the truth."

She was leading into a deep conversation. I wasn't looking forward to it. Proving my suspicions correct, she said, "I'm sorry."

"I know," I told her. I hopped onto my bed and pulled the blankets over me, trying to let Julia get the hint that I wasn't interested in talking. She didn't have many people to talk to. In fact, I didn't think she had any friends.

"I just. . .I really want to go to college."

I knew that Julia was upset a lot. I knew she had scars on her wrists to prove it. How couldn't she? She had no future, our mom was married to an alcoholic, and she was raped by Damon.

"You could go to Boston college," I suggested, uninterested. I was so tired.

"I know, but I. . . God, I just hate Stephen so much," Julia said, her voice venomous and full of anger.

"Me too. Not as much as Damon, though."

"I hate him more than anybody."

Damon was a touchy subject for Julia. He was Mom's worst. Maybe everything that happened was my fault, but he still triggered it all. The reason it had been the worst night of my entire existence was because of him. I could still remember the feeling of his face on my fist, and his foot in my side, over and over again. I still had the bruises.

"You think you'll ever tell Mom?" I asked.

"Never. It would kill her."

Please don't say 'kill,' I wanted to tell her. There's been so much of that already.

Lola

Christmas morning. I wouldn't see Dylan until break ended—a whole week. I could still feel his lips on mine. The smell of vanilla and the taste of alcohol in his breath. My stomach turned inside and out every time I thought of him, and I couldn't bring myself to understand why. I couldn't bring myself to feel something like what Dave and I had.

I twisted Mom's bracelet around my arm and reached for the locket that should have been resting around my neck. But it wasn't. I immediately went into panic. Standing up from the spot at the end of my bed, I thought about how I might have lost it. Had Ray taken it from me? I was fuming with anger and anxiety. If he took it. . .

I flung drawer after drawer open, trying to find my lost keepsake. It was the most important thing I had left. My hand trailed quickly over the top of my dresser, going through all of the old jewelry I had and everything that laid there. The locket was nowhere.

I looked everywhere I could. The kitchen, the living room (Ray was out at a bar), the bathroom. I never stayed in any of these rooms, so it was pointless. I was avoiding Mom and Sammy's rooms for many reasons. I hadn't been in their rooms since before they died. However, I knew I needed to go in.

Sam's room was off-limits. It always had been. Sammy would get angry if I ever went in, and I couldn't bring myself to betray him like that, even if he was dead. Mom had never cared if I went inside her room, as long as I didn't look through her things. She kept a box of personal things in her closet which I had never even thought to look through. A big part of me resented the very idea— but the other told me I should.

Giving in, I found myself outside the door of Mom's bedroom, my hand resting on the door knob. Sucking in a deep breath, I gently pushed open the door to have a gigantic red-colored room revealed to me. All of the walls were a cream-color, covered in picture frames and Bible scriptures. Almost everything in the room was red. A red king-sized bed stood to the left of me, against the back wall. A red dresser was across from me, my reflection staring back at me though the red jewel-outlined mirror. There was a window seat to my right with a bookcase under it and a bathroom right in between it and the dresser. It was a beautiful room. It was a shame Ray slept on the couch every night.

I took my first step onto the pale red carpet. It felt so strange being in here when Mom wasn't. She wasn't downstairs cleaning. She wasn't in the basement painting and sculpting in her studio. She wasn't roaming the house with nothing to do or yelling at Sammy or writing in her journals or crying. Mom was nowhere.

I remembered where she kept most of her things; in her closet in a big box. Maybe if Ray looked in there sometimes, he would have thought to place the locket in it. Going inside the big walk-in closet, I reached high up to grab the box that was on the top shelf in the left corner. The whole closet was lined with shoes and coats and luxurious things. Mom would always go out to parties and dinners with Ray. She'd wear her elegant dresses and drink champagne and act like her life was just perfect, but then she'd come home and cry.

I held the box tightly to my chest and looked around the room. The walls in here were also red. But the dresses were so. . . un-Mom. They didn't look like anything Mom would ever wear. During the days, she wore jeans and flannels, shorts and T-shirts. Black hair like mine pulled up into a ponytail or tied into messy side-braids, but never down. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.

Shaking the image out of my head, I quickly walked out of the closet and out of the room. Hopefully, Ray wouldn't notice the missing box. If he did. . .

I set the box down on the floor and sat down, my back resting against the side of my bed. My heart seemed to skip a beat when I opened up the cover of the box to reveal all of Mom's stuff.

There were small polaroid pictures, stupid certificates from Sammy and I's schools, small trinkets that were probably gifts from friends or Ray, and so much more. The main things that stuck out to me were three journals. But no locket.

With curiosity taking over me, I quickly pulled out the journals and pushed the box aside. I picked one particular one bound in maroon leather. It had a little magnetic latch on the right side and a big number ONE on the other. I unlocked it easily and impatiently opened up to a page with writing all over it. I began reading instantly:

"November 3, 1997

My name is Brenda Reid, and I have no idea why I'm writing this."