The Bryce Tapes

Pro & Ch1 Draft

Prologue:

The sky was cloudless, the sun was shining and by all appearances, it looked like an all around prefect bright, sunny day. It's the kind of day that inspires images of kids playing in sparklers on the front lawn or riding bikes down the street, chasing the ice cream truck. Right up until you get to the police tape.

Outside one little suburban McMansion, there were no kids or sparklers, just police tapes, police vehicles, a lot of police officers and one extremely bewilder teenage boy wearing a backpack.

Clay Jensen held onto his backpack shoulder straps as if the were the only thing tethering him to reality. The reality around him was quick difficult for his mind to grasp. Was there really a corpse in the house just behind behind him? Was the shirt hidden under his hastily zipped up hooded really sparkled with someone else's blood? Is the classmate who'd pointed a gun at him just hours earlier really dead now? And did Clay's backpack now really contain something from inside a house that was now a crime scene? Surely the sensible answer to all these questions was no. Yet everything around him screamed that the answer to all those disquieting questions was an unarguable yes.

"What a mess, uh?"

A sudden voice tore Clay from his inner crisis and brought him back to the real one behind it. He turn to see a middle aged man in a hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts to his right. He and Clay were at the back of the group gawking at the scene across the street. Though Mr.Cargo-shorts seem to want a better view as he craned his neck, Clay was glad to be hidden in the back of the crowd. Clay had already seen more then anyone here would see of the crime scene, he'd been there the moment it became a crime scene. Clay wonder how long ago that had been. Time was yet another thing his schock had thrown out of focus for him.

"Yeah, definitely a mess." He managed to stutter out.

Chapter #1:

"Are you alright, honey?" His mother asked as if a now dead classmate hadn't told him some strange things and given him and mysterious box.

Though that wasn't really fair to her. His mother didn't know about the box or the strangest ramblings Bryce had told him. Strange rambling that didn't make sense and Clay didn't believe could be true. His mother didn't know that when she'd come into wake him, he'd already been awake for hours. She had know idea he'd creeped out last night and the he hadn't gotten home until 4:00 AM after sneaking off a classmates property while praying he wasn't seen. 

When he'd arrived home, Clay immediately locked his bedroom door and opened his backpack. He'd hauled out a shoebox with a picture for expensive men's dress shoes on it. Clay realized the shoes that had been in there either belonged to a dead person, or to a father who didn't know yet, but had just lost a child. Clay was the only person in that moment who knew of that unsuspecting father's loss.

Suddenly he couldn't handle it all. Clay was overwhelmed with the memories of the past of hours. He remember smelling the alcohol sent mixed with the sent of pool cleaners before seeing the smashing Jack Daniels bottle as he walked into Bryce's family's poolhouse. He remember looking up to see Bryce himself holding a gun with the barrel pointed straight at Clay's face.

"I was worried you wouldn't show." Bryce had grinned from his chair and nodded towards another wicker chair to his right. "Come on in, take a seat."

Clay debated running, but Bryce's finger was on the trigger. And Clay was scared. So slowly, with hands raised, Clay had taken the offered seat.

Without taking his eyes off Clay, Bryce reached under his seat and pulled out a shoebox which he properly slide over to Clay. "Slowly, stick that in your bag. You can look inside later. And relax. It's not a bomb or anthrax. It's something else that you're, apparently, much more familiar with."

"It's sort of hard to relax with the gun pointed at you." Clay had stammered as he followed Bryce's instructions.

"Well, it's also pretty hard to relax when you find out you've been framed by someone you loved." Bryce had signed sadly and with his left hand, picked up a bottle from the little end table by his chair and took a gulp. "Not just loved. In love with actually. But I don't think you care much about that. You probably won't care much about the why no matter how much you learn. But I suppose I can't really blame you. Being in love can't redeem me for Jessica, or Justin. Or for anything I choose to do, really. Love is stupid and I'm stupider. Love has made me irredeemable. Screw the stupid poster. I'm irredeemable. Fucking irredeemable."

He took a swig, never taking his eye's off Clay's face as he did so. Clay had no idea in the slightest what to say. He was terrified and confused and mad. "You don't rape someone you love."

Clay's heart had speed up. How could he be idiotic enough to mouth of to a drunk with a gun?

Bryce had just given him a sad smile, "No, but I DID raped someone my best friend loved. God, I'm such a fucking idiot. But not exactly in the way I know you think I am.

"And, that box will help with that, but right now I just want to go over some basics." Bryce explained casually, like this was all normal. 

"First of, we have one very big thing in common; we both had it bad for Hannah. You had your little crush. I, however, was completely, and insanely as it turned out, in love with her. And don't interrupted. I can see you want to and I know what you're going to bring up. And it's not true. Nearly everything Hannah and I did was her idea. Or, her, Kat and Tony's idea, but I was kept out of that loop until it was too late. I'd already sold my heart and soul before I realized it was to the devil. 

"You know, the idea of having a girlfriend who was okay with me sleeping with another girl always sounded cool to me, ya know? Hannah, wasn't just cool with it though, she wanted it. And it wasn't like I'd imagined at all. Not in the least. But you'll get what I'm talking about later, after you've opened the box.

"Right now I just want to say, don't show anyone else that box until you've finish with it, okay, Jensen? And I don't have a back up plan. I'm just taking it on faith that you'll listen. If you do, you do and if you don't you don't. I won't be able to care. But for your sake, I hope you listen.

"Oh yeah, and to circle back, it's more than pretty hard to relax when you find out you've been framed by someone you loved. It's pretty hard to do anything. Especially when part of you still loves them. And all of you misses them.

"You know, ever since Hannah died, the school's been plastered in, helpline numbers and those 'It's Never The Answer!' type posters." Bryce's speech was slurred. "It's easy to say it's never the answer if the person sounds all likable and cool. Try it when they don't. Try it when the controversial thing is really not a big, fat no brainer to make people feel better about themselves. Who truly thinks deep down that being sad about a likable sounding person dying is hard? Right now, I dare say, anyone hearing all this from your point of view or from Hannah's tapes, would be okay with it happening now. Like right now. I dare them to say their go to BS about this one now."

Then Bryce did something Clay hadn't expect when he got Bryce's note to meet in his locker that afternoon. Bryce turned the gun on himself, and pulled the trigger.