Dirty Secrets

Part 32

Lyla dreamed she'd been a witness standing on the cold black asphalt looking up in horror at that window, an orange rectangle like the eye of a jack-o-lantern cut into the black facade of the apartment building. 

A strobe of silhouettes and then the shattering of glass. 

In the first instant, she couldn't see the airborne figure. But once the dirty yellow streetlight found Clarisse in mid-flight, head-first, braids lashing, eyes wide, mouth agape, arms outstretched, Lyla recoiled, clamping her eyes shut.

Compressed within a split-second, she cringed at the bone-crushing impact, the expulsion of Clarisse's final breath as her anatomy surrendered to the unforgiving pavement.

Lyla carried those images with her into the shower, sobbing, heartbroken and terrified. She steadied herself with a wet hand against the slick tile wall, praying that the hot water pounding the back of her skull would help flush away the gruesome memory.

Clarisse was sus. She was intense. But she didn't seem like the kind of person who would be so extreme. There was someone or something in that apartment with her before she jumped. Or was pushed. 

Lyla got dressed and took her meds. But not the new one. Not now. She couldn't afford to dull her acuity. Keenan would take full advantage of the tiniest chink in her armor. Before going downstairs, she grabbed her phone. She'd left it charging overnight beside the bowl of salt. Maybe it was a coincidence, but there were no messages from Keenan.

.........

"You got money for lunch? Or for a snack or anything?" her dad asked as they drove to the hospital.

"Huh?" She couldn't stop thinking about Clarisse. "No. I'm good. They don't charge for lunch. It's all-inclusive."

He replied with a grin. 

Her smile faded when she remembered Clarisse's warning. "This one is very angry. This one won't rest in peace until he takes what he wants. He wants you." 

........

During the afternoon session, Matthew perched on his chair, fingers knotted together between his knees. "Our lives are journeys of explorations," he said, with hopes of arousing introspection. "Choices. Mistakes made. And hopefully, lessons learned."

Natalie picked her nails. Lyla and Shaniece rolled their eyes in unison.

He stood abruptly for dramatic effect. "But let's suppose you could go back to one particular event. And change it. One event in your life that you believe was a pivotal moment." He inserted his obligatory dramatic pause. "How would your life be different?"

No responses.

He paced along the front row of chairs. "Would you be a different young lady today?"

AJ nodded.

Lyla didn't need to dig deep to identify her pivotal moment. Though her brain was flooded that night with whatever chemical Keenan had used to spike her drink, causing perceptual anomalies, her pivotal moment was indelibly etched in her consciousness.

She was back on that narrow winding slice of asphalt that disappeared into a black hole at the end of Jack's headlight beams, submerged in the chilling breath of the surrounding mountain forest, nose running, fingertips ice cold.

Jack inched around the front of his car. What he found on the side of the road sucked the air out of his lungs. He bent forward, hands on his dented hood.

Lyla knelt beside the motionless body. She felt for a pulse in Keenan's carotid artery, which ran just beneath the blue serpent tattoo on his broken neck. She shook her head. "He's gone," she said.

"Oh, Jesus," Jack exhaled a defeated sigh. He fumbled in his pocket, then produced his phone and held it in his trembling hand. "Damn! No signal."

She got to her feet. "Wait. Wait. Maybe that's not how this should go."

"What are you even talking about?! We need to report this."

Lyla placed her hand over his phone and stepped closer. "Look, you've been drinking."

He nodded.

"Didn't you get tagged for a DUI last summer?"

"Who told you that?"

"People talk." She cupped her hands and blew heat into them.

Jack took a quick glance at the body, then hung his head.

"You can forget about a scholarship. And football," said Lyla. "With the DUI and then something like this on your record, there's no coming back from that one." She fidgeted, anxiously straightening the hem of her gray and white striped top.

"Well, then you call the police."

"And tell them what? How do I leave you out of the story?"

"Don't do it for me."

"I'm also doing it for me. You know why Keenan was like he was? His mother. She's seriously deranged. I'm more scared of her than I ever was of him. His whole family is a bunch of psychos. If they found out I had something to do with this, they would never, ever let it go."

"So, what are you saying?"

"Maybe we dump him and his car out here somewhere."

Jack's jaw dropped. "We can't. We just can't."

"Maybe I'm a terrible person for saying this, but if anybody deserved to die..." She directed her eyes from Jack toward Keenan's body sprawled on the roadside.