(Price: unedited)
When Nolan had said, we're going to the lake, Price hadn't anticipated standing knee-deep in the clouded water, watching the hollow end of the pistol swing between Charliegh's terrified face and his own.
It had taken five minutes to give him a bloody nose, and another three for his friends to lace Price up and push both captives down to the shoreline. Eight minutes. Eight minutes total, and he still couldn't hear the whine of the sirens.
The lake was empty, discolored a murky greyish-green, clumps of scum drifting across its surface like discombobulated clouds. The air was a muggy weight, sinking down onto his shoulders and cranking up the pressure building in his chest.
For once, Nolan wasn't talking. Even then, Price couldn't hear the familiar grumble of tires upon gravel, or footsteps snaking along the dead grass. It was so agonizingly silent that he curled his hands into fists, taking comfort in the cathartic pain of his nails against his skin.
Charliegh was deeper into the water. Her arms had been rebound, and in the process she had lost the tattered remnants of her shirt. She stood, eyes huge, topless, blood running down her lower lip. She looked pathetic.
His legs were shaking. Price fought the urge to run, to defy Nolan's cocked pistol and ran over to Charliegh. A mountain of regrets stood between them, but the familiar brotherly instinct was dancing along his nerves. He had wanted to save her. Now, he couldn't even give her his shirt to cover herself.
He edged one footstep forward. Nolan's posse of friends were lounging in the sand. Nolan seemed to be deliberating, fixated upon the horizon behind the lake.
"Hey!"
He stilled. When he shifted, neck popping in protest, he saw that Nolan had turned towards him. One finger still lingered dangerously close to the trigger. "Yes?"
"Stop moving. I'll shoot you."
"Yeah," Price said. "So you've said. But you've still failed to explain why we're both standing in the lake, watching you swing that gun around like a lasso."
Nolan tried to point the thing straight, but his fists were rattling around, like he was deciding whether to shoot or flee. "Have Charliegh tell you."
Images flashed across his eyes as he swung to face her. Nolan, sliding his body overtop of hers, lips attached to the winter of her neck. Her sobs, her shrieking. The way she kept saying Randall instead of Price, and how, when he ran away, she had curled into the side of the very boy who was bringing her pain.
She licked her lips, grimacing. She was at once innocent and aged, and it frightened him to see how far they had both deteriorated. When had they begun to unravel? When had they stopped being siblings, or even friends? Was this because of his father - or something his father had done to her? "He hates me. Beyond that..." her voice trembled. She was shaking like a leaf, the water lapping around her waist threatening to engulf her. "I have no idea."
"You have every idea!" Nolan shouted. "I told you!"
"Revenge?" She shook her head. For one fleeting moment, she almost looked sorry for him. Then she glanced down, and remembered that she was shirtless, and bruised, and inches away from dying. "This is bigger than that. Randall. It's something about him, isn't it?"
"Isn't it always?"
"Since he died, yes."
Nolan sneered. "Do you think I regret it, Charliegh?" Without waiting for her to respond, he kicked off his sneakers and waded into the water. He kept the gun above his head, but the closer he inched to her, the fainter the hold he seemed to have on his self-control.
They were inches apart. Nolan started to reach out, but dropped his hand by his side. Disgusted. He was disgusted by her, and that alone made Price furious.
"So? Do you?"
Charliegh lifted her chin. Her compassion, even when her confidence was shaken, emanated from her uneven posture and her tilted eyes, the twist of her narrow mouth. "Yes," she said quietly. "And that's why I'm standing here. Because you can't stand to live with any reminder - anyone - of your guilt."
Nolan knocked her collarbone with the butt of his gun. "That's enough of a reason to shoot?"
"For someone like you? Absolutely."
Price held his breath. Strangely, Nolan didn't look angry. He appeared bemused, somewhat discomfited that his secret had been revealed. But when he took a step back, he seemed cautious. Charliegh could summarize too much about him - things that could not be spoken in front of an audience.
"Keep walking," He said. "I'm watching. And if you stop, I'll put a bullet -" he gestured to Price, "-right through his forehead."
Nine minutes. Ten. It had to have been at least ten by now. Price watched Charliegh take one tentative step. Nolan was retreating. But the air was still quite, untainted by the travesty of the moment. By the time he reached the sand, Charliegh was up to her belly button. He paced alongside his friends, bare feet kicking up sand.
Her face was hidden. A tangle of greenish hair, like bracken, had fallen over her profile. And the rest of her wasn't worth looking at - it was her humiliation, and Price wished to play no larger a part in that.
Eleven. At eleven minutes, Price let his shoulders sag in defeat. And just as he prepared for his final moment - in which he was planning to either save Charliegh or punch Nolan - the scream of the cop cars pierced through the trees.
"Freakin' crap!" One of his friends bolted to his feet, wolf like in his swiftness. "Someone told them off." He extended one lean arm, pulling the girl to her feet.
"Wait!" Nolan glared at them, pulling themselves up and dusting the sand off their shoes. "You can't leave! We had this planned."
The siren sounds increased. The boy shifted nervously. "This wasn't part of the plan! If we get arrested, they'll nail us for that Randall kid."
"No more pot. Or tattoos."
"Look, man," his friend said, "You won't have a body to pump drugs into." All three grabbed their belongings and mounted their bicycles, scattering from the shoreline just as the coughing of car exhaust screeched to a halt.
"You did this! You called the cops!" Nolan shoved the gun in Price's directions, face twisted with fury. His cheeks were flushed with color. He was screwed, and he knew it.
Who do you think was lingering on Price's tongue, but his feet were already moving, almost of themselves. He slogged through the water towards Charliegh, who was locked in a shoulder-high standstill.
"Hey! You can't run from me, Olsen!"
His lungs were burning, muscles screaming in protest, but he struggled forward. His eyes were fixed firmly on Charliegh. And as he watched, her face went white with terror. She splashed her arms, trying to pull herself closer. Yet just as she began to scream, a warning that reverberated across the lake, he felt an ember explode behind his shoulder blade.
The pain was immediate and excruciating. There was a fire in his muscles, rendering his left arm immobile. He slumped forward, teeth gritted. Blood was pooling under his armpit, sticking his cheap cotton shirt to his heaving chest. His pulse hammered in his ears.
When he tried to move, his joints ground together. He hunched over, sticking his hands into the water, trying to ease the burning. Instead, it grew stronger. There was a weight on his shoulder, a tie around his wrist, and he was falling face-first into the water, pitching to his knees.
As he sunk onto the sandy, dank underbelly of the lake, he missed the moment that he had been waiting for months to see. The water closed around his head, multiplying in his tear ducts. The transition from surface to sinking was shocking. It was quiet - the angry words muffled, the crying drowned out. His whole body felt loose and heavy, lifeless as the gentle waves dragged his limbs further down.
Through the haze, he pushed his eyelids open. Salt burned against his eyes, but he could see the shimmering reflection of the shoreline overhead, slanted at an angle. He watched numbly as the portly policeman and his accomplice stumbled across the sand, hands shoved into the pockets of their snug uniforms. At the sight of a beaten girl, and two boys - one keeling into the water, and the other quavering around with a gun - they started running. Shouting.
The water rippled in Price's ears, pushing gently against his temples. The screaming was muffled underwater, relieving the pounding from his temples and the agonizing pulsating of liquid through the bullet hole in his shoulder.
He saw the beginnings of desperation unfold before him. Nolan, still immobilized, facing Charliegh, had spotted the police. His mouth was gaping open. His features were blurred, but Price could practically feel the lifelessness in the slump of his shoulders, the folding of his body upon itself.
Just before the men in blue reached him, he swung the silver weapon up to his face. Another voice joined the chorus - Charliegh, keening in a wicked, sorrowful way. It was enough to wake the dead, but not enough to distract him. He shoved the barrel into his open mouth.
Price closed his eyes, ducking further beneath the surface of the water. He didn't wish to watch, but he could imagine so clearly what was happening that it frightened him. Nolan, vacant, fingers still shaking. The unmistakable click of the trigger.
And overhead, slicing through the air and diving down into the water, a sickening crack broke loose in his eardrums.
***
He didn't expect to open his eyes again.
Nolan had taken his own life, and it seemed fitting that Price would return the favor. His lungs were burning and darkness swam about in every direction. Light flickered across his eyelids, dancing and curling like minnows around his slumped head.
He could still feel the lake beneath him. Sand pressed into the crevices of his palms, his ribcage, his back and stomach and his raw knees. It was cooler down there, a blessed rest from the chaos above. Wavering in limbo between oblivion and consciousness, he was free to forget about the many, many lives in his life that had become interconnected and so suddenly ripped apart.
Today, the cards had been dealt. Fate had collected souls for its secrets. Nolan, his brains blown across the lake behind the Endell farm, had joined Randall. An eye for an eye, Price thought sleepily.
His ears were ringing. His head felt empty, his lips dry. He tried to open his mouth, welcoming to rush of briny lake water, but met only air that tasted acidic on his tongue, like sterilizer and instant coffee. When he shifted, expecting to feel sand between his fingers, he was met with something smooth and crisp. It crackled, like his sweatshirt fresh out of the laundry.
After spending hours locked in a fetal position, convinced of his own death and waiting to be collected for the afterlife, it was discomfiting to be yanked back into reality.
His eyelids were lead weights, coaxing him back to sleep. But he could feel pressure building behind his head, the minnows bumping up against his cheekbones insistently. Pinpricks of light became streams. And suddenly, the darkness fell away, droplets running down his chin.
The plaster above his head was sky blue. When he stirred, creaking his neck to the side, he made out the outline of four eggshell walls and a square window, flanked by shrunken curtains. Next to his knee - a lump covered with white blankets - was a chair.
Lily. Sleeping, head tilted back and arms crossed over her chest.
The harder he stared, the clearer his vision became. The fogginess in his head cleared slightly. Yet as he tried to pull himself up, he discovered that his shoulder was numb.
Panic. And then, as the door swung open, relief. Ariel tip-toed into his room, arms wrapped around her chest. She stopped at the foot of his bed, assessing him.
He widened his eyes, lips curling into a tight smile. She reminded him of Charliegh, guarded and fragile. The hood of her sweatshirt covered her ragged hair, and the rubber soles of her boots squelched against the tile floor as she stepped closer.
"Hey." He whispered.
"Hello, Price." She smiled wistfully. Her lips were trembling, and she rolled them into her mouth, trying to disguise her nerves.
"I'm alive." He said. "Didn't expect that."
She started to laugh, but choked on the sound as it came out of her throat. When she dipped her head, tugging her hood down, he realized that she was crying. Tears streamed down her cheeks, carrying her eyeliner to her temples. "Oh, God." She whispered. "No funny. Not funny."
Price shrugged his shoulders, trying to feel which arm was still in working order. Carefully, he extended his right hand. He latched onto the closest thing - her jeans pockets - and tugged her closer. It was as irrational as his cafeteria kiss, but he needed to sit down, and reassure him that he was absolutely alive.
The bedsprings creaked as she lowered herself down. She stared at him, searching his gaze. She looked just like Nolan before he had died - hollow - and fear lodged in the pit of his stomach. He placed one tentative palm upon her thigh, spreading his fingers across the torn material of her jeans. "I'm sorry."
"For being alive?" Ariel shivered when he touched her. A mascara constellation flecked her sunken cheeks, but she didn't bother to wipe her eyes. She just tilted her head, forlorn and intent upon him. "Why is everyone fading away?"
"You have a choice, Ariel." Price slid his hand from her leg to her waist, palm edging around her hip. He wanted her closer. It was the first time in months that he had acknowledged his own weakness, and it scared him that she wasn't responding. There was no point to vulnerability if it was one-sided. It was wasted. "You don't have to fade."
"Too late." Ariel pulled his hand off her waist. "It's too late for me."
The fear spread from his stomach to his chest, a network of morphine veins. And with it, frustration. He was lying in a hospital bed. She was inches away from being incarcerated in one, and she couldn't lower her defenses long enough to appreciate being free.
"Did you pass out again?"
"Worse. Definitely worse."
Heart pounding, Price wracked his mind. As far as he knew, the next step was the hospital. Passing out seemed to be the final step, the acknowledgement of a drastic problem. "Define worse for me."
She shook her bangs out of her eyes, voice muffled by her anguish. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed. "I can't." She said. "You'll hate me."
At that, he reached over and pushed her hair off her face. He cupped her chin, trying to get her to meet his eyes. "Don't tell me, then." He leaned closer. She smelled like coconut, the same scent that had been lingering upon his sweatshirt. "Don't talk," he suggested.
It was endearing when she tensed. She looked like a trapped animal, the cafeteria expression of abject terror crossing her features. "Price."
"Ariel." He said. "Why did you come?"
She fixed her arms firmly across her chest, curling into herself. She was retreating again. And even though they were a few inches apart, she was miles away, cloaked inside her mind. He could imagine a million things crossing her mind, and he didn't want her to be thinking about any of them. Eating. Shrinking. Condensing. Dissolving. Fading Away.
"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know."
In response, he edged her closer. He slung his working arm over her prickly exterior. He kissed the corner of her pursed lips lightly, and released her. She could not be chased, or cornered, or contained. She was impenetrable as ever, and he found himself wondering if breaking down her walls would be worth the effort.
What was behind the bricks and mortar? What, exactly, was she trying to frantically to hide?
She bolted from the room. He sat up in bed, watching her go, examining the minute curvature of her calves before they disappeared around the edge of the door. She was a shell of a person, brittle and lifeless.
He wondered if she was empty inside. If he would be spending his vulnerability upon a girl that, when she became human again, had nothing to offer except a couple hollow smiles and shifting remarks. If she was merely going for coffee, and return after his mother had awakened, rejuvenated by the cigarette smoke that clung around the collar of her shirt. And if, when she came back, she would kiss his open mouth and curl into his side, and marvel at the thick white gauze taped around his shoulder.
But, after visitors and breakfast and more morphine, she was still gone.
And this time, he was fairly certain that she would not be coming back.