“Why?” I cried as Derrick dropped me to the gravel at the back of my car.
“Because, Becks. You ruined my life.”
“Your life?” I cried, my head a mess of a pain, my ankle on fire, cuts up and down my arms and legs, pine needles and dead grass in my hair. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing to mine?”
“Exactly,” he said, standing above me. He reached up, gingerly touched the gaping wound on his cheek, and hissed. “Scars make you look cool, right?” he asked, looking at me hopefully. “Honestly?”
He was a psychopath. “Fuck you,” I growled, spitting blood on his boots. “Fuck you, Derrick. I wish you were fucking dead, you piece of shit.”
“Well, the feeling’s fucking mutual, Becks.” He stuffed the pistol in the back of his jeans. The pistol, I realized, that belonged to Matthew. He turned to the still-ajar trunk of my Civic and pulled out the red can of diesel. “Has been since you got my Aunt Mabel killed and dragged me right back to this shithole of a town, and that harpy of a woman that calls herself my mother.”
I swallowed hard, shaking my head despite the pain, the rocks digging into my cheek. “Your Aunt Mabel? I didn’t even know you had an Aunt Mabel.”
He turned back to me, canister in hand. “Well, guess you do now.” He set the fuel down next to me and reached down for my hair again.
I tried to scramble away from him, but I was too slow.
He grabbed hold of my hair and began to drag me into a sitting position.
“Derrick!” I screamed, grabbing hold of his hand so he wouldn’t rip my hair out by the roots. “Stop!” I sat there, panting in pain as he set the diesel down next to me.
“Now,” he said, nudging it over the rocks towards me with a foot, “you’re going to pour this over yourself. So you can understand what pain is like.”
I just looked down at the can of fuel, eyeing it through my tears. “Fuck you, Derrick. I don’t even know what this is about!”
“Does it matter?” he asked, nearly spitting the words at me.
“Of course it matters! Why wouldn’t it?”
He sneered. “You know what? I guess you’re right. I want you to know exactly why I’m doing this.” He crouched down in front of me. “Aunt Mabel was going to be your substitute. She was the lady who died in the car accident on the way to your school last winter.”
I blinked slowly, the pain encompassing the entirety of my body. I shifted a little, not understanding, and a fiery streak of agony shot through my neck and scalp.
“What?” I asked, trying to shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
I remembered the accident that happened all those months ago. I’d been sick with the flu and couldn’t go into work. They’d called in a substitute, and some kind of accident had happened.
“Aunt Mabel was my mother’s sister,” he said, his colder-than-winter eyes staring into mine, “and was taking care of her. I was paying her, even. But sometimes she subbed at your school. When she died, there was no one to take care of my mother, so I had to come back.”
I fluttered my eyelids a little. “Okay.”
“I never told you about what my parents did to me, did I?” he asked as he grabbed the front of his shirt and began to pull it up so I could see his chest. Little circular scars covered his chest and abdomen. Puckered, tight rings of scar tissue all over. Cigarette burns.
I winced, reaching out a shaky hand to him.
“They’d put their smokes out on me when I was bad in school. When I mouthed off at home. When I was good in school, or didn’t mouth off. Or because the day ended in ‘y.’ Said it was to get the demons out, Becks.”
I didn’t know how to feel. This madman, one of my oldest friends, had just spent the last few months terrorizing me in secret, and the last couple hours making my life hell right out in the open. He’d framed my godfather, tried to blow up the man I loved, and was holding me now at gunpoint.
But, deep down in those dark eyes of his, I could see the Derrick I’d met that first day at ERHS. How timid and weird he’d been at first. How edgy he was that all the other kids were worried about it. But, ultimately, how harmless he’d really been. I ran my finger over one of the scars and traced the puckered edges of the ring.
He slapped my hand away and pulled his shirt back down, covering the countless rings of damaged tissue on his chest. Harmless back then, at least.
I pulled my hand back, but I didn’t divert my eyes. I couldn’t look away.
“Understand now? You brought me back here, you bitch. I’d gotten away from this place. I had a girl, I had a good job. Now I’m stuck here waiting for that old bitch to die. Having to wait on her hand and foot, having to wait for her to just expire from this world. But she’s so hate-filled, Becks, I know she won’t be going for a long, long time. She’s going to stick around and make sure my life stays a living hell.”
I slumped into myself, my posture collapsing forward as I let out a deep sigh of regret. “Oh, Derrick,” I groaned. “I had no idea it was that bad for you. If I had, maybe Uncle Zeke or I could have done something.”
“Well, guess what,” he said, climbing back to his feet and grabbing the diesel can. He set it down in front of me. “You can.”
I looked down at the can and looked back up at him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Pour it on yourself,” he said as he pulled Matthew’s handgun from the back of his jeans, “or I put a bullet in your head with your little boyfriend’s gun. We’ll see how easy he can get out of that one.”
I shuddered at the thought. Would they go after him for something like that? Would he end up being cell mates with Uncle Zeke when it was all said and done?
Derrick pointed the gun at me.
I stared up into the black hole of existence that was the barrel of Matthew’s pistol.
Non-existence hid somewhere down there, down at the very beginning of it. Non-existence measured in just a few grams of lead.
I swallowed hard. It was either I do it myself, or he did it for me and blamed it all on the best man I’d ever known. In retrospect, it wasn’t that hard of a choice. I reached out for the canister of diesel.
Figured I was dead either way. Might as well save Matthew the time spent talking to Sheriff Peak.
Not a hard choice at all.