Because You Exist (8 page)

Chapter 13

When I came to I was lying on the locker room floor. I didn’t have time to ponder how many germs I would probably pick up laying on the floor where thirty teenage males sweated and spit five days a week.  Instead, I closed my eyes and felt the cold tile underneath my hands, and I wanted to cry at the familiarity of it all. This was a world I understood. This was a world where I felt in control. That other world, the future that belonged to every person I saw and spoke to on a daily basis, would never make sense to me.

I had just watched a man die.

A man Josephine had killed.

Josephine.

At the thought of the girl who saved my life, a girl who scared the living crap out of me, I scrambled to my feet. I quickly splashed some water on my face and made sure no trace of post-shift blood was left under my nose. Without wasting another second, I ran out of the locker room.

I had no intention of returning to football practice.

One dark. One light.

I was beginning to understand exactly what that meant. It meant that Josephine and I were partnered for a reason. Even despite our differences. Maybe because of our differences.  Considering her capacity to kill, I knew I needed Josephine to survive the future world, and she needed me to survive this one.

I ran as fast as I could to the school’s main building. I was still covered in the dirt and sweat from my experiences in bizarro land. I suspected the same held true for Josephine. Which meant she was more than likely drenched in the blood of the man she killed, and she didn’t have her hoodie to cover up. While most of the school liked to imagine Scary Carrie bathed herself in blood every night, it would be a little hard for her to explain walking out of the school bathroom in a track uniform covered in blood that didn’t belong to her.

That wasn’t the only reason I ran to find her. I remembered the tears that fell down her cheeks. Something in her shattered when she killed that man. I was glad she felt something. If she could have killed him without feeling anything, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

I had my hand on the bathroom door when I realized I didn’t have anything to cover Josephine up with either. I was still in my practice jersey and having Josephine walk around in that didn’t seem too evasive either. There were still a lot of students and teachers around for after school activities, and the sight of her wearing my clothes would really make the rumors start to fly. I turned around and ran into the gym where I knew the cheerleaders were practicing.

I was taking a risk.

But I trusted Jenna to trust me. To know I loved her. To understand no one would mean anything to me besides her. Because I knew how this would look.

When I finally reached Jenna I had to catch my breath before I was able to speak. As I put my hands on my knees and struggled for normalcy, Jenna sauntered over to me with a grin.

“Just couldn’t wait to see me. Could you? I’m starting to think you might be addicted to me.” Jenna was using her fake snob voice. She had picked it up from watching hours and hours of
Gossip Girl
and every version of
Bring It On
that ever existed. There’s a lot boyfriends will put up with to get a little action.

“I...I need...I need your sweatshirt,” I stammered.

Jenna’s grin faded. “Are you all right? What are you really doing here, Logan? Coach is going to kill you.” Coach was going to kill me. Jenna was smart enough to know my football schedule, and also know that missing a single minute of it would mean suicide runs all week.

I took a deep breath. “I need your sweatshirt. Well, Scary Carrie does. I can’t explain right now. I just need it, Jenna.”

Without a word Jenna turned from me and went to retrieve her sweatshirt.

I was running out of time. I could just feel it. Would Josephine know I was coming for her? I couldn’t see her thinking well enough of me to think that I would.

“Is Josephine all right?” she asked, handing me the sweatshirt.

That wasn’t a question I could answer. “I’ll call you later,” I replied, and gave Jenna a quick kiss on the cheek.

I didn’t bother calling out to see if anyone was in the girls bathroom before I entered it. I figured if there were someone in there the whole school would be crawling with police by now.

“Josephine,” I called out. My voice sounded desperate. Part of me needed her to be able to keep it together until we got out of here, but there was another part of me that needed to see proof again that she felt something over the man’s death. This was real life. Not a movie. I needed her to understand consequences.

I need there to still be consequences.

The door to one of the bathroom stalls slowly opened and Josephine stepped out. I almost lost it at the sight of her. Her face was once again a mask of indifference. Her hair was wildly out of place. Dirt covered her arms; her tank top covered with blood.

I reached out my hand for her. She looked down at it and then back up at me. She shook her head slightly.  She didn’t want to be touched, and I could understand that. I held out the sweatshirt for her. She pulled it over her head without a question. I moved to the sink and turned on the water. Josephine stepped up to it and washed off her face. Even with the sweatshirt and the dirt off her face, Josephine looked like hell.

“Ready?” I asked.

She nodded.

I pushed open the bathroom door and began to speed walk down the hall. I just needed to get her out of there. And quickly. The less people who saw me escorting a frazzled Scary Carrie through the hallways the better. We almost made it the entire distance to my car without anyone seeing us. Almost.

If I had been using my brain at all I would have realized the reason the hallways were empty was because most after school activities had ended during the five minutes I was in the bathroom. There was no one in the hallways because they were all in the parking lot.

“What the hell, Middleton? Do you know what coach is going to do to you?” Alec’s face was flushed with anger as he called out to me across the parking lot. A few of the drama club kids and band geeks stopped to watch.

“I had to take care of something,” I yelled back.

Entirely wrong thing to say. Alec’s eyes looked from me to a very disheveled Scary Carrie. Alec clenched his jaw and looked Josephine up and down in disgust.

“I think we’re going to have to have a discussion about your after school activities, Middleton.”

“Sure. But not today.” I pushed past Alec and only turned around once to make sure Josephine was still following. It was hard to ignore how many people had stopped to stare at the two of us walking to my car. I knew how it looked, and I knew the rumors were going to be in full swing tomorrow.

I wasn’t prepared for Jenna who was waiting for me by my car. I felt my throat close up at the sight of her. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either.

Jenna looked from me to Josephine and back to me again. Her smile was pulled tight. I knew what it meant. She was struggling to remain civil despite whatever she was really feeling on the inside. Jenna always believed in manners first.

“Um. Jenna. Look. I gotta take Josephine home.”

So far I wasn’t lying. I knew Josephine had her own car, but I didn’t think now was a very good time for her to be driving.

“Are you all right, Jo?” Jenna asked. I wondered when and how Jenna had earned the privilege of calling her Jo. I never saw the two even talk to each other. Maybe it was something left over from their childhood.

“Thanks for letting me use your sweatshirt,” Josephine replied. How she knew it was Jenna’s I had no idea.

Jenna nodded. “No problem.”

Jenna looked around her and crossed her arms. If there was one thing Jenna avoided it was being part of the rumor mill. She didn’t spread rumors, nor was she really ever the center of one. That certainly wasn’t the case anymore.

“Call me later, Logan? I mean as soon as you can,” she said, looking up at me and letting me know sooner would be much better than later.

I nodded. Jenna walked away from me without another word.

“Where do you live?” I asked Josephine as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“I can’t go home like this,” she quietly replied. “Just drop me off at a Walmart or something so I can get cleaned up.”

“Nonsense. Just tell me where you live.”

“I can’t go home!” Josephine was rocking back and forth in her seat and her fists were pressed against her eyes. She went from zero emotions to crazy faster than I could turn on my turn signal.

“Fine.”

I figured since it would be a few hours before my uncle got home for work, I could take Josephine to my house. He was never home before eight. He always walked in with some story about a client needing him or a call that took too long. It used to really bother me when I was little, but I learned to stop asking for excuses a long time ago. He always came home with takeout and didn’t expect me to do chores. I was pretty lucky. I guess.

Josephine and I didn’t talk anymore during the short drive to my house. Which was a good thing and a bad thing. Good because I wasn’t quite sure how to talk about the whole her taking a human life thing, and bad because it left me time to think about the hell that would await me at school in the morning.

Josephine silently followed me into my house. She was back to being emo girl. I could only imagine what she was thinking as she saw the inside of my house. She had a tendency to mock everything, and I knew my house was mock-worthy. It was much too big for only two people. Leather couches. Large screen television on the wall surrounded by a Bose sound system. A hideously large fish tank embedded in the wall. Then there was all the religious stuff. Old bibles. Painting after painting of fallen angels and the death of Christ. Large wooden crosses. Whenever anyone asked my uncle about the décor he told them it was meant to be ironic.

Even I had to admit it was a tad bit weird.

If Josephine wanted to mock it all she kept it to herself. She followed me silently up to my room. If she was any other girl I might have been embarrassed by the state of it, but she wasn’t any other girl. Lucinda, our maid, wasn’t scheduled to come till Sunday. I always found some way to create a war zone in my room before her visits. Now it was covered with dirty clothes and empty fast food bags. Jenna never liked to hang out at my house, so I never felt a need to keep my room clean. She didn’t particularly enjoy my uncle’s company. My uncle didn’t have any tact, and Jenna always thought out her words carefully.

“Nice room,” Josephine said dully.

“Thanks. The bathroom is over here. If you want to go get cleaned up. I’ll find you something to wear.”

“Try and find something clean. I’m not really down with smelling like whatever goes on in this room.”

At least she was acting a little more like herself.

When I heard the bathroom door close I began to rummage through my closest. What does one wear after shooting someone in the chest? Settling on an old Shepherd Middle School t-shirt I found in the corner of my closest, a shirt I wouldn’t mind never getting back, I waited for Josephine to get done.

When I heard the shower turn on I took a seat on my bed. I wouldn’t be a male if my mind didn’t momentarily wander to thinking about the fact that there was a girl naked in my shower. Jenna had never even used my shower. But I only thought about this for a moment.

When the shower turned off I waited by the bathroom door, the old t-shirt in my hand. The door cracked open and an arm shot out. I placed the t-shirt in her waiting hand. After clutching onto it, Josephine slammed the door shut and I heard it lock.

Like I would try and go in there.

After a few more minutes, Josephine appeared. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. Her face was flushed from the warm water. The t-shirt fit a little snugly against her chest. And I was staring. And she caught me staring. Josephine frowned and pulled Jenna’s sweatshirt back over her head.

“Your bathroom is disgusting. I mean really disgusting. You need a shower to clean yourself up from taking a shower in that bathroom,” said Josephine.

“Thanks. It takes a lot of effort to create a natural disaster in one’s own home,” I replied.

“There’s nothing natural about what’s going on in there,” she countered.

“So...we going to talk about it?” I was starting to become a little uncomfortable with Josephine hanging out in my room.

“Talk about what?” she asked.

The fact that you killed a man.

Josephine moved to take a seat at my desk, lifting up a crumpled issue of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue so she could sit down in the chair. “I don’t want to know how this magazine got like this,” she said, holding the magazine towards me by the corner.

“Ha. Funny,” I replied, snatching it from her hand and throwing it over my shoulder.

Josephine let free a sigh. “You wanted to talk about something?”