Off the Deep End (65)

I held my hand up to stop him. “I’m not sure I’m following you. So, Isaac created a fake city in a video game world where they got points for shooting the cool kids?”

He nodded.

“But it was all just a video game?”

He nodded again.

“Okay, okay.” I thought while I spoke. “That’s an awful game. Like a really awful game, and I’m horrified that Isaac would do such a thing, but it’s understandable that he has some strong feelings after the way he’s been treated.” I didn’t need to remind Mark about the texts. He’d seen them too. Or the fact that most of the kids at school hadn’t ever been all that nice to him. “Maybe it was his way of blowing off steam.”

He frantically shook his head. “It was way more than that. He and the players started doing things in the real world, Amber. Not shooting up schools, obviously, because that would’ve been all over the news, but they started being able to earn points in the game for things they’d done in real life too. They’d come back to the game and talk about what they’d done. At first, it was small. Only a handful of people. But it grew. It got bigger and bigger. Their pranks got riskier and riskier. They created lists of kids who had hurt them and started doing horrible things to them, like shitting in their lockers. Flattening their tires in the parking lot. Spray-painting their cars. One of them even started a fire in someone’s backyard. It was like this underground world of rejected kids who took it upon themselves to punish the people that were hurting them.”

I rubbed my face with my hands, trying to make sense of what he was telling me, but I couldn’t make the pieces fit. “But I don’t know how Isaac would’ve been involved in any of that. He never even left the house unless it was to walk the dog or visit Jules. For a while, he wasn’t even going to school.”

“Yeah, but that was the thing. None of his followers knew that. They all thought he had. Isaac made up all these stories of the things he did to fight back against his tormentors. Most of what the others did were ideas he’d given them that he either told them he’d done himself or he made up. They practically worshipped him. He was the lord of their world.”

“Are you sure?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around any of this. None of it fit.

“Yes, I was right there in the middle of it all. It was like some sick and twisted version of the Hunger Games. I made up stories the same way he did. The same way they all did. I told myself that maybe everyone was just making it up. But then people started posting pictures about what they’d done, and that’s when it got really scary.” He looked stricken.

This was too much. What was happening? Isaac had never been violent. And then I quickly remembered all the times in the last three months that he had. Maybe I didn’t know Isaac any more than I knew Mark.

“There was this dark shift that happened right around that time. They moved from talking about things they’d do to people’s stuff and started discussing what they’d do to their bodies. All these disturbed fantasies of torturing them before killing them. It was awful, and I never said a word to anyone. Not even you.” Guilt contorts his every feature. “I wanted to tell you, but I was too afraid you’d get all confrontational with him about it and push him even further way, and I just didn’t want to do that to him. I’m sorry.” He hung his head. “It wasn’t the right thing to do, but I thought if he trusted me as his friend, then I could talk him out of it. As long as I was in his inner circle, then I would know what he was doing, and I swear, Jules, the moment it looked like he was going to actually hurt another person, I would’ve stepped in and done something. But then he was just gone.”

He stopped. There was no denying he was reliving the moment it finally sank in that Isaac wasn’t coming home that night. I felt it in my guts too. He’d been the one to call the police department and say the words that changed our world forever: I need to report a missing boy.

His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he wrestled to speak. “I thought the Dog Snatcher took him. I really did.” His voice cracked. Tears flowed down his cheeks. “And a part of me? This small secret part of me . . . was glad. I know that’s so awful. You can’t say something like that about your child. But I just kept thinking what if that was the universe’s way of keeping him from hurting other people?” He put his hands over his mouth like he wanted to shove the truth back inside.

But he couldn’t. The truth was out. There was no taking it back. It settled like a cold stone in my gut.

“Has anyone . . . has anyone . . .” My voice lowered automatically, but I was still having a hard time saying it. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Has anyone hurt anyone or done anything else yet?”

“Not that I know of, but I’m so nervous someone will that I don’t even know what to do. I’ve been obsessively logging on to the game every day to monitor the activity, and so far, there’s been nothing. I’ve also been checking to see if Isaac’s logged on, too, obviously.”

“Has he?”

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I heard from him?”

“You didn’t tell me this,” I snapped without thinking. I wanted to be mad at him. I really did, but I couldn’t be too angry with him. After all, he wasn’t the only one with secrets about Isaac.