We Told Six Lies(78)

I look behind him, trying to find my dad, but don’t catch sight of him.

Holt looks for him, too, and seems pleased when he doesn’t see him coming.

Mom says to stay away from Holt when he gets funny, but I don’t think I can get past him. I’m faster, but he’s got longer legs, and he’s older by three years.

Holt comes two steps closer.

Then he lunges.

My head snaps up when I spot movement between the trees.

I put my head down and run, unafraid because I’m not his little brother anymore.

I made sure of that.





MOLLY


Molly shook from the cold and the fear as she hid, her back pressed against the tree.

“When I saw you and my brother together, it made me sick,” he said as he searched for her. “Here I was on the streets after the shithole my parents stuck me in closed down, and there was my fucking golden-boy brother with his happy little girlfriend. Then I decided, fuck it, you know? I’m just going to take what I should’ve always had.”

Holt rounded the tree. “I never expected to find my carbon copy, though. And yet here you are.”

Molly screamed and raced toward the van, but he was on her in an instant. He wrestled her until her back pressed against the cold metal.

“I am nothing like you,” Molly spat.

“Yes, you are. You’re as messed up as I am.” But then his eyes flashed, and for a moment, the person she’d spent these last few weeks with came back. His head dropped, and he turned his face away from her. The uncertainty and pain returned to him.

“You don’t even know my name,” he said.

“I don’t want to know it.”

“Holt,” he said, his voice gentle. “Say it.”

Molly smiled. “Blue.”

He shook his head. “No, say my real name.”

“Blue,” she said, her grin widening. “Blue, Blue, Blue. What a stupid fucking name, Blue.”

He pulled her away from the van and pushed her back against it. It hardly rattled her, but there was no mistaking the warning.

“You won’t hurt me,” she challenged.

He searched her face, and what she saw in his eyes shook her confidence.

“You care about me,” he said, delivering his own challenge. “Admit it.”

Molly leveled him with a look. “Listen to me when I tell you this. Listen very carefully. Are you listening?”

He nodded, his desperation broadcast for all the world to hear.

“I don’t care about you,” she said, her voice unwavering. “I never cared about you. Every time I touched you, I envisioned your death. Every time I sang for you, I imagined watching the life leave your body. You locked me away with no thought of what that would do to me.” Molly leaned closer. “You disgust me.”

He released her, the surprise in his eyes so profound that it stole Molly’s breath away.

She took several steps away from him, her heart leaping at the possibility of escape. But then he looked down. Said with sudden clarity, “I thought you were like me. But you’re not. You’re like him.”

When he looked up again, it wasn’t with intrigue.

It was with decisiveness.

He was going to kill her.

“Holt, wait,” she said.

Didn’t matter.

He rushed toward her.





NOW


I hear Molly. Hear her screaming.

I power toward the sound of her.

“Molly!” I roar.

Holt’s body slams into mine beside the water. His hands find my throat, and he squeezes.

“They used to love me,” he tells me.

He’s crying, and I am, too. Or I would be if I could get enough air.

I claw at his fingers, at his face, but he only clenches his hands tighter, the pressure on my neck becoming unbearable. Blackness creeps in at the corners of my vision, and I hear Holt saying, “I love you, too, but no one will love me as long as you’re here.”

I kick and thrash, but he is so much bigger than me. I don’t even fully understand death, but I know I’m crashing toward it. I know, and all I can think of is my mom. I want my mom.

I realize as I look into my brother’s face, as he cries and pushes down, that he wants my mom, too. That’s why he’s hurting me.

“I’m sorry,” he says as the world begins to fade away.

I remember a crow flying across a cloudless sky.

I remember the sound of a dog barking.

I remember the blast of my dad firing a gun into the air, and moments later, his hands ripping my brother away.

He beat him.

He beat him so badly I thought he was dead.

He beat him until my mother screamed and my aunt collapsed, and then he kicked his son once more.

Molly screams louder when she hears me coming. I see a flash of her between the trees. Someone is on top of her.

I yell her name again and run faster, and then she’s on her feet, and the person on top of her is racing in the opposite direction.

She barrels toward me, and when our bodies crash together, everything is right again for one moment in time.

“Cobain!” she screams, tears cutting streaks down her dirtied face. She’s soaking wet and freezing in my arms.