False Idols: A Dark College Romance, page 6
Why the fuck didn’t we go there that night instead of Bloom Point?
So fucking stupid. Stupid fucking goddamn-
“That little bitch is here!” My mother’s whisper may as well be a scream. I see her the second my mother does. Nevaeh. She’s walking with a girl I’ve never seen before. A little blonde thing that’s arm and arm with her. I frown. She’s supposed to be alone. Not with a friend. What the fuck is this? But then I see Pastor Mike and two dipshits I remember following me around in youth group.
“Pastor Mike is with her,” I observe. I tuck my hands in the pockets of the pressed slacks I have on. I look like a fucking rich douche. Like I did before I got locked up with murderers and became one too. I found my way, though and earned my respect. If they saw me dressed like this, they would gut me and I would let them. Doesn’t matter though, it’s a disguise that works as good as the dark hood The Reaper hides behind. That’s all I remember seeing from that night. A hooded figure, something that looked like a robe, slamming into me on my way down the path after Carrie. She was supposed to just be taking a piss but then I heard her scream and I knew something was wrong. I was drunk though, high too, and I fell more than I didn’t in the dark trying to find her. The Reaper ran right into me then and knocked me on my ass, covering me in Carrie’s blood.
I thought I was going to marry her and he covered me in her blood. My hands curl at my sides and anger rises up in me but then my mother steps in front of me and clucks her tongue at the sight of Pastor Mike and the bitch that put me away.
“She has some fucking nerve showing up here. I thought they took that scholarship away from her.”
I nod. “I know.”
My mother sighs and shakes her head. “I can’t believe you’re forgiving her.”
I say the words I practiced a million times when there was nothing to do but pace my cell and look at Nevaeh’s photos. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Beside us the camera crew van is pulling up. The brakes squeal when they come to a stop and I know it’s showtime. My mother may be kicking up a fuss at Nevaeh being here, but we need her here. It wouldn’t work without her.
“She was just a kid,” I add.
My father makes a noncommittal grunt. “It’s very admirable of you son. I’m proud of you.”
“So am I,” my mother sniffs and hugs me. “My poor baby.”
I pat her shoulder and let her hug me and sniffle into my shirt, but I don’t look away from Nevaeh. I can’t look away, because she’s smiling. I watch as she smiles, as her lush lips curve up, before I see the white flash of her teeth when she laughs. Sunlight warms her skin and bounces off her dark hair. It shines, hints of red and gold show and I want to fucking touch her. God. How many hours did I stare at my shitty printed out photos of her?
Nothing compares to the real fucking thing, even if she’s a hundred feet away from me. I want to get closer, but my mother won’t let go and the camera crew and news reporter are talking to my father.
“There she is!” The news reporter chirps and points at Nevaeh. I want to slap her hand away. I don’t want anyone else looking at Nevaeh but me. I waited a long fucking time for this, but I stay where I am. Still as a statue and with a dumb as fuck kid smile on my face, like everything is perfectly fine and the girl that I’ve thought about for four years isn’t walking so close I can hear the tone of her voice.
“Are you ready?” The reporter is getting mic’d up or something, but I don’t pay much attention. I just nod and say the line they expect with an easy going smile.
“Of course I am. I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time.”
“Well, wait no longer! Come with me, young man.” The reporter takes off across the green like they own the place and heads straight for Nevaeh. Adrenaline hits my body. I’m so fucking close to her. I want her to look at me. I fucking need her to. I’ve looked at her for so long, not having her eyes on me makes me want to break something. I want to fucking kill everyone she looks at.
“Excuse me! Miss Santiago! Miss Santiago!” The reporter has her hand up and is waving down Nevaeh’s group. I don’t miss the way Nevaeh’s big brown eyes get bigger and she looks like she’s going to faint.
I notice the second she sees me.
“Can we get a moment of your time?”
Nevaeh’s eyes are on me and it’s like the first hit of a drug. Like the first sip of liquor after a long fucking day. That burn is perfect. It hurts in the best possible way and I smile at her. She looks like she’s going to throw up.
Good. I hope she fucking gets sick all over her fucking self. The bitch.
She falls back a step and grabs onto the girl walking with her. Nevaeh looks just the way I imagined her. Terrified and trapped. My little liar wants to run, but she’s got nowhere to go. Not in broad daylight with a reporter shoving a microphone in her face and my parents standing with me. Even if we weren’t here, she’d be surrounded. I see the looks from the students that recognize her. The ones that knew me. They look at me with a mix of admiration and pity. I can almost hear their whispers.
“He didn’t deserve that.”
“He was such a nice guy.”
I’m not a fucking nice guy. Not anymore.
I smile at Nevaeh and ignore the reporter that’s firing questions off at her like a sniper. Honestly, I don’t even know what she’s asking Nevaeh, because I can’t look anywhere but at Nevaeh’s face. She’s beautiful. I didn’t think that before, not before I spent hours, days…fucking years, staring at her pictures. I’ve memorized every curve and dip of her. The way her hair looks in the sun, the depth of brown of her eyes, the way she tans in the summer. I know it all.
She’s mine.
But even if I hadn’t, there’s no denying the beauty she grew into from the gangly teenager that used to sweep my floors. She was awkward then, knobby kneed with baby fat on her face and clothes that didn’t fit right.
But now?
Now she’s fresh faced with curves that I want to bruise. She’s fucking perfect.
“Beau?” She whispers and I feel that whisper hit me like a knife to the chest. It’s work to keep a pleasant smile on my face. All I want to do is cross the space between us and shove the reporter and cameraman away from her. I want to drag her inside where no one is going to see us and make her pay for what she did to me, but it’s then that I realize something.
For four fucking years I’ve spent my days and nights thinking about this moment. Staring at Nevaeh’s photo until the after image of it is burned into my eyes. Even when I tried to sleep, she was there. Always, my beautiful, perfect, fucking liar was there, just out of reach. But now she’s not. Now she’s fucking not and something happened to me while I was locked away with the ghost of Nevaeh haunting me, because it really is true what they say.
It’s a thin line between love and hate, and I’ve blurred that line until I can barely see it.
I don’t know if I want to fuck her or kill her.
Motherfucker.
6
NEVAEH
I’ve thought of Beau Du Pont every moment since the day I put him in prison. I didn’t eat for that whole week because every time I thought of Beau, I threw up, which just made me think of that night again. I stopped eating so there was nothing to throw up and it took my mom bringing down the kids from my youth group to pray over me for me to eat anything and keep it down. I really only gave in then because I was embarrassed to see them in my room unexpectedly with pity in their eyes.
I ate then and eventually was able to think of Beau without getting sick. Right now I’m glad I haven’t eaten the pizza we were about to get, because I have zero doubts that I would have thrown up all over Sunny.
“Beau?” I can’t believe he’s here, but there he is. Plain as day and even more beautiful than I remember him. He’s so much more grown up than I remember. Before, he had boyish looks and the kind of charm that a nineteen year old boy had when you were fifteen and didn’t know shit about the world. I thought the sun rose because Beau Du Pont told it to, then. But that never changed. It can’t have, with the way my heart feels like it’s going a million miles an hour.
“Can we ask you a few questions, Ms. Santiago?” There’s a microphone in my face and I jump back in surprise from the reporter that I forgot about for the split second that my eyes met Beau’s. He’s smiling at me. Why is he smiling at me?
I don’t deserve him to be smiling at me with the fall sun high in the sky and making him look like my dreams come true. His dark hair is slightly longer now than the way he kept it when he was in high school, but it looks good. There’s product in it, just enough to keep it swept away from his face. I’d have given anything to touch his hair. His face is more angular now, jawline sharp and strong with a hit of stubble there that wasn’t around before. He’s bigger, too. Beau was always bigger than me, but now?
Now he feels like a mountain with broad shoulders that pull the material of his dress shirt tight and his trousers fit to a tee. Even with the changes that make him look like a man with just a hint of the boy I loved, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed.
His eyes.
At least…almost. Beau’s eyes are a beautifully clear kind of blue that makes me think of the sea. They look the same, but the longer I stare at him, I see there’s something else there that wasn’t before. A hardness that’s there and gone in a flash when the camera swings his way.
“We are here with Beau Du Pont and his family on Bloom State’s Move In Day, but this day is so much more than that. This perfect autumn day is when Bloom's very own confronts the girl that helped put him away, in a case that rocked our small community and stole four years of his life.”
That’s the bucket of ice water I need to snap back to reality and I fall back a step. Sunny follows close and Pastor Mike comes up to the reporter. “Now, now, miss. I think there’s been a misunderstanding-” he starts, but the reporter isn’t letting up.
“Ms. Santiago, what do you have to say for the role you played in Beau Du Pont’s wrongful conviction?”
“I-I-” I stammer and the words won’t come. I’ve had a recurring nightmare where this happens. Where I’m dragged out in front of everybody and have to account for my sins, but I could never find my voice then and I can’t find it now either. I look at Beau. “I’m sorry.”
“You put my boy away for a murder he didn’t commit and that’s all you have to say for yourself?” Mrs. Du Pont is there beside the reporter and her eyes, the ones that are identical to Beau’s, are angry. She looks mean as a snake and I know she’d slap me if there wasn’t a camera crew filming the whole thing.
“Mrs. Du Pont-”
“Mama, I forgive her. We went over this.” Beau’s voice. My heart squeezes and stutters at the sound of Beau’s voice. I’ve tried to remember what it sounded like, but it’s not like I had any recordings. The only ones I could find when I looked were his trial and questioning. I couldn’t watch either of them. Over the years, I’ve almost forgotten what he sounded like, but this is right. It’s like a key sliding into a lock and everything just clicks.
Beau looks at me and there’s an apologetic look on his handsome face. “You didn’t know they’d be here, did you?” he asks and glances at the reporter. “Your mama was supposed to have told you. I’m sorry, Nevaeh. I wouldn’t have let them do this if you weren’t okay with the interview.”
“Interview?” I ask and look around because yes, this is an interview. The reporter is there with her dumb microphone and the camera man shows no sign of letting up. There’s even one of those sound guys that has the big stick with the fuzzy microphone on one end. I can see two other television vans pull up and a second later reporters and more cameramen hop out and start heading our way.
“I didn’t know anything about an interview.” I shake my head and back away, I bump into Tyler and he jumps away from me, but Sunny is right there and grabs my hand. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I c-can’t.”
I turn to try and run before the other reporters get to us, but the one that’s already there shouts after me. “And what about the school revoking your scholarship? What are your plans for college?”
That stops me.
The scholarship.
I’ve been kicked out of my house. The scholarship is the only thing I have. I can’t lose it, I can’t! If I do, I don’t know how I’ll afford Bloom State. I was a good enough student and did all the right things, but I didn’t apply for any other financial aid because I didn’t have to. I had the scholarship trust waiting on me, so it seemed unnecessary. I should have known it wasn’t going to work out.
“What do you mean?” I force myself to go back. The reporter knows she has me from the smug look on her face and I hate that I have to ask her. I’m so tired of people forcing me to do what they want. First it was the questioning when things started to fall apart and I didn’t know what I had seen. Why was Beau there? Why did he grab me? I hadn’t seen a knife, so maybe it hadn’t been him, right? That had been before the detectives. I don’t remember a lot of what I said then, but it cost me Beau and my fucking conscience.
“What did you say about my scholarship?”
“Bloom State has made a motion to revoke your trust and forfeit your scholarship.”
I hear Pastor Mike make an indignant sound. “On what grounds?” He sounds angry. Poor man. I don’t know why he’s defending me. No one should.
“On a morality clause issue, given Ms. Santiago’s part in what happened to Beau. Her presence on campus could prove to be nothing but a distraction to the student body and a reminder of that horrible night.”
Pastor Mike sweeps me behind him and confronts the reporter and the Du Pont’s head on. “No, I don’t accept that-”
Mr. Du Pont nods and holds a hand up, stopping whatever it is that Pastor Mike is going to try and convince them of. We all know what I did, so it can’t be my innocence. “Now Pastor, we respect your authority at Crown of Thorns. That’s what part of this is about.”
“I think the school is right. She should lose her scholarship.” Mrs. Du Pont’s eyes on me are sharp as ever. “She can stay if she can pay her own way. It’s only fair, with what she’s done to our family.”
Pastor Mike doesn’t back down. “That’s not true. She’s just a girl, you have to forgive her!”
I open my mouth to tell him they’re right. That it’s okay and can he please help me move my shit out of my dorm, but everyone starts talking at once. A camera flash goes off and that’s when I realize the other crews are here.
“Excuse me, Nevaeh, can we get a photo for the paper?” There’s another flash and it’s hard to focus. I can hear Mrs. Du Pont’s sharp voice and when there’s more camera flashes, her blue eyes are the only thing I can see. Her look tells me everything I need to know. If she could kill me, she would do it.
“I’m sorry, I have to go.” I turn and try to get away, but I run right into one of the reporters. I don’t know if this one is new or if it was the one that was talking to me, but her microphone hits me in the chest and I have to back off.
A voice rises up out of everyone. “Do you really think you’re going to be forgiven for what you did?”
I go still but Sunny catches my arm and glares at the person that spoke. “Let’s get out of here, Nev.”
“Yeah, okay.” We start to push out of the crowd and I’m thankful Pastor Mike is there. He helps clear a way, but we aren’t going anywhere fast. Not with the crews and reporters shouting questions at our backs. That’s when I hear Beau.
“I have,” Beau blurts out, cutting everyone off.
“Are you saying that you’ve forgiven the girl that put you behind bars for the murder of your girlfriend?”
My gut twists. I know I shouldn’t be paying more attention to the fact that Carrie was called Beau’s girlfriend than their mention of what I did to him. I should not feel upset about the mention of Carrie. That’s sick.
“That’s right,” Beau says and I look over my shoulder at him. He’s standing in the circle that’s formed out of everyone, his family at his back. Tyler and Jared are awkwardly to the side and the reporters, journalists, and their crews have fanned out around us, blocking us in. Students and their families have started to gather. Some close by and others further back, but everyone is watching what’s happening. Everyone in Bloom is going to know about today, even if they weren’t here, they’ll know. I look at Beau because I’d rather look at him than anyone else. I don’t know how he manages to stand at the center of it looking unaffected. I feel like I’m going to pass out.
“I’ve forgiven her,” he says and looks around at the group of people before his eyes come to me. “And I don’t want you to lose your scholarship. It wasn’t your fault.” The amount of camera clicks and flashes that go off when he says that are insane. A half dozen microphones swing his way and Beau keeps talking, raising his voice as he does and takes a step in my direction.
“You were just a kid,” he says and gives me a warm smile. “I know you didn’t mean it. We’ve all made mistakes and one shouldn’t define the rest of your life, Nevaeh.”
“And what do you think about her presence on campus?”
“I think Nevaeh should be here. It’s fitting that we go on this journey together. I am personally going to visit with the school board and trustees to ensure that her scholarship remains intact. If Nevaeh goes, I go.”
There’s a few gasps and my mouth falls open. I can’t believe he just said that. I don’t move, I can’t move while I watch him approach. Beau doesn’t stop walking and comes right up to me.
When he extends a hand to me, I have to let go of Sunny to take it. Then it’s just us.
“Nevaeh is staying right here with me at Bloom State,” Beau goes on, voice still loud enough for everyone to hear. Then my dream man, the man I’ve loved since I was fifteen, the man that I thought of every day for the past four years and wondered what did I do? How could it have been me that put him away? That same man leans in close and it’s like all my dreams are coming true. In those daydreams, Beau kisses me. He holds me close and tells me that he loves me, that he always has and that he’s thought of nothing but me. It’s a perfect fairytale after a nightmare. I hold my breath, don’t dare move while Beau comes closer and the cameras flash and record around us.
