Because You Exist(73)

Maybe they were dead.

A strange, strangled noise came from Jo. I looked up to see that she was crying. She ran a hand under her nose and went over to the paper towel dispenser. She returned with a wad of the stiff, brown paper. She wet the end of a towel and began to wipe Randall’s blood from my face. Then she dried it. She unzipped her hoodie and handed it to me. I didn’t even feel weird putting it on. Her hoodie was always big on her, so it actually fit me. It covered the blood that now stained my shirt.

Not my blood of course.

The blood of the man who thought my life was worth more than his.

Did he even know me?

I wasn’t a man.

I was a bully.

I was a cheater.

I was a liar.

And I should feel bad about all of these things. But I just couldn’t.

I didn’t feel anything.

Jo wiped the tears from her face and closed her eyes. Getting herself together. She intertwined her fingers with mine and pulled me out of the bathroom. When we were out in the hallway, the heart of the place that would never let us be together, that wouldn’t let me be the man she needed me to be, she looked up at me. Her hand pressed against my cheek. She moved in closer to me.

I closed my eyes.

I felt the tiniest bit of something stir within me.

Longing.

The team was waiting for us. Right there in the hallways. They could be anywhere. Privileged. We had a key to the building. I’d almost forgotten about them. The plan. My last act of selfishness. I didn’t agree to this to save her. I agreed to it to save me. To protect the life, the power, I so cherished. I wasn’t half human. Whatever that meant.

There was no humanity anywhere in me.

Jo wrenched her hand from my face. She looked from the team then back up to me. But I had nothing to offer her. I wasn’t going to help her. I was going to ruin her. I had to. Alec stepped up to us. He nodded towards the bathroom. “You are one sick dude, Middleton. One last go, huh?”

Logan,” Jo whispered. She was pleading with me.

Her whisper reached that place that was starting to feel.

I couldn’t let it.

“There’s no point fighting it, Jo. We don’t need to fight anymore,” I said.

As Alec and the others surrounded her she didn’t fight. She didn’t call out.

I’d broken her.

They pushed her to the floor. Two of then bent down and held her arms. They didn’t have to. She wasn’t moving. The rest of them moved in greedily. They pulled out a variety of writing utensils. Pens. Permanent markers. Sharpies. They marked her.

Loser.

Whore.

Witch.

Lesbian.

Freak.

Traitor.

Boyfriend Stealer.

I just watched, pressing my back against the lockers.

They circled every visible scar.

They pulled her up and marched her outside. I followed. Numbly. No matter how much they jeered at her, she didn’t say anything back.

She had no voice anymore.

I’d murdered it.

They took the rope and tied her the flagpole. They wouldn’t wait with her till morning. That wasn’t part of the deal. They’d leave her there shivering in the cold night air. Waiting for the rest of the wolves to descend. They’d all show up. They’d see her. They’d laughed at all the horrible things written over her body, all the things they’d thought about her for years.

All the things I helped them think.

This is what Randall died for.

So, I could become this.

I pulled her cell phone from my pocket. Alec took it from her earlier and gave it to me. Why? I wasn’t sure. I dialed Bentham’s number.

I moved into the shadows, still keeping an eye on the girl tied up like some statue of a woman on the mast of a ship. Like that poem. The one where the captain of the ship doesn’t listen when the old man warns of the storm. The captain thinks he can control the elements. When the storm hits the captain ties his daughter to the mast so she doesn’t get knocked around. But then he dies. And she’s left alone. She dies too. Frozen to that damn mast.

I told Bentham Jo needed him. He sounded tired. He told me he’d get there as soon as he could. I wondered if he had told Randall’s wife yet. About how he died for nothing. Nothing important at all.

The darkness turned into dawn. Just as it always does.

But everything had changed.

The crowd gathered. They pointed. They laughed.

Scary Carrie.

Life intimating art and all that crap.

I still never moved.

I did what I did best. I watched.

“Tell me you had nothing to do with this?” Jenna asked me, horrified. But she knew I did. I could tell by the way she looked at me.

I shrugged.

“But why? Why would you do this, Logan?”

I shrugged again.

“You use to stare at her all the time,” she continued, her voice catching with emotion. If I looked back at her again I knew I’d see her crying.