That playful demeanor Daggett had sort of fizzled and his lips drooped into a frown. He walked a few steps away, found a milk crate, and sat down on it. “Cora saved my life,” he began. “She found me with a bullet lodged in my body, and I’d be dead if she hadn’t gotten me help. But I was willing to die that night if I had to. My best friend was killed right in front of me, and if I had stood there and didn’t fight, I’d never be able to live with myself.”
I wasn’t expecting this to get so heavy. I walked closer and leaned against the refrigerators with the milk inside. “Your best friend was killed?”
He nodded. “Kerry was his name. We met at Aga’s compound a couple of years back.” Before I could ask who Aga was, he said, “Aga was Brinly’s grandpa. He ran the place before he was murdered by Paul.” Cora had probably told me about him, but she has a habit of rambling and I tend to tune her out.
Daggett exhaled deeply. “Kerry and I were supposed to go someplace safe since it was a full moon, but all hell broke loose and we tried our best to help. It was the first time I could feel myself actually making decisions when I was in my other form. It was the same with Kerry too.” Daggett dropped his head low and shook it. “I don’t know how I was able to live through my injuries, but he couldn’t.”
“Life’s a bitch like that. Someone could get shot five times and be fine, and other people could drink too much cough medicine and slip into a coma. None of it makes sense.”
“Such is life, right?”
“You’re not, like, feeling guilty, are you?”
“About what? That if I hadn’t decided to play hero, my best friend may not have been shot to death?” I was usually a fan of sarcasm, but I didn’t like it used this way. This was just depressing.
“At least you did something. You’d probably feel a lot more guilt if, as you said, you just stood by and did nothing.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“It’s not like you’re the one that killed him.”
“I know that. I just often wonder why I was the one that lived and not him.”
I breathed in deeply. “If I tell you something, will you promise to keep your mouth shut?”
“Okay.”
I slid another milk crate across the floor toward him and then plopped down on it. “The guy whose head was thrown at me at the party? After he died, I spent a year or more writing back and forth letters with his mom.”
Daggett’s eyes widened. “Why?”
I shrugged. “I felt bad. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a bitch.”
“No, no, I haven’t noticed at all,” he said plainly, trying not to smile.
“I was so mean to him, and when he died, it happened so quick I didn’t really think about it. Until the next week, when I went back to work. I had to clean out his locker and send his belongings back to his family. There were all these photos of his sisters and his mom. There was even a half-eaten sandwich. It was just so fucking depressing. I treated him like shit because he annoyed me, but he was a real person with a real life.” I looked over at Daggett, and he was listening to me so intensely I had to look away. I cleared my throat. “Point is, I kind of know about the guilt you’re feeling. Henry actually had a family that love and miss him, yet it was an asshole like me that lived instead.”
“You have people that care about you too.”
“I have people who put up with me.”
“They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t care.”
I cackled. “I put up with people I hate all the time.”
Now he was laughing. “I really doubt you put up with anyone, Priscilla. You speak your mind way too much for that.”
“You’d be surprised at how often I bite my tongue.”
He grit his teeth while shaking his head and said, “I’d hate to think about what you consider too vulgar to say.”
I rolled my eyes and loudly scoffed. “You don’t want to know.”
“Hopefully it’s nothing too bad about me.”
“No,” I admitted. “You’re fine. For now.”
Daggett smiled. I never noticed until then that he had these big, girly lips and super white teeth. Or maybe his skin was just so tan they looked extra white. Eh…okay, the dumbass was kind of cute. There, I said it.
I opened my mouth to speak, and instantly Daggett lunged toward me, putting both of his hands over my mouth so hard we fell off of the milk crates and crashed onto the nasty-ass floor. The kind of floor that probably had roaches crawling over it and random liquids with human cells in them. I was ready to fight him off, but he shushed me and whispered into my ear, “Something’s coming.”
I don’t think I’d ever gone so quiet in my life. I didn’t want to fucking die.
Daggett peeled his hand off of my mouth and crawled to his knees. I could see my red lipstick smeared all over his palm, and figured my mouth now looked the same. Though, I figured if I was gonna die, I’d be covered head-to-toe in red anyway, so what did it matter?
He peeked through the gaps in the display cases with the chips as I laid on the floor, wondering if I should join him or play dead. The whole time I was cursing Max out in my head. He said we’d be safe here, that the killer wouldn’t return to the site of the kill, yet I was lying on a
