“I won’t.”
He opened the door for me, and I stepped outside. After he closed the door, I resisted the urge to break into a sprint. I simply walked away from his house at a normal pace.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch things.
I’d completely failed.
Not just that—I’d made things worse. I’d gone from not being able to prove that Gerald Martin had abducted Todd to desperately needing for nobody else to prove it, either. Utter and total failure. I’d let down my best friend.
All I’d had to do was pull the trigger. I didn’t have to murder him. Just shoot him in the leg. Or the gut. He would’ve fallen down.
There would have been a lot of explaining to do, but eventually I would’ve been a hero. Todd’s parents would experience the devastation of extinguishing the last bit of hope that their son was alive, but at least they’d have closure. They could figure out how to move on. Now they’d never know the truth. They’d have to gradually come to accept that Todd was never returning home, yet have this lingering doubt that would last for the rest of their lives.
Squeeze the trigger. That’s all I’d had to do. I had the son of a bitch at gunpoint.
I felt a dizzy spell coming on, so I stopped walking for a moment until it passed.
It came back as soon as I started walking again. I sat down on the sidewalk, closed my eyes, and tried not to throw up.
I couldn’t sit here very long. It would be suspicious for some kid to just be sitting right there in the middle of the sidewalk, and I now had to do everything I could to not seem suspicious. I wished that I thought Mr. Martin was making up the whole thing about his unsavory friend, but I completely believed him. That friend was real.
I got back up and continued walking home, filled with anger and self-loathing and regret and pretty much every negative emotion I could summon. Hell, from a purely practical standpoint, I still had to repay the money I’d stolen from Dad’s safe. I’d have to mow lawns like crazy to pay for a gun that I’d been too much of a chickenshit to fire. And my parents couldn’t know that I was mowing all of these extra lawns, or doing whatever work I could get paid for, because they’d wonder where the money went, so I’d have to secretly work my ass off while maintaining my secret identity as a lazy bum. It would’ve been worth it if I could’ve brought Todd’s killer to justice. It sure wasn’t worth it now.
To keep myself sane, I needed to focus on the positive. I’d gotten out of there alive. Right now I could be dead or, more likely, several minutes into my slow death. There could be duct tape over my mouth and a thin blade carefully working its way around my eyeball socket. I could see staring into Mr. Martin’s grinning, leering face with my good eye, begging him not to kill me, knowing that my muffled words wouldn’t change his mind.
So, yeah, I was still alive.
That was something.
I’d monumentally fucked this up, but I’d also played it well enough for him to let me go. The note to my parents had served its purpose. Good planning there. And I’d successfully talked him out of making me cut myself. And, while I was praising myself, I should note that I’d pulled the gun out of my backpack before he could—
Shit.
I’d left my backpack there.
Goddamn it.
There wasn’t anything irreplaceable in there. A few books. Just random stuff that I could put in there so that if he asked to peek inside, he wouldn’t immediately see the gun. But I didn’t own another backpack, and now I’d have to hope that my parents didn’t notice that I’d lost it.
I sure as hell wasn’t going back for it. For all I knew, Mr. Martin was kicking himself for letting me go. I wasn’t going to deliver myself to his front door.
It had a tag that said, “If found, please return to Curtis Black” with my address, which was mildly concerning but nothing he couldn’t easily find out on his own. Our name and address were in the phone book. It wasn’t like my parents were worried about serial killers finding us.
Okay, so, I’d done a couple of things right, but I was also stupid enough to forget my backpack. My attempt to build up my self-esteem had, like this entire plan, been a dismal failure.
At least I didn’t have any more dizzy spells as I walked out of Mr. Martin’s neighborhood and into my own. I’d go home, rip up the note, take a really long nap, and then try to forget that this had ever happened. I couldn’t let my parents suspect that anything was wrong, because if they pushed me too hard, I was liable to just start sobbing. Sure, ever since Todd disappeared it wasn’t uncommon for me to have an emotional reaction out of nowhere, but now I had to be conscious of the truth versus the lie. I was having a meltdown because Todd was still missing, not because he’d been murdered.
The thought of police protection did occur to me. Tell them everything, especially about the man who would be on his way to mutilate us. He couldn’t get at us if we were being closely watched by the authorities, could he?
Maybe.
And they wouldn’t have a patrol car parked outside of our house forever. What were we going to do, go into a witness protection program? Change our identities? Did they even do that in real life, or was that just something I’d seen in movies?
Better to simply stick to the terms of our agreement, and pray that Mr. Martin did the same.
I was sweating again—or, more likely, I’d never stopped—as I turned onto my own street. I had my plan.
