Getting It Twisted (Unforgivable Needs #1)

3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Nathan

I climb into the driver’s seat, completely soaked through and shivering. A glance into the rearview mirror tells me I look a mess, with clumps of hair plastered to my forehead and a haunted gleam to my eyes.

It’s this fucking town. It puts me on edge.

So does Daniel.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Tonight I was supposed to be a wallflower gazing into his life, but then he had to come and pluck me off the wall—or more like, shove me into the wall.

I should have left him alone for now. I should have gone to see him another day. But no, my first order of business when I came back to town after a ten-hour drive was to look up the address of my former best friend and go ogle at him through the window like a fucking stalker.

He was so pissed off when he saw me. Furious. Has living with George and his anger issues rubbed off on him, or did me leaving really affect him that much?

It was so long ago though. A different time. A different life. And we used to be friends. Does that mean nothing to him?

Fuck, I’m too tired for this shit.

As I swerve out on the street, I can’t stop thinking about how he looked inside that house, among all those happy, drunken people. Unlike them, he seemed so . . . dejected. Shoulders slumped, head bent down, gaze dead and numb. He used to get like that sometimes when he got too into his head. Maybe now that he doesn’t have me to lighten his mood, he’s completely taken over by it—the gloominess.

Gloomy doesn’t even begin to describe how he was when he pushed me up against that wall. Goddamn. I liked seeing him like that though. All pissed off and intense, with those thick muscled arms bearing down on me. He’s no longer the skinny, long-limbed teenager I remember.

He’s a man now.

Those baby-blue eyes are the same, as are his long lashes and freckles. But his jaw has sharpened, the last bit of baby fat gone from his face, and the way he looked at me . . . The very thought makes the crotch of my jeans feel tight. I sure wouldn’t mind getting those hands on me again.

The rainfall slows to a trickle as I turn into the downtown district of Springvale. Everything’s closed at this hour except for the odd gas station and a handful of bars. Other than the surrounding nature—if you care about that sort of thing—this town’s only saving grace is its proximity to a fairly reputable college. At this time of year, the area is flooded with students.

I pass the sign for Springvale University and turn left in the three-way crossing by the edge of the city center. Dark groves of trees line up on either side as I come onto Wayward Road. The streetlights grow sparser and sparser and die some ten miles on.

Around the next curve of the road, there it is: a lonely gray wooden house, tucked into a burrow of trees. I stop the car and rip the key out of the ignition.

Silence.

Dead silence.

Why did I come here again? I mean, I know why, but damn . . . My skin starts to tingle from a mere glance at that house, and I have to do a whole lot more than glance at it.

A dog barks somewhere down the road. There’s a movement in the rearview mirror as my old neighbor, Ennis, comes limping toward me with his cane. His German shepherd zips past my car like a dark shadow and paces the front of the house, whining and barking like mad.

“Jagger!” Ennis yells. “Come back here, girl.” His shrill whistle tears through the air.

I climb out of the car and fish a cigarette out of my pocket.

Ennis’s watery gray eyes fix on me. “What are you doing here, boy?”

I keep the cigarette in my mouth unlit, hands in my pockets. “Didn’t you hear? My mama went and croaked.”

“I know,” Ennis says. “Wayne Hastings himself came a-knocking.”

“Oh yeah?” I light the cigarette and ask the one thing they didn’t tell me on the phone call. “Where’d they find her? In what room?”

“Why don’t you ask at the station?” Ennis grumbles. “Unless you have a spare key, you oughta pay them a visit regardless.”

“Why would I have a spare?” When I left this place, I had no plans of coming back.

“Good luck getting inside that door, then, boy. It’s locked. The cops have the key.”

I grit my teeth. I know damn well the cops have the key. “I’ll manage.”

The dog—Jagger—has stopped barking, but she’s still pacing the yard, letting out wary little whines now and again. Ennis and I gaze toward the house looming in the darkness.

“I’m almost blind, boy,” Ennis says slowly, “but not so blind that I didn’t understand what was going on here.”

My voice comes out bitter around a cloud of smoke. “Oh yeah? Why didn’t you do anything, if you knew so much?”

“I don’t stick my nose into other people’s business.”

“Then what’s this you’re doing now?”

Ennis studies me, forehead creasing into deep dark grooves. “You shouldn’t be back here, boy.”

“I’m not. I’m just gonna fix up the place and sell it.”

“Are you, now?”

“Someone’s bound to buy it. Why else would I be here?”

“Well, get it done, then, boy, as soon as you can. Don’t linger around here.”

“Is that a threat?” My sarcastic tone and accompanying grin don’t seem to work on old Ennis. He stares at me blankly before pursing his lips and giving another whistle.

“Come here, girl!” This time, Jagger obeys, and they continue down the road.

“Yeah, go ahead, don’t let me keep you. Crazy old man,” I mutter under my breath.

As I turn back to the house, an unease that wasn’t there before courses through me. And suddenly I wish Jagger and Ennis would’ve stayed a little while longer.

I open the trunk of my car and rip out the tattered gym bag containing most of the stuff I own. Then I start trudging up the overgrown path toward the house. My house.

The house I was born in. The house I grew up in. The twisted times, the lonely times. The horror my mother put me through.

Darkness presses further in on my vision the closer I get. The house is little more than a shack, with rough wood-panel walls bleached gray from the sun and many years of neglect. The stairs creak as I walk up the patio and try the door. Locked, like Ennis said it would be. If the door were as run-down as the rest of the house, I could’ve kicked it in. But this door is a remnant of my grandfather, reinforced with a lock on either side; I need the key to unlock it even from within.

No matter. I go around the back. I have to watch where I’m going; there’s so much shit lying around on the lawn—wires, old car wheels, dingy furniture—all half-hidden by knee-high weeds and grass.

I imagine myself dousing the house in gasoline and lighting a match. I’d turn my back on the fire while flames licked into the open black sky.

What I do instead is grab a decent-sized rock from the ground and chuck it as hard as I can into the hallway window.

The sound of shattering glass is deafening in the silence and fills me with a strange sense of satisfaction. Using an old chopping block as a stepping stone, I heave myself up, taking care not to cut myself as I crawl inside.

I land on the wooden floor, glass crunching under my feet. I flick the light switch in the hallway, but nothing happens. Electricity’s shut off? Oh well, I could’ve seen that one coming. A quick check in the kitchen—which is a disgusting mess in its own right—tells me the faucet is also nonfunctioning. Great.

The interior hasn’t changed much since I lived here. It’s smellier, sure, and dirtier. Cigarette butts litter the floor together with old food containers, beer cans, and bottles. My grandfather’s shotgun still hangs in the hallway, however, and what used to be my bedroom is oddly unchanged. In fact, it’s so pristine it sends a chill down my spine.

My desk, my bed. The posters of old bands I liked and actors I found hot. I left this place when I was eighteen—plenty of time for my mom to get rid of my stuff.

All the more convenient for me. I’m not about to sleep in my mom’s bed; that would be weird. Breaking into my old childhood home in the middle of the night is weird enough.

The officer who called didn’t mention how long she’d been dead before they found her, but since the house doesn’t smell like a corpse, it can’t have been long. Are there any traces of her left, or have they already cleaned that shit up? I’ll have a look in the morning.

I sit on my bed and stare at a torn, faded poster of Ziggy Stardust on the wall. It’s strange; Daniel and I were friends for so many years, yet he never visited my home. I never allowed him to see who I was here. Never allowed him to bear witness to that small and pitiful boy, or hear my mother’s screams shaking the walls . . . Her tantrums, her torments, her endless slew of boyfriends and tricks . . .

What did she think about in her last moments? Did she cry out for the men who kept her company? Did she think of my dead grandpa? Did she think of me?

It would have been a night like this, quiet and listless, when she gave up her final breath, shot full of dope and probably drunk too.

Darkness seeps into my vision, and I cradle my head in my hands. I swore I’d never return to this house if not for three reasons: to shoot my mom, to set fire to the place, and to shoot myself once it’s all said and done. One of those options she stole from me, but two still remain.

Before I do anything radical and fucked up like that, though, I need to see Daniel again. He’s a bit like Rome, I suppose: all my roads lead back to him. I just hope at least one of those roads has a bridge left unburned.