CHAPTER 2
Guilt Has Her Bed

☠︎

      This you had gathered so far: Casey Becker and Steven Orth were dead. So had been the case for a number of hours. One had been found hanging grotesquely by the neck from an oak tree, the other gagged and bound to a lawn chair, both with their innards spilling out of the soft, gaping flesh of their bellies. The blood had still been fresh, the bodies still warm.

How quickly it must have happened. Alive one second, dead the next.

As you stared blankly through the large, blindless window, you intensely fought the urge to hunch over and vomit on the linoleum. That could have been you—brutalized and made a spectacle—had you not run off in your cowardice and left Casey to hold her own.

You winced, your grip on your ink pen tightening tenfold, as the guilt burrowed deeply within you began to simmer.

You let your eyes roam distractedly a moment longer. Outside, the courtyard was bustling with people: late students holding gossipy conversations with wide, prying eyes; abrasive reporters and their camera crews; policemen with crisply pressed uniforms and stern, mustachioed faces.

Your lips dropped at the corners, pulling your face down glumly. You were still struggling to comprehend all that you had heard from the hubbub of the crowd: ceaseless, rambling talk of drugs and the occult, of murder and a ruthless, unpredictable killer.

Your gaze slipped grudgingly back onto the flimsy notebook laid open before you, then to the hefty, well-worn textbook at its side.

Due to the plights of the morning, your teacher, Mr. Morton, strict as he usually was, had abandoned all attempts to maintain even a fraction of normalcy in the classroom. The day's work was forgotten, and you were free to do as you pleased with the given time.

You had settled on rewriting some notes you had taken days prior in a neater hand. It was good for you to keep busy. It dulled your senses and left little room for thought.

You were less than a page through now, with several more to go. Focus wasn't coming to you easily.

In your peripheral, a group of students had pushed their desks into a small cluster and were leaning conspicuously close to one another, whispering and snickering.

Your body grew uncomfortably warm, your foot tapping quickly and restlessly in a sporadic rhythm against the floor. You couldn't help but think that it was you they were speaking of, that they knew where you had been last night, what you had failed to speak up about.

A knock at the door immediately sent the voices to a halt and your shoulders up in dismay.

You ceased your fidgeting and looked up from your desk to see Stu standing tall at the threshold of the room, one of his hands splayed easily against the door, holding it open. There was a slip of thin, white paper clutched in the other.

You watched intently as Morton, rising from behind his desk, beckoned him into the room and extended a hand, wordlessly asking for the note. You half-expected Stu to pull his hand back at the last moment, eyes alight with mirth, in that comedic manner you were so accustomed to.

He handed it over with no such antics.

Morton shifted his bifocals up the bridge of his nose with a finger, peering carefully down at the slip of paper. After a moment's hesitation, he solemnly called out the name of a student at the rear of the classroom, followed by: "I believe it's your turn."

Briefly, you turned your head away from the front of the room, chin atop your shoulder, to catch a glimpse of the student as he gathered his things. When you righted your head, you were surprised to find the door swinging gently shut. You hadn't expected Stu to take his leave so quickly, and without so much as a wave in your direction.

You looked back down at the half-blank page of your notebook, slightly disappointed.

Around you, a steady flow of conversation began to pick up again. As the student who had been singled out exited the room, you readjusted your grip on your pen, trying, with much effort, to slip back into the groove of things.

Just as the first speck of ink colored the paper, your head was tugged harshly backward by the ends of your hair, the affected patch of scalp suffusing with a warm, dull pain.

You spun around with whiplash-inducing speed, your hand raised to your head, eyes instantly catching Stu's: unbelievably bright and crinkled at the corners with pure, unadulterated hilarity.

You spared a cursory glance back to your paper. A long, jagged line now ran along the length of it.

"Stu!" you exclaimed, somewhere between a whisper and a rebuke, turning to face him once more. How had he even managed to maneuver his body, lanky as ever, across the classroom without catching your eye?

You raised your dominant arm, pulling it slightly backward, and threw your pen aggressively at his sweater-clad chest.

Still laughing under his breath, he raised a hand—the same one that had just moments ago been fisted in your hair—to catch it, at first fumbling and nearly letting it drop to the floor: a scene that reminded you, with a welcome sort of lightness, of some kind of clumsy, cartoonish juggler.

"Relax!" He pulled an empty chair from beneath your desk before he slouched languidly into it, legs spread and fingers twiddling with your pen. "I come in peace."

You looked quickly about the room, trying to gauge how much of a scene the two of you had made. To your relief, it seemed not much at all.

"Peace, my ass," you mumbled, glaring sharply up at him, rubbing your palm soothingly over your scalp. "Where did you come from anyway? What was all of that about?"

He looked incredulously at you, his brow wrinkled. "How big is the rock you live under?" He began obnoxiously clicking your pen, extending and retracting the point repeatedly. "They're questioning the whole student body."

"What?" you exclaimed, your voice rising an octave as your hand closed in on itself, the fingernails sinking uncomfortably into the soft skin of the palm. You could feel the dread coursing through you like waves, violent and undulating.

Stu watched you with careful attention, his lips twitching imperceptibly upward. Without breaking eye contact, he leaned forward so that his elbow was resting against the surface of the desk, his cheek cradled in his palm. "Yeah, they wanna know who decided to go all psycho on a couple of kids last night, man."

Immediately the deep, threatening voice—from which you could find no nook or sanctuary to escape—resounded forcefully in your head. You nearly flinched. Genuinely curious, you asked, "They think it was a student?" The words dripped with unease. Was it possible you had walked past the killer today and not even known it?

He shrugged, raising his brows and widening his eyes dramatically. Suddenly, he reached a hand across the expanse of the desk, laying a palm flat against your notebook to slide it toward him. "I swear, it's like fuckin' Hannibal Lecter in there." He faked a shudder as he began skimming over all you had written.

You could picture it clearly: penetrating eyes, clear as glass; gilded badges shining beneath fluorescent lights; your own face, leaden and with a perspiring brow.

"Sounds like fun." Your voice was somber, unenthused, obscuring the panic that was steadily rising within you. You sincerely doubted your ability to resist cracking under the pressure when the time came.

Stu clicked your pen open and began scribbling frenetically in the white margins of the page, his tongue prodding the fleshy interior of his cheek.

You watched him attentively, letting him write as he pleased. You would have to start over anyway, so you saw no point in asking him to stop. Besides, observing the way the pen drifted over the page—smoothly, carelessly—softened your mind and relaxed the muscles of your body, taut as a rubber band.

You leaned forward, craning your neck for a better view, and realized he was writing his name repeatedly—sometimes in big, blue bubble letters, others in messy, childlike cursive—each signature boldly underlined like an important footnote.

A smile bit at your cheeks. You felt much lighter than you had before. You stared at his profile, wondering if he could feel your gaze, and propped your elbow on the desk, resting your head on your hand. Your fingers tangled with the roots of your hair.

Whenever Stu was around, you were prone to raucous bursts of laughter: the type so forceful and long-running that they gave you piercing cramps in the side. He tended to have that effect on most he interacted with. You never could understand how he managed it.

His character was one you struggled to grasp completely. He was exuberant, loud-mouthed, often irritating; a comedian behind a grand, theatrical curtain. His manner seemed sloppy and expertly crafted all at once, his face bright and always smothered by the extent of his smile.

In a way he reminded you of the cheesy, second-rate slasher flicks he was so keen on making you watch time and again: full to the brim with bawdy thrills and cheap scares—corpses that were reborn with a vengeance, eyes that popped out, severed limbs that moved on their own accord, blood that was bright and plentiful—but lacking depth and a real sense of purpose upon scrutiny.

You knew the jokes he found funniest, the subtle ways in which his face had changed over the years, the movies he loved and those he hated, but found you knew little beyond that. Who was Stu when he wasn't smiling?

You felt simultaneously as if you knew him down to the marrow and no deeper than the first layer of skin.

You were pulled from your trance when Stu spoke absentmindedly, still focused on the fluid movement of the pen: "This is big stuff. Even that chick from Top Story was here."

"Gale Weathers?" You couldn't help but take up a scowl, your voice ripe with distaste. You had heard a plethora of less than kind things about that woman and her flagrant lack of compassion from Sidney.

"That's the one." Eying you mischievously, he straightened his back, clicked the pen shut, and pushed the notebook back to its rightful place before you.

As soon as you moved to close it and shove it back into your bag—because, if you were being honest with yourself, the chances of you getting any work done now were slim to none—Stu's hand shot out, nearly making you jolt. He used a lone finger to adjust its placement so that it remained in front of you but faced in his direction. Then he looked down at it—sporting an expression of exaggerated, mock confusion—as if for the first time.

"What's all this?" He gestured to the blue scrawls in the margins, eyes limpid. "You got a little crush on me?" Smiling teasingly, he leaned toward you, pressing the tip of the pen into the pillowy apple of your cheek; he kept it there, twirling it in a tight circle by the barrel, fingers nimble and spindly.

"Shut up, Stu!" His hand tensed beneath yours as you pulled it gently away from your face—you weren't too keen on having your eye taken out by a ballpoint pen. You leaned backward into your seat, extending your leg to kick him firmly in the shin. "You're so in love with yourself. You'd go crazy over that."

He jokingly scrunched his face up in pain before his eyes flashed with something unknown to you. "You said it, not me."

Floridity washed over your cheeks as you considered the implications of that—if there were any at all.

That was another strange aspect of his character: his sly little innuendos. You had never wholly gotten used to them, though he said them so often. You liked to brush them aside, trying to convince yourself you heard the mockery in them. But always there was this feeling of doubt—subtle, nagging, unshakable doubt. If he was only messing with you, why did he speak them so surreptitiously, never in the presence of anyone but you, and act as if he had never said them at all after the fact? Briefly, and with a kind of shame, you thought of Tatum. Did she know about them? Did she need to?

You suddenly felt as if you had said something out of line and opted to change the subject before the conversation could lapse into a strained, awkward silence.

It took only a moment for you to find something to say. Once you had, the words came easily and rolled smoothly off the tongue.

For a long while the two of you carried on like that, talking nonsense, before you were called to the office for your round of interrogation.

Stu insisted he accompany you, and you couldn't find it in yourself to deny him.

The majority of the walk was spent without either of you saying a word. You maintained a tight, white-knuckled grip on the strap of your bag, and Stu cradled the books that had lain on the desk in his arms. You were grateful for his company in spite of the silence. You needed someone to aid you, no matter how obliviously, in keeping yourself composed and steady in the knees.

The two of you were abreast, maintaining a similar pace. Your brain was steadily nurturing a headache, and every few seconds, your arm would brush tenderly against Stu's. It was a small comfort.

The whole ordeal was beginning to feel like something of a dream: vignettes of shoes pattering against linoleum, of lockers passing by in a blur, of long, sinuous hallways. The closer you got to the front office, the more erratically your heart began to beat.

When you were finally near enough to see the door, you noticed that it was open wide, waiting for you.

Stu spun on his heels to walk backwards, your books still clutched to his chest. You resisted the urge to grab the sleeve of his sweater and pull him to a halt. You doubted that they would ever make it back to your locker while in his care.

Still backpedaling, he winked, shooting you a strange grin. "Good luck, Starling!"

You watched, despondent, as he disappeared around the corner.

☠︎

Author's Note: I would like to mention really quickly that this story is meant to be mature!! For some reason it doesn't show up correctly in tags when I mark it that way, so I turned it off for now.