Protection Is for The Weak

I was in the middle of Algebra II dozing off when Oliver leaned over the edge of my desk and started snapping his fingers in front of my face.

"Hmm." I sat up, suddenly aware of the vacant classroom. When had class ended?

"Ophelia." there was an unmistakable fear in Oliver's voice that had my eyes flickering to him. "We need to go."

He was even paler than usual, if that was possible. His eyes were glassy with fresh tears, hands trembling at his sides.

"Oliver?" I started to reach out for him when the door was thrown open and Principal Martins stepped in.

"What are you still doing in here?" he shook his head. "We made the announcement for you all to go home twenty minutes ago."

Shaking my head, I grabbed my backpack from the back of my chair and threw a strap over my shoulder. "I must have dozed off."

"You do have a ride, right, Miss Colemen?"

Confused, I asked, "Why would I need a ride?"

Well, other than the fact someone might be stalking me. But the old man didn't know anything about that.

"Miss Colemen, they found Oliver St. James body in the lake this morning."

My entire body grew rigid and I had to grasp the edge of the teacher's desk to keep myself upright. Eventually, I managed a strangled, "What?"

"Detectives and forensics on scene are ruling it a homicide." The middle-aged man raked his fingers through his gray hair. "Such a shame. The boy was a very promising student."

I didn't bother to stay and listen to the principal's sympathy. I ran for the front door and collapsed just passed the small brick wall encasing a palm tree and vomited all over the concrete.

"Fai?" King's voice sounded far away, then as if he'd raced across the parking lot, he walked around and crouched behind me to grab my hair in his fist. "Are you okay?"

I shook my head once I was sure I wasn't going to puke again and rested my head against the hardness of his chest.

"Let's go back to my place." King insisted, and I slowly turned to look at him. We hadn't been to his house in ages. Not since before Homecoming.

"Okay." I agreed, because I had no desire to go home and have Dad playing helicopter parent or face Axel who was undoubtedly a mess right now.

As soon as we made it to his car, he offered a few mints, not that they'd do much more my nausea but they'd help with my breath. I popped one in my mouth and pulled my seat belt on. I glanced in back to see if Oliver may have hitched a ride with us, but he had disappeared the second Principal Martins had walked in.

"I was waiting outside for you." King broke the silence with a quick worried glance in my direction. "After the announcement you were the first thing I thought about. Because. . . you said you've been seeing him."

"I have." I whispered. "But King I. . . I—" I couldn't put into words how I felt, so the words just fizzled in the air between us. It wasn't until he'd pulled his car to a stop in his driveway that I leaned back and breathed out shakily.

King turned the key in the ignition and shifted his body in my direction. "Are you good, Fai? Like no bs."

"No." I confessed. "I'm scared, King."

"Scared of what?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

I stole a look out the window to avoid eye contact. "I'm scared whoever killed Oliver is watching me."

"Why would you think that?"

"Have you looked at Oliver's social media lately? Someone's been posting pictures of me, King." I clenched my clammy hands into fists on my lap. "He's been dead for a month."

My best friend stayed silent, not a word of reassurance leaving him.

I turned when tension started to fill the car.

"What?" I asked him.

"Did you ever stop and consider Axel having something to do with it?"

I immediately sat upright, ready to jump to the older St. James defense but found the words dying before they could break passed my lips.

"You don't think it's strange? That he's strange?" King went on. "He's a loner. Has no friends, no girlfriend. His brother goes missing and he starts hanging with you. Maybe so he can misdirect you from the truth."

"No." I denied with a shake of my head. I'd seen the look in Axel's eyes. "It wasn't him."

King's lip curled back in disgust. "You don't know that."

"Oliver said what he last remembers was being with you, King." I reached across the console and grabbed his elbow. "You and Marcus and Serena. And he remembered. . . last night he was telling me he argued with one of you in front of my house the night he died."

The entire energy in the car shifted and King reached over and grabbed both of my arms. Hard. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"King, you're hurting me!"

"His brother is the killer. If that weren't the case, why did the investigators take him in this morning?"

I thought about Axel sitting in an interrogation room with his arms crossed over his broad chest as he stared at the Detective with a poker face. Under different circumstances I might have laughed.

"King, let go." I tried to pry his fingers from my arms. "You're hurting me."

He loosened his grip but didn't let go. "I had to protect you, Ophelia."

"What?" I shook my head, confused. "What do you mean, King?"

He didn't respond, instead he slammed his fists against the steering wheel, screaming profanities at the wheel.

"King?"

There was a cold dread easing its way into my chest as I grasped the door handle.

"I didn't kill him." King whispered, barley audible. "I didn't, Fai."

I nodded, "I know, King."

"I swear I didn't." he repeated. "I put that on my Mama."

It wasn't King and his pleading eyes that was the confirmation, but Oliver leaning between the seats with his eyes on my best friend. His eyes flickered from my friend to me, and he eventually said, "It wasn't him."

*

Turns out King's words had a nice way of getting under my skin. By the time Axel was released from the police station, I was sitting on the trunk of his Jaguar, eyes scanning our surroundings. King, after over an hour of convincing, had dropped me off. This was one of the safest places I could be, I'd assured him, but he was so lost in his own head I don't think he even thought about it.

Sadly, as Axel trudged down the sidewalk and out to the lot, King's words bounced around in my head.

What if Axel had killed Oliver? What if this was some kind of ploy? What if he was trying to distract me from the bigger picture?

"Ophelia?" Axel's exhausted words snapped me back into reality. "What the hell are you doing here? Did they question you too?"

"No." I hopped off the car so I was staring up at him. "I. . . we were let out of school early because of. . . Oliver."

Axel tensed but didn't speak.

"King picked me up." I continued, averting my eyes to the street. "He. . . he was acting weird."

"Of course he was." Axel retorted. "That's how guilty people act. Weird."

I met his icy blues again and stated confidently, "He didn't kill Oliver."

"There's no way you could possibly know that."

"Did you kill Oliver?"

The words slipped before I realized what I was saying and his entire expression shifted in horror. "What?"

"Did you kill him?" tears burned my eyes at the thought. "Please, Axel if you know more than you're letting on, I need to know the truth."

Axel buried a hand in his hair and moved toward me, then leaned into his car, crossing his arms. "I know that he was into you. Oliver, I mean."

"What?" I gaped, "No way."

"Yeah. I don't know if it was romantic, but you intrigued him." he shrugged a shoulder. "He told me about you the night before. Said that he was going to try and talk to you at Homecoming, if you showed. You did."

I nodded. "Yeah, obviously."

"Well, he texted me that he was going to the afterparty and I didn't hear from him again. I was at the shop until three in the morning, but I. . . I had this feeling in my gut something was wrong. I just shook it off."

I couldn't say I wasn't relieved to hear his words. "So you didn't kill him."

"No, I didn't kill my fucking brother, Ophelia."

"King didn't either."

"You think the other kid did?" Axel lifted his head slightly. "The jock?"

I started to shake my head, "No way. He's an idiot, a creep, and a potential rapist, but he isn't a murderer. He's not smart enough or methodical enough."

"Then who do you think killed Oliver, Ophelia?"

I didn't get a chance to respond because Oliver stood a few feet away, his eyes wide as he stared at me. "You."

"What?" I asked him, trying to reach for him despite knowing my hand would go right through. "Oliver, what's going on?"

"You were there, Ophelia. That night." he closed the distance between us. "That's why we were outside of your house. Because we were dropping you off."

I shook my head. "I don't remember anything. I went home with my dad. I didn't go to the after party."

"You snuck out." Oliver explained. "I was in the car, I saw you climb out the window. You got in the car beside me and Marcus kept trying to explain himself but you were long over his shit."

"Oliver, if you remember that, do you remember who killed you?"

He nodded, and when he extended a hand to my cheek, I felt the warmth of his hand. "You did."

"Huh?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him right. "What did you say?"

"You killed me, Ophelia." he repeated. "It was an accident."

I staggered back-right into his brother. "No."

"All of it was an accident." he took a step forward. "You were trying to get away from him. Marcus. You ran to me and he started to get aggressive, pulled a gun and everything.

"No." I repeated.

"I didn't think it was loaded or that he was serious, but King did and he kept trying to reason with him. But he was drunk. Marcus, I mean. Wouldn't put the gun down. You kept grabbing my arm and begging me to stop and we could leave. Call Axel or your dad to come get us. Serena had already run for the hills. I don't even know where she was at that point."

Axel squeezed my shoulder, "What's going on, Ophelia?"

"I must have said something that pissed him off." Oliver stopped in front of me, shaking his head. "He came at us and knocked the butt of the gun against the side of my head so I was disoriented. He grabbed you, telling King to grab you and get you in the car. But you. . . obviously you don't like being controlled, Ophelia. You ran at him to try and hit the gun from his hand but when you did his finger hit the trigger and sent a bullet into my stomach."

He touched his hand to just above his left peck and blood starting pooling in the area. "It's not your fault, Ophelia. You were trying to get the gun from him. You were trying to protect me."

"But I made him shoot you!" I said through a horrified sob. "Oliver, you're dead because of me!"

"I'm dead because those dumbasses threw you into the car doped up on whatever they had and stood there fighting one another on what to do while I bled out a few feet away."

I clutched at my chest. "I'm so sorry, Oliver."

"It wasn't your fault, Ophelia." he repeated, and again, when he touched my cheek I felt the warmth of his hand. "You were just trying to help."

"Why can't I remember?" I shook my head, burying my fingers in my hair until my nails dug into my scalp. "Why can't I remember what happened?"

"They drugged you." Oliver offered up with a shrug. "I don't know with what. But even doped up you found your way back to me and you sat there, half awake beside me, trying to put your shirt against my wound. When you saw how hard it was becoming to breathe, you started laughing hysterically and said, "I'll see you again, Oliver. I promise." But I didn't know what you meant until I woke up that night at the end of your bed."

I tried to shrug Axel off, but his grip was too tight, and when I tilted my head back I saw just how freaked out he was by hearing and seeing one side of the conversation. He had no idea the bomb his brother had just dropped on me.

"Ophelia." Oliver drew my attention back to him. "You need to go into the police station and tell them what happened."

I looked away from him and to the building Axel had walked out of. "No. I. . . I can't. Not yet. I need answers."

"You're going to end up getting yourself killed, Ophelia!" Oliver shouted, then, his emotions overwhelmed him and he blipped. I stared at the empty space he'd just occupied before I spun on my heel and buried my face in Axel's chest. He waited a few minutes before he asked the question I dreaded answering.

"What happened? Did he remember? Who did it?"

I squeezed my eyes shut and wrapped my arms around his waist as I forced the two words out. "I did."