The sting of Rishie's words lingered like a physical bruise. Lucas walked down the hallway, but the usual adoring gazes of the female students felt like needles against his skin. Her voice echoed in his skull: Nothing inside you worth staying for.
I reached my locker and leaned my forehead against the cold metal. My hands were shaking. Not the adrenaline-fueled tremor of a sexual encounter, but a deep, rhythmic shudder that started in my marrow.
I was Lucas. I was the king of Rokehurst. I had the Principal in my pocket and half the female population in my bed. So why did I feel like a ghost?
The hallway blurred. Suddenly, I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I was ten years old, sitting on the porch on Christmas Eve. The snow was falling in silent, heavy flakes. I remembered the way the fairy lights on the bushes flickered—red, green, red, green—until a pair of blue police lights joined the rhythm. I remembered the officer's face, the pity in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, son. They aren't coming home."
Since that night, I had been running. I ran into the arms of girls, into the beds of teachers, into a cynical belief that if I "conquered" everyone, no one could ever leave me again. Because you can't lose someone who is just a conquest.
I skipped the rest of my classes. My feet moved on autopilot, leading me to the old Quarry bridge on the outskirts of town. It was a jagged drop into dark, rushing water—a place where the silence was loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
I stood on the rusted railing, looking down. My "perfect" reflection stared back from the surface of the water, distorted by the ripples.
"Is this it?" I whispered to the wind. "Just another day of being a 'pretty face' for people to use? Just another night of pretending I don't care?"
The weight of it all—the $110 I lost, the bills I had to pay, the masks I had to wear, and the crushing realization that Kit, the only person I ever truly loved, looked at me like I was a piece of trash on the sidewalk—it was too much. The "Sex God" was tired. I wanted to step off. I wanted the silence to be permanent.
I closed my eyes and leaned forward, the wind catching my hair.
"You always were a drama queen, Luca."
I nearly slipped, my heart hammering against my ribs. I spun around to see Kit leaning against a willow tree at the edge of the bridge. She wasn't wearing that predatory smirk anymore. She looked tired, her dark eyes reflecting a hollow pain that mirrored my own.
"Get lost, Kit," I spat, though my voice cracked. "Go find another heart to break. I'm busy."
"Busy doing what? Proving Rishie right?" She walked closer, her footsteps silent on the gravel. "You think you're the only one who died that Christmas, Lucas? When your parents went, my world ended too. They were the only ones who saw me. Not as 'the twin,' not as 'the trouble,' but as me."
"You left me!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat. "You left me when I had nothing!"
"I left because I was rotting!" she screamed back, tears finally breaking through her icy exterior. "And I didn't want to take you down with me. But look at you now. You did it all by yourself."
She stepped onto the bridge, standing a few feet away. "If you want to jump, jump. But don't do it because of me. And don't do it because you think you're hollow. You're not hollow, Lucas. You're just overflowing with things you're too afraid to feel."
I looked at the water, then back at the girl who had started my descent into hell. The silence between us wasn't empty; it was heavy with ten years of unsaid apologies.