The phone's right there. Pick it up. Call someone.
Part of him was glad. Johnson and Murphy could stay lost, for all he cared. After what he'd had to endure from those jerks for... months now, they could be at the bottom of a really deep well, screaming for help, and he'd happily just walk on by and ignore...
Stop it. Dont think like that. He turned over, facing the ceiling, trying to ignore the little voices in his head that all said, Part of this is your fault.
No, it wasnt, not at all. It was... that guy.
Everyone had been talking for weeks now about the disappearances. Fourteen kids, mostly teenagers, all across the tri-county area. When the bodies started to show up, folks got even more scared. Curfews were imposed: if you were under sixteen and out after six by yourself, the police would take you down to the station and wait for your parents to come get you. All for your own good, they said.
My own good? he thought miserably. When did any of them care about my own good? All the nights his father told him to just "stand up to those bullies and be a man!" All the mornings his mother ignored his pleas to be able to stay home, anything to avoid going to school and face Johnson and Murphy and all the others who seemed to take a special delight in making him feel as miserable as possible.
So he ran away. And he hadnt gotten three miles before a nice man in a big shiny car picked him up and took him to an abandoned barn and told him he was going to die. Fine. Do it, he'd answered dourly.
His would-be attacker stopped, the knife poised in mid-air.
C'mon! he yelled at the man, with a fury and a rage that surprised even him. It's not like you're gonna accomplish anything all that important! You think anyone's gonna give a shit? No one's gonna care. Just do it and get it over with!
... and they talked, long into the night. Sobbing, he told the man about the boys who made his life a living hell, and the man nodded in complete and utter understanding. They went to eat at a local hangout, and he pointed out the boys, all of whom looked at him and just grinned, that evil, evil grin he'd endured so many times before. Later, when the man dropped him off at his house, he felt like, for the first time in his life, he had a friend.
His parents were beside themselves with worry, but he made up a story that seemed to work. And when he went to school the next day, he felt almost happy.
Then Matthew Franklin disappeared. Captain of the football team and one of his main tormentors. The police found his body the next day.
Then Steve Wagner was gone. The police found him pretty quickly as well, and they started to wonder if maybe this serial murderer wasnt just leaving the victims' remains out where he knew the police would see them.
And now Billy Johnson and Don Murphy have gone missing...
The phone's right there. Pick it up. Call someone.
