Breathless 3 (Breathless #3) (3 page)

If I could trust that Johnny’s story about Claire
being his first sexual partner was true — if I could trust anything he had told
me at all — I couldn’t imagine that he and Claire hadn’t been together for a
long time before that. Plenty of time for him to become abusive towards her, if
that was what had happened.
What he did
to her wasn’t love.
That was what the anonymous commenter had said about
Johnny. That pointed to abuse of some kind — abuse that the other boys who had
been sent to jail must have somehow aided and participated in.

I was in my second class of the day, still mulling
over the various different things that had happened between Johnny and me, the
little scraps of accusations that had been leveled against him, when my phone vibrated
in my pocket. I took it out carefully with a sense of dread. It was Johnny
again.
Hey, baby, I’ve got an away game
coming up soon and I can’t stand the idea of waiting so long to see you.
My
stomach started churning and I regretting having oatmeal for breakfast, even if
it had tasted good at the time.
Can I see
you tonight? I miss you so much!
I bit my bottom lip. How many women on
campus would have cut off their own left arm to get a text like that from
Johnny?

I worried at my lip for a moment as I thought. I
couldn’t just ignore it. But I had a ready-made excuse; I had told Johnny last
night that I was sick.
I’m so sorry,
babe. I miss you, too! But I’m still feeling really bad — don’t know what I’ve
got and I’d hate to give it to you.
An away game — that would be a good
thing for me. It would give me a little bit of time without having to worry
about Johnny running into me, seeing the liar that I was. I wouldn’t have to
see him for a while. I could think and figure out what was going on.

My phone buzzed again with Johnny’s reply.
Aw. I’d love to share germs with you
anytime.
He had added a little kiss-face emoji to the end of it. I didn’t
know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. If Johnny was really some kind
of crazy, abusive person — if he had driven a girl to suicide — then I should
be running away. But how could he be so sweet and so terrible at the same time?

I knew that I should talk to him, that I should give
him some kind of opportunity to explain the situation. He had told me in the
one instance when we’d talked about Claire White — in the woods, after the girl
had tried to poison my mind about Johnny on the other girl’s behalf — that
there were a lot of people who blamed him for Claire’s death, even though he
hadn’t done anything. The mere fact that he hadn’t been able to save her had
been enough to condemn him. But the comment I’d read, anonymous as it was, had
implied that there had been more to it than that. It had implied that Johnny
hadn’t just failed Claire — but that Johnny had hurt her.

I messaged back to Johnny that I just wasn’t feeling
up to being around anyone at all; it wasn’t a complete lie. I felt sick. I
decided that since I hadn’t managed to actually absorb anything of the lesson,
it would be better off to skip the rest of my day’s classes. I emailed my
professors and told them that I was too sick to attend and that I had spent
half the night in the bathroom. One or two of them emailed back as I was
waiting for my class to be over, telling me to definitely keep to the dorm as
they would rather not catch whatever it was that I had and that if it lasted
longer than a day or two, that I should visit the campus nurse to get looked
over.

I left my class the moment the professor called a halt
for the day and hurried back to the dorms, not wanting to run into Johnny or
anyone I knew. I just wanted to get back into the quiet and relative peace of
my room and to try and think about how everything had managed to go so
completely wrong with my college career not even a full semester into it. I put
my bag down as soon as I was safely in the room and pulled out my laptop.

I’m not sure what possessed me to start looking things
up. Not things about Claire White exactly and not even things about Johnny
exactly, but just questions about the kind of person who could drive someone to
commit suicide. I Googled “sociopath characteristics” and opened a few tabs,
flipping between them, and became more and more alarmed the more I read.
Marked readiness to blame others or to offer
plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into
conflict into society…
That could be Johnny saying that people were blaming
him for not being able to save Claire; but then, he wasn’t blaming others — he
was just explaining. If I could believe him.
Sociopaths tend to lack symptoms of nervousness and agitation and tend
to have a great deal of superficial charm and intelligence...
That sounded
like Johnny! He never seemed to be nervous, he was always charming, and he was
definitely smart.

I saw that sometimes psychopath was used
interchangeably with sociopath and started further down the rabbit hole of
research.
Psychopaths are often able to
make quick decisions without agonizing over the outcomes…they tend to be
assertive, even aggressive…
Johnny certainly was assertive and even
aggressive on the ice; he never seemed to hesitate when it came to decision
making.
When a psychopath engages in
criminal behavior, they tend to do so in a way that minimizes risk to themselves.
They will carefully plan criminal activity to ensure they don’t get caught,
having contingency plans in place for every possibility.
If Johnny was
guilty — if he had some part in Claire’s suicide, he had definitely prevented
himself from being caught. I started to wonder if the other boys who had been
caught had been Johnny’s “contingency” plan, his way to get away with it.
Another article said,
Psychopaths tend to
focus on the positive. Psychopaths don’t take things personally; they don’t
beat themselves up if things go wrong, even if they’re to blame. And they’re
cool under pressure.

I tried to decide, objectively, if I had seen any
evidence of the negative sides of Johnny’s possible sociopathy; he hadn’t done
anything cruel to me. He hadn’t been abusive to me. I thought about the way he
acted on the ice and about the look of enjoyment in his eyes when we’d been
going down the trail through the middle of the woods. Had that been because I
was scared or because he was anticipating the surprise of showing me the stars?
That certainly had been an impulsive date idea. Could I really say that he had
shown a “callous unconcern for the feelings of others?” Or that he had “A very
low tolerance to frustration?” I hadn’t seen it, but I realized that he and I,
in spite of having sex a few times, hadn’t really spent that much time together
and I hadn’t really seen him in many situations that would make a person
frustrated. He had been so comfortable and unconcerned about meeting my
parents, and he hadn’t even minded my mom being rude to him. My mind was
spinning and I couldn’t help but think that Johnny had to be — just had to be —
some kind of sociopath.

Chapter
Four

I was on the verge of a full-blown meltdown of epic
proportions, reading all of these things about sociopaths and psychopaths and
trying to decide which Johnny might be; the consensus amongst the psychological
community was that sociopaths were made by circumstances while psychopaths
seemed to have some kind of difference in their brain from birth. I was
shaking, unable to close the tabs on my browser, unable to think of anything
but what might happen the next time I let Johnny convince me to go on a date
with him, when he might take me out into the woods again. Instead of s’mores,
cider, a crackling fire, and making love, he might kill me.
Claire White killed herself,
I told my
mind firmly.
But do you really know that?
Wouldn’t a psychopath make it seem like suicide?

I was dwelling on this point, my heart pounding in my
chest, imagining all the ways that someone could make a murder look like a
suicide to get away with it when I heard the door to the dorm open. I looked
up, half-expecting to see Johnny there, knife in hand. Instead it was Georgia
and I was almost as frightened by her coming in as I would have been of Johnny
showing up. I quickly closed out all of my tabs, trying to get rid of any
evidence of what I was searching for and the answers I was trying to find. In
my haste to close everything, the laptop started to slip off of my legs and I barely
caught it before it tumbled to the floor.

“You look like my brother when I walked in on him
jerking off to ‘Lesbian Flower Shop Five,’” Georgia said as she came in,
grinning at me and shaking her head. “What, did Johnny send you pictures of his
cock?” I blushed, shaking my head.

“Nah, nothing like that,” I told her, hearing the
tension in my own voice. Georgia stopped on her way to her side of the dorm
room, frowning. She looked at me more closely.

“What’s going on? You look like you’re about to throw
up.” I shrugged, swallowing down the nausea I was feeling and trying to force
my heart to slow down in my chest.

“I just haven’t been sleeping much lately,” I said,
looking down at the keyboard. I glanced at Georgia. She set her backpack down
and sat down in the chair next to the couch were I was, watching me more
heavily than even my mom would when I pretended to be sick to get out of
school.

“I ran into Johnny earlier,” Georgia said slowly.
“He’d said you were sick…also said that he was glad I had taken care of you
last night.” I blushed. I should have told Georgia about my cover story, but I
hadn’t had the opportunity. “Of course, I just went along with it. I mean, if
somehow you’re tired of hanging out with him now that your parents approve…”

“Oh God, they do,” I said, shaking my head. I
remembered how approving they had been. How charming Johnny had been. Somehow
it all seemed so much more sinister with their approval — with the way he had
buttered them up, talking to my dad about hockey, answering my mom’s
impertinent questions without batting an eyelash, being just as funny and sweet
to them as he had been to me ever since I’d first run into him in the dining
hall.

“Why is that a bad thing? I would have thought you’d
be happy to have a boyfriend your parents wouldn’t come after you for.” Gigi’s
eyes narrowed. “What exactly is going on, Becky? I mean, you were over the moon
about Johnny just a few days ago. What happened?” I bit my bottom lip and
worried it between my teeth for a few moments, trying to decide what to say. I
didn’t want to lie to Georgia about the situation, but I couldn’t think of what
the truth was. I didn’t know what the truth was. I didn’t know if I was out of
my mind or if Johnny was.

“Nothing. Nothing is going on. At least, not that I
know of,” I said, correcting myself. I didn’t know — that was the problem. I
had no hard proof one way or the other what Johnny’s involvement in the suicide
had been or what it hadn’t been.

“Come on, Becky, tell me the truth,” Georgia said,
looking at me sharply. “You don’t go around telling gorgeous guys that you’re
sick and have to stay away from them if everything’s fine. Do you think he’s
cheating on you or something?” I shook my head. I felt my eyes burning.

Before I knew it, a huge sob worked its way up from
the pit of my stomach and I pushed the laptop away, tears streaming down my
face as the enormity of what was going on in my life crashed over me.
Everything I had been so happy about was turning into complete shit.
“I…don’t…know…what to do…” I managed to say in an almost-howl as more and more
sobs hiccupped out of me. Georgia stood up out of the chair and came over to
the couch, pulling me into a tight hug as I continued to cry.

“
Shh
, Becky, it’s okay. Just
tell me what’s going on. It’s not that stupid girl from the game is it?” I
shook my head, for a moment not even able to talk. I took a few deep,
shuddering breaths.

“So,” I said, still trying to get a firm hold of
myself. “When I got home the other night from the dinner with my parents,
something was bugging me about the whole…Claire White thing.” Georgia’s eyes
widened.

“I thought he had answered your questions about that,”
she said, frowning slightly. I explained what I had found, late at night – how
I had found the original news article we’d both seen, about the memorial page
for Claire White and the implication that a bunch of boys had gone to jail over
her suicide. I told her about the anonymous comment about Johnny. Somehow, in
my wandering, meandering story, I found myself saying, “And I was reading about
sociopaths and they’re really charming at first and they’re not nervous or
anything and really smart…” I shook my head and tried to take a deep breath,
knowing that I was sounding crazy.

“Becky, this is… kind of a lot to take in,” Georgia
said, smiling slightly. “I get why you’re avoiding him. If I was convinced that
my boyfriend was some kind of girlfriend-killing maniac, I’d be a little less
than thrilled to be around him, too.” I had told her about my nightmare. “But
nothing you’ve found so far is, like…proof that Johnny was actually involved.
Maybe the anonymous comment was someone who hates him. You don’t know. And I
mean, he’s never been even a little bit mean to you. He obviously cares about
you.”

“But…but…” Georgia shook her head.

“Honestly, I mean, even if he is a sociopath, it’s not
like he’s going to kill you outright for asking him about it. In fact, he’d
probably just tell you. And you’ll have your answer.” I laughed in spite of
myself. “You owe it to him to give Johnny just a little bit of the benefit of
the doubt. Just a little bit. He’s always been good to you. He deserves a fair
trial, not a Google conviction.” I smiled weakly. “Just ask him more about the
Claire White thing and see what he says.” Georgia hugged me tightly and then we
shifted onto the topic of her date the night before; it had been a big success,
and she was looking forward to maybe seeing the guy again. I was able to put my
misgivings aside, for a little while at least, to think about something other
than Johnny and whether he might be a homicidal maniac.