Guilt (15 page)

Then, I remembered who this man was. I pushed against his chest and dislodged him from our close proximity. For a moment, I was afraid that he'd fight back – like Luke had. Kain respected my body language and moved away. He turned his gaze in another direction and cleared his throat to rid the moment of its sudden discomfort. After a few awkward seconds, he looked at me and smiled.

"I'll build the fire," he said, and rose to make his way back down the steep hill. He headed for the firewood, and I followed to retrieve the blanket.

I had to tell him. He needed to know why I couldn't return his advances. He didn't need to know about my rape in college, but I had to confess my part in his brother's death. It was the fair thing to do.

After clearing away dead leaves to keep the fire from spreading outside the pit, Kain built the firewood into the shape of a teepee, and stuffed the inside with old newspaper he retrieved from his pack. While he worked to kindle the fire from within, I spread out the blanket nearby and began to unpack the contents of the backpack. It consisted of sandwiches and potato chips, along with a thermos of hot cocoa, some chocolate bars and graham crackers to go with the marshmallows. Oh my god,
smores
. An absolute treat. My giddiness returned, but I felt guilty about it.

As much as I didn't want to ruin this picnic, I had to tell him. I couldn't keep prolonging it. He needed to know. Dammit, just do it already. Stop battling it out, and just do it.

"Kain," my voice wavered as I got his attention. The tone in which I said his name drew his concern, because he looked at me with apprehension.

"I have something I need to tell you," I started.

"I know, I know," he interrupted. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so forward. I just thought maybe. . . well you know. . ."

"No, no. It's not that," I wished it was that simple, but it wasn't. "It's just that. . . I. . ." Gee, how could I word this? "I'm the one responsible for Corry's death." The words blurted out quickly, leaving a strange staleness on my tongue.

The look that appeared on his face at those words surprised me. It showed confusion, amusement and a hint of sorrow. "What are you talking about? Corry committed suicide."

"I know." My heart was pumping faster than it had when I first climbed the hill. "But he did it because of me. I'm the one responsible for him taking his own life. He did it because I rejected him."

"What makes you think that that made him. . . where'd you get that idea from?"

"It was all over school. He killed himself because he asked a girl out and she said no. It broke his heart and he, well, he couldn't handle it." My throat began to close in on me because I was trying not to cry.

"I know about that rumor – " Kain's expression went darker.

"It was me. I was the one he asked out the day before he killed himself." My voice pleaded his understanding. "He said he wanted to take me somewhere that Saturday and I said no. He seemed really hurt and I couldn't bear to look at him anymore, so I just turned away from him. That was the last time I saw him. And I'm so sorry for it."

Kain didn't say anything. He turned his head towards the fire that had begun to catch onto the wood.

I wanted to smooth it over, to let him know how sorry I was. I never had the chance to say it to Corry, but I could admit it to his brother. "The thing is, I figured out that I really did like him after all, and I was going to tell him the next day. If I'd had a chance to tell him that I'd changed my mind, he'd still be alive. He wouldn't have had a reason to. . ." I sniffled and a tear ran down my cheek. I couldn't hold it back any more. "He was such a decent person, and I r-r-ruined h-him."

Kain stood up. "There was a lot more to it than that," he said, then turned and walked to the other side of the elongated mound.

I remained by the fire for several minutes before I got up and joined him. His last words had held the promise of removing some of the fault I'd carried around for so long. Perhaps, I could get him to reveal more on the subject, but I didn't want to hurt him in order to get him to disclose it. I felt a fondness for Corry's big brother, and I just couldn't bring myself to try to obtain closure at his expense anymore.

I stood behind him, trying to think of the words to say, anything to break the silence. A minute went by before I realized something, and I inched closer until I stood beside him. Pointing my finger towards the gully beneath us, I said, "There. That's where Corry placed the little girl's grave."

Kain followed the direction of my finger and looked at the leaf-covered earth below. His eyes went darker. Perhaps, I only reminded him that his brother may have made an unanswered plead for help by drawing the grave. To salvage the situation, I expanded on my thoughts about the subject.

"Corry was so thoughtful. He actually gave that little lost girl the marked grave that she never received in real life. And he gave her a giant to watch over her. He really had such a deep soul."

Kain continued his silent stare at the imaginary grave below. Perhaps, I dwelled on the subject for too long, so I decided that, maybe, I should leave things alone now. Turning back towards the blanket, I took several steps when I heard Kain turn back around to face me.

"Actually," he spoke at last, "the location was my idea."

Chapter Twenty

It took Claire several hours to make it home that Monday afternoon. She'd rather stay isolated in the tranquil woods than to return to the reality that suggested that life could change and people could die. Tragedy had never truly happened to her before, and so she still felt a sort of immunity to such a notion as death. Sure, she had lost two grandparents, and her Great Aunt Mimmsy passed away only last summer; but they were so much older and had died of natural causes. While it had been sad to lose them, those events never encroached on her concept of mortality, or the lack there of.

The crime of the kidnapped girl shocked and upset her as a member of the community, but even that wasn't close enough to shake up her perception of life. So, the idea that Corry, or any other peer, could have ended his own existence – to just stop being and no longer cohabit the lives of others – well, it just couldn't be possible.

The early December sun began to set, so Claire resigned herself to make her way back to civilization. She felt relieved that she met with no one on her way home from school; and intended to sneak in the side door of the house, which opened up to the kitchen. From there, she planned to head straight for her bedroom.

She walked inside, only to have her mother and her neighbor, Mrs. Corsciker, thwart her plans. They were sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee and looking dejected.

"Oh, Clairabell," her mom said upon seeing her, "where have you been? This town is turning upside-down, and then
you
go missing."

"You shouldn't worry your mother like that. Don't you have any idea what kind of things have been going on lately?" Mrs. Corsciker never intentionally irritated Claire, but she possessed a different disposition than the young girl, which kind of rubbed her the wrong way.

The Corsciker family had been friends with Claire's family for as long as she could remember. Barbeques, babysitting, road trips were all shared. Even bullying was a united effort by their fifteen-year old daughter, Lori, who happened to adore Lil, and, therefore, plagued Claire for years; but Claire didn't care about that anymore. She revenged Lori's snobby attitude last year when she let slip to Lil that Lori had a case of head lice. Lil wouldn't let Lori near her after that; and, as a bonus, she caught her big sister checking for lice larva in the bathroom mirror on several occasions since. Lil was such a sucker.

"Claire," her mom looked at her daughter with sad inquisitive eyes, drawing the girl back from her wandering reflection, "did you know Corry Murphy?"

Claire heard that question and discerned two pivotal points. Not only did her mom mention the name of a boy that Claire doubted the woman had known only yesterday, but she also used the word "did". Past tense.

"Wha-What do you mean?" Claire's heart stopped for a moment, and then began pounding so hard she became light headed.

"You didn't hear about it yet?" The neighbor piped up. "You must be the only one in town. Lori said the whole school was talking about it."

"Sweety," her mom had the decency to address the subject delicately for her young daughter. "A boy in your school took his own life last Friday. Lil said that he was in the same grade level that she's in. Did you know this Corry?" The look on the woman's face showed Claire that she hoped she didn't know him, so that the mother could save her little girl from the grief of such a distressing incident.

Claire felt her knees go week and her eyes watered up, threatening to unleash tears. Her mother had just confirmed her worst fears. "I," she needed privacy, "I'm going to my room." She felt thankful that her words came out in a bored sounding cadence, rather than revealing exactly how she felt.

* * *

As soon as the report hit the town, anxiety levels skyrocketed. The news of the missing girl had already shaken up the community, and now the suicide of a seventeen-year old boy stunned them.

The school board decided to close the high school for the remainder of the week to allow the students to grieve. The truth was, the teachers and guidance councilors didn't know how to handle bereavement on such a large scale, so they let the parents deal with their own teenagers.

Corry's family scheduled the funeral for Thursday afternoon. Claire found this out by listening in on Lil's phone conversations. Lil and her friends discussed the death like they saw it as a personal loss. They told stories back and forth about how they knew something was wrong with Corry, how they saw his suicide coming.

If that were true, why didn't they do something to stop it? Those little bitches didn't know anything. They just liked the attention that came from their share in the gossip.

Claire spent most of her days in her bedroom, in a stupor. She shifted from grief to anger, numbness to physical sickness, disbelief to self-loathing, but spent most of her time in anguish. Her mind twisted the scenarios regarding Corry's death. Sometimes it was her fault and sometimes it wasn't. She told herself that she should have seen the warning signs and, then, she declared to herself that there were no signs. Now and then, she became convinced that it had to be an accident because Corry wasn't capable of self-murder, and later, she concluded that an act such as suicide was simply characteristic of his intense personality.

She couldn't deal with all the thoughts surging through her mind, so she slept often. This routine passed the time away until the funeral. Claire hoped that if she attended the memorial she could bury her sorrow with Corry's coffin. That, she assumed, was how it worked, right? Once the body was laid to rest the world went on, turning back to normal? Her heart yearned for normalcy, and her mind longed to forget the death that she caused and the possibilities for the future that were lost.

* * *

Claire's father drove her family to the church for the funeral service. Since Corry had been in Lil's class, her mom thought that it would be a good idea if they all attended. They parked the car in a spot along the street, the church lot being full, and when they walked through the double doors they found that there was only standing room available.

The whole school – student body and faculty – showed up for the funeral. The entire town made an appearance, actually. People who couldn't possibly have known Corry, like the mayor of Brickerton and half of the residents of the Sunny Pines Nursing home, sat in the pews of the church while the memorial service took place.

Claire glared around at the crowd, but no one in the congregation seemed to notice her frown because of the general sorrow that surrounded the room. She saw these people, watched them with scorn, as they sat there dabbing at the tears that escaped from their eyes. Most of them didn't know Corry. They probably wouldn't have been able to pick him out in a crowd when he was alive. They wouldn't have given him a second look last week.