Modern Monsters (Entangled Teen) (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

I don’t realize that I’ve hit him until Autumn is grabbing my arms and trying to pull me back. Patrick is on the ground, hand clamped over his mouth. I’m shaking. I’m shaking and I’m going to be sick and Patrick is rolling onto his side, spitting blood onto the concrete, and I don’t understand what just happened.

Rage:
violent, uncontrollable anger.

Wrath. Fury. Outrage.

None of these is a strong enough word.

“Take it back!”
The words are hollow and seem to echo into nothingness.

“You wanted the truth,” Patrick hisses. His bottom lip is bleeding. He must have cut it on his teeth when I punched him. “And I gave it to you. We were drunk. We saw you take her upstairs, and Brett wanted to go look. It just got out of hand.”

Even my voice wavers. Every word is an effort to get out. “I don’t believe you.”

“At first I was just going to use his phone to take a picture of him sitting there with her. Something stupid. Then it got carried away and he just started to mess around with her—I swear, I never meant for it to happen.”

Autumn’s hands are wrapped around mine, holding me in place as much as I think I’m holding her. She whips her head toward him, her voice shy of a scream. “But it did! It did happen, you son of a bitch, and you were willing to let Vic take the fall for it! You went with your friends to go after him, knowing exactly who the real rapist was!”

“I didn’t want to go to jail!” Patrick howls. “They already suspected Vic; it was easy to just play along with it. It was Brett’s idea to put some of the pics on Aaron’s phone as a backup just in case!”

I don’t care about the whys or hows or anything else. It’s all background noise set behind the blaring reality of what Patrick first said to me.

I had hoped this would all lead to a dead end, that the cops would find another suspect. Someone who fit into the role perfectly. Someone who didn’t go to our school. Patrick and Aaron were bad enough when I thought about how many times Callie has passed them in the few short days she’s been back at school, but Brett…

Brett
.

Brett raped Callie.

Brett, who comforted me and promised me everything would be okay. Brett, whose father was ready to stand at my side and defend me.

No. I’m not grasping this concept. I can’t breathe.

Patrick and Autumn are still arguing when I turn and run for the parking lot.

The car door is locked. I try the handle anyway before sliding down the side to sit on the ground, staring at my cell. Brett never texted me back after I said I was coming to Patrick’s. Why didn’t he text me back?

Patrick is lying. He has to be.

Brett is not that type of person. More than that, he would never have thrown me under the bus, never have let me take the fall for him.

Autumn finds me several minutes later. Her eyes are red from crying. She sinks to a crouch in front of me, hands on her knees. It’s the first time I’ve seen her at a loss for what to say.

“Maybe we should talk to his parents first,” she says quietly. “Unless you want to go to the police.”

Mutely, I shake my head. How can I go to the cops and turn in my best friend? Especially when I’m not convinced he did it.

“Victor.” Autumn extends a hand, touches my cheek, tries to coax me into looking up at her. “We have to do something.”

I force a deep breath into my lungs and out again, despite how tight and disorganized my insides feel. “I need to t-talk to him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We need to—”

“
No.
He’s my best friend. I can’t just t-take someone else’s word for it without t-talking to him.”

Autumn runs a hand over her face. She’s as tired as I am. And while my concern has shifted involuntarily toward my closest friend, I know she’s still focused on Callie. I should be, too. But I’m not sure how to balance my worry for them both. Autumn’s whole social world is Callie. Mine is Brett.

Brett couldn’t do this. He
wouldn’t
.

There’s some misunderstanding. Patrick is full of shit.

“I’ll drive you, if you want,” she offers.

Logically, that would be best. But my brain isn’t clear enough yet to talk to Brett. I need some air. I need some silence. I need— “I can walk.” If my sense of direction isn’t skewed, Brett’s shouldn’t be more than thirty minutes away. I can use my phone if I need directions.

Autumn gets up at the same time I do, brows knit together. “Vic, you don’t have to do this alone.”

Looking at her face, I think I really understand why Autumn has wanted to help so much these last few weeks. It isn’t just because she cares about me, or about Callie. It’s because she’s felt so helpless to undo what happened to her best friend, helpless to control anything about this situation. If it were anyone else but Brett, I would gladly bring her along, but this is something I have to do. This is something I need to tackle on my own.

I cup her cheeks in my hands, bowing down until our foreheads touch. She’s struggling to stay composed, to keep from crying any more, and I wonder what else she said to Patrick, what Patrick said to her.

“I
need
to do this alone,” I murmur, covering her mouth with a kiss before she can protest. Autumn’s fingers curl against my chest, twisting the fabric of my shirt to hold me where I am, and her mouth is soft but so insistent and desperate in the way she kisses me back, as though I can somehow fix all of this with a wave of my hand. God, I would if I could.

When I pull away, she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath and straightening up. Of all the moments in my life I could have picked to gather the courage to kiss Autumn Dixon, and this is it. Desperate and sad and raw, and tasting of tears. Still, Autumn tries to smile through it. “Call me when you need me.”

That’s all I need. To know she’ll be there when this is over, that if somehow—some way—Brett is gone out of my life, I won’t be all alone.

I underestimated the walk to Brett’s. It takes me closer to fifty minutes in the heat as opposed to thirty. The only car in Brett’s driveway when I get there is his, and for a second my stomach lurches at the thought that he went somewhere with his parents, and no one is home.

The key Mrs. Mason gave me is still on my key chain. I don’t think twice before using it, and my throat won’t even cooperate enough to call out Brett’s name. He isn’t in the living room or the kitchen. Further investigation leads me upstairs, where I hear the shower going in the hall. Brett’s shower.

My hands have gone clammy and numb. I step into Brett’s room, making a straight line for his cell phone, which is sitting ominously on his desk, near his glasses and homework. I wrap my fingers around the rubber casing and turn on the screen, stopping only when my gaze is caught by the corkboard behind Brett’s desk.

I’ve seen it a hundred times before. It’s not like the photographs I’m looking at now are any different than they were the first, second, third, hundredth time I looked at them. Now, maybe, I’m viewing them with more brevity and each image of Brett and me—from grade school to high school and every summer, holiday, birthday in between—stabs my heart a littler deeper.

“Vic?”

I turn around, his phone in hand. Brett steps into his room in sweatpants and a T-shirt, towel around his shoulders and short, wet hair plastered to his forehead.

“What’re you doing?”

This is stupid. I should just tell him. I should tell him what Patrick told me so he can explain and put my worries to rest. “I j-just got here from talking to Patrick.”

Brett blinks. He slides the towel off and chucks it into his laundry basket. “Why would you go see him?”

My grip tightens around the phone. I have to force it to relax. “He has pictures on his phone from the night of the party. Of Callie.”

Brett pauses, straightens, turns to watch me with a serious crease to his brow. “What?”

“Patrick has pictures of Callie. He said he took them for someone.” I don’t stutter, but the tone of my voice wavers like I’m regretting every word that is coming out of my mouth.

“Jesus.” Brett combs his fingers through his hair, but he doesn’t move from his spot. If anything, his gaze has grown more intense. “We should call my dad. Let me see my phone.”

Reflex almost has me handing it to him. I want to. If I could pretend I don’t have a reason to mistrust Brett right now, my world would be a much brighter place. “I n-need to look at the pictures on your phone, Brett.”

His mouth downturns. “No, you don’t. Let’s call my dad.”

He extends his hand, waiting.

I lift the phone, breathe deeply, and turn on the screen again, punch in the pass code I’ve known since the day he got the phone, and open to Brett’s photos.

“You’re overreacting, Vic,” he says quietly.

No response. I’m too busy skimming through Brett’s phone, flipping through pictures from the night of the party, of which there are plenty. A number of them of himself and Aaron, himself and Patrick.

There are no pictures of Callie. I lower the phone. Tears prick my eyes.

“Feel better?” Brett hasn’t lowered his hand. “Can I have it now, please?”

Does it prove anything? I don’t know. I want it to. My eyes are burning with fighting back tears, and I step forward to hand over the phone.

It beeps once, and the still-active screen presents me with a pop-up from Patrick that reads:

I told about callie. The cops know about both of us. Sorry

The cops know.

Patrick was telling the truth.

Did Autumn leave him so racked with guilt that he had to tell? Or did he know his secret was out and didn’t want to wait around for the police to show up at his door?

Either way, I can see the anger settling over Brett’s features, darkening his eyes, curling his mouth. The last time I saw that look was when he cornered Aaron in the parking lot, an act that now makes my chest tight with how wrong it was. Brett snatches the phone from my hand and turns away. He drags in a shaky breath. He types something back to Patrick and chucks the phone to the bed. His hands go to his hair, gripping the short strands fiercely in frustration. “Fucking moron…”

“Brett. What did you do?”

He turns halfway to look at me, raising a finger. “This is your chance to leave it alone, Vic. They have no evidence against me, and Patrick had the pictures.”

God, my throat is so dry and my eyes feel like they’re going to spill over. “You did it. You raped Callie.”

“I was
drunk
,” he groans. “I was fucking
drunk
and she was barely conscious, she can’t remember hardly any of it!
I
didn’t even remember it at first!”

“Oh, please. You weren’t
that
drunk. You were sober enough to drive yourself home. She remembers enough. She remembers it happened.”

“So I should throw away my whole life, my whole future, for one mistake? Vic…” He closes the distance between us, his hands clasping the back of my neck to force me to look right at him, and I’ve never seen Brett look so crazed and frightened, so unlike himself. “I’m eighteen. She’s a minor. If I were prosecuted…that’s it. I’m gone. I’d be labeled as a sex offender for life even if I got a short sentence. No future for me. No Ivy League college. I’m
going places
in my life, yeah?”

I try to blink back the tears and only succeed in catching a few in my lashes. “What’d you do with the pictures?”

“What?”

“Patrick said he took pictures.” And it was obvious he didn’t have all of them.

Brett’s mouth twitches and he says, “They’re gone.” But he ruins it by casting a quick glance at his laptop. He does have them. And deleting them now isn’t going to keep the cops from recovering them.

“You were going to let someone else take the fall for it. You were going to let
me
take the fall.”

He shakes his head quickly, like I can’t possibly understand. “That was never my intention. I didn’t care if it was someone else, but you—no. That’s why I asked Dad to take care of your case. You, Aaron, Patrick…you’re still seventeen. You might be tried as minors and your record would be sealed when you hit eighteen. Dad could’ve gotten you off with a light sentence.”

His words make me cold all over. “So it was okay if
my
life got ruined because of jail.”

The laugh Brett lets out is sharp and acidic as he pushes me back and steps away. “
What life?
Jesus Christ, Vic! You’re barely graduating. If you go to college, it’ll be some crappy community place. I didn’t want you to get involved in this, and I had no idea Callie would pinpoint you. That’s why I had Patrick snatch Aaron’s phone and slip that picture on there. He’s an asshole. You and I both would’ve been fine. Dad even said so.”

I close my eyes for a moment. “Your dad knew.”

Brett’s fingers tighten. I can feel them against my vertebrae, begging me to look at him. “I didn’t know who else to tell,” he whispers. “I thought I was just…going nuts. After I found out you had gone through Aaron’s phone, I had to tell him. I didn’t know what to do.”

And Mr. Mason wanted to protect him.

I don’t know who I’m looking at, but it isn’t my best friend since grade school. It isn’t the Brett who stood up for me, who taught me to ride a bike, who helped me pass all of my high school finals. Because the Brett I knew would never hurt someone like this and then not take responsibility for it.

Or maybe he would have done this, and I’ve really never known him at all.

He presses his forehead to mine and I think he’s close to tears, too. This is a look I’ve never wanted to see on him. Such unbridled fear and uncertainty.

“Vic. I need you to do this for me. I swear to God, it was a
mistake
. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am and I fucked up, I know I did…but tell them I was with you. Tell them Patrick is lying. The two of us against him, we can do it. You’re my best friend. You’re all I’ve got. Please, Vic.
Please
.”

I am small.

Helpless.

“I’ve worked
so hard
not to be ordinary,” Brett says.