The Epidemic (32 page)

“In the end,” he says, “I wanted to keep her, but I can’t live with it. Virginia showed me that. She knew her father would erase her again, and she was so scared of him, Quinn. You can’t imagine. He left her completely powerless in her own life. Now he’s doing the same to us.”

Reed stands, and my hand falls away from his knee. He bites down on his lower lip, and measures his words. When he drags his eyes to meet mine again, a tear drips onto his cheek. “I shouldn’t even be here,” he says. “But I wanted you to know that I think you’re special. I always have. You’ve got something we don’t: a soul. The rest of us closers have lost ours somewhere along the way, but you—you still care. Maybe that will be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

Reed doesn’t finish the statement. He starts for the door, but I jump up and block his exit. I’m not about to let him leave when he’s obviously having some sort of psychotic episode. I move in front of him, my hands on his chest to stop him.

“Reed,” I beg. “Please, just wait here.” The terrifying fact is that Reed was not like this earlier in the week. But ever since the day he met Virginia Pritchard, he’s steadily gotten worse. I just didn’t realize it. I’m the one who asked him to take her home. I’ve done this to him. This behavioral contagion is fast—too fast to stop. What the hell are we going to do?

Reed looks down at me and reaches to trail his fingers down my cheek. His touch is cold, and it sends an icy shiver down my back.

“Virginia’s right,” he whispers. “There is no hope. If Arthur catches you, he’ll change you. He’ll take away everyone you love. It’s just like being dead.” Reed’s fingers stop at my collarbone. “Don’t try to save them,” he says. “Any of them—even Deacon. Just save yourself.” He leans in and presses his dry lips to mine.

I jump back fast as if he shocked me with static electricity. I slap him across the face, hoping to knock some sense into him. He stares at me for a moment, his tongue licking at the blood that’s begun to trickle again from his lip. It’s as if he doesn’t recognize me. Then he blinks quickly.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he mutters, wiping his hand over his mouth and looking down at the spot of blood. He turns and starts for the bathroom to wash it off.

“Reed, wait,” I call after him. “I didn’t mean—”

He pauses at the door and turns to glance over his shoulder at me. My stomach sinks. His expression is empty, lost. “I’m going to kill myself, Quinlan,” he says in a quiet voice. “I just wanted to say good-bye first.”

I take a startled breath at his words and rush forward. But before I reach him, Reed moves into the bathroom, slams the door, and locks it.

Panic explodes through my body, and I pound on the door with my fists and try the handle over and over. There’s a loud smash and the shatter of glass from inside.

“Reed!” I scream. “Reed!”

This isn’t happening. This can’t be real. But as I kick, bang, and throw myself against the door, trying to break the lock, I know exactly what’s happening. And I’m reminded of Catalina and her sister’s story about the day she killed herself.

There is a heavy thud behind the door, followed by silence. I take a step back, staring at the handle. “Open it,” I sob out. “Please, Reed.” I put my sore fingers over my lips, terror raging through me. “Reed,” I say weakly. But there is no answer.

The quiet goes on for another moment, and I numbly reach into my pocket and slip out my phone, keeping an eye on the door. I’m shaking nearly too much to dial, but I manage 911 and give them my address. I call Aaron, and when he answers, I can only whisper, “Come back.”

“Quinn,” he says. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

I don’t respond immediately because the beige carpet at the edge of the bathroom tile starts to darken. And I watch in horror as blood seeps under the door, staining the carpet red.

*  *  *

Reed Castle broke the mirror in the bathroom with the soap dish and then used a shard to stab himself in the neck, severing his
anterior jugular vein. The paramedics told me he bled out in less than two minutes. By the time they arrived, the bloodstain on the carpet had grown to nearly three feet wide.

Aaron arrived shortly after, never having made it to Marie’s. I gave the paramedics as much information as I could without compromising myself. I used Elizabeth Major’s name and abandoned my friend’s body—I didn’t even see him. I left Reed there with strangers because I had no choice. I left him all alone.

And I hate it. I fucking hate it so much, because he belongs with us. We’re his family.

Reed was my friend and I ruined him by getting him involved with Virginia. I’ve ruined everything.

Tomorrow, when I turn on the TV, they’ll be talking about Reed, his privacy stripped away as they dwell on the horror of it all. Sparing no detail. Because the concern has led to calls for transparency. And really, the news wants ratings. Clickbait. People find coroners’ reports and post them online. Their morbid obsession is fueling this crisis, and yet . . . they can’t see it.

Grief ravages through my chest, and I turn to Aaron, crying against his shoulder as we stand in the rain, letting it soak us through. Aaron gathered Reed’s things before we came outside. Reed hadn’t checked into his room, so he’d left his stuff in ours. Aaron haphazardly shoved the items into a bag and put them in the backseat of his car.

Aaron helps me into the passenger seat and walks around the car and gets in. He parks around the corner, away from the police, so we can catch our breath. In the dark car, we
sit and listen to the rain against the windshield. “Make it okay,” I murmur. “Please just bring him back.”

Aaron sniffles hard and turns his eyes toward the roof of the car.

“I wish I could,” he says miserably.

I try to build myself back up, sliding each piece into place until I’m almost a whole person. A broken plate superglued back together, all cracks and chipped corners. “Where will we go?” I ask in a scratchy voice, my thoughts a jumbled mess. I’ve lost Reed. I’ve lost my father, my advisor, my identity. And I’ve lost Deacon. “I have nowhere to go,” I say.

I’ve never really had a home. I had a place where I lived with a man pretending to be my father. I had houses where I stayed with families who had recently lost a child. Nothing of my own.

I had Deacon, and together we made a home. He knows my lonely soul better than anyone. Arthur Pritchard is trying to take that away from me: my last bit of home. And if Reed was right, Arthur plans to take even more than that.

“He took Reed,” I say. “Arthur Pritchard murdered him. And I led him straight to him.” I choke on my cry.

Aaron closes his eyes, his hands on the steering wheel. I know he wants to console me about our lost friend, but he doesn’t get the chance. His face contorts in anguish, his shoulders hunching over as he sobs, hard and filled with pain.

I lean in and rest my head on his shoulder while we both cry. We go on for nearly twenty minutes, and when we’re done, Aaron sits up, wiping his tearstained face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. And he starts the car, his breath still hitching on his tears.

AARON DRIVES AIMLESSLY AROUND TOWN
while I call Marie. I tell her that Reed is dead without crying, trying to detach myself from the story. A defense mechanism. A disturbing one at that.

Marie seems devastated by the news. I leave out the part where Reed said Marie knew of Arthur’s plan for the closers. One tragedy at a time. I can’t even stand the sound of her voice right now.

The night is a blur. We stop for gas, and then stop again later so Aaron can call Myra. He tells her everything. He promises he’ll be back with her soon, but even I can hear the doubt in his voice. Reed’s death is a heavy weight dragging us down. Like it’s killing us too.

We just keep driving, because if we stop for the night, we might not be able to start again. I don’t know where the time
goes. I only know it’s morning when the sun rises at five thirty, making a rare appearance. It cuts through the gray clouds and illuminates one side of the road. I close my eyes and lean my head against the car window, letting the warmth onto my cheeks.

Reed,
I think.
He’s sending this to me to give me hope. To tell me not to give up.

It’s a sweet sentiment—one I hold on to as I fight off the darkness creeping up my throat. I drift off, and when I open my eyes again I see that along the road the trees are thick and green, the branches curling toward the sun as if yearning for life. Asking for help to thrive.

A thought occurs to me, and I reach into the backseat and grab the bag with Reed’s things. I remember seeing a journal on the side table. I start to rummage through the bag, feeling around for it.

“What are you looking for?” Aaron turns to me, his voice rough, and I realize we haven’t spoken out loud in hours.

“Did you grab Reed’s journal?” I ask, my heart beats ticking faster.

“Uh . . .” Aaron furrows his brow. “I’m not sure. I grabbed whatever I saw. Was it in the room?”

“Yes,” I snap, although not at him. “He was writing in it when I got there. He set it aside.” I grow frantic. “I can’t find it!”

I tear open the zipper on the front pocket. Whatever Reed was writing could be a clue to what happened—how he spiraled so quickly. How this epidemic works.

My hand closes around a small leather-bound book, and I pull it out. The sight of it makes pain well up in my chest, a
reminder that its author is dead. I turn around in the seat and immediately open it.

The journal starts nearly a year ago. All closers keep one, although most of us opt to do it electronically. To be honest, my own journal was mild observation, plain. I imagine Reed’s will be the same. I quickly pass through the pages, skipping ahead, even over the mentions of me somewhere in the middle.

“Oh my God,” I say, my fingers stopping on a page.

“What?” Aaron takes his eyes off the road to look over at the journal. He immediately flashes his gaze at me and then turns back to the road. “When did it start?” he asks.

I stare down at the black spiral drawn on the page, the words underneath blocked out. I check the page before and see it was from the day we met with Marie at the diner. So the spirals started shortly after he saw Virginia Pritchard on the volleyball court. After talking to the girls at the game.

I skip ahead, finding nothing but dark spirals page after page, the outward expression of how lost he felt. Of the darkness that was taking over his soul. A tear falls from my eyes and dots the page. It waters down the ink, and a gray river runs off the paper.

My hands are shaking, but I turn to the last page—what he was writing just before I arrived at the room. I’m surprised when I don’t see a spiral.

Quinlan,

My breath catches at my name.

I know you’re going to be angry with me. I know you’ll be sad and I’m sorry for that. Believe me when I say I would never willingly hurt you. You are one of the truest friends I’ve ever had.

I was with Virginia tonight—she found your file. She also told me what it was like to be erased, showed me what was left of her. She said it was like being an empty shell. She said her father took her soul.

She also told me that he’d done the same to you. And that he’s planning to use this procedure on all of us. Arthur has a new facility on Old Garden Road, and I think that’s where he’s taking the closers.

This memory erasure is his cure—not just for suicide, but for misbehavior. Noncompliance. It will pinpoint memories and erase them. Loved ones are typically the first to go, she says.

But I couldn’t lose Katy. Her memory is all I have left.

Don’t trust Marie. Don’t trust anyone. You should run. Hide. I want you to know that I care about you. To me, it doesn’t matter who you used to be, because I know who you are now. You’re you. And that’s enough. That’s

The words end and the absence of them rips through my heart. I must have walked in when he wrote the last bit and he closed his book. I would give anything to talk to him again. To take back everything—keep him safe. But it’s too late for everything except regret. I read it aloud to Aaron.

When I close the journal, Aaron looks over, his jaw set hard. “Am I a bad person for hating Virginia?” he asks quietly.

“No,” I say honestly. “But she was a victim too. Imagine living with a monster. Imagine waking up with no hope every day. I can’t hate her; I understand if you do. But right now we have to be focused. We can’t absorb this pain. We can’t take this all in. Reed tried, and it killed him.”

“He killed himself,” Aaron says flatly.

“No,” I say, glancing over. “Arthur’s plans did. And that’s the problem. This behavior is a contagion. I can only hope that Virginia’s death hasn’t triggered something worse. Reed felt like he had nowhere to turn—it had all gone black for him. One deep, dark spiral. And fear is a force all its own. Arthur Pritchard and Virginia are spreading fear. And for that . . . there is no cure.”

“And if they got to Deacon?” he asks, turning to me. “If they erased him? Then what?”

“Then we’ll burn it all to the fucking ground,” I say, and stare out the windshield. “I won’t let him take Deacon too.”

I take out my phone and look up directions to Old Garden Road. Aaron looks over and asks what I’m doing.

“Something,” I say. “I’ve got to do something, and if the choice is run or show up on Arthur’s front fucking doorstep, I choose to face that bastard head on. I will
take
Deacon back, even if it means handing myself over.

“Stupid plan,” Aaron mutters, and with a glance at the map on my phone, he makes a U-turn. And drives us directly to Arthur Pritchard.

*  *  *

Aaron’s dark skin has taken on a greenish tint. We’re heartsick. But our courage grows as we drive down the nearly abandoned stretch of road. We pass old factories with their crumbling brick façades. I start to worry that Reed misled me—he wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. But Aaron was right: Reed was a good closer. His observations would have reflected that.

“There it is,” I say, pointing ahead. It’s unmarked. It’s unremarkable. But I know it’s the right place. A two-story building with whitewashed bricks, a wheelchair ramp out front. Aaron pulls into the lot and drives around to the back. When I see Arthur Pritchard’s car, I take in a shaky breath. This really is it.