Pressure - By Jeff Strand Page 0,51
room, letting blood drip onto his shirt.
“I’m sorry, Will,” I said, feeling queasy.
“Go to hell.”
“Enough! Alex, do you need ice for your hand?”
“No, I’m okay.”
Michael helped Will to his feet. “We’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
Michael led Will out of the room. The crowd of spectators hadn’t dissipated, so I shut the door.
I sat down at Will’s desk, gathered up the pictures, and tore them to pieces, ignoring the pain in my hand as I did so. I wanted to burn them, dunk them in the kerosene I used for my flaming torches, but that had been confiscated weeks ago.
No way in hell had Will made those pictures.
I picked up the phone and dialed Melanie’s number.
“Hello?” she asked on the third ring.
“Hey.”
“Hi! How’s it going?”
“All right.”
“Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“No, no, I’m fine. I just wanted to call.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Just…just make sure you keep your door locked tonight, okay?”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“You there?” I asked.
“Yeah. Is there something wrong, Alex?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong. It was a funny dream I had, that’s all. Sorry if I scared you. Look, I should go, I fell asleep at my desk and woke up in the middle of a nightmare, no big deal.”
“We can talk as long as you want.”
“No, you need to get some sleep; you’ve got an early class.”
“I could come over.”
“No, really, I’m fine. Just got kind of spooked.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I wrote Michael a note promising him that everything was fine and that I’d be back in the morning and slipped it under his door. Then I left the building, walked to Melanie’s dorm, and found a good vantage point where I could sit outside and keep watch throughout the night.
As the first students started to emerge from their dorms and head off to class, I walked to Darren’s room and knocked on his door.
“Hey, Alex,” he said, grinning as he answered. His nose was red and swollen. “That was one hell of a punch you threw. I think you probably hurt me as bad as you did him.”
“Can I come inside?”
“Jeez, aren’t we Mr. Formal? Yeah, c’mon in.”
I walked inside his room. Darren shut the door behind me, then went across the room and plopped down on his bed. “Did you even sleep?”
I shook my head.
“Why not? Hand hurt too much?”
“My hand’s fine. Did you do the pictures?”
“Dude! I adore Melanie! You’re all glowy and stuff when you’re around her. I’d never do something like that. Why would you even think that?”
“Because Will said he didn’t do it and I believe him.”
“You believe that freak?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’m hurt. I’m really hurt. Do you really think that putting up death pictures of your girlfriend is something I’d do?”
“You faked a journal to get my friends kicked out of school.”
Darren let out an incredulous laugh. “I was twelve! Holy shit, I thought we were long over that!”
“I thought we were, too.”
“How could I have even done it? I don’t have a key.”
“You’ve heard me complaining to Will lots of times that he leaves the door unlocked.”
“So, what, you think I made up some pictures of Melanie, snuck into your room, stuck ’em on your wall, and waited for you to blame Will?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would I do that?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
Darren gave a slight nod. “Did you notice that you haven’t backed down?”
“Huh?”
“You haven’t backed down. I said I didn’t do it, and you didn’t apologize and pretend everything was okay.”
“So?”
“So that’s good. How did it feel to punch him?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“That’s exactly what this is about. How did it feel?”
“It felt good.”
Darren grinned. “That’s how it was supposed to feel.”
“It felt good when I did it, because I was more pissed off than I’ve been in my entire life. Then I realized that he wasn’t the one who deserved it, and it felt absolutely sickening.”
“That’s understandable. But you can get over that. Focus on how good it felt to finally let that son of a bitch know what you thought about him.”
“That’s not what I thought about him. I made a mistake.”
Darren was silent for a long moment. “Do you want a Coke or something? I’ve got some in the fridge.”
“No.”
“Yeah, I made the pictures. But don’t flip out on me…hear me out, okay?”
I nodded as I clenched my fists.
“I swear to you, it wasn’t because I have any bad feelings about Melanie. None at all. I just