the one I bought for me and Travis. I can almost see him passed out on the couch after a late night of video games, his textbooks still open and spread out with his notes across the floor.
My throat tightens. I still can’t believe he’s gone and not coming back to find me. If he was still alive, he would have come back by now.
There’s no point in putting this off. My train leaves for D.C. in a couple of hours. No more excuses. My bags are packed. Xander is waiting for me.
Travis isn’t ... Not that it’ll stop me from leaving him a note, just in case. It won’t give my location or any other revealing information because who knows what lengths Sam will go to try and find me.
If Sam wasn’t hunting me for vengeance on my brother, I’d question whether he was the one who came for Travis that night. With Sam and the rest of the people on his payroll convinced that Travis was the rat, that he’s in witness protection somewhere after a staged disappearance, I know—without a doubt—this is one thing that Sam wasn’t behind.
Travis didn’t do shit. He’d never rat me out. He would have taken me with him to hide forever in some terrible place.
Travis and I used to write letters to one another, like a secret club for siblings. Before Mom and Dad died and we were split up, we used to hide notes for each other in our house. My favorite hiding spot was in the linen closet, tucked behind the towels and blankets. It’s where I could put letters that detailed my annoyances with our parents because I knew they’d never find them in a closet that only the two of us used.
The dinky cupboard here that serves as my linen closet will work perfectly. Along with the photo that I keep hidden of Travis and me on our last vacation with our parents in a ridiculously picturesque downtown area.
Despite all the letters that I still write to Travis, this one is harder. I write to a dead person no problem, but I’m at a loss for words when it’s a fictitious event in which he’s alive.
On the sixth piece of paper, I scribble out:
I fold it around the photo, then shove it into the closet before I can talk myself out of this childish notion that he’s in a coma, ready to wake up, or is an amnesiac who will remember who he is—who I am—any moment now.
As I step back out into the tiny living space, I catch sight of the stains on the carpet. They don’t look like blood stains anymore, but I know that the bleach spots mark where Travis’ blood splattered. I picture the scene that I’ve settled on in my mind as a way of trying to understand. I imagine the assailant broke into our home—which apparently wasn’t a challenge, because the police say the lock wasn’t tampered with. They think that I left it unlocked, maybe even open, that night.
I’d like to think that he tried to fight back. In my mind, he was knocked unconscious so that they could ravage our home and steal our jewelry, including the cross around my neck. They took my mother’s old jewelry box, the one with secrets I knew existed but hadn’t yet uncovered.
The thieves probably dragged Travis out the front door. It’s here that the story that I’ve created goes blurry. I try not to think about them pulling his lifeless body from the apartment to destroy the evidence of their murder, but that is what the cops think happened.
In the back of my mind, there’s constant pecking, stabbing holes in their theory. It seems impossible that they’d get a dead body out of the building without being seen. He must have been alive. If they were after information, they knapped the wrong sibling. Travis only ever knew what was happening with our unethical ties after I told him. I was dating Sam. I was the one who eavesdropped on discussions of the drug ring breaking into something new—though I hadn’t heard what. Travis had no clue because he wanted desperately to stay clean.
He ran away from his foster home and came to New York City because of me. He slept on the streets because of me. He sold pot because of me.
He wanted nothing to do with illegal schemes. He wanted to go to school and play video games. He wanted nothing more than to make sure his little sister was always happy and safe. He did everything because of me—for me. He would never compromise me. Destroy me. That was my job.