52
I’m going to kill him.
And I have to, don’t I? After what I saw . . . after what he did. But he’s shouting something. About how we’re brothers, how we look after each other, how we don’t tell no secrets. He’s saying it wasn’t his fault.
‘We got each other’s backs!’ he yells. ‘Always! I didn’t do nothing!’
He’s not going to have a chance to tell nothing more. Because I’m stopping his voice, stopping his air. Stopping him. I hear Emily’s footsteps above, racing away.
I press my hands round his neck. ‘How hard do I push?’ I ask him.
His eyes go wide.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I saw it all mate.’ I say the last word like I’m mocking him. ‘I saw those films you made.’
And I’m thinking of Ashlee falling down. About how Mack laughed.
‘What were you playing at?’ I shout.
I need answers. Need to hurt him. I don’t know which I need most.
‘She wanted it,’ he’s saying. ‘I swear!’
‘Why would she want that . . .?’
Words catch in my throat. I’m thinking something else – remembering. Ashlee had placed my hands on her that night. I’d felt her neck between my fingers, her pulse. I remember her daring me.
I twist away and Mack slams me to the side of the head.
‘Get a grip!’ he shouts. ‘It was Shepherd, OK – him! You know this! I would never have hurt Ashlee . . . not intentionally, not . . .’
His voice is shaky, unable to finish.
I’m stumbling across the bunker, seeing flashes of light from where Mack’s just punched me.
‘You don’t know shit!’ Mack’s saying. ‘You don’t know what I did with Ashlee, what it meant.’
My stomach clenches. Mack and Ashlee kept secrets. Ashlee did things with Mack she didn’t do with me. Mack’s just admitted it.
I glare at him nasty. ‘You chased Ashlee! You chased her and then you . . .’
‘No,’ Mack says. ‘You don’t understand!’
Something’s coming together, though. It’s so big and terrible, it hits me like a tsunami. I don’t want to face it, because I know that soon as I do, there’s no going back. There’s nothing! It’s just the getting flattened, the drowning. The blackness and emptiness of knowing that . . .
‘You killed her!’ I scream. ‘It was you! You!’
I feel my jaw and my throat tense. There’s streaks of pain shooting through me. But I grab Mack and push him so hard he makes a thudding noise against the bunker wall.
‘You!’ I shout. ‘You wrapped your fingers around her. You squeezed.’
And he made me believe it was Shepherd, all this time! I think of Emily running hard to the police station – I want her to get there faster.
I push Mack again. His arm splays out towards the candles, scatters them – I see sparks of light in the air. I hear the lamp smash. But I can’t stop. Not until I know why. Not until I hurt him as much as he hurt her.
‘What were you doing?’
He’s moving his head sideways, much as I’ll let him, he can hardly get words out. ‘A different game,’ he gasps.
I’ve got my fingers round his neck, and I’m squeezing ’til I see red lines through his eyeballs, ’til his look goes kind of vacant. Did he see that in Ashlee’s eyes too, that night? Did he keep going anyway? I’m shaking so much I don’t know how hard I’m pressing. But I’m seeing his big dirty hands all over her, and I’m hearing his wide mouth laughing as she fell . . . and I don’t want to listen to his excuses. Don’t even want to look at him. I just want to squeeze, do it hard.
‘I saw it all!’ I yell again.
I just want him hurt. And I still have Ashlee’s collar in my pocket. I could wrap this around Mack’s neck and draw it up tighter than I ever done before, ’til he coughs and gasps. And maybe that would be right.
‘Not brothers any more,’ I say.