Weeds in the Sidewalk by Allen Renfro

Author:Allen Renfro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, serial killer, vigilante thriller, psychological crime thriller, revenge and betrayal, gay abused, homeless lgbt youth, amnesia thriller, murder action suspense thriller
Publisher: Allen Renfro

Chapter Thirteen

“13”

Rodney didn’t say a word to me as we drove home, as he parked his car and we walked up the three flights of stairs to the apartment. I was familiar with every pop and groan of the wood steps, a feeling too comfortable, too much like home.

The music I liked soaked through the walls of my room as I watched the light through my window become dark. The stains of nightglow stretched across my bed as I lay there staring up at the ceiling. Rodney didn’t want to talk anymore. My threat was like a tornado warning: don’t call me Aiden ever again. The music in the living room was cranked up loud to drown out his conscience, his well-meaning guilt. I was sorry for not feeling sorry. I knew even at thirteen that I couldn’t be the bandage to his wound. I wasn’t a nephew. I wasn’t a son. I wasn’t little league. I wasn’t football games or Christmas plays. I wasn’t him.

Everything that Mary said bored holes into me, like worms digging deep into my gut, the nausea that pushes up through the throat and forces you to swallow back down. In the city’s glow, I could see the wall behind my bed, my drawing, the trees, the clouds that only I could see, upside down from my view, so different than what I knew. My perfect drawing, the mirror that didn’t reflect back; an answer that I was missing; a part of me lurking in closets behind closed doors that I was afraid to open. Let him sleep, I told myself. Let him stay blind, don’t let the dominoes fall.

Quietly, I crept from my room down the hall to the bathroom, flicked on the light, and locked the door. The mirror over the sink stared at me, a dark-haired boy with a black eye and swollen jaw, lower lip as large as a balloon, the white T-shirt too big. It wasn’t a vampire that stared back. I looked innocent again, somewhere between stupid and victim.

A soft knock came to the door.

“You okay in there?” Rodney asked.

I rushed over and opened the door, pushing quickly past him and down the hall.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I called back as I closed the door to my room.

I could feel him standing just outside, listening. The noise a body makes without moving or saying anything, a natural sound like the soft hum of electricity flowing from place to place, a shadow that interrupts the line of light just under the door.

I waited for the shadow under the door to become light again, pulling the covers up to my stomach. The ceiling above me was not the same as counting stars, staring at a square fixture of glass that reflected light when flipping a switch. I pretended to stare out into space.

Everything inside me felt different. The cancer of Mary’s words spread from my heart to my brain, lungs, stomach. No going back. No forgiveness. The one I was

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