Page 30 of Firefly
According to the article, we stole a vehicle while intoxicated, crashed into another car and both died at the scene due to severe injuries.
Dead… declared dead.
Buried.
My pulse pounds loudly in my ears while I keep reading.
Whitestone Penitentiary is never mentioned.
No prison sentence.
No trial details.
Nothing. It’s like I vanished from existence after that night.
Like somebody erased me completely.
Rage detonates inside my chest so fast I punch the table hard enough to crack the wood.
“That motherfucker!” I roar.
Judge Fitzgerald. He didn’t just bury me in prison. He buried me in the world too.
Fake death certificate. Corrupted records. Closed case.
Nobody would look for a dead boy. No wonder I never had any visitors. Nobody would question where I went.
A laugh bubbles from my throat and I let it out.
Loud and broken.
Ophelia thought for the last three years that I was dead. Mourned me while I sat inside a cage thinking she abandoned me.
Jesus Christ.
I let my head fall, trying to slow down my breathing, then I drag my hands down my face roughly. I hurt her tonight and the realization of that twists like a knife beneath my ribs.
All those tears.
The heartbreak in her voice.
The way she looked at me like she finally got a miracle, only for me to rip it away seconds later.
“Fuck!” I yell as the guilt of it all sits unfamiliar and ugly inside me.
I hold my head in my hands.
I don’t know what to do with all this because I wanted revenge.
But not like this.
Not if she really believed I was dead.
I lean back and shut my eyes, hoping that with some sleep I can clear my mind enough to come up with some sort of a plan, but sleep never comes.
By three in the morning, I’m pacing my apartment like a caged animal with too much rage and nowhere to put it.
So I grab my bike keys and leave.
