Interference (ON HOLD)

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Carly led the way down the hall to her room. Davey stepped inside and was swept into the image she’d been shown earlier in the day. This was the room where she found Carly’s body. The room where she destroyed the future by saving Carly’s life. Carly sank to the floor beside her bed. Her eyes deeper in her face than ever before. Her cheeks so hollow that the bones appeared ready to poke through. But worse than that, worse than everything, was the look behind Carly’s eyes. The horrible, blank look of nothingness was gone. It had been replaced by a look of confused clarity.

“Carly,” Davey sat down across from her friend, “I… I don’t know how to ask this, but I need to know what you’re thinking.”

“I can’t do this anymore.” Carly rubbed her eyes, “I can’t take the not knowing. The wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. When I’m going to be thrown in the Cage again, or worse. How can I keep doing this to my family?”

“Doing what to your family?”

“My status in town impacts theirs. If I wasn’t here. If they weren’t burdened by my overwhelming failure, they would be able to get Bridgette out of this horrible situation. They would be able to provide her with a future. A real future.”

“But you are here,” Davey refused to direct the conversation. She had decided that she would no longer interfere, but she wouldn’t help her get there.

“I don’t have to be.” Carly’s voice was quiet, no louder than a whisper.

“What are you thinking, Carly?”

“This is all it would take.” Carly pulled a short metal blade from her nightstand. “Just two quick strokes and the world would change. Or my world would change. No one else would even notice that I was gone.”

“Don’t under estimate your importance.” Davey ran a hand through her hair. Her eyes remained glued to the thin flash of silver sitting on Carly’s knee.

“Getting rid of me is the best thing that can happen to my family, but I just don’t know how I can do this to them. If I do it here, they’re going to be the ones to find me. It’ll be messy and sticky, and when they find me that’s the memory they’ll have forever. Bridgette can’t grow up remembering me that way. She’s seven years old. What if she’s the one that finds me.” Carly picked up the blade and twirled it in her fingers, “I was thinking, maybe if I went somewhere, I could just disappear. If I’m not here, they can’t find me… and they won’t have to see me after it happens. They’ll just think the Fenton took me.”

“Carly,” Davey suddenly understood what Ajay had been alluding to, what her other role was in this decision. Not only did she have to ensure that Carly went through with the suicide, but she had to make sure that the girl did it the right way. If Bridgette didn’t get that letter, it wouldn’t matter how Carly died. “You can’t just disappear. You keep saying you don’t want to hurt your family, but what will they think if you just disappear. They’ll look for you until they find your body and they’ll know you ran away from them. If they don’t find you, they’ll think you deserted them. That you left them. Do you want your sister to grow up thinking that you’d just leave her like that?”

Carly didn’t answer. She just stared at her fingers. Her eyes drifted to the bag in the corner, packed and ready to go. “I don’t know, Davey. Wouldn’t it be worse to have her to find me, you know?”

Davey knew there was only one way to convince Carly. She had to go for the jugular. “Do you want Bridgette to think that you deserted her? To sit at that front window and watch the door, waiting for you to come back? To think that you abandoned her?” She used the word she knew would hit Carly the hardest. To invoke the image of her younger self sitting in the hospital waiting for a visitor.  It was that word, that image, that would fill her with dread. That would drive her join the Fenton if Davey couldn’t convince her to do this the right way.