“I didn’t mean to do it. I swear, it was an accident.” Ella’s trembling voice begs Moet to understand. Her slate-grey eyes identical to Leighton’s water. The hand holding the gun shakes a bit too.
“I remember,” Moet murmurs to herself. “I remember everything.” She looks up. “Why, Ella? How could you do something like that?”
“She ruined my life, Moet. You don’t understand. She was going to take him away from me. I couldn’t let that happen.” Ella’s eyes are shiny and miserable. “I’m so sick of everyone leaving me.”
Quinn. Moet immediately knew whom she was talking about.
I don’t remember her name. But she had dark hair. Petite build.
The puzzle pieces clicked together in her head and she just knew. “I can’t let you get away again.”
“Yes you will,” Ella steps closer and backs Moet into a tree trunk. “You will leave this place and you will forget everything like last time and nobody will get hurt.”
“Dakota!” Moet screamed as she darted out from the cover of the woods. She cradled her sister’s head in her hands, but it was too late. Her once-lively blue eyes were dull and lifeless and she seemed like an empty shell. No soul, no life, nothing.
And Moet only had enough time to turn around and see the wavy dark hair of the murderer and a flash of grey before she felt a flash of pain explode across the side of her head and she fell to the ground and blacked out.
“No,” Moet shakes her head. “No!” Bracing herself, Moet uses all her weight to push Ella away from her, which makes the younger girl fall back. Not looking behind, Moet starts running towards the dirt trail when she hears a voice.
“Ella! Why’d you just run off—Moet?” Leighton’s slowly-emerging form from the cover of trees startles her into stopping. Suddenly, his eyes widen and his mouth opens as if to shout.
Moet turns around to see what has him so worried and she sees Ella right behind her, frazzled and shaking and crying and an explosion of pain hits the left side of her chest and she falls and keeps falling while Leighton shouts and the edges of her vision become blurry.
Thump… thump… thump.
She takes her shaking hands away from her chest and she sees bright crimson all over her pale hands and her shirt. The dark-haired girl drops the gun and curls up into a quivering, pathetic ball of misery as her brother hovers over Moet with a phone pressed to the side of his face. He grabs one of Moet’s blood-stained hands and tells her that everything’s okay, that it wasn’t that bad, that he’ll fix it, he’ll fix everything.
And all the while, she’s fading, fading, fading into the background and the earth and she finally closes her eyes to rest in peace.
YOU ARE READING
Strawberries & Cigarettes
Teen FictionShe has obsessive-compulsive disorder. He finished all the required classes for graduating by his freshman year. She trains in ballet four hours a day, five days a week. He doesn’t understand people. She’s scared of waking up. He’s scared of not kn...
