Chapter 7 – Chap 7

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

With that promise came a few worries. For one thing, I’d have to be absolutely certain that I passed my drivers test on Saturday. I hadn’t exactly planned on failing it but it would be much more embarrassing if I failed and couldn’t pick up Amy.

The second worry was that, assuming I did pass my test, I had to come up with a decent enough lie so that my mother would believe why I was out of the house for at least a few hours. It wasn’t like I could just tell her where we were going, and definitely not why.

She still didn’t know about what really happened Friday night. As far as she knew we just played video games at Kas’ house that night.

Saying that we were going to the spot a classmate died just for the sake of checking it out wasn’t really a good thing to say to anybody in town, and rightfully so.

The third reason, though realistically the least important of the three worries, was the one that weighed the most on my mind.

I didn’t want to be alone with Amy.

I liked Amy, but only as a friend. Sure, she was both very kind and very pretty, but my feelings towards her were purely platonic. That being said, I didn’t want to be alone with her because I knew it’d be awkward between us.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t really great around girls. I don’t mean to say that I never had a girlfriend before or was like the Nightstalker around women, I just often struggled to hold a conversation.

These worries bounced around my head in the days that followed so often and stressed me out to the point that I did something that I really didn’t want to do.

Wednesday morning I got to school and went through with it, like ripping off a bandaid. I walked into the cafeteria and right up to Josh’s table.

“Hey, Josh,” I said, interrupting whatever conversation that they were having, “Can we talk?”

I felt the hot glaring stares of the group as I stood. “Alone,” I added.

Thankfully, he nodded and got up to meet me. We walked to an isolated corner by the auditorium which wasn’t too far off from the bustling lunchroom.

“What do you want?” The blunt disinterest in his voice didn’t go unnoticed. I decided that I wouldn’t waste his time.

“We have to go back to the woods.”

The look on his face told me that he wouldn’t have expected me to say that sentence in a million years.

“Why?”

“Well…” Why exactly did we? The simple answer was that some freshman wanted to go but I couldn’t say that. At least not in those words.

“I know someone that may know a little bit more about what happened.”

His eyes grew big but his brow furrowed, “So why doesn’t this someone just tell you? Why do we have to go back?”

“It’s part of the deal. We show her where he died and-”

“Her?”

“Yes, her. So are you in?” I was getting impatient.

I saw him run it all through his head. “Why do I have to go?”

I came up with a lazy excuse quickly, “Because you were there with me last time and know a lot more about all this than I do.”

“Wait… wait, hang on,” even though we were alone, he leaned in and whispered, “did you tell her that we went to the woods?”

My silence was a good enough answer, apparently.

“What the hell man!”

“It just slipped out,” I apologized.

He ran his hand over his mouth and down to his chin, “She better know a hell of a lot about this case, man!”

“Fair enough,” I said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll all meet here. 7:40, got it?”

“Fine” he said before walking away.

For a moment I stood alone in the hall, letting out a sigh as I realized I’d have to find out why it was that this was so important to Amy.

Was it simply morbid curiosity? Surely it had to be more than that, right? I’d need to find out if other people were getting involved in this.

Amy and I had no classes together, not even lunch. This meant that once school was out for the day, I waited by my locker for her. Her eyes briefly met mine as she approached, but she quickly snapped them away as though looking at me would burn her eyes. She was talking with someone who I assumed was one of her friends. I’d seen her around Amy’s locker a few times before but had never spoken to her or even picked up on her name. She was another freshman if I had to bet.

I stood my ground as I waited on Amy to finish her conversation. Her occasional glances in my direction told me that she knew what I was doing and was hoping to avoid it. I felt like a creep standing there but I needed to talk to her. It wasn’t until she tried to leave that I called out to her.

“Amy!” Her and her friend both turned to face me, “Can we talk?” I glanced over at her friend, “Just the two of us?”

The friend giggled and walked away before Amy could rubbutle, leaving Amy behind.

She put her hands on her hips before impatiently saying, “What is it?”

“Josh Biafra’s coming with us on Saturday,” I kept my voice down so the flock of students going to their busses or cars wouldn’t hear us.

Amy made no attempt to disguise the look of distaste that spread across her face at the mention of Josh’s name.

“Why?”

“Because he knows more about all of this shit than I do,” I said, “But if others are getting involved I need to know why this is so important to you.”

She set her jaw, “I didn’t ask you to get anyone involved.”

“Well I did,” I said cooly.

This was very unlike me. I wasn’t typically a confrontational person. Yet all the events surrounding my involvement in finding Ronnie’s place of death were proving to be contradictory to that. My near fight with Drevon, calling out both Josh and Amy, this wasn’t like me.

It is said that no one is truly how they present themselves, that in tragedy or desperation people reveal their true selves, regardless or not of how much that real version may go against how they perceive themselves.

I’ve only seen this glimpse of my real self once. And, although the part of me being so inviting to confrontation was leading to it coming out, I wouldn’t truly see that part of myself until three days later.

I was taking notice of myself being too forward with Amy, though. I backed off a bit and regained my composure.

“Amy,” I said, “I have to know.”

Her eyes broke from mine as she looked to the floor, nodding her head. She took a quick look around before walking towards an empty classroom, signalling for me to follow. I did as instructed and followed her into the back of an empty chemistry room.

“It’s Ronnie,” her voice broke over his name.

“Well… yeah,” I didn’t really know how to respond, obviously Ronnie was the only reason we were doing this.

“No,” her bottom lip was trembling and her eyes were watering yet again, “you don’t get it.”

I could tell that something was on the tip of her tongue, “He went because of me!” she blurted out.

She no longer made an attempt to hide her tears like she did the Monday two days ago. Instead, she collapsed into a chair and buried her face into her hands in open sobs.

I didn’t know what to do. I was on the edge of my seat to hear more but I knew I couldn’t just ask her while she was crying in front of me. I didn’t know how to react. I walked up and pulled out a chair next to her to sit down in. I awkwardly put an arm around her, hoping to comfort her. I sat there, uncomfortably, for what felt like forever until she lifted her head up again.

“I loved him,” she whispered between sniffles.

That, I was not expecting, “I… I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback, “I had no idea.”

She used the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe the tears from her eyes, “We were seat partners in psych,” she continued, “We started talking about horror movies and stuff, you know? That moved on to urban legends and stuff like that. I told him I knew this one about a witch that haunts the woods of (Redacted).”

I had no idea that an athlete like Ronnie or a cheerleader like Amy would be so interested in horror stories and urban legends. Amy would go on to explain that Ronnie didn’t really have anyone to talk to about those kinds of things out of fear of ending up an outcast, not too far off from what happened to Josh when he entered highschool.

Amy and Ronnie grew a bond through a shared love of horror that both hid from their peers, only really confiding in one another. This bond grew into a crush on Amy’s part. She’d never get to find out if those feelings were shared, though.

Amy’s story about the witch haunting the woods was not that far off from the story that Drevon told us. It’s likely that they started off as the same story but warped through time by the different people passing the legend on. So she let Ronnie know about it.

“He was really into it,” she said, her voice still hollow sounding. By this point I wasn’t part of the conversation. She was talking more to herself than she was to me.

Ronnie was absolutely fascinated by the urban legend. It wasn’t only in his town but it was so close to his house too. He did research into it, trying to figure out more and more until he decided to just go for it one night.

The next morning he was found dead by a man and his dog.

This time, she met my eyes. Looking into them broke my heart, like looking into the pure embodiment of despair, “He died because I told him about the legend. It’s my fault.”

“Amy,” I sighed, “You can’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”

She suddenly seemed to fully realize she was actually talking to a person. She quickly looked away and wiped the tears from her eyes before standing up out of the chair.

“Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Having heard it, I wish it could have just boiled down to morbid curiosity but, unfortunately, the world hadn’t been kind to Amy.