Killer Teens

Gotta Love a Good Ultimatum

Some silences are awkward. Some are peaceful—a time for reflection or meditation. Sometimes, there’s simply nothing to say.

But this silence is for none of those reasons. It’s simple, really: we can’t speak. We can’t move. We can’t think. We stare at the body below us, and sure, we probably all want to scream, but it’s as if someone hit mute, and as hard as we might try, no sound comes out.

We stay muted for a long time. I can hear the clock on Brooke’s kitchen’s wall, ticking and ticking—our only sign that life is still going on around us.

Finally, when I’m starting to wonder whether I’m the one who was shot, we’re interrupted.

“Brooke!” shouts Jason from the foyer. “Babe, where—”

He stops short when he reaches the kitchen and sees us. I wonder what surprises him the most—seeing me at Brooke’s, seeing Cole dead, or seeing Brooke covered in blood?

Brooke, of course. I have to give him credit for that, and remind myself that I’m not the only one who cares about her anymore.

“Brooke!” he shouts again, his voice thick with fear this time. “Baby, tell me what happened. Are you okay?”

Brooke looks up at him with empty eyes. Of course, she isn’t okay.

Jason sighs and runs up the stairs. He returns a moment later with a first aid kit and supplies. He begins to carefully wash her arm, then asks me in a voice so empty of cruelty that I’m not even sure it’s him at first, “You called an ambulance?”

I swallow and look over at Kate.

“We can’t,” she whispers. Her soft eyes are hollow and distant.

Jason stares at her in disbelief. “What?”

“We can’t,” she repeats. “We killed someone.”

Jason looks from her to me and back incredulously, then shakes his head and shoves past us over to the phone.

Brooke grabs him before he can reach it. “No—you’re not calling anyone, Jase.” Her voice is much more certain than it was before Cole died. 

Before Cole died… Did I really just think that? Is any of this really happening?

“Kate is my best friend,” Brooke tells her boyfriend, “and she saved my life, and I am not going to repay her by reporting that she shot someone.”

It’s pointless for Jason to try to argue. Brooke has always been this way about Kate—even back when we were together. “You shot him?” he asks Kate instead.

Kate says nothing.

“What are you going to do, then?” Jason asks Brooke. “Hide the body? You won’t be able to hide your scars.”

Another long, heavy silence.

“We hide the body,” she whispers. “And we run.”

- - - - -

Jason, of course, thinks it’s ridiculous. The girls tell us both the full story of what went down, and Jason insists that we have a perfectly innocent case and that the courts would understand why Kate did what she did. 

I don’t think it’s being charged guilty that concerns them, though.

Sure enough, Kate voices exactly what I’ve been feeling since I watched Cole West’s body crumple.

She tells him that all the forgiveness in the world won’t let her forget it—that she can’t go on living her life the way she was before. She reminds him, boldly and emphatically, that she pulled a trigger—twice—and ended someone’s life. 

“It’s not like it is in the movies,” she tells him. “I will never, ever be okay again.”

“And you?” Jason asks Brooke. “Is this how you feel?”

She nods. 

His eyes make their way to mine. I don’t say anything, nor does he. But I can tell he knows what I’m thinking: that I’m right there with them.

“The bottom line is this, Jase,” Kate finally says to Jason: “you’re either with us, or you’re against us.”

Gotta love a good ultimatum.

Jason doesn’t say anything for a long time. He finishes wrapping Brooke’s arm, then bandages her temple. When he’s finally finished, he speaks.

“If I said I didn’t want to be a part of this—that I didn’t want to run away with you—that would be it? The three of you would leave, and I would never see you again?”

His eyes are on Brooke at first, but they trail back over to mine by the end of his question. The resentment and hatred that usually lingers in them towards me is finally back, and I realize what his chief concern is with a pang of amusement: he’s worried about me and Brooke.

He must not realize how much Brooke hates me. If he did, he wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.

“Yes,” Brooke tells him, swallowing. “That’s right.”

“And if I came with you—”

“No,” she interrupts, standing up too fast. She sways a little, but rights herself on her own. “You weren’t a part of this. I’m not going to let you throw your life away for it.”

He looks irritated by this, which I don’t find too surprising. It can’t feel great for the woman you love to tell you she doesn’t want you to run away with her, even if it’s for selfless reasons. “It’s my decision to make, not yours. And I want to come with you.”

I don’t even know what we’re doing yet, but I don't want Jason to be a part of it. Jason Levi, fugitive on the run? He’s too high-maintenance. So is Brooke, but I know from experience that she can adapt to anything. Can Jason?

“You have everything going for you,” Brooke pushes. “You’re on the football team, you’ve got money, friends, family…”

And we’ve got nothing, I think dryly, trying my best to disguise my dry amusement. 

“Guys,” Kate interrupts, “we need to move. Argue in the car.”

Jason nods, crossing his arms. “You’re right. Brooke, you have any tarp?”

Brooke wordlessly heads up the stairs, face still white as a sheet, and returns a moment later with a large, folded-up tarp. She hands it to Jason, walks over to Kate, and takes her hand. 

I try not to stare, but it’s hard. 

It’s always hard not to stare at Brooke, but especially now.

“Come on,” Jason says to me, tearing my attention away from his girlfriend. “We’ve got a body to wrap.”

I glance down at Cole’s body, throat tight. It’s so, so hard to look at. His head is caked with drying blood from the shovel, and his eyes are still open—still angry. I exhale with relief when Jason throws the tarp over his body.

I kneel beside Jason and help him wrap Cole up, feeling sicker and sicker by the second. You did this, I think to myself as bile fills my throat. You didn’t pull the trigger, but you may as well have.

“Whose car should we take him to?” Jason asks Brooke. “Probably won’t fit in my Lexus.”

“The Rodeo.” Her voice is cold and distant. “I’ll drive.”

“But—your arm,” Kate reminds her, frowning.

Brooke looks down at her arm as if she’d forgotten that it was severely wounded only minutes earlier. She looks back up at Kate, then up at Jason, then over at me. 

And then she bursts out laughing.

It’s the most frightening sound in the world, that laugh. It’s at least two octaves higher than her normal laugh, and so crazed, it almost sounds more like a scream.