Blurred - Kissed by Death Page 0,3

darkness and barreled though the hall.

“Hey!” I patted my jeans for my inhaler, my lungs burning with the want for air. “Stop!” I braced myself on the edge of the lockers where he’d been standing and the metal seared my hand with cold.

What the hell?

I spun in a circle, searching the empty halls. He was gone.

I backed down the hall toward the exit. I was fucking losing it. Had he even been real? Did the things circling my ankles even exist or was I just my own brand of crazy now? I wasn’t ready to answer that, so I turned around and ran until my feet hit the gravel parking lot. The sunshine felt good against the frosty sting of my skin, so I kept going until I was in my Bronco, speeding down Main Street. I prayed to God I didn’t get pulled over. If I had to stop, they’d catch me. What happened if they did? I stepped on the pedal a little harder. I didn’t want to find out.

I didn’t know how long I’d been home. Long enough for the light in the windows to fade and the neighbor’s dog to stop barking. Long enough for me to hear Dad’s little silver BMW cruise up the drive about four minutes before he marched into my studio, armed and ready to make my ears bleed.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dad growled before the door to my studio had even slammed shut. “I didn’t raise you to act like this.”

I stared at the half-painted canvas in front of me and pressed my bare feet against the cold, concrete floor to wake me up. He was either pissed about me skipping again, or he found the half-empty bottle of bourbon I had taken from his desk. “You didn’t raise me to act any way. You would have actually had to be around to do that.”

I picked up a brush, dipped it into bloodred paint, and slashed a wound across the white canvas. Dad’s well-polished oxfords clicked across the concrete floor until he was standing next to my canvas, blocking my light. He hadn’t changed yet, which meant he was still in lawyer mode. Damn it.

Out of habit, my gaze wandered to the window where Emma’s house once stood. It was just a clean foundation now, waiting for some stranger to build a new house and move in. The fire hadn’t left anything more than memories and a crap-ton of hospital bills. Escape wasn’t as simple as walking across the yard anymore.

Who was I kidding? Escape didn’t exist anymore. It used to be so easy to find. In the bottom of a bottle. In the backseat of my Bronco with a girl who was just as needy and fucked-up as me. Or my favorite way, curled up in Em’s bed, letting the soft sounds she made as she slept drag me under with her. But none of those things could help me escape from the hell I was living in now.

I sighed, dropped my brush back into the bucket, and retrieved a clean one.

“Look…I’m sorry, okay? Whatever you’re pissed about, I’m sorry. But I can’t do this right now, Dad. Can you just yell at me tomorrow?” I pinched the bridge of my nose to fend off the throbbing inside my skull, dipped the clean brush into a dark, unforgiving black, and swiped it down the canvas, blotting two thick smudges for eyes. It still wasn’t dark enough.

Dad leaned around the canvas to see what I was working on. “What’s this one supposed to be?”

I narrowed my gaze on the canvas, at the shadow eating up the fiery sunset behind it. Its hungry, hollow eyes watched me. Its gaping mouth, a cavern of bloody darkness, drooled. A chill ran down my spine.

“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” I said. God, I wish I knew. If I knew, maybe I could find a way to make them stop.

“Have you eaten dinner yet?”

I shook my head.

“How long have you been out here?”

I dropped my brush into a bucket and stared at the ceiling. “Do you need something?”

He took a step back and frowned. “Your principal called.”

I slid my gaze his way, careful not to make eye contact.

“He said you’ve been skipping school again.”

“I told you, I haven’t been feeling good.”

He crossed his arms over his burly chest. “You never feel good anymore. Haven’t you been using the inhaler they gave you? Taking the breathing treatments?”

I’d been cramming my body full