When Angels Fall (Fallen Angels) (14 page)

“So, Tiffany, that’s why you’re a daddy’s girl now,” Dave chimed in and laughed.

“Fuck off, David, the story isn’t about me. But you would be wise to end it now, Robyn, before it gets out of hand,” Tiffany warned her.

Robyn laughed at that. “Why would I stop now? We’re just getting to the good part. The girl, desperate for her father’s love, did the only thing she could. One night, she made her mother a cup of tea. She crushed up a full bottle of sleeping pills and painkillers and stirred them in the hot liquid. Adding sugar, so that it was very sweet, she took the deadly drink to her sickly mother.” She stared at Chloe and then continued, “The girl watched as her poor mother drank it down, leaving nothing but a few bitter granules at the bottom of the cup”

Chloe grew still and her eyes widened while she stood next to Nick.

“Her mother started to gag, clawing at her throat. She looked at the girl in horror, realizing what her child had done. Her final word in her last breath was ‘Why?’ The girl called her father and he never answered. For three days, she sat with her mother’s body. The stench of the rotting flesh was filling the room and house. At night, she sat in the dark, the word ‘Why’ haunting her. Finally, the father returned and found what his child had done. Disgusted, he shut her in her room, locking her away from prying eyes, so that no one could see the monster the girl had become. After the funeral, the girl, overcome with guilt, would go off to the cemetery at night and sat vigil at her mother’s grave. She would trace her mother’s name over and over on the cold gravestone until her fingers bled.”

“Shut up, Robyn. No one believes you,” Gabbie shouted at her now, knowing what she was doing.

“No, let her finish,” Nick said, wondering if this story was true. It just seemed so unreal, and if there was any truth to it, it was pretty scary.

Chloe just looked at her in horror, tears streaming down her face.

Seeing that seemed to give Robyn the cue she needed to finish the story. “So, fed up with dealing with the girl, the father sent her to school. Our school. There were whispers and rumors, but no one really knew for sure if it were, in fact, the girl who we had all come to know. The quiet one who would sit under a tree and draw. Until last year, when the guilt over came the girl.

Chloe was gasping for air while Robyn talked.

“She had killed her mother in a lame attempt to make her father love her. No one liked her, really liked her, because of who she was. So, she went into the girl’s bathroom on the anniversary of the day she murdered her mother and, taking a razor, she slit her wrists. With her blood, she wrote on the bathroom wall, ‘I’m sorry’. Lucky for the corpse girl, the nuns found her before it was too late. But if you drive past Heavens Cemetery, late at night, you may still see her, sitting by her mother’s cold grave by the light of a single candle, begging for her forgiveness.”

No one said a word.

“That can’t be true. She still goes there?” Nick asked, finding it hard to believe the story he just heard.

“Okay, the last part I made up about the cemetery, unless…Do you still go there, Chloe?” Robyn seemed to be waiting for the reaction she longed for.

Chloe got up slowly, knowing that all eyes were on her. Everything was crashing down around her. It was going to start again. She could feel Nick’s eyes on her, pleading with her to tell him that it wasn’t true. Someone grabbed her hand. She was frozen to the spot, but someone was forcing her to move. She couldn’t breathe. She could feel the tears streaming down her face. Someone was talking to her, Gabbie, she thought. Tabitha was next to her, too. She handed her something to drink.

*
   
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*

Robyn was laughing at the reaction she’d caused and the whispers that were going around about Chloe. Finally, she set her sights on Nick, who looked as if he had been lied to. He would need a shoulder to lean on, and that was where she would come in.

“I think you better go.” Tiffany stopped Robyn before she got any closer.

“You have no power over me, rich bitch. It was about time people knew who we had going to our school,” Robyn said and laughed.

“You heard, Tiff. I want you out of here. The party is over,” Dave seethed at her.

The story Robyn started had gone too far. They had controlled the rumors for years now, and in one stupid move, Robyn had destroyed that.

Kevin was saying something to Nick, who was still taking it all in.

“Nicky, come on. We don’t need to be around these losers,” Robyn suggested wearing a smug expression.

He looked up at her and scoffed. “Are you nuts? Why would I go with you, after you just did that to someone who has never said a bad thing about you? Why would you start such a lie?” he asked her. Nothing made any sense.

“It’s not a lie. My dad is the chief of police. He was called in when it happened. You can’t tell me you still have feelings for the corpse girl? Come on, she’s emo, you can’t be serious,” She huffed and laughed.

“Don’t you ever call her that again, you bitter, coldhearted bitch. The only one who knows what happened, what really happened, is Chloe. And she would never do something like that. Dave told you to leave. Now go!” Nick shouted.

After everyone had left, Kevin and Nick sat out by the fire. Nick just stared at the flames as they danced from the logs. Everything Robyn said was still sinking in and he didn’t want to believe any of it. Chloe’s friends had told him just to wait outside until everyone was gone, but all he wanted to do was see her and hear her side of it.

“Nicky, I know you don’t want to hear this, but what if what she said was true? I mean, I don’t want to think that it could have happened that way, but I have heard the stories about Chloe slitting her wrists,” Kevin whispered.

Nick just kept staring at the fire. “That’s not her. Chloe would never do that. I know she wouldn’t. She was literally shaking as Robyn told that stupid story. It’s killing me, how they all started whispering about her. And now, Tiffany won’t even let me near her. She probably thinks I left and I believed what was said.”

Dave came out and sat down. “Tiffany wants to go over damage control. She told me to come out here and get you.”

“Are they going to let me see her?” Nick asked. “I mean, when I tried, Tiffany shoved me back out the door.”

“They have a strange way of doing things. Last time I saw Chloe, they were taking her to the couch to lie down. Dude, it’s not going to be pretty when we go back to school on Monday. I’m supposed to tell you that if you want out, then leave. Don’t give her a false hope,” Dave explained.

“He’s right, Nick. You really need to think about what you want to do now. You can’t go in there and say you’re there for her, and then give up because you can’t handle this,” Kevin added, agreeing with Dave.

Nick sat up and looked at his brother. “Have you ever known me to walk away from someone I care about? When all that stuff was said about Taylor and they started to add me into it, did I walk away from her?”

“You have known Taylor forever and this isn’t something stupid like the mono crap that went around last summer. This is a story about something serious that really messed her up in the head. I like her, Nick. She’s fun to be around, but this is a lot to deal with,” he reminded him.

“And I’m willing to deal with it. She is different, Kev. I can’t explain it. Let’s go see what they want to do.” Nick got up and started into the house. He wasn’t going to push her for the truth. When she was ready, he would be, too.

Chloe was lying across Gabbie’s lap as she stroked her hair.

 
The ache in his chest got worse when he saw her like that. It looked as if she’d cried herself to sleep.

Gabbie looked up and halfheartedly smiled at him.

“We slipped her a Valium in a glass of whisky. Well, in one of the glasses we gave her. She is pretty much out for a while. Sit, we need to talk about Monday and what we’re going to do about you,” Tiffany instructed him a she sat on the edge of the couch.

“Wait, are you telling us you drugged her? What the fuck is your problem?” Kevin asked her, staring at Chloe now.

“This is how we do things here. She was in too much of an emo state to deal with, so this is how I said to handle it. You have no idea what it will be like come Monday morning, and Robyn has had her time to make the story she told spread more,” Tiffany shot at him.

“He left, didn’t he?” Chloe’s voice was a whisper, but they all heard her. She had brought her arms up and around her, shutting her eyes tightly to whoever she was talking about.

“Who, Sweetie?” Gabbie stroked her hair and hoped it would keep her calm.

The tears started down her cheek and fell onto Gabbie’s leg. “Nick. I should’ve known it was too good to be true.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He believed her story.”

Tiffany squinted her eyes at him. “Now’s your chance. Walk out that door and we will make something up to soothe her, or stay and really be the guy she thinks you are. If you stay and then decide this is too much for you and hurt her? I will find a way to hurt you just as bad. Trust me, I did it to Josh.” They all knew her warnings were good. Josh had an accident on the way to practice, where he fell down two flights of steps. Both of his legs were broken and he had to have surgery to put pins in his throwing arm. This happened three days after the fight with Nick.

Nick walked over to her and sat on the floor. Gently, he started stroking her cheek. “I didn’t leave, Chlo. I’m still here.”

Tiffany crossed her arms and huffed. “Damage control, what are the options?”

“Handle Robyn first. Take her down a peg, and then contract the rumors, like we did last year. Watch her locker for notes and pictures. I’ll try to get her to stay home from school, but she won’t. Come next Friday, she won’t be able to handle this,” Gabbie reminded them.

“I’m telling you this now: I will not deal with an emo mess. If she starts the suicide shit again, she’s out of the group,” Tiffany informed them.

Kevin laughed. “You have got to be fucking kidding me! You’re going to turn your back on her when she needs you the most? This is why I don’t want to go out with you. Any sign of weakness and you bolt.”

“Like you would have lasted a day. This is how things are done here. I took her under my wing to try and help her. Her emotional problems are not my fault,” Tiffany explained.

Nick listened to them bicker about the situation and just stared at her face. Her hand touched his, and as he took it, he saw the marks on her wrist. “How much of what Robyn said was true?” He wanted to know everything they did.

Gabbie seemed to be the one who knew the most, so she spoke up, “No one really knows what happened when her mom died. Before that, no one even knew her. Last year, around this time, things got really hard at home for her. They decided they were tired of dealing with her and were going to send her to boarding school. They don’t talk to her most of the time. That was just sprung on her. She said she wanted to get his attention, make him see her. The nuns didn’t find her, I did. There was no writing on the wall. She was just weak from the blood loss and was crying. She kept saying she didn’t mean to do that. The story Robyn told tonight, it was the first time I have heard it. But her dad is the chief, so I guess she knows more than we do.”

“I heard the cemetery thing is true. She hasn’t done it since she was little, though. My uncle worked there and said they had found some little girl lying on a grave one morning,” Tabitha added.

Tiffany got up and started pacing the room. “Okay, that is just creepy. I mean it. If she goes off the deep end this week, it’s really over. I can only handle so much.”

“Again, Tiffany, you show us just how shallow you really are,” Kevin said to her.

“Besides that, what are we going to do with her tonight? She can’t come to my house. If my mom sees her like this, I won’t be able to hang with her anymore. She has problems with Chloe as it is.”