Chapter Four: Another Tragedy

Time passed by a little too quickly as it always does in school. Surprisingly, I sometimes wished it would go slower because here, I felt more at peace than at the Turners.

In here, I was invisible. I was just like any other kid, nothing of note or importance, and I planned to keep it that way. The less people knew about me, the better.

“Are you sure you can’t come with me to the grocery store? Pretty please with sprinkles on top?” Milla cupped my hands as she gave me pouty eyes and so did her little brother and the three kids next to her.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I really need the extra credits so I have to stay at the library for an hour or two. I’ll meet you back at the house as soon as I can.”

Milla crossed her arms. “Hmph, extra credits, my butt. As if you need any more, you’re literally a straight A student!”

“Hey, what can I say? The A’s just can’t get enough of me.” I jokingly bragged. “So you guys need to study hard too if you want to be as cool as me.” I told the kids and they all smiled wide.

I never confessed to them and probably never will, but I’m doing this for them, too. If I get good grades, hopefully I can get a good job and earn enough for all of us to have a decent life together once I’m of legal age.

After waving goodbye to Milla and the kids, I set off to bury my head in as many history books as I could in the library.

I was on the last page of ‘Salt: A World History’ when my phone started buzzing like crazy.

I looked at the time and it was still half an hour to five o’ clock, which meant the Turners wouldn’t be expecting me, unless of course they wanted to order me around even more.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Alessi!” The panicked voice was from my best friend and my heart skipped in fear.

“Milla? What’s wrong?” I asked as I hurriedly fixed my pile of books back in its place.

“P– please come here. Please! It’s Mr. Turner! He’s– he’s gone insane! I– I think he’s going to hu– hurt us!” Milla pleaded and that was when I heard the small cries in the background.

No, oh Goddess, please don’t let anything bad happen to them.

Terrible thoughts flooded my head as I moved as fast as I could. I didn’t care if the librarian or the other students looked at me weirdly. I had to get the fuck out of there.

As soon as I stepped out, the bus at the stop was starting to close. Thankfully, I trained myself whenever I had time to run fast and I managed to catch up to it.

The bus driver looked at me like I was insane as I pleaded with her to please go faster as it was an emergency. She was kind enough to agree because there were no other passengers.

My mind was going haywire and my heart was racing with worry.

Please be okay. Please be okay. Please, please, please.

I kept begging in my head and as soon as the bus stopped, I fled like the wind, running at a speed I didn’t know I could.

As soon as I reached the front door, I heard screaming, and my heart dropped to my stomach.

It was Milla. I know it was her.

I rushed up the stairs, almost tumbling down, but I kept going.

“Milla! Milla! Where are you?!” I shouted out in desperation, not caring if the Turners would get annoyed at my noise.

“Please, Mr. Turner! Please don’t do this! We’re sorry! I promise it won’t happen again!” I heard Milla crying and pleading and my heart ached even further.

I was close.

So, so close.

But when I opened the door to our bedroom…

I was too late.

It all happened so fast. I didn’t think it was even real. I prayed to the Goddess that it wasn’t, but as I approached the edge of the window and saw both the lifeless bodies of my best friend and her little brother…

My whole world shattered into pieces in the blink of an eye.

“What did you do?! What the hell did you do, you– you– you monster!” I screamed at Mr. Turner, my eyes starting to fill with rage.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted nothing more than to tear him apart and I felt something brewing inside of me that I’ve never felt before.

Just when it felt like I was getting close to commiting murder, Mrs. Turner appeared somewhat shaken, but still composed.

“Don’t move, Alessandra! Don’t you dare hurt my husband!” She shouted.

“Your husband just committed murder! He killed two people, both underage! He is going to jail!”

For the first time ever, I could see the uncertainty and fear in the Turners’ eyes. They didn’t know what to do.

I got them.

At least until their asshole son appeared.

“No, he isn’t. It was self-defense, wasn’t it, dad? I saw it all with my own eyes. Mom did, too. Milla was going crazy and my dad had no choice but to defend himself. Poor little Michael was just in the way and slipped with her sister out of the window.” Shawn stated with so much certainty, an outsider wouldn’t even think it was false, and I was speechless.

No way. There was no way that they could get away with this with that insane narrative.

Surely nobody would believe them, right? Right?!

Sadly, I was horrifyingly wrong.

The police came a few minutes later and it turns out, Mr. Turner was friends with a couple of them. They knew him from church, said he was a good and kind man. They kept agreeing that Mr. Turner could never hurt anybody, and each time they did, it felt like a knife was stabbing my heart over and over again.

In less than five minutes, my statement was tagged as a lie or some sort of hallucination and what was obviously murder suddenly became self-defense, just as Shawn said it was.

I was devastated. I had no words. Hell, I could barely breathe.

My best friend and her little brother were just killed… yet I couldn’t do anything about it.

When the police left, Mr. and Mrs. Turner locked me alone in the room where it all happened. I cried and I cried as I felt nothing but pain, until sometime during that, it had all just gone numb.

I was silent and it seemed as if there were no more tears left to cry.

Suddenly, an alarm rang and it took a few rings for me to manage to move so that I could turn it off.

I got up shakingly and walked over to Milla’s phone and just as I was about to end it, the words on the screen took me by surprise.

“Give Alessi her present! It’s in the box in the cabinet!”