Chapter 2 – Rubik's Cube
"Do you think we'll be safe here?" Aria asked, shedding her torn outer jacket and setting it on the counter. She was shivering and her clothes were soaking wet, her sneakers dripping onto the carpet.
"We should be." Jason replied, stepping into the house behind her, shutting the door. Outside, a layer of rain pelted against the windows, and in the distance, thunder clapped overhead.
The inside of the Kahn's cabin was shadowy and warm. Aria felt along the walls with her numb fingertips, trying to locate a light switch. When she found it, she clicked it on, and the first floor glowed to life. Her eyes surveyed the room – it was very different from the way it had looked the last time she had been there. In the beginning of last summer, before Ali went missing and things went sour, Noel had had an end-of-the-year bash and invited Aria and all of her friends – as well as the entire freshman and sophomore class – to join in the fun. Now, the cabin was scarce and bare, with the absence of streamers, beer, and broken pieces of furniture. The living room was just a couch with a blanket thrown over the back, in front of a dark, hollow fireplace. A few armchairs were scattered about the room, and old magazines were strewn across the top of the coffee table. Aria could see that the door next to the couch led into the shadowy kitchen.
She turned back to Jason, "Do you know how to light a fire?"
He nodded, shedding his wet jacket and throwing it over the back of a chair. He approached the fireplace, found a large box of matches on the mantel, and in moments, had sparked a flame amongst the unused firewood within the hearth.
Aria turned her head to look out the window, immediately hit by a strike of vertigo. She grasped the back of a kitchen chair so tightly her knuckles turned white, her other hand flying to the back of her head where the wounds were the worst. Her eyes clenched shut. Jason looked back at her, rising to his feet and approaching her quickly. "Hey. You okay?" He asked, his hands reaching out to steady her.
She nodded. "Fine. Just a little dizzy."
"Aria, if you need me to take you to the hospital – "
"No." She insisted. "I'm fine." She assured him. "Really. I don't think I cracked my skull or anything – just some bad scrapes along my scalp."
"Are you sure you'll be alright until morning?" Jason looked at her uneasily, holding her upper arms in case she collapsed on the spot.
"Jason, I'm fine." She repeated. "Besides, it's pouring outside; I'd have a better chance of dying on the spot by catching pneumonia out there than losing too much blood here."
"Hey, you're still bleeding…" He said. His hand rose to the side of her face, gently patting at the outlines of a large, bloodied scrape that had cut surprisingly deep.
"I'm alright." She shook her head, breaking eye contact.
He put his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes again, "Will you at least let me clean it for you?"
Aria snorted, "Really, it's fine. And what would you even clean it with?"
"I know where Eric and Noel hide the First Aid Kit."
Aria shrugged. "Alright, if you want."
"I would really just rather not return you to your parents in the morning with your comatose body thrown over my shoulder." Jason replied dryly, and Aria laughed lightly.
"Alright." She said, and watched him enter one of the first bedrooms down the hall. She could hear him riffling through a closet.
Turning back to the living room, she sauntered over to the couch and gently flopped down onto it. The whole thing was…bizarre, that was the word for it. Bizarre.
Scary. Oh, it was scary.
Somehow, the seriousness of the situation hadn't exactly made an impact on her yet. It was all too much to wrap her mind around.
"Ah, found it!" Jason called from down the hall. Aria sat still, her eyes frozen to her ragged, bleeding fingernails. He entered the living room, rounding the couch and sitting on the coffee table in front of her so that their knees were touching.
"Hey. Aria. Aria? Hello? Anyone in there?" He chuckled slightly.
She nodded slowly, her eyes still narrowed in thought. Jason must have taken it as a confirmation to start disinfecting her cut, for he opened the first aid kit in his lap and pulled out a little box of Q-tips and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Her eyes centered on his hands as they unscrewed the cap and dipped one end of the Q-tip into the clear liquid.
"Head up." He told her gently, and she obeyed, raising her chin. He rested his wrist on her temple and gently dabbed the wet point of the Q-tip against the cut along her hairline. She sucked in a breath slightly as the acidic liquid bit into her already ragged skin.
"You know, I used to do this for Ali when she was little." Jason said absently. He drew back for a second to dip the other end of the Q-tip into the bottle, turning it over in his hand so that he could press the clean side to her cut. "She used to get hurt all the time over the summer. She used to try so hard to just be "one of the guys" so she could hang out with my friends and me; I can't even tell you how many times she wiped out on a skateboard. But she got back up, like it never happened, even if she had blood running down her knee."
Aria snorted and laughed, "Yeah, that sounds like Ali…" She confirmed.
"And at night, I'd help her sit down on the counter and clean out whatever wound she decided to put on herself."
Aria smiled bittersweetly, "I bet it made her laugh when you waited on her hand and foot like that."
Jason nodded, pushing back a strand of Aria's hair to clean more of the cut, "Yeah. She pretended like she was the queen of the house."
Aria snorted, "Psh, what are you talking about? Ali was the queen."
"Well, she sure thought she was." Jason laughed.
Aria laughed a little bit too, before it slowly died off and she let out a deep breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She shook her head slowly in awe, "God, we're so going to hell, Jason." She murmured softly. "We're practically sprinting there."
"Don't say that."
"Why? It's true. Pretty sure that murder kind of makes the list of 'Requirements for Hell.'"
"It was an accident."
"But doesn't lying about it kind of cancel out the accident part? If it really was an accident, we would have no reason to hide it."
"Aria, people get drunk and screw up all the time. We weren't even that wasted."
"I was. I don't know about you, but I was." Aria replied.
"Well, I wasn't. And the man just jumped out of no where."
"Doesn't make it any less of a murder. He died on our account. He died because we weren't careful. And now his family will never get the closure it needs because we're lying about what happened."
"Aria, just…don't talk about it, alright? We'll figure it out in the morning. Right now, all freaking out about it is doing is making you uneasy." Jason finally finished cleaning out the gash above her hairline and pressed a stiff band-aid over the surface of it. He gently let his hand rest on her cheek. Aria remembered when he had done that once before, touched her like that. It was barely a month ago, but it felt like eons…
"Everything is going to change now, isn't it?" She murmured softly under her breath.
He nodded. "Yeah. I guess so." Jason was never one to beat around the bush, or tell you what you wanted to hear. He gave you the truth. No matter how harsh it was.
"It feels like just yesterday that she was here. In my living room laughing at some joke. Or chasing some lifeguard down at the lake. All this time…I guess I expected her to just show up one day. Smile at me and ask, 'What are you frowning about Aria? I'm right here, silly.'"
Jason smiled. "Yeah. I guess I did, too."
"I guess now…now I'm really going to have to get used to living life without her." Aria said. "But I don't want to let go just yet."
"Me neither." Jason agreed solemnly. He looked over at her. "But I think we have to say goodbye, don't we?"
Her feet were crossed at the ankles, stretched out on the step in front of her. Jason's front porch wasn't exactly the most private place to talk, but Jason hadn't left the spot all morning. He'd been sitting there, in his black suit, dressed for the service, but hadn't moved an inch. When Aria had looked at herself in the mirror that morning, she had felt about a million years old. Dressed up in her fancy black dress, with her hair ironed like her mother had done it for her as a child. She certainly looked older.
She was too young to say goodbye to someone she knew so well. They both were.
"It's weird; I've been out of the house for a while but…it isn't until now that I actually feel like an adult." Jason told her.
She nodded. "I know what you mean. I feel like I'm as old as my parents. Maybe even older. Yikes." She snorted. She peered over at him.
"Are you going to be alright?" He asked her, his eyes meeting hers. He reached out hesitantly, but ultimately decided to let his hand rest on her cheek. "I know it's probably hard for the four of you."
Predictably, Aria's heart began to sputter and break into a trot. She swallowed hard, nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I'll be alright."
"If you ever need to talk…I'm here, ok?"
"I know."
Now, as his hand softly lied on her face, her heart didn't race. She didn't blush. She didn't sputter, trying to remember what the hell she was talking about in the first place. It felt…familiar.
Well, calming at least.
For the first time – in all of the years she had known him – she felt like his equal. They were in this mess together, both of them having done the same amount of wrong and were both as terrified as the other.
Somehow, she felt as though a bond had been made tonight. In the midst of all the chaos, they found their way on the other side together, tethered to one another by this dark, horrible secret.
She knew that the lying was only going to get worse.
"Should we sleep on the couch?" She asked finally, breaking the silence. "I don't want to get the sheets all dirty with blood."
Jason nodded grimly. "I think I might take a shower beforehand; I'm pretty filthy."
"No worse than me." The side of Aria's mouth quirked up and she gave a shrug.
Jason got to his feet, "I'll see you in a little bit. Do you need anything?" He asked.
She shook her head. "I'm fine. Just…go take your shower."
He looked at her for another long moment, narrowing his eyes and searching her face for hidden emotion. Finally, he gave up and retreated to the bathroom down the hall.
Aria stared at the newly lit fire, the flames dancing along the charred piece of wood. Getting carefully to her feet, she approached it and knelt before it, extending her frigid hands to its welcoming warmth. She peeled off her outer layer – a new sweater that her mother had just bought her and was now basically in shreds – and laid it on the ground in front of it to dry. She sat there, in the while camisole and soaking jeans, peeling off her socks and setting them beside her shirt. Most of the blood on her arms had died, but she feared that the cut on her thigh had been adhered by her blood to the rips in her jeans.
Whatever, she thought, I'll deal with the injuries tomorrow.
With that, she picked up the throw blanket that was cast across the back of the sofa, wrapping it around herself, and laid down beside her drying clothes, silhouetted by the warm glow of the fire. The sound of the old water heater cranking and the shower gushing down the hall lulled her to sleep.
When she dreamed, she dreamt of Ali. Smiley Ali, crazy Ali, happy Ali. Ali running in front of her through the soccer field by Rosewood High, looking over her shoulder at her, her long blonde curls bouncing around her grinning face…
Suddenly, the scene shifted, and Aria was no longer running through the freshly mowed grass of the field, but rather standing on a dark road, illuminated by the hellish smolder of car headlights. Ali wasn't running in front of her, but rather lying before her on her side, in the same yellow shirt she wore on her last day on Earth. The only difference was that there were huge holes ripped in the back of it, and her usually soft blonde hair was matted and tangled.
She could hear Jason's voice, too. Calling to her, standing right in front of her, yet sounding a thousand miles away. He reached for her, shook her shoulders, shouting in her face, then motioning towards Ali's body, stretched out before them. Suddenly, streams of blood began pooling from her body, out of the tears in her shirt, and everything was fuzzy, in slow motion.
Jason still sounded as though he was speaking through a pillow as he reached down for Ali's marred body, hoisting it upwards, dragging it away, and preparing to
cast it over the side of the cliff…
With a gasp, Aria jerked awake, jolting upward so fast that she twisted a muscle in her sore neck. She cringed, her fingers reaching for the sprained area.
"Whoa, hey, are you alright?" Jason's voice asked, and she looked over her shoulder to see him there, sitting beside her. His hair was still damp from his shower, and he had changed back into his singed t-shirt and ratty jeans. She wondered idly how long he had been sitting there, watching her sleep, and if he had gotten any shut-eye of his own.
"How long have you…?"
"Just a little while. You were shivering a bit, so I brought you another blanket." He replied, and she looked down to see her body, indeed, swathed in a second layer of wool.
"You know, you're actually kind of funny when you sleep." Jason offered, his eyes flickering from the flame of the fire to her face, "You scowl a lot."
"Well, I wasn't exactly dreaming sweetly." She answered, tightening the blanket around her. Should it creep her out that he was watching her sleep…?
But they were past embarrassment, weren't they?
"You should get some sleep, Jason." She said.
"I will. Later." He replied, scooting down so that his back could rest against the coffee table, and his feet were stretched out before the fire.
"What are we going to do tomorrow, Jason?" Aria murmured softly, her dead eyes on the fire.
He shrugged. "I don't know." He said, "We'll figure it out."
"How are we supposed to move on from this?" She whispered.
"We'll find a way."
"What like, get high again?" She snapped, her voice slightly high pitched from the lump in her throat.
Jason didn't answer, but instead shook his head, "Aria…"
"Just…go to sleep." She told him, lying back down, "I'm going to."
She closed her eyes and felt him gently put a hand on her back. For the first time in almost a year, Aria cried herself to sleep.
thanks for the reviews!
AJ