I love you Violet…

This boy with tousled blonde curls, dimpled smile, and gentle hands, murdered fifteen kids in cold blood. Their names are engraved at the high school. I saw it. I stood in the library. I traced his predatory steps.

And I want you to be happy…

This boy who presses sweet kisses to my lips and whispers loving words in my ear, he pulled the trigger again and again, looking directly into his victims' eyes. He heard them beg and he heard them scream. He watched them bleed.

And free…

This boy who knows the secrets of my body knows the secrets of this house. He is part of the secret. Maybe a bigger part of it than I know.

If we take these…

This boy thrills me. He scares me. He comforts and alarms me. He is my shelter. He is my storm.

We can be together.

This boy wants me to die.

Forever.

He knows how to do it so it won't hurt.

We are in the attic- our hideaway from the world. It was a safe and special place for me until this moment. Now it is filled with shadows.

Pills and razor blades. I am well acquainted with both. The blades he is holding are my own. The pills are samples swiped from my dad's cabinet.

They are the golden ticket. The gateway to forever. A lifetime and then some with Tate.

He paces around me in a circle, agitated, anxious, pulling at his hair.

I try to calculate the price of forever, but he needs an answer now.

"We can't get all chicken-shit about this Violet!" he shouts, "We're running out of options!"

His panicked tone rattles me.

He waits for my answer, breath heaving, dark eyes piercing me through a curtain of reckless blonde hair.

"Yeah, I get it," I hear myself say. "It's the only way we can be together."

But my heart screams that there must be another way. He rushes at me with a kiss.

"Like Romeo and Juliet," he sighs.

Romeo and Juliet. A tragedy. An impossible love that was never meant to be.

I want to cry. I want to run. I want to tell him -

I am so scared of you, Tate! I want your eyes come back to me. Hold me the way you do when I'm afraid. Don't make me choose, Tate. Because I don't want to believe that death is the only way to you.

But the Tate I know is gone from me. This one – I can't let him know I'm going run. I tell this Tate a lie.

"Can we do it in the bath?"

"Why?" he huffs.

"Because it's warm and nice and I can light some candles."

He is not so far gone that he can ignore the pleading in my eyes.

"Okay," he says, "but we have to go now."

Time is of the essence, you see, because he has done something to my dad. He "just scared him a little." I am so afraid he is hurt. I am so afraid he is dead. I don't trust Tate. I don't trust this Tate. It makes me sick and sad and so scared I can barely breathe. I have to find my dad. We have to get out of this house. We need to get out to the air, the sun, away from this fear and these shadows.

"I'll go run the bath."

I wait until I reach the stairs before I start to scream.