Blood on My Hands

them to me, because he trusted me. At least, until I betrayed him.
    Pangs of regret surge through me, but they’re nothing new. I’ve been feeling them ever since we broke up. Slade’s been home from Guard training for nearly a week. I’ve seen his pickup at the new town center. He’s working there with his father to get everything ready for the opening celebration. I’ve been so tempted to call and tell him how sorry I am. But how would I answer when he asked the inevitable question: why did I do it?
    How could I tell him? How can I face him?
    He’d be completely entitled to tell me to go to hell. After all, that was basically what I did when he was alone and needy.
    And yet I don’t think he will. He’s a better person than that.
    I call. As it rings, I feel myself growing tense and my heart revving up. Then that strange mixture of disappointment and relief when I get his answering message. I swallow and begin: “Slade, please call me. It’s urgent, a matter of life and death. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise, but something terrible’s happened. I know you probably hate me and never want to hear from me again, but you’re the only person I can trust. Please call me as soon as you can!”
    I close the phone and wait for my heart to slow. But my emotions are a hurricane of yearning, regret, need, and fear. Just hearing his voice on the message brings fresh tears to my eyes.
    Slade doesn’t call back. It seems like at least half an hour has passed, but when I check the time, it’s only been ten minutes. He could be at the movies, at a party, anywhere. And with anyone. Even now, in the middle of all this, that’s the thought I hate most.
    I call again, leave another message. I imagine him listening to the first message and thinking I can drop dead. He owes me nothing. But maybe the second message will make him reconsider.
    I wait in the dark. Seconds feel like minutes, and minutes feel like forever. It’s agony to imagine him listening to my messages and being unmoved. But what did I think would happen? Did I think he’d come back from Guard training brokenhearted and sit by the phone every night waiting for me to call and say I’d made a mistake and I was sorry?
    In your dreams, Callie Carson .
    I know it makes no sense to keep calling and leaving messages, but I can’t help myself. I call again, knowing there’s probably nothing I can do or say to change his mind, but feeling like I have to try anyway.
    “Slade, please, I …” There’s a catch in my throat as tears well up in my eyes. I’ve cried so much tonight that they’re raw and sore. “I’m so sorry to put this on you, really I am. I know I was awful to you. But you don’t know how much I regret what I did. I mean, even before this … this horrible thing that happened tonight. I was sorry, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell you I’d made a terrible mistake. I felt like I’d already hurt you so bad that it wouldn’t be fair. But I … I …”
    What I want to say is that I still love him, but it’s too much all at once. Some protective instinct deep inside won’t allow me to reveal that much or leave myself that vulnerable, even if it’s been all I’ve felt for weeks and has nothing to do with what happened tonight.
    I’ve always loved him.
    I close the phone. Three messages is enough. Salty tears sting my raw cheeks.
    “Here’s to rapid metabolisms,” Jodie toasted one afternoon in late March when she, Zelda, Katherine, and I were in the city. She raised her s’more cupcake and we joined in.
    “Rue the day these go straight to our thighs,” Zelda declared.
    “Hear! Hear!” Katherine chimed in. It was one of those periods when she and Dakota weren’t speaking. We never knew why the two of them ran so hot and cold. But they were like the weather: all you had to do was wait and everything would change.
    Before Katherine, I’d never gone to the city without an adult, but now we went practically every other weekend, and always to some special place she knew about. That day we were in the Magnolia Bakery.
    “What say ye, sweet Callie?” Katherine asked.
    “This is definitely the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted,” I said, licking the creamy icing off a cupcake called a Hummingbird.
    “Easy to say for someone who’s probably only had Hostess Twinkies,” Katherine quipped. The smiles fell off the other girls’ faces as they waited to see if I’d rise to the dig or let it