White Space Season 1

wide and worried, blinking at Alex, looking as though she was frightened by his sudden outburst. “So what if he’s dead? He deserves it.”
    Alex stared at her.
    “Don’t you get it? If he’s dead, and I killed him, I’m going to jail. They couldn’t get my dad, so there’s no way on Earth they’re gonna let me go. Hell, the jurors might kill me before the trial takes its first recess.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Katie said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were protecting yourself! I was there. I’ll be your witness!”
    “Who the hell is gonna believe that? You saw what they spray-painted on my mom’s car! Everyone hates us.”
    Alex didn’t want to cry. Not like this. Not in front of Katie.
    The tears came, anyway.
    He turned away, closing his eyes as tight as he could, as if that would force the tears back into their ducts.
    “It’s not fair,” he said, figuring if he forced words from his mouth, he could keep Katie from thinking he was crying. “Everything was going normal. We were one big happy family, or most of the time, anyway, until BAM, out of nowhere, my dad goes nuts! What the hell?”
    His words turned into sobs anyway, and he felt like the world’s biggest pussy.
    Katie’s hands closed around his chest as she hugged him from behind, leaning into his body.
    “I’m so sorry, Alex.”
    He turned around and hugged her back, releasing his tears like flow from a faucet.
    Katie was crying, too.
    “We’re gonna get through this,” she said. “I swear. Everything will work out.”
    Alex wanted to believe her. But how could he lay all his faith at the feet of hope, now of all times? Everything was fucked. And now, he might have blood on his hands. His stomach soured as the sound of Jake’s head hitting the concrete wall reverberated in his mind — a sickening thud which sounded like it came with major, if not fatal, damage.
    “I’ve gotta run.”
    “Are you insane?” Katie said, pulling away. “You can’t go! You’ll look guilty.”
    “They’re gonna think I’m guilty, anyway.”
    “We don’t even know if Jake’s dead. Maybe he’s just knocked unconscious. I definitely saw Ray getting up. I say we go to the police and tell them what happened.”
    As Alex was replaying the sequence in his mind, trying to figure out how guilty he would appear to the police, he remembered what Katie had done to Ray.
    “How did you do that?” he asked.
    “Do what?” Katie said, looking to the side again, though no longer biting her lip.
    “Throw Ray off of me?” Alex held her eyes. “You pulled him off of me and threw him at least 10 feet.”
    “What?” She said, laughing. “No way. I just grabbed him and pushed him. He went stumbling back.”
    Why would she lie about this?
    “No, you threw him. I saw it, Katie.”
    “How the hell am I gonna throw someone 10 feet? Hell, I asked you to open the jar of Ragu last night, remember?”
    “I dunno,” Alex said, shaking his head, feeling as if he were accusing his girlfriend when he should be thanking her for saving him from getting beat down, or worse. “Maybe it was one of those weird situations like you hear about on the news, moms lifting cars off their children and stuff, I dunno.”
    Maybe I didn’t see what I thought I saw?
    “Like adrenaline overload or something?” she said. “I’m not sure, Alex. It all happened so fast, I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I saw him on top of you, then grabbed him as fast as I could and pulled him off.”
    Alex laughed, though he wasn’t sure if it was from discomfort or the thought of his girlfriend having super powers. Or perhaps at the tail of a miserable week, marinating in grief, it felt good to finally laugh.
    “Remind me never to piss you off,” he said.
    “You’re a guy, it’s in your nature,” she said, a hint of a smirk at the end of the sentence and the edge of her mouth.
    “So, you think we should just go back to school, or head to the police?”
    “I think the police,” Katie said. “If you go to school, they’re just gonna call the cops. Plus, who knows how many of Jake and Ray’s friends will be there waiting, ready to form a lynch mob or worse.”
    Alex sighed. “You’re right. How the hell am I ever gonna go back to school? We’re gonna have to move for sure.”
    The duo fell into silence. The implications of his family moving, and leaving Katie behind, were too heavy to hold in the moment. He couldn’t imagine being without her. He