"Pretty girls like you get lost in these woods all the time, Alexa."
On the night of Sebastián's annual Beginning of Summer Bash, amiable and adventurous Melody Tryniski went missing. What might have appeared as a juvenile escapade - a casual incide...
Christopher Shaw's house October 12, 2018 9:09 p.m.
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CHRISTOPHER IS BENT OVER the windowsill, his head poking outside as a cigarette hangs loosely in between his lips. Smoke billows all around him, forming a gray cloud that creates a foggy image of him. From the doorway, I can make out the outline of his lean body. Over there, where he's unaware of my presence, stands a shadow of a boy I thought I knew. My eyes shift instinctively to the only flash of color in this portrait --- his dirty blonde hair that's covered by shards of glass that glint against the moonlight.
The room is covered by a thick blanket of complete darkness. The items that compose his room become mere shapes and figures that don't seem to be part of a whole. Christopher himself becomes an unmoving shadow that blends with the overall dark atmosphere in this room. In this moment, he's not a person. He's one with the darkness.
The full moon hangs on an otherwise starless night, its silver light bathing Christopher and forming a strip on the floor behind him. Despite the cigarette smoke that circulates around him, the sharp bulging of his back muscles makes it evident that his torso is completely naked. Some gray sweatpants hang low on his hips, revealing the beginning of his V-line. As I lurk in the shadows and admire the body I know so well by heart, a soft sigh escapes my lips.
The sight of him creates a reaction on my brain that travels to my entire body. There's a warmness growing in my stomach, reaching my heart and dispersing throughout my body. It's a bittersweet mixture of dread and longing and love and yearning and desire, mingling together to become one. They coexist inside of me, but the man who triggers this duality is the villain in Melody's recent letter. This is the effect he has on me. It's a fuzzy, little feeling that flutters in my stomach and makes me dizzy.
I place my hand on the doorframe, balancing my body so as to not fall face-first to the floor. It doesn't matter what Melody says about him. My body still reacts the same to him. In my eyes, he's the same Christopher who's been helping me with her murder; the same guy I've been in love with for the past four years.
It's not until now I realize that I miss him like crazy. While he went to God-knows-where and disappeared from my life for a few days, I felt as though I would never see him again. Although he promised he would be back by my side, there was always the fear of losing him forever. But here he is, so close to me, so close to reach. He seems like a perfect illusion, one that will disappear if I don't grab him soon enough.
I don't want him to slip away ever again, lost in the depths of my memory, becoming a figure of my imagination; like someone who's too good to be true.
He's a great liar. It's easy to be fooled by him. What you see on the outside doesn't match what resides on the inside.
Melody's words appear to me in her voice, as if she had the opportunity to whisper them in my ear before her death. It's certainly a wake-up call, a burst out of my dream-like state. I'm not here to admire his beauty or ponder over my love for him. I came to confront him, to hear his side of the story.
