Charlie shoveled dirt, letting the cicadas' rhythmic chirp ground her to this awful reality. Lilith's makeshift gravestone consisted of a rock with the words R.I.P. LILITH REYES painted in black nail polish. Charlie paused to wipe sweat off her forehead, the hole somehow not looking any deeper than it had two minutes ago.

Peter sat against the door with his head in his hands. He'd had a panic attack. That was all she could describe it as, his skin pastier than usual, his chest heaving as he reached his breaking point. She'd tried to hold his hand, but he pulled away. She got him a glass of water and set it at his side, but he'd remained silent.

"Peter?" she called out.

"I'm fine," he grumbled.

"Can you help me? I'll get another shovel."

"I'm not looking that thing in the face."

Tears streamed down her cheeks, tainted by a red-hot simmering in her gut she'd tried to avoid. But it trailed upward, warming the cross dangling against her sorry, hollow chest. She gripped her shovel hard enough to splinter and said, "Lilith isn't a thing. She's my best friend."

But Peter didn't budge, and Charlie rammed the shovel into the mess of dirt and uprooted grass... over and over again, unwavering even as she feared Jonah's silhouette flashing in the peripherals of her vision.

It'd been so easy for him. So effortless how he'd ruined any shred of peace she had. He went so far as murdering Lilith, an innocent being, as if she was an object. As if she didn't have a life of her own that didn't deserve to end like this.

He could've done it to Charlie instead. He'd already broken into her house, and he could've easily stabbed her, watching as she bled out over Hello Kitty's face on her sheets. And maybe part of her would've understood. Maybe part of her could've accepted paying for what she'd done—or hadn't done. Maybe she deserved to suffer, but not Lilith.

And wasn't that why Jonah did it?

He knew this was how to make Charlie hurt the most.

Tears blurred her vision. With a deep breath and many sniffles, she gently placed her cat inside the grave.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She would've said a prayer if Peter had been watching. "I'm so, so sorry."

The sun shone lower in the sky, giving her relief from the humid, stuffy heat. When she finished covering Lilith with dirt, the familiar dread of loss closed in from all sides.

"I love you so much. I always will. You'll always be my bestest friend. My baby. Please don't forget that. Please know that I never—"

She then noticed the faint trail of blood from the grass toward the swimming pool. What looked like a small clump of veins floated in the turquoise water alongside the algae and bugs. And attached to it was, she was sure of it, an eyeball. A green iris... watching her.

Slowly, she picked it up with her shovel. Stared it down. The eye, now rancid and so so wrong, no longer belonged to Lilith. Charlie threw it over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

"I have an idea," Peter called out.

She turned to find him standing on the porch, no longer panicking as if all it'd taken was for her to finish burying that "thing" in the ground.

"What now?" she asked through clenched teeth.

"We need to put him in his place. Show him that if he messes with my girl, I'll mess with him."

Charlie resisted the urge to roll her—thankfully still intact—eyes. "I told you we should've called the police."

Peter made a fist with his right hand and brought it to his palm in a loud slap.

"That's not... that's not okay."

"Then what do you want? Should we go give him a speech about our feelings, see how that works? That won't do anything. The cops won't do anything."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I'm damn sure the sicko needs his ass kicked."

"Do you think that's the Catholic thing to do?"

The color returned to his cheeks in an angry flush. "You wanna know how many people God killed in the flood? Read the Old Testament sometime. God understands that some people deserve hell even while they're living."

Charlie was tired. So, so tired. "Why do you always want to make things worse?"

"So he deserves to get away with this?" Peter's voice lowered, almost huskily as he said, "Maybe he really is your ex... if you care about him so much."

"...what?"

"Do you still like him? That what it is? Because you're making it seem like you still like him."

Panic blew a hole through her dreary, sweaty fatigue. "Why would you even think that?"

"You tell me."

"He's my stalker; he just murdered Lilith! How could you—"

"You don't want me to get justice. So what do you want? Tell me how to solve this."

The more she refused, the more Peter pried, and she couldn't bear the way he spoke to her then. It'd be so easy for him to decide she wasn't worth it anymore. That their two-month relationship wasn't worth this mess.

Could she call the police? Could she show them Lilith's body as evidence? She'd have to explain everything—how she'd begged Jonah not to jump, weeks before what was now the worst day of their lives, and he'd resisted every time, holding her hands in his, "We promised. You promised me. This is what you said you wanted—it's fate-it's fate-it's fate."

And now he could accuse her of attempted murder. She had no one to vouch for her, no one who knew about what happened in November nearly four years ago from today. Her new life hinged on pretending he hadn't existed at all.

"I don't have to hurt him that bad," Peter continued. "Nothing serious—just a little something to scare him." A pause. "Think about what the cat would want."

Charlie pressed her palms against her eyes, too drained to argue. In her mind, she imagined Lilith saying: Quiero verlo sangrar.

I want to see him bleed.

But whether that referred to Jonah or Peter, Charlie wasn't sure.

She saw herself as if on a plane far away, a nobody girl speck against a mass of green and scattered lakes. Holding back her tears, she finally managed to say, "Fine." 

●     ●     ●

a/n: it seems like most people hate peter so far, but i actually love writing his character. he's so ridiculous and over the top it makes me laugh. but tell me, how much did your disapproval of him increase in this chapter??