Read Online Slowly We Rot by Bryan Smith - Free Book Online Page A

The drinking got out of
hand starting early in October.  Noah would later recognize this as the
beginning of the end.  Lisa had a credit card her father had given her.  Until
then, she’d used it almost exclusively for living expenses.  Suddenly, though,
she was racking up huge liquor store purchases with it.  They drank heavily
throughout that month, getting hammered every day.  They attended no classes. 
Lisa’s friends again tried to intervene, but the borderline violent way she
lashed out at them for trying ensured it wouldn’t happen again.  By the middle
of October, there was a definite tinge of darkness to all of it.  The intensity
of the mutual obsession had not lessened, but there was now a grim, desperate
edge to it.
              The day before
Halloween, Noah returned to his dorm room for the first time in weeks to
retrieve some things he needed.  He was exhausted from weeks of light sleeping
and decided to lie down for a nap.  When he woke up, several hours had passed and
it was now nighttime.  He checked his phone and saw that Lisa had sent him
dozens of text messages, each seemingly more distraught than the previous one. 
None of them specified what the problem was.
              Noah called her number
and got no answer.  It was almost nine pm by the time he finally got over to
Lisa’s apartment.  He knocked on the door, but no one answered.  There were no
lights on inside.  He checked the parking lot and saw no sign of Lisa’s Chevy
Malibu.  He then went to a campus pub he’d frequented with her that semester,
hoping to find her there.  Again, he came up empty.  He asked around, but no
one knew anything.  He went back to her apartment and tried again.  The lights
were still out.  His knocks on the door again went unanswered.  He decided to
sit outside her door and wait for her.  While he waited, he checked his phone
again, reviewing her flurry of texts.  The last one had been sent six hours
ago.  Before the cutoff, she’d been sending them at a clip of roughly every
five minutes.  The more he stewed over it, the more the long silence worried
him.
              When one in the morning
rolled around with no sign of Lisa or her roommate, Noah returned to his dorm
for a night of fitful sleep.  He woke up at eight in the morning, got dressed,
and headed back to Lisa’s apartment.  There were still no new messages on his
phone.
              His heart was racing as
he ran up the stairs to her second floor apartment and banged on the door. 
This time the door opened almost right away.  A surge of delirious relief shot
through him as he heard the lock turn.  When the door opened, however, it was
Melanie standing there in the doorway.  The grim, wary look on her face killed
his relief on sight.
              “Where is she?”
              Melanie shook her
head.  “She’s gone.”
              “What the fuck does
that mean?”  Noah held up his phone and thrust it at her.  “She sent me a
hundred fucking messages yesterday, all of them begging me to contact her, and
all you can say is ‘She’s gone’?  You’re gonna have to do better than that. 
I’m not leaving until I know what the fuck’s going on.”
              Melanie scowled at
him.  “Her parents were killed in an accident yesterday.  Okay?  She had to go
home.”
              Noah felt like the
world was about to give way beneath him.  “I have to talk to her.  I have
to…help her.  I’m her boyfriend, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
              Melanie shook her
head.  “You can’t help her, Noah.”
              “When do you think
she’ll be back?”
              “I don’t know.  She
might not come back at all.”
              Before he could say
anything to that, Melanie closed the door in his face.  He heard the lock turn
again.  After staring in shock at the door a few moments, he