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Veronica is dead.
He feels something, seeing her body hanging limply from the ceiling, that he can’t put a name to. She would have died anyway; he’s frozen there with his pistol in hand, lest she perish in fire and pain with the rest of the school tomorrow. Still, there’s a certain ache to seeing her like this. Did her spine snap when she jumped? Or did she twist there, her windpipe forced shut by the bed sheets, until unconsciousness finally took her? A bullet was quick and certain. He would have pressed the barrel of the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger, plain and simple, and she never would have felt a thing. This is different, somehow. This is wrong.
“I loved you,” he hears himself say, taking a shaky step back. “Sure, I was coming up here to kill you, but...”
“Veronica! Dinner’s ready!”
Something’s wrong with him. His chest burns. He takes a shaky step back and nearly trips over the leg of Veronica’s chair. Her diary is lying open on the desk.
Let’s see how JD reacts to a suicide that he didn’t create.
“Veronica?”
He can hear her mother now, her footfalls heavy on the stairs. He stumbles out the window and back down the ladder, sprinting across the yard in a daze. Only when he reaches the safety of his motorcycle on the curb does he slow down and light a cigarette.
Veronica is dead.
His arms itch. There’s a 7/11 down the street; if he hurries, if he only wastes fifteen minutes wandering up and down the aisles and numbing out his brain, then he’ll be home in time to —
No.
He doesn’t have time for that. If he goes now, he’ll be there all night, chugging slushees and binging on those little cakes and cinnamon buns that he really can’t stand. He barely notices when his cigarette burns to the filter. JD blinks, crushing the smoking butt beneath his heel. He pulls a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of his coat and slips one finger inside, feeling around until his skin grazes something sharp.
The razor blade slides right out, shiny and smooth against the palm of his hand. It’s not a slushee, he thinks, but it will do.
He’s done this before. He drags the blade across his wrist, slowly at first, watching the blood bead on his skin. That doesn’t do it. He pulls his arm back and slashes, hard and fast and angry, and that’s what he needed. The comforting, brain freeze-esque numbness sets in, spreading up his arm like fire, until Veronica’s hung body is nothing but a faded memory, like a dream turned nightmare. His sleeve soaks, cold and damp against his skin.
He leans against his motorcycle and shuts his eyes. The pounding in his chest is gone. He takes a moment to bask in the hypnotic calm of his pain. Then, his hands unwavering and certain, he puts his blade away. Veronica is dead. He can handle this now. The motorcycle hums to life beneath him. He moves on auto pilot, cold and unfeeling, like a machine. Tonight, he thinks, he’ll sleep through the night.
Tomorrow, Westerburg dies.