Frozen on Exam Day Chapter 07
The neighbors had already heard the cominotion. Someone called the police and, within half an hour, officers arrived and cordoned off the apartment. I was lifted onto a stretcher, and the coroner examined my body with painstaking care.
When the report was placed in front of my parents, they stared at the words and read them over and over again.
“Deceased: Wesley Merritt. Cause of death: hypothermia. Estimated time of death. approximately five days prior.”
“Five days ago… that was the first day of the SATs.” Dad’s voice was barely above a whisper. He stared at that one line and his whole body started to tremble.
“That morning, he got on his knees and begged me. He begged me not to do it. He was crying so hard he could barely talk. He even begged me to give him back his ID.” His voice cracked.
“I’m the one who kicked him in there. I told him to stay inside and think about what he’d done.”
Next to him, Mom let out a broken wail. “He was banging on the door! He was screaming that he was cold! I thought he was faking it. I heard him and I thought he was faking it!”
She started clawing at her own hair, tearing at it in fistfuls. “He kept knocking! He knocked for so long! He wasn’t throwing a tantrum. He was calling for help!”
The officers had to restrain her. She thrashed against them, half laughing, half sobbing, completely unraveled.
“My child was in there for five days! He froze to death! He could’ve been saved!”
Her voice gave out entirely. She sounded like an animal with a hand around its throat.
Dad shot to his feet so hard the chair toppled behind him. “How is this possible? The psychic never said this would happen!”
His eyes were wild, bloodshot, all composure gone. “He told us that as long as we kept Wes down, as long as we kept him from ɔutshining Darren, everything would be fine. We did everything he said to protect Darren. So why couldn’t we protect Wes?
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!”
The officer sitting across from them in the interrogation room studied him with a frown. He was quiet for a few seconds. Then he reached into a case folder, pulled out a photograph and set it on the table.
“The psychic you’re talking about, is this him?”
Dad picked up the photo. The man in it was wearing a prison jumpsuit. His head was shaved bald, his face gaunt. He stood behind bars with a hollow, empty stare.
Dad went still.
“He was arrested two years ago.” The officer’s voice was cold as steel.
“It was for fraud. Over 300,000 dollars in total. His entire operation was built around targeting parents like you, people desperate enough to believe anything
“He already confessed. He was never a psychic. He was a conman from start to finish”
The interrogation room stayed silent for a long time. The officer looked at them with a gaze that was equal parts ice and contempt.
“You spent 18 years destroying your son’s life because a stranger made something up on the spot
“And in those 18 years, did you ever realize that your son, Wesley Merritt, had developed severe depression? Did either of you know that?”
Mom’s head snapped up. The screen was shattered, cracked from when Dad kicked me into the freezer. She tapped my notes app to open it.
