Machete

by Nicole Thorn

  We watched each other; eyes locked while air ceased to enter me. He had no expression, and didn’t say a word to me. Lane only wrapped his hands around my throat, holding on until the world started fading away.

  I waited, feeling myself creep toward an edge that I’d seen many times before. Black slunk into my being, telling me it would keep me safe if I only took its hand. The blackness did that for me because it was my friend. It granted me hours where I could stop being.

  Then my brother released me, and I gagged on nothing at all when I hit the ground. He stepped over me, his heel bashing into my spine on his way out. He left the door open.

  I stumbled my way to school, getting there in time for my first class. Becket was not there, and it was the only thing I was aware of. My mind swam from the damage this morning, and I did my best to focus on the world.

  Then it was lunch, and I couldn’t remember when that happened. I had a headache that made my body feel like one giant pulse, and I had to guard my eyes from the sun. I sat at the table at lunch, safely indoors, staring at the slop on my tray.

  When I heard another tray set down, my chest filled with glee at the hope it was Becket. It was not, and I’d never felt disappointment like that in my whole life.

  “Hi,” Merry said, forcing a brittle smile.

  I sighed. “Look, if you’re here to fuck with me, I’m in no mood. It won’t even be fun for you, so check back tomorrow,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “That’s not what I’m here for,” she said flatly. “You’re sitting alone.”

  “I am,” I said. “Nothing gets by you.”

  She glared at me. “I was trying to be nice and sit with you so you’re not alone but I can leave if you wanna be bitchy.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Don’t you have friends? Like those cows who terrorize my best friend?”

  Merry cocked her head. “Depends on your definition of friend. But I’m sitting with you today, so get over it.”

  If I had my way, then I would have taken my tray and bashed Merry in the face with it. Then I would have done it several times, until there was so much blood coating me that Becket would be proud. God, I wanted him next to me. Everything would feel easier if I had him there, my hip touching him, wishing he would hold my hand.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked because everyone wanted something from me.

  She smiled all wrong. “I told you I wanted to sit with you. You look like you could use a friend.”

  Well, she’d flirted with Becket, so I had a violent hatred for her that I couldn’t put into words. He’d already been taken advantage of by one girl, and it didn’t need to happen again. And, selfishly, I didn’t want him touched because it would have broken my heart if I had to hear about him with another girl. I could only take so many hits.

  “And you wanna be that friend?” I asked.

  “Sure. You can tell me about yourself.”

  Oh, goodie, she was giving me permission. That was my cue to spill my guts to the girl in front of me. Too bad for her, there was nothing at all to me. “I go to school, I go home, and that’s it.”

  She arched one eyebrow. “Aw, come on. Is that all you do? You don’t have a job or anything?”

  I shrugged. “I work at my parents’ jewelry story sometimes.”

  “Oh, that must be interesting. You guys get a lot of business?”

  “Yeah,” I said, having to explain for the first time in my life. I’d never met anyone who didn’t know who I was. “We’re the top-selling shop in the county, and top three in the state.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Lucky you. Do you get to wear the jewelry? Or take stuff home?”

  I really didn’t feel like talking about work or my family. I wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while, waiting for my friend to come back. How the hell did I used to get through the days? Was my whole life a sleepwalk? It had to be.

  “No,” I said, snippy and quiet. “As much fun as this little chat has been, I have to be anywhere but here right now. Thanks for the stimulating conversation.”

  She called after me when I got up and started for the trash cans but she didn’t follow. Must not have been that important to her after all. Who the hell wanted to hear about how a jewelry store worked? And what kind of moron thought that I could just keep what I wanted? I would have to buy it like everyone else did. My parents weren’t the kinds to let me have any of the inventory.

  I found myself wandering, leaving the school altogether. My feet were carrying me on a path I knew well, a path I had traveled only a couple of days ago. I wanted to be where I was happiest last, and that was the woods. The same spot I’d gotten my markings in.

  My phone rang in my ear, and I was calling Becket again. I doubted he would pick up but I had to try. I had to try until my fingers bled because he wasn’t safe. He needed to be safe.

  I was in disbelief when I heard him on the other side. “Manny,” he said, weak and odd.

  “Hi, honey,” I said, unable to keep the happiness out of my voice. “How are you? You’re not at school. What happened?”

  Becket hesitated, not answering my several questions all at once. “I... sorry. I... I don’t feel good. I couldn’t come in.”

  I swallowed, and spoke slowly. “Sweetie, are you okay? You sound weird.”

  “I’m fine,” he responded, slurring. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Can I come over now?” I asked. “I can take you out to dinner or something. Then I can bring you back to my house. I miss sleeping with you,” I admitted, and then regretted it right after. Didn’t he already know by now anyway?

  “Um, n-no. Not right now. I just...”

  “Becket,” I said. “Are you on something? Did you sleep? What happened?”

  “Shh,” he said. “I’m fine. Dad gave me something, and I feel a lot better. I can’t come over tonight. I’m sorry. But I have to go now.”

  My heart stung. He was messed up, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not only that but I couldn’t even see him. I needed a distraction. Something to make me forget how helpless I was. “Wait. Before you go, I wanted to ask you something. Do you own a suit?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  We Can Pretend for a Night

  Becket

  I ‘woke up’ the next morning groggy and dazed. My eyes felt gritty, and I laid on the dining room floor. I was halfway under the table, and my legs were tangled with the chair legs. My head hurt like someone had bashed me with a vase, and my body ached with a similar kind of beaten down feeling.

  After crawling out from under the table, I looked around. The table was set, and food had been left out overnight. Seeing it brought memories of the day before back. My father had been furious with me for doing something so stupid and potentially disastrous to my future. I had apologized profusely but it didn’t seem to matter to him. I couldn’t say that I blamed him either. I could have seriously hurt those other students, and all because I didn’t like what they were saying?

  It seemed dumb now but at that moment, it hadn’t felt dumb. It felt like the only logical response. They had treated Manny so terribly, and I needed to make sure that they never did something like that again.

  Yesterday, my father told me that I wouldn’t be going to school again until he could be certain that I wouldn’t act so foolish a second time. He told me that I needed to mellow out, and then he had given me something. I wasn’t sure what that something was, and for the first time that bothered me.

  Sometimes, after being medicated, I did and thought strange things. Things that I couldn’t imagine Manny would tolerate for very long. He had left me upstairs in my room, and I had just... floated. For the entire day, I had laid there floating, looking around at everything. It all seemed so vital but impossible. Nothing could be touched but yet my hands had moved things around. Like I needed to figure out the perfect place to put them.

  Then Manny had called and talked with me. I remembered that clearly. She wanted me to g
o somewhere with her in a tux. I didn’t own one but my father would take me to get one if I asked politely enough. If he wasn’t angry with me anymore.

  Which he might’ve been. At dinner, we had sat silently across from each other. I hadn’t been hungry, and I couldn’t focus for long enough to eat anything. When Dad got up, he told me to clean the dining room and do all the dishes. The kind of thing that our maid normally did but he was upset with me.

  After that, I wasn’t entirely sure what happened. I must have passed out or gotten extremely tired. Either way, I was still sitting on the floor when the door to the dining room swung open. My heart leaped into my throat, convinced that my father would be standing there. It wasn’t him, though. We had the maid service come in once or twice a week, and this must be Aggie’s day.

  She peered down at me on the floor and sighed. “What happened, Becket?” she asked, coming into the room.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, honestly. Aggie helped me to my feet, brushing me off with a quick hand.

  “Why don’t you let me clean up in here, and you can head on upstairs, okay?” Her voice was soft, like it always was around me. The slight southern accent only made the words gentler, somehow.

  I blinked at her. “I’m supposed to clean this up. Dad said so.”

  She shook her head. “You go on upstairs and get ready for school. I’ll handle this. It’s my job after all. Don’t you worry about your father. I know how to handle that man.” She nudged me out of the room, and I found myself stumbling towards the door. I listened to her because my head was too loud.

  In a daze, I went up the stairs, into my bedroom. I felt terrible but I had promised Manny that I would be at school today. One second, I stood in front of my bed, and the next, I was at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed, with a backpack slung over my shoulder.

  I blinked heavily, looking around. The details of how I got here were fuzzy in my mind. I must have gotten ready but I couldn’t remember how that happened.

  “Becket?” my father called from his office.

  I wandered over so that I could look into the room. Dad hunched over his notebook, scribbling across the page with a deft hand. He waited a full five or six seconds before looking up at me, smiling. “Are you off to school? I don’t have to worry about you doing something reckless, do I?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I’m pleased that you have a friend, Becket but I do worry about you sometimes. Don’t let this girl influence the way you behave, okay? Chances are, she’ll get bored and leave sooner rather than later. You know that, right?”

  I nodded my head, though it felt like a lie. I wouldn't presume to understand how Manny’s head worked, even if I thought I could predict her reactions fairly well. If she hadn’t gotten bored yet, and she had been okay with me sleeping in her bed, then would she get tired of me?

  I couldn’t be certain. Hel hadn’t gotten tired of me. She just didn’t like sex with me. Manny seemed to think Hel was insane for that, so maybe everything was different with her. Maybe I wouldn’t lose this time, if I acted carefully. If I didn’t pretend to be more normal than I was.

  “Good,” Dad said. “You may leave now.”

  “Thank you, Dad,” I said, and turned around.

  He called me back before I got more than two steps away from him. “Do I need to give you something, so that you’re mellow today?” Before I could answer, he stood up and approached me. I watched each step, my heart hurting. My legs throbbed in warning, where I had let him cut me the day before. There wasn’t much room left on my body for new scars, and each one was a reminder that I had screwed up somehow. How many times could I screw up before it killed me?

  “No.”

  Dad grabbed my face, looking steadily in my eyes for so long that I worried about being late for meeting up with Manny. “Are you certain, Becket?”

  “Please,” I said.

  “What?” Dad asked.

  “Please, don’t,” I repeated. I had never talked to my father that way before, and I worried about his reaction. He released my face, and I stumbled back a step. I wasted no time getting away from him as he told me to go. My heart pounded steadily in my throat all the way out the door.

  I stood on the porch, staring at the driveway for a few seconds. I didn’t understand anything that happened. Not once in my life had I spoken to my father that way, and he hadn’t seemed pleased with the change. I worried that I had somehow made a mistake with asking for leniency.

  Nothing to do about it now, I supposed. I started walking down the walkway, and only made it down the block before I saw Manny. She marched down the street like she had something important to do. When she saw me, her steady walk turned into a jog. I barely had any time to prepare myself before she launched herself at me. Her arms wound around my neck, squeezing so tightly that I worried about breathing.

  I put my own arms around her, so that I could stand straight. Her feet left the ground but she didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Her arms tightened even more, and she kicked her legs. “Are you okay?” she asked against my neck.

  “Why wouldn’t…” I trailed off, and then whispered, “Yes. I am okay.”

  She dropped back down to her feet but my hands remained on her hips. She felt warm through the fabric of her pretty green dress. It showed off her arms, so that I could see all the drawings that I had done. The ones at the corners of her eyes had started to fade but I could always redo those. I brushed a strand of blonde hair out of her face and sat back on my heels.

  There were bruises around her throat. I tilted her head back so that I could see them clearer. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Manny...” I stepped back so that I could look into her eyes. A frown turned my lips down, and I looked away. If I wasn’t willing to tell her about the cuts in my legs, then could I expect her to tell me what happened to her throat? I did not think so, and it bothered me. Almost enough that I opened my mouth.

  Shame stopped me. Shame not that I had been cut up but that I had done something to deserve it. Each of my scars had been from my own stupidity, and I didn’t want her to know that. I didn’t want her to know how stupid I really was.

  I brushed my thumb along her throat, pushing the bruise away. It was slow at first because it was such a dark purple. Then it started to pick up speed, until the color turned a sickly yellow, and then disappeared altogether. I dropped my hand, smiling at her.

  “Thank you,” she said but I wondered if she actually meant it.

  I brushed another strand of blond hair aside. “You don’t deserve the way they treat you.”

  She smiled at me but there was nothing real in the smile. Like the red mouths painted onto dolls, with the fake shine in their eyes. The expression was right but there was nothing real in it. Nothing comforting.

  Manny wound our hands together and started walking with me down the sidewalk. “How are you feeling?” she asked, leaning forward so that she could peer up at me.

  I glanced back at her, choosing to lie. “I’m good. Ready for school, I promise.”

  I didn’t think she believed my words any more than I believed her smile. Neither of us called the other out on it. We walked the rest of the way to school, talking quietly. Some of the other students looked at us sideways as we walked past. Their eyes dropped immediately to our hands but I ignored them. They didn’t matter to me.

  Mrs. Flannigan looked up at us as we walked into her classroom. Her eyes shot from Manny to me to our hands in a fast sequence. Her features pinched, and she set down the marker she had been writing on the board with. “Manny? Can I talk to you outside, please?”

  “I’d rather not,” Manny said.

  “Now,” Mrs. Flannigan ordered. Manny dropped my hand and went out into the hall with the teacher. No one else had come inside yet, so I wandered closer to the door, leaning forward so that I could hear their conversation.

  “... is
fine,” Manny said.

  “I don’t believe that,” Mrs. Flannigan said. “I don’t know what’s happening at home that’s making you act out lately but you need to think about more than just right now. Becket is a very nice young man but he is also very unstable. Do you want him to lash out and hurt you?”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Manny said.

  “Really? I saw the bruise on your throat yesterday, Manny. I can’t help noticing it’s not there today. Do you expect me to believe that Becket had nothing to do with that? You never had bruises before you started spending time with him.”

  Yes, she did. She was just better at hiding them.

  “You can’t tell me who to spend my time with,” Manny said, her voice cold. “Becket has never hurt me, and will never hurt me. If you don’t want me to try my best to get you fired, then you will shut up about him and all the assumptions that you’ve made. Do you understand?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then, “Yes.”

  Manny came back into the room. She could see that I had been standing there, listening. A smile formed on her face, and this one reached her eyes. She took my hand without hesitation, leading me over to our seats.

  X

  The class before lunch, I didn’t have with Manny. I sat behind Mrs. Flannigan’s desk and drew using some of the pencils that Manny had given me. Nothing special but I thought she might like putting it up on her wall, next to the lizard I had given her previously. She treated each line I made like it was precious, and the thought that someone cared eased a tightness in my chest.

  “Becket?” Mrs. Flannigan said.

  I looked up at her as she sat down in her chair. She scooted it forward, lacing her hands together. “Yes?” I asked. “Do you need something?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I wanted to talk with you about Manny Hodkin. I know that the two of you have been spending a lot of time together lately, and I want to make sure that you aren’t… doing anything that you shouldn’t be. You know who her family is, and I worry about the two of you making a mistake that you can’t fix.”