Shhh...Mack's Side

by Jettie Woodruff

  “Why? Aren’t you enjoying the show? I am,” Mr. Nichols wildly spoke, rubbing my clitoris even wilder. Oh lord. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

  I didn’t really moan, not really. It was more of a whimper. My eyes closed, my head dropped to his chest, and the orgasm released. Shit. Oh sweet mother of god. Hallelujah.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Mr. Nichols yelled, shoving one finger deep inside me, letting my walls constrict around his finger. My breathing regulated and I looked at Gia’s stone cold face. I couldn’t read it.

  That’s when all hell broke loose. Gianna lunged, taking three full strides right toward me. Years of buildup boiled out of her. She was raging mad. It all surfaced, right there, right at that orgasmic second.

  Mr. Nichols incited our little brawl on the floor. My shorts were still around my knees, leaving me at a disadvantage over Gia. I had handfuls of her hair, and we scrapped, back and forth, rolling over each other. Mr. Nichols dropped to his stomach, mimicking a referee, smacking his hand on the floor. “One, oh come on, Gia. You almost had her.” And then he’d do it with me. Neither of us made it to the victory count of three. I think we were too weak.

  “I’m done,” I panted, rolling to my back, sliding my shorts up. Gia followed and breathed heavy, deep breaths.

  “No. No. You’re not done. That wasn’t a fight,” Mr. Nichols argued, disappointed. Yes it was. I could feel the goose egg right above my right eye. I could taste blood from the inside of my lip. It was a fight.

  “Gia, tell her. Tell her how you set out on this venture for revenge. How irate you were about her getting ahead of you, living your dream and not hers. Tell her how you weren’t going to school to compete with Mack. Tell her, Gia,” he ordered, egging it on more.

  “Gia?” I questioned. What was he saying? There had to be a mistake. Gia wouldn’t do that to me. Gia loved me. We were Mack and Gia. We’d always been Mack and Gia.

  “That’s right, McKenzie. You were part of the plan,” she taunted, spitting blood to the dirty floor. “That day you wrote your name on my paper was all part of it. The day you agreed to write my name on top of your page was the day I smiled. Victory would be mine.”

  “Victory? Are you fucking kidding me? Victory? Where’s your fucking glory now, Gia? How’d that all turn out for you?

  “You set out to hurt me, too?” I asked, pulling my swollen bottom lip inside my mouth. Sucking lightly, I tasted the warm blood, fueling my fire.

  “Your little friend here, made sure you got caught,” Mr. Nichols chimed in. He was enjoying this. The fucker was enjoying every second of it.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, glaring from him to Gia. Nothing made sense. My mind was blurred, and I fought with everything in me to keep it together. Thoughts of little Cara kept popping up, alone in our room. No. That wasn’t real. She was probably awake and scared. I kept blinking, trying to get the irrational part of my brain to stay focused on the now, not the doll who was not waiting on me back in our room, I mean, my room.

  “You see, Mack,” Mr. Nichols chanted, dropping to one knee. He looked up at me like he was there to give me a pep talk, tell me how things were going to be okay. That’s not what he was doing. He was apathetic in the worse way possible. He wanted to hurt us, both of us. “Gia never wrote her name on the other test. She wrote yours. That’s how you got caught. That’s how Gia made sure you would go down with me. Once you were there, you were sinking until she drowned you. That was her goal. She wanted to ruin you, too. Right, Gia? Am I telling it right?” Mr. Nichols beamed with self-satisfaction while my mind thought about that day. No. That wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. Gia had too much to lose.

  Think, Mack. Think, I told myself, trying to remember the facts of that day.

  “Gia, I don’t think we should do this. What if we get caught?”

  “Stop being so dramatic, Mack. It really doesn’t suit you. What are you worried about? You have an A in his class. The worse thing that could happen is you’ll get a C instead of an A. You’ll live. I’m not going to pass this class if I don’t ace this test. You know I’m not going to ace this test. Just write my name at the top of yours and I’ll write yours at the top of mine. Nobody’s going to know. They can’t differentiate my filled in circle from yours. Do you want us to go to school together and continue the dance competitions? We’re going to state, Mack. We finally made it to state.”

  I recalled the conversation of the day that changed my life. Gia set me up.

  “I don’t get it,” I admitted, looking at Mr. Nichols and not Gia. I hated Gia. How could she do this to me?

  “Mack, Mack, Mack. You’re so pretty and smart, but so, so dumb,” Mr. Nichols recited. He stood from his perched position and walked behind Gia. Moving her hair, he kissed the back of her neck and slid his hands down her hips. I thought for a second he was going to seduce her in front of me, too. He didn’t.

  “Ahhhhhh,” Gia screamed in pain, dropping to her knees when Mr. Nichols swept her off her feet with one swift kick.

  Kneeling beside her, he placed his hand over her shoulders’, keeping her on the floor in front of him. “You see, Mack, Gia wasn’t going to college. Gia decided to cut off her nose to spite her face. She played the martyr, punishing herself for killing her baby. Poor Gia. Felt like she couldn’t go on after what she did.”

  I frowned, looking at the sober expression on Gia’s face. “What’s he talking about, Gia?”

  Mr. Nichols nudged her with his foot. “Come on. Tell her. Tell her how you thought you were in love with me. Tell her how you got pregnant and then decided to kill it when you realized we were nothing. Nothing more than an illusion of a dream to never come. TELL HER!” Dropping to Gia, he screamed in her face, jerked her by her hair to a sitting position and turned her head to look at me.

  “Gia?” I questioned again. Who the hell was this girl?

  “I had an abortion.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” I said. I didn’t get it. Women had abortions all the time. They had abortions and still went about their lives.

  “Yeah, but Gia is not a normal person,” Mr. Nichols helped. “Gia, here, couldn’t stand the thought of you going on and living a happy life while she wallowed in her own self-pity, could you, Gianna?”

  Gia didn’t answer. She only stared at me with a look of, I don’t know what. I had no idea who Gia was. I guess I never did.

  “Answer me!” Mr. Nichols yelled.

  “YES!” Gia screamed, pulling away from him. Tears ran down her face while she confessed. “I wanted to ruin you. I wanted you to hurt like you hurt me. You ruined my family. I spent my entire life trying to be as good as you. I never was. The only reason I was head cheerleader was because I was ten pounds lighter than you. I was the easiest one to toss around. It wasn’t because I was better. You were always better. It didn’t matter in what. You always had to do it better.”

  “That’s not true, Gia.”

  “It is, goddamnit. You always thought you had to be better. Your cupcakes were decorated prettier, your Halloween costumes were better, your Christmas and birthday presents were better, you danced better, and everyone liked you more than me. My own father even liked you more than me!”

  “What? Who the hell are you? Why did I not ever know how envious of me you were?”

  “Because she couldn’t let you find out she was just a weak little girl, trying to be as good as Mack. She just wanted to be like Mack,” Mr. Nichols laughed.

  That was the craziest thing I had ever heard in my life. If Gia only knew how much I struggled just to be normal, she wouldn’t wish that. Not on anyone.

  “I lost everything. I wanted you to lose everything, too. Why do you get to be happy when I don’t? Huh?” she yelled at me, her true colors finally showing.

  “You didn’t lose anything.”

  “I lost James. I lost the baby. And my best friend was fucking my dad. I wasn’t about to let you run off into the sunset and become my new step-mom.”

  “You
had an abortion. You just said so. Don’t make it sound like it was some tragic miscarriage. You didn’t lose it, you got rid of it.” She was such a manipulator. “And I ended things with Kyle. I knew as well as he did that we couldn’t go on forever.

  And let’s not forget, you never lost me. You can’t lose something you never had. You never had me, Gia. It was the other way around. I had you. So many times,” Mr. Nichols interjected with a devious smile.

  “You had it, Gianna Edwards, you had it all. Tell me Jake didn’t give that to you. Tell me Jake didn’t worship the ground you walked on. You can’t. You can’t do that because you’re infatuation with your goddamn teacher wouldn’t let you see how much he loved you. You ruined that. Not me.”

  “Fuck you!” Gia spouted. Mr. Nichols laughed some more, loving every second of this.

  “Yes, Gia. We know. That’s what you always do. When things get a little tough, poor Gia, here, goes out and finds her someone to fuck. Did you know that, Mack? Did you think your best friend in the whole world would turn out to be such a slut? That’s all she is, a washed up, drunken slut. She was easy to take from that bar. You were both easy, wasn’t much thrill in it for me, not the way I played it out in my head, anyway.

  “You, I knew would be easy. You weren’t going to know what hit you. It was Gia I wanted to scare the living daylights out of. She wasn’t scared. You know why, Mack? Because she’s nothing but a washed up drunk, can’t even hold down a job. If it weren’t for her rich mommy and daddy, poor little Gia here would be on the streets, giving head for some dope.”

  “But what about Jake?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Gia would never live like that. She was too high-class for that.

  “Jake left her, finally. He tried. Didn’t he try, Gia?”

  “How do you know so much? You were in prison. I didn’t even know any of that.”

  “That’s because you didn’t care. You left Gia, moved on with your success without her.”

  “We just drifted apart,” I tried. For whatever reason, I felt bad for leaving her. I shouldn’t feel bad. I had no reason to feel bad. Gia ruined our lives.

  “Ahh, such a shame. Two best friends such as yourselves, drifting apart due to life. BULLSHIT!” Mr. Nichols screamed. Red flushed his face and veins popped in his neck every time he did that. Calming with a smirk, he continued to pour alcohol on the opened wounds. Wounds that would never heal. Wounds punctured so deep, they seeped with pain. Pain that would be relieved when death took its place.

  “You parted ways because you couldn’t stand it. Neither of you could stand the thought of what you did to me. It ate at you daily. Both of you.”

  He was right. “I never knew it would turn out the way it did. I didn’t know. I was a kid. I thought you’d lose your job, move to another town and work as a teacher somewhere else. It was never premeditated, I swear,” I pleaded.

  “Hmmm. I think you may be right. You may not have known about it, but I think Gia here did. Gia planned it all along, not just that night. Is that right, Gia? Wasn’t that another one of your schemes, another one of your ploys to get back at me?” he asked turning back to Gia. She looked depleted, tired and ready to give up.

  “Yes,” she quietly admitted.

  “You planned it?” My heart stopped. I was suckered into a sticky mess because I loved Gia. I would have done anything for her.

  “I had so much going on, Mack.”

  “You fucking planned it?” I asked again. My life was in shambles because Gianna Edwards was bitter and jealous.

  “I was young, too, McKenzie. I didn’t know either. I didn’t know you would go to prison. I’m sorry,” she cried.

  I wanted out. I wanted out of that room. “I can’t breathe,” I said, hyperventilating.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Mr. Nichols asked, dropping to his knees to be at my level. “We’re not done here. There’s lots more to hash out. Pull your shit together,” he ordered.

  “I, I, can’t. I can’t breathe. I need to go outside. Please,” I begged.

  “Jesus Christ. You’re both fucking pathetic,” he said, pulling me up. I didn’t look back at Gia. I couldn’t look at her anymore that day. I wasn’t sure I would ever look at her the same again.

  I sat outside on a fallen down cinderblock wall where patients were once gathered for recreation. I heaved, trying to calm my breath.

  “Please take me back to Cara,” I begged.

  “What?” Mr. Nichols asked, shocked.

  “I need to go back. Please,” I begged.

  “You’re a fucking fruit loop. Your friend is a no good, drunken slut, and you’re a fucking deranged lunatic,” he labeled us, jerking me to my feet.

  I was glad to get back to my solitude. I wasn’t going to complain to myself about being alone or bored ever again. I was staying right there in my safe part of the world with Cara.

  I was crazy. I was trying hard not to find solitude in rocking my baby back and forth, back and forth, cross legged in the middle of the floor. Sometimes when I looked down at her, I saw a doll with one eye closed. That one didn’t open when you sat her up, only the left one did. Sometimes that’s what I saw, just an old creepy doll left behind by some crazy person. Other times, I saw her. I saw the baby that I briefly got to see before they rushed her out for a surgery that took her life.

  I thought about how she looked now and I wondered about AJ. He would have been a good daddy. I shouldn’t have cheated on him. I should have stayed with him. He was good for me. I smiled down at little Cara, sleeping in my arms. AJ was good for me. He grounded me, kept me planted in a sane realm.

  AJ was the only one who knew, the only person in the world that I ever broke down and told the truth to. He knew more about me than I let anyone know. I didn’t mean to tell him. It wasn’t until I came home pregnant with another man’s child that I told him.

  I was in a manic state, only it was different. That happened sometimes when I went off my meds and drank. I cried a lot. And finally broke down and told him I’d sent an innocent man to prison. He held me, and then fucked me when I begged for that, too. I should have been there with him. Not here in this fucked up, crazy sprit filled room.

  AJ loved me with everything in him. He cared, but didn’t care. He felt bad for Mr. Nichols and me for going through it. He didn’t want me to come clean, not after finding out about the baby. He wanted to marry me and raise our family. I’d be okay. He promised to make it all okay for me. He didn’t. He couldn’t. I screwed that up, too.

  I wondered about Melanie and Kyle. Were they still together? Gia didn’t say. I still had so many questions. Damn. I should have kept it together.

  Laying Cara carefully to the bed, I picked up the baggy full of broken crayons, thinking about home, being the age where the only thing that mattered was Gia. Back when we were four, six, nine, all of it. I questioned myself, drawing a big yellow circle, covering the entire center of the crumbling wall. I’m sure if I looked in the mirror, I would have seen nothing, hollow, dazed and confused, nothing. Spacing out, I began to color the massive circle. I hoped I had enough yellow. It was going to be a sun. I needed lots of yellow, I thought as my mind drifted to another time. A happy time.

  I sang. I sang in a creepy voice, chanting the Freddy Kruger rhyme. I sang and colored.

  “One, two, Freddy’s after you.”

  I paid no attention to the two of them when the entered my room. Mr. Nichols was saying something. What was he saying? I could hear him, but couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t have time for this. I was busy. Couldn’t they see I was busy?

  I didn’t listen. I worked hard. I had a deadline. I had to get the circle colored. I scribbled diligently, concentrating on one thing. Blinking, I shook my head, trying to differentiate real from figments of my imagination. Gia was real. Gia was yelling. Just concentrate. Why was she yelling? The sun had to be colored. It needed to be yellow. Don’t pay her any mind. I argued with myself, back and forth, listen
ing to Gia describe that night.

  “Mack?” Mr. Nichols called. “Is that what happened?”

  I looked past him, reverting back in time.

  I guess if I have to admit it, I knew. I knew there was something more when we left that house. Gia was so pumped up, bouncing around, shaking her hands. She was on the verge of losing it herself.

  “We’re not letting him get away with this, Mack. He’s ruining everything. We’re not letting him.”

  “Let me drive,” I said, taking the keys from her. One, she was drunker than I was, and two, she was too worked up. She was really worked up.

  “OOOOOL!” she screeched, fisting the hood of her car before getting in the passenger side.

  “Do you realize this changes everything? I’m not going to school with you. You’re going to make it big without me.”

  “I won’t go, Gia. We’ll do something else. I don’t have to compete. I’m over it, anyway. We’ll go to school somewhere else.”

  “That’s not the point. Who the fuck does he think he is?”

  “We cheated. He’s doing what he has to do. You heard him.”

  “Are you taking his fucking side, Mack?” Gia asked, angrily.

  “No. I’m on your side, but what else is there to do?”

  “Let’s go get laid.”

  “What? No way. You’re crazy.”

  “Come on Mack. I need to relieve some frustration. Don’t tell me you couldn’t use a little stress relief yourself. Let’s do it.” Of course I could. I could always use that.

  “Gia. We can’t just go fuck random guys.”

  “Yes we can. Let’s go find a couple hotties we don’t know. It’s perfect.”

  “Sure, Genius Gia, let’s go into Providence to a club. We could go to that new one over on the strip.” Geesh. She was more out of her mind than I was.

  “Club Red! Oh my god, Mack. That’s perfect.”