“I think you’re too scared to take the leap. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Go at your own pace. Who cares what I think?” I open the bathroom door, step inside, and close it behind me.
“Mom and Maxen don’t know, by the way, they were asleep when we got back,” he calls through the door as I reach for the digital shower buttons. I love this bathroom.
“Thank you,” I call back, smiling to myself. I guess he’s not so bad after all.
* * *
Downstairs, after a long shower, dressed in denim shorts and a camisole, I head to the kitchen to make the greasiest breakfast I can.
Dad and Shonda aren’t up yet, they often sleep in on a Saturday but I make enough food for all of us anyway. Stepdork included who I call down when it’s done.
He takes his plate with gratitude and digs in as I do the same while playing on my phone and messaging Cella to make sure she got home safe.
Cella: I’ll be at your house in an hour. So much to tell you!
Meaning she probably got laid and had a great night. Unlike me, who got wasted and passed out on top of her stepbrother.
Shonda enters the kitchen in floral pajamas and a matching nightgown. Her hair has been combed and her teeth brushed, I can tell by the white bits at the corner of her lips. She’s like me, can’t wait even an hour in the morning to brush her teeth.
I can’t stand having morning breath.
I brush before breakfast and floss afterwards. I don’t like to overdo it but so far no cavities so I must be doing something right.
“This looks great,” she says, her tone cautious as she eyes us warily. I point to her plate and swallow another mouthful of my own.
“More coffee?” Stepdork asks when I reach for my empty cup and frown.
“Ah, please.”
Shonda eyes us both, even more curious and cautious than before.
Stepdork stands and takes my cup to the coffee machine, I watch him spoon in a single sugar and add more coffee and a tiny drop of creamer. He knows how I like it. He’s more observant than I thought.
He returns it to me and I sip it with a hum.
“So you had fun last night?” Shonda asks carefully, as though terrified she’ll set us off. Have we really been that bad?
I glance at Travis and wonder if he’s going to snitch, he just shrugs and replies, “It was alright.”
“Just alright?”
“It was awesome, Shonda. Travis played spin the bottle.”
He chokes on his food as I laugh wickedly and Shonda joins in. Glaring at me, he takes his plate and rinses it in the sink.
“I’m just kidding, Stepdork, don’t take shit so hard.”
“Language,” Shonda admonishes sounding exasperated. “You and your father have such potty mouths.”
“I am my father’s daughter,” I wryly say with a smirk.
“Thank heavens.”
She said it around a giggle and with a smile but the second those words left her mouth we all froze and our smiles vanished.
My heart stopped and it hasn’t started yet. An icy chill runs through my veins.
Her words hurt and I know she regrets them because her eyes fill with regret as mine become void of life altogether.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she tries, reaching for me but I feel numb. “I swear. I just… I meant… I didn’t think.”
“Forget it,” I mumble, hating how they’re both looking at me now. I leave the room before they can stop me and race up to my room. My heart feels dead. I feel dead.
Thoughts of my mom have my eyes swimming with tears. I know everybody sees me and worries I’ll be like her. Sick, depressed, out of her mind.
Because she was all of those things. She was sick. She was depressed. She was out of her fucking mind.
That’s what they always say. She was sick. Her behavior was scary and destructive and selfish.
Like mine.
Like me.
I slam my bedroom door, then I open it and slam it again. I don’t know why. I guess to show them that I’m angry, because I am angry, because they’ll always be scared of me and what I’ll become.
I’m not smart. I don’t get the best grades. I don’t make good life choices. I can never think beyond the night.
My dad tells me it’s normal to let loose as a teenager within reason, just don’t do heavy drugs and don’t get pregnant. But last night I drank so much that if I’d woken up in another man’s bed, naked, feeling dirty and used, I wouldn’t have remembered it. I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself.
I look at myself in the mirror and hate on what I see, my large eyes that can’t decide if they’re green or gray. My chestnut-brown hair that skims the tips of my nipples through my shirt. My tanned skin, covered in light freckles, along my nose and cheeks, down my forearms too.
Sometimes I think I’m pretty and other times like this I just scare me. I have the power to hurt everybody I love, intentionally or unintentionally and that kind of burden on my shoulders makes my stomach hurt.
Growling, I cover my mirror with a T-shirt after fiddling with the corners for a while and then move to my stereo.
I switch on my music, turn it up full blast and message Cella telling her not to come. I’m not in the mood for company. I’m not in the mood for anything right now.
There’s a picture of me and my mom on my bedroom wall. I was around six months old and she loved me so much. There isn’t a picture of us together where she wasn’t happy and smiling.
I remember my time with her fondly. She was a good mom. She loved me.
When my dad knocks on my door I’m not happy to see him. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to be pushed.
I open it anyway because as fucked up as I am I respect my dad and I’m not about to piss him off and make things harder for myself.
He doesn’t walk in alone, Shonda follows him and he immediately moves to turn down my music.
I’m being backed into a corner here by both of them.
I don’t like it. I feel my hackles rising and they haven’t even spoken yet.
“Please don’t,” I beg, raising my hands. “Just leave me alone.”
“Shonda didn’t mean it,” Dad says, looking at his fiancée with that same loved-up look that he always has when he looks at her. This time it’s laced with sorrow at the situation. He’s apologizing for me with his eyes, as though saying I’m sorry for my fucked-up daughter.
Sorry for his massive load of baggage.
Does he think he’s better off without me?
“I really didn’t mean it like that,” she tries but she can hardly look me in the eye. “I love you, Raven. As you are, you have to believe me.”
“As I am?”
“Don’t peck,” Dad snaps, it’s something he says when he thinks I’m picking an argument. He calls it pecking. A weird term but whatever.
“I’m not,” I argue, standing rigid with my hands crossed over my chest. “I don’t know why you’re in here, I’m not bothering anybody.”
“You’re upset,” Dad explains like I don’t know that already. “Shonda wants to apologize.”
“And she’s too scared to come in here by herself?” When he opens his mouth to argue I look at her. “Are you scared of me, Shonda?”
“Of course not.” She looks at my dad and they both share that look again, the one of pity, the one of silent apology to each other for my behavior.
My breathing starts to pick up and my arms and hands start to shake. “Will you stop doing that!”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at each other like you are!”
Dad gives me a look and then Shonda, and I want to scream.
Shonda reaches for me. “I’m not scared of you. Honestly.”
Yet she flinches when I push her hand away. “Really? You’re not?”
“This is getting out of hand. Can we talk? Calmly?”
“Talk about what?” My voice is getting higher. “What did I do? She’s
the one who said something mean. I didn’t reply. I didn’t say anything back…” I motion to my Bluetooth speaker. “I came to calm down…”
“And close your drapes and cover your mirror?” Dad points out, frowning deeply now.
“How I deal with my anxiety is up to me,” I snap, wishing I had the strength to pick them both up and deposit them on the outside of my space.
“It’s not healthy.”
My lips part. “What’s not healthy is getting into a screaming match with my stepmom because of something she probably didn’t mean to say! What’s not healthy is pushing your way into somebody’s safe space when they’re not ready to talk! What’s not healthy is treating me like I’m going to hurt myself because I put music on and closed my fucking drapes.”
“Language,” Shonda admonishes.
“Oh fuck off with your language bullshit right now, Shonda. I don’t know why you’re both ganging up on me. Stepdork has stayed in his room the majority of the time I’ve lived here and you guys haven’t done a fucking thing about it.”
“Don’t speak to Shonda like that.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
Dad shakes his head, making me feel smaller than I ever have. “We’re getting nowhere.”
“Babe,” Shonda mutters and places her hand on his arm like he’s the one who needs comforting.
“We’ll talk about this,” Dad snaps, pointing at me before he moves toward the door. “Open your drapes.”
I don’t just open my drapes, I open my window and climb onto the roof outside, shut the window behind me, and sit with my legs dangling over the driveway.
I don’t know what they want from me. Why did they come at me like that?
Did they really think that would end well?
They just don’t get it. If they’d left me to it I would have felt less fucked up in a couple of hours and I would have gone down and everything would have been fine.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting out here swinging my legs when a familiar male voice asks, “If you’re thinking of jumping, don’t do it. You’ll sprain an ankle or break something but you won’t die from that height.”
I blink slowly and look at Preston who is hanging out of Stepdork’s bedroom window. “I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, I know that.” He purses his lips which make his cheeks become round like a hamster’s. He’s got such chubby cheeks and massive baby-blue eyes. They’re open books. You can tell he’s never been mean to anyone a day in his life. “Are you okay?”
I ignore him and turn back to my view of the neighbor’s house and the trees that line the beach in the distance. I can just see the edge of the pool in the back yard too.
“We’re playing Dungeons Quest, Rise of the Goblin King if you want to join us?”
I hear somebody laugh within the room and whisper something to him. He seems to ignore them and leans further out of the window.
“It seems really nerdy.”
This time I snort.
“But I promise you it’s a lot of fun. You basically just run around a map, killing things and looting treasure.”
“She’s not interested, Preston, leave her alone,” Stepdork instructs and I turn to look at Babyface again.
“It’s really easy too.”
I glare at him. “I’m not stupid.”
He smiles kindly as pink tinges his cheeks. “No, I know that.”
“Preston wants to kiss you!” another guy in the room yells. I recognize his voice too from the last time they visited.
“Dude, shut up,” Babyface hisses. “She’s Travis’ sister, man. You suck.”
“She’s not my sister,” Travis barks immediately and I can’t smooth my face at that blow.
I reacted, something I never do and my eyes burn with the need to cry, also something I never do. I feel so alone in my new home.
“I think you hurt her feelings,” Babyface whispers like I can’t hear him. As though the window isn’t right there, attaching Stepdork’s cushy, big corner bedroom to mine.
“Come and play with us,” the guy who shouted about Babyface wanting to kiss me yells. “You’ll have fun. Promise.”
I sigh and assess my options. Truth be told I have wanted to see what all of the fuss is about for a while now.
So, once standing, I carefully move to Travis’ window, and grabbing a hold of the top of the frame, I slide one leg in at a time and then drop onto his soft, gray rug.
All of them look at me like they can’t believe I’m in here. I’m looking at myself wondering why I’m here.
The mystery guy is Duncan, lanky, gray-eyed Duncan. He joined our school a couple of years ago. I know very little about him except he had a badass neck brace at one point for a broken spine.
On the floor is a shiny, detailed, cardboard map and on it are little figures, the same kind I fucked up on the shelf a while ago.
I snicker and look at them. “Where do you want me?”
Travis’ eyes darken behind his glasses as they narrow on me and I wonder what he’s thinking. I bet he’s happy that Dad and Shonda hate me. I bet he’s reveling in it.
“Okay, so choose who you want to be.” Babyface brings me the remaining characters, all of them massive, metal-plated men and wizards. All but one which is a withered old hag with a long cape and a gnarly-looking staff.
“She looks like my soul, I’ll take her,” I say and Duncan’s eyes light up.
“That’s Mistress Mabel. She’s a seer and a witch. She is badass.”
They hand me a few cards, some of them contain powers, others contain items that I can use on my character.
“We are currently in the tunnel of terror.”
“How original,” I mutter and Travis shoots me another look.
Duncan, with his charcoal eyes and even darker hair, lifts up a book full of terrible handwriting and looks at us all.
“Aren’t you going to teach me how to play first?” I ask, frowning because I have no fucking idea what I’m doing.
“You learn as you go,” Travis says with surprising warmth and pats the ground between him and Babyface who is still blushing, or perhaps he’s always this flushed. “Trust me.”
I place my character beside his green orc with massive teeth. “If you tell anyone I did this, I’m telling everyone you gave each other crabs.”
“Duly noted,” Duncan says and nods once.
Babyface hums an agreement and Duncan finally starts reading.
When we started this game two hours ago, I honestly believed I’d hate it and get bored after ten minutes. But now I’m face-to-face with three goblins and a twenty-face dice in my hand, I can’t help but get animated.
Babyface got himself locked in a magic spell that won’t release him until the goblins are dead, or at least the one that cast it. But we don’t know which one that is and without his elemental wizard’s fire fury spell, we’re not beating them all.
“Hit them with the dizzy spell!” Travis yells at me, his eyes as wild as my own.
“But that’ll waste my turn! If we can figure out which one cast the curse, we can end this with him.” I point my thumb at Babyface who shrugs.
“And how do you propose we do that?” Travis levels me with a skeptical look. “If you can dizzy them for three turns, we can take them out one by one.”
“And what are the chances that will work?”
“Better than the chances of us killing the right one.”
“Yee of little faith,” I sigh and look at Duncan. “Can I spell my compass or some shit? Like in Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean?”
“Umm…”
“Because I have this, don’t I; it’s for treasure. What if my character spells it to pick the right goblin?”
Travis stares down Duncan who looks positively terrified right now.
“Sure, why not?” he squeaks and I shake the dice in my hand. “But with an odd chance of success.”
“So odd number?” Travis clarifies and Dun
can nods, scribbling something down in his book.
“Come on, baby, give me a seventeen or some shit.” I’m about to blow on it when Travis’ hand closes over mine. “What now, Stepdork?”
“The odds of this are fifty-fifty. If you fail, you die. You know this?”
“Then I better not fail.” I release the dice onto the board and bite my lip so hard I taste blood.
It rolls to a stop and we all scream at the top of our lungs when it lands on lucky number seven. I high-five Travis and knuckle-bump Preston. Then I throw down my compass and Duncan moves one of the three goblins forward which Travis proceeds to take out with a powerful swipe of his shark-headed mallet.
The goblin falls, Preston is saved, and soon all of the goblins are gone.
This game is fucking awesome. It’s even more awesome when Shonda brings lunch to us and we don’t have to leave the room, she says nothing to me when she sees me, she just smiles and I notice how she leaves the bedroom door open when she leaves.
Both Travis and I look at each other, and for the first time since fourth grade, we smile and it’s genuine. Perhaps we’ve found kinship over Dungeon Quest.
“Okay, what next?” I ask, my mouth full of pasta.
“Why don’t you choose the route this time?” Travis suggests and I notice how he shifts slightly closer to point to the map. “We can go through Acid Alley, or Goblin Grove.”
* * *
Three hours later we finally stop, not because the game is finished but because our necks hurt. So we pile pillows onto Travis’ bed and pull down a screen to project a movie onto. Travis has the best gadgets.
I rest against his headboard with three pillows propping me up and popcorn in my lap. Preston is to my left and Travis to my right because he has to power on the projector. Duncan is on his side at the end of the bed, chewing on some kind of candy bar that he offered to me first.
For dorks these are pretty cool people. They’re kind and generous and the entire day has been about making me feel welcome. Not like me and my friends last night with Travis.
I feel awful all of a sudden. Sick even.
The movie starts, it’s a new exorcism one, it doesn’t look too bad, but for all my grandeur, I really don’t like ghost movies. Not at all.
Stepdork Page 5
