Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

  Once, she had passed out from the pain, waking up to find him inside of her, his eyes unblinking and looking past her as if she wasn’t under him. It was the first time he had given her pain without offering pleasure too, and she hated him for it.

  After that time, she almost told Arrow everything. She wanted to tell him, especially when he was lying next to her on her bed like he was now, her flinching at his slightest touch until she forced herself to relax. She wanted to explain to him why, but he had to know. He had to, his eyes always skipping over the marks she tried to conceal. She wanted to scream to him how much she hated Isaac, but it would be a lie. The truth was she looked forward to Isaac coming to her, of him giving her more pleasure than she knew how to give herself, than Arrow could give her, because he gave her pain alongside it, pain making her feel more solid and real than anything.

  She couldn’t tell Arrow because it was her fault. Isaac had warned her. He said she didn’t understand what she wanted, and she now knew she didn’t, but she didn’t know how to make him stop. What she had done to herself for years—poking herself with needles, burning her inner thighs with melted wax, choking herself with her blanket—it was nothing compared to what Isaac enjoyed.

  She didn’t want to think about the barn, of what happened there the week before, but the memory kept picking at her brain, removing the scab. She thought of the sound of Isaac’s breathing behind her, the goats bleating in the stalls around her, her mind numb when she realized he could kill her.

  The wound pulsed between her legs. She wouldn’t think about that night, of any of those things, when she was with Arrow. She had to be normal for him. She had to play pretend with him. Everything was fine.

  She stared at a freckle near his earlobe, holding her breath, pain from the wound making her nauseous every time she breathed in too hard.

  “Are you okay?” Arrow asked.

  She nodded and closed her eyes as he ran his hand up and down her arm. His touch was so different from Isaac, so gentle.

  “You smell different. What is it?”

  Sam showered under the hottest water she could stand every time Isaac was done with her, the trickle of blood down her thighs no longer frightening. Even Isaac seemed shocked by what he had done. He cradled her since she couldn’t stand, saying, “It’ll be okay, honey.” He later snuck some pills to her that made her drowsy and eased the pain but did nothing to make her walk right. She ended up faking the flu for three days.

  She shifted onto her back, which didn’t help the pressure between her legs.

  “My mama gave me her old perfume.”

  She actually stole her mama’s Vanilla Fields, but her mama hadn’t used it since Isaac bought her Poison for her birthday. Even with the hot showers, Sam was paranoid others could smell Isaac on her, so she doused herself with so much Vanilla Fields she smelled like a bakery.

  “It smells good,” Arrow said.

  She realized her shirt had pushed up when she turned onto her back, and she pulled it back down since her lamp was on. She didn’t like Arrow seeing the marks Isaac left. Bruises, teeth marks, scratches—her body was his blank canvas.

  Arrow abruptly stopped tickling her arm, his full lips sucked into a straight line. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  She knew he wanted to have sex, but she couldn’t, not with the wound.

  “I just don’t want to tonight,” she said.

  “You act like you hate it now.”

  She slowly turned back onto her side, facing him. His eyes searched hers, and she wondered what he would say if she asked him to bite her neck, thought about what Isaac would do if he saw marks not made by him.

  “I don’t hate it. I’m just tired.”

  She watched the worry crease his forehead and she thought again about telling him.

  “Fine.” He pulled back the covers and left her bed. “I’m tired too, and I still haven’t studied for my Spanish test.”

  She watched him put on his T-shirt and his face paled when he looked at her.

  “Sam.”

  “What?”

  His eyes scanned her bedsheets. “Fuck.”

  She looked down and there was blood on her bedding. She jumped out of her bed and saw blood smeared on her inner thighs all the way down to her knees. “Oh, shit!”

  Arrow looked like he was going to throw up. “Is that your period?”

  She couldn’t let Arrow see the wound.

  “Would you get one of the old towels from the hallway? Please? Quick.”

  Arrow didn’t look like he wanted to move, but he left the room and came back with a wet cloth and an old towel for her. Then he pulled the bloody sheets from her bed and helped her put on fresh ones.

  She left her bedroom and went straight for the pink-tiled bathroom that made her feel like she was trapped in a giant Barbie house. She locked the door and found her grandma’s old, silver hand mirror. She held it between her legs, her bloody underwear at her ankles.

  It definitely wasn’t her period. It was the tear Isaac had made, which seemed to have grown longer. The blood, which had stopped, didn’t scare her as much as the swollen redness and yellow puss oozing out of the area. She pressed down on it, thinking she could squeeze it out and it’d feel better, and nearly passed out from the pain.

  She sat on the toilet and cried because it was the only thing she had energy to do. Arrow knocked on the bathroom door, whisper-asking if she was okay. She didn’t answer and a few moments later Grandma Haylin was at the door.

  “Let me in, Biscuit.”

  Sam pulled up her underwear and cracked the door. She caught Arrow’s worried face before her grandma pushed in, closing the door behind her. She looked at the blood staining Sam’s underwear and almost looked relieved.

  “Lady time wake you, honey? You need help cleaning up?” Grandma Haylin looked like she hoped Sam didn’t need assistance.

  Sam felt dizzy, as if a strong fever were coming over her. She shivered until her entire body shook and wouldn’t stop, and her grandma’s face grayed with alarm. She held Sam by her shoulders, examining her face as though she could diagnose her with her eyes.

  “Honey? Do you think you have the flu again?” She touched Sam’s forehead and her mouth dropped. “I’m gonna get your mama.”

  “Grandma, I—I don’t feel well.”

  And that’s the last thing she remembered before there was nothing.

  Chapter 23: Eric, 2009

  It was two in the afternoon and Eric was still hung over. He had hit happy hour after Detective Eastman was done questioning him, but drinking did nothing but narrow all his thoughts to a kid he thought died almost sixteen years before. Then Sam showing up at his place, seeing him in that state, the strain in her eyes when she said the boy’s name—Caleb—it made him want to go back to the bar and drown some more.

  The pounding in his head subsided some as he sat in his truck across from a small, beige apartment complex off a narrow, poorly paved road. Of course, Vickie lived here, the shittiest low-income housing Anadarko likely had to offer. He willed himself to cut the engine and go to the second-story unit, to see the woman face-to-face for the first time in over fifteen years.

  The only positive thing about living with Vickie, after losing his mom, after moving and losing his friends and the home he knew, was Meredith, her strong welcoming hug, her strawberry-blond hair smelling like fresh-cut apples, like something good could finally happen to him.

  Her tiny room was a clean sanctuary in the house, some Section 8 rental property on the verge of crumbling into a pile of termite-infested wood. She had made space for him, shoving her dresser into a corner so a twin mattress could rest on the floor next to her own. She was a talker, but he didn’t mind. He liked listening to her dreams about becoming an actor, leaving Oklahoma and moving to Los Angeles, her description of the city all glitter and magic. Even then, he knew she’d never get to LA, not after
seeing how his father watched her dance around the house, Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” blaring on the stereo. It took Eric that first week of living there to realize his dad already knew where to find the toilet paper rolls and coffee filters and that he never slept on the couch.

  He couldn’t think about Meredith or his father, of everything that happened then and all the things he could’ve but didn’t do.

  He found himself standing at the front door of Vickie’s apartment unit, the peeling brown paint revealing lighter beige underneath. He shouldn’t be here. He should be anywhere else but here, but he needed to know why she was talking to police about him. And Caleb. He needed to know about him, but he couldn’t face Meredith. Not yet.

  He steadied his breath and knocked. Vickie’s crazy red hair poked out of the door before her sleepy face. Her eyes—fake green contacts—instantly widened when she recognized him.

  “Holy shit.”

  He swallowed, his mouth drier than the late August afternoon. “Vickie.”

  She smiled and he noticed she had maybe seven good teeth left. She had clearly moved from cocaine to meth. She opened the door wide, revealing her short, kimono-style red robe. “Come on in.”

  He followed her inside the combined living and dining space, the kitchen an open U less than ten feet from the entrance. Dirty clothes scattered about on the stained carpet, a half-dozen or so Big Gulps crowded the small coffee table. The smell of sour milk and unwashed female parts wafted toward him when Vickie plopped down on the couch covered in cat fur, although Eric didn’t see a cat around. He smelled one for sure.

  “Sit down.” She patted the cushion next to her.

  “I’ll stand.”

  Vickie sneered and lit a cigarette, leaning forward as she took a drag. Her sagging breasts were halfway hanging out of her robe, and Eric was sure she was aware of this.

  “What brings you all the way out here, honey? Been a long time.”

  A cat materialized and rubbed against Eric’s leg.

  “You lied to detectives about me, about what happened with Meredith.”

  The cat jumped onto the couch at Vickie’s prompting and she pet its skinny black body.

  “I didn’t lie about anything. Maybe you just have a bad memory.”

  “My memory’s just fine.”

  Vickie pushed back into the couch and gave Eric a long appraisal before smiling. “Good Lord, you haven’t changed a bit. Look just like your daddy.” She patted next to her again. “Sit down—you’re making me nervous. I promise I won’t bite.”

  His heart jumped at her words. Stupid. She’d never touched him, not physically. She didn’t need to. Her words had been saccharine when she was high, but when she was itching for something she turned her hate on him so fast. On Meredith too.

  “Why did you lie to them?” he asked.

  Vickie hacked up something and took another quick drag of her cigarette. He always hated that about her—her chain-smoking but never taking more than four small drags per cigarette, letting them burn to the filter and forcing Meredith and him to breathe all the smoke.

  “They needed to know about you, know the truth.”

  Eric’s left leg ached but he remained standing.

  “What truth is that? The one where my father’s a saint?”

  Vickie’s face twisted in anger. “Your father was a good, hard-working man. You’re lucky I don’t call the police right now, have them lock your ass up for killing him.”

  “Do it.”

  He knew Vickie wouldn’t call the police, not with all the drug paraphernalia he saw in her apartment. He always knew she was obsessed with his father, but he didn’t expect her to carry such a bright torch for him after so many years.

  She coughed again, deep from within her chest and he thought she might keel over on the couch. “I know you did it.”

  “Believe what you want.” The cat rubbed against Eric’s leg again, purring. “My father came back, didn’t he? Fifteen years ago, he crawled back to you and you took him in, hid him from police.”

  “I never saw him. He probably drove out to Les’s place to get far away from you.”

  Lies. He expected nothing less of Vickie.

  “You tell the detectives that?”

  “Told them all I could remember.”

  “You tell them what you let him do to your daughter?”

  Vickie grinned and it was an ugly sight.

  “You mean what you did? Trying to kill your own daddy.”

  He never wanted to punch a woman as much as he did right then, but then he knew that was exactly what she wanted so she could have something to show the cops.

  She took a tiny drag of her cigarette and laughed. “Mr. Fucking Innocent.”

  Vickie knew nothing about innocence. She only knew about his father getting tired of her drug binges and moving on to someone he could control and slowly destroy while she watched and did nothing.

  “I wish I had better aim that night,” he said.

  “Well, you didn’t.”

  Vickie stubbed out her cigarette and lifted a huge purse from the carpet.

  “Got something to show you. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

  She dug for her wallet and pulled out a photo Eric didn’t want to see because he knew it’d cut him deep and he might not recover. He couldn’t even make himself search the internet like Sam had done. Vickie handed the photo to him and he forced himself to look at it, at the boy on the verge of becoming a man. His hair was longer than Eric had imagined but his smile was like Eric’s had been most of his life: anxious and unsure.

  Caleb.

  “That tall whore of yours know about him?”

  Eric didn’t think—he took one of the half-full Big Gulps from the coffee table and threw it hard against the wall, soda splattering everywhere. Vickie smiled coyly as if she thought he was being cute.

  “Don’t fucking call her that again.”

  How did she know about Sam? From his father? From Meredith? It made him feel unprotected, like standing next to a tall tree during a thunderstorm.

  “I wonder. Does she know you’re a murderer?” Vickie flashed her nasty smile at him. “The detectives know now. That act of yours. Wounded little boy who lost his mommy. Bet your little girlfriend buys it. Of course she does.” She grinned again. “Yeah, she likes to think she’s sneaky, following people around.”

  So, Meredith had talked to her mother, told her about Sam’s visit. He had to control himself, ignore Vickie’s smirking, or he’d do something stupid like strangle her. He didn’t drive to Anadarko for that.

  “What about Caleb?”

  Her smile dropped. “What about him?”

  “People said Meredith lost the baby. You lied. She lied.” His vision blurred with tears, but he held them back. “I need to see him.”

  Somehow, he thought if he could just see the boy face-to-face he would know; his gut would tell him if Caleb was his.

  Vickie leaned back into the fur-covered cushions. “What makes you think he’d want to see you?”

  Chapter 24: Sam, 1994

  All Sam knew was one moment she was in the upstairs bathroom and the next she was awake in an ER room, her mama stroking her head with Grandma Haylin on the other side of the triage bed. She had looked around the room and Isaac was sitting in the visitor’s chair, the expression on his face one she had never seen on him.

  He looked scared.

  “Where’s Arrow?” she had said, feeling herself panic as she slipped away again, her skin burning, but she saw Isaac’s face before she closed her eyes. His narrowed eyes and jaw locked tight made her wish she had never said Arrow’s name.

  The next time Sam was fully awake, a woman with a white lab coat was the only person in the room with her. A doctor, Sam guessed. She had long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and high cheekbones, and Sam wondered if the doctor had Indian blood in her. Her daddy had some in him, or that’s what he
r mama once told her.

  “Hi Samantha,” the woman said.

  “Sam.”

  The woman nodded. “Sam then. How are you feeling?”

  She felt like shit, but she was more concerned that no one else was in the room with her.

  “Where’s my family?”

  “They’re in the waiting area, but they’ll be back soon.” She gave Sam a reassuring smile. “My name is Dr. Tohtsoni.”

  Sam sat up in the hospital bed as much as she could and decided it was a bad idea. Her entire body ached, and the stupid IV needle hit a painful nerve when she accidentally bent her arm.

  “I just have a few questions to ask you, if that’s okay, Sam.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Just ones that will help us get you better.” Dr. Tohtsoni moved closer to the bedside, her smile plastered on. “Sam, do you know what septic shock is?”

  Sam nodded. She only knew what it meant from a World War II documentary she had watched in school. Young men dropping dead left and right in the trenches from simple wounds, their blood poisoned with infection.

  “And do you know why you got it?”

  She thought about the swollen red skin between her legs, the rip in her flesh Isaac had made. She slowly nodded at the doctor.

  The doctor looked uncomfortable when she reached for Sam’s hand. The woman’s hand was ice-cold, even colder than her mama’s, and her mama had the coldest hands of anyone she knew.

  “When a woman has a baby, sometimes she can get a vaginal tear like the one you have, and sometimes she can get it other ways.”

  Sam turned on the empty glazed look she gave her mama when she knew she was being grilled and wanted to be anywhere else.

  Dr. Tohtsoni squeezed her hand for no reason. “Do you have a boyfriend, Sam?”

  She thought about Arrow, how much she wanted to see him right then.

  “Sort of.”

  She didn’t know why Arrow wasn’t at the hospital, and she wondered if Isaac made him stay behind at the farm.