Long Blue Line: Based on a True Story

by E. McNew

  Once again I have to say life is unpredictable and sometimes it takes some pretty rough turns, and eventually if you’re one of the unlucky, you’ll have zero control over where you’ll end up next. One of the most challenging things in life is living through the unknown. Not knowing what will happen next or where the next direction of your life may swerve is usually more frightening than actually knowing what’s to come. I lived for four years in this state. Or wait, I existed for four years in this state. I didn’t know what would come next. I began to expect that whatever did come next would certainly be bad, and those bad things would always be followed by other things that got worse.

  The only explanation that I can think of as to how my mental status is still intact enough to even write my story is the countless nights I spent praying as I fell asleep. I would beg for God to make it better. I begged him to just make it go away. I mentioned to God on several occasions that if my life were to forever continue with this pain, I would rather he just let me die in my sleep. I was too chicken to kill myself. I knew that I could not live like this for much longer. Fortunately, God kept me breathing. He knew that there were better things to come. God knew that I would one day have a better understanding of life, and he knew that I would pass it on to the many others who were still searching. Thanks for that, God. I am thankful that you forced me to endure all of that pain because if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be who I am today. And today, because of you, I love myself.

  Prologue

  Everything is fuzzy. I can’t seem to focus. I cast my line out ahead hoping for a fresh salmon dinner doused in lemon and garlic, and the girls always like to eat what we catch. Waiting patiently is always worth the prize. Wondering where they’ve toddled off to, I peer over my shoulder. The white pickup truck is crookedly parked about 20 feet away. It’s too quiet, I think to myself. Something isn’t right. Where are the girls? Where is Derrick?

  In a panic, I drop my pole to the ground and quickly race toward the truck. The fishing gear is scattered in the bed of the four-wheel-drive, and the only evidence of my girls is a shoe. A blue and white shoe with the laces untied. It’s too small to be Chloe’s shoe. It must belong to Zoe. Gazing around, I see nothing. Derrick suddenly appears from the side of the truck and asks me, “What’s going on?”

  He reeks of pot. I could see the heavy smoke swirling out of the passenger side window. “Derrick, where are the girls?” I ask in a panic. “Elizabeth…” he sighs as if we’ve been through this. “Chloe is in a foster home - don’t you remember?” His statement sounds familiar. I must have forgotten. How in the world could I forget about something like that, I ask myself. “Well, where is Zoe?” I demand. “C’mon Elizabeth. Don’t get all crazy again. You know where Zoe is.” “No! I don’t! Where the hell is my baby?” I shriek.

  His red eyes look to the ground and the silence returns. As Derrick slowly lifts his head, he glances toward the tailgate, silently urging me to acknowledge the single shoe lying on its side. As I look over, the wind picks up and the laces begin to sway. The silence and the eerie manner in which the shoelace hangs over the tailgate, resting to a slow swing, forces an abrupt vision of choosing a tiny casket for Zoe at the local morgue. The casket suddenly becomes visible. It’s in the back of the truck next to the shoe. “ZOE!” I become hysterical. I hurry over to the casket to lift the lid. It’s empty. “No, Derrick!” I sob. “What happened to Zoe? Why is this casket in your truck? WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”

  Oh my God, I say to myself. My stomach clenches as I hurry to pick up the tiny sneaker.

  “They told me she didn’t die, Derrick!” I yell, as a rush of fear overcomes my body. “This can’t be true! Zoe is only 22 months old!” I cry, more to myself. I begin sobbing uncontrollably as my knees hit the ground.

  Dear God, Please let this be a nightmare. Please let me wake up! I want my baby back! PLEASE!

  I opened my eyes to the sunlight seeping through my townhouse window. I’m soaked with sweat and still feeling the terror from the nightmare. With tears streaming down my face I sigh, simultaneously with relief and grief. I know that today will be one of those tough days. The lingering feeling of pain and sadness from my dream will follow me around for the remainder of the day, and I’ll have nothing on my mind except my babies. I’ll also be wondering why my subconscious always seems to bring Derrick into my nightmares as the villain. I sat across the table from him in deep thought while watching him devour his breakfast.

  Chapter 1

  My scrawny little 13-year-old body was pumping with adrenaline. I peered over my shoulder and through my nerdy glasses to make sure that no one else in the class had noticed my shaky reaction. My G-rated literature days were over. I had never read anything so intense. It was like a first date - so nerve wracking but incredibly thrilling.

  After losing my literature virginity, I started spending all of my free time cozied up in my little twin-sized bed obsessing over these novels. The characters were all young, beautiful girls in their teens. They all had a disadvantaged upbringing and faced horrible tragedy. Most importantly, they all ended up living in some immaculate mansion with a rich, distant relative that they never knew existed.

  My young mind was incredibly influenced by these books. These stories started to create their own lives, building into my subconscious. I was suddenly and completely infatuated with tragedy as well as thinking up various ways of becoming rich like the girls in the novels. At the age of thirteen, I was going through the obituaries in the local newspaper hoping to find a rich relative that would leave me their estate. I also put together a flip -book of the future mansion I wanted to own in Palm Springs.

  If I wasn’t romanticizing about death or tragedy, it was money I was thinking about or sometimes boys. The thought of boys would take over about a year later. To say I was a little mixed up would be an understatement.

  I was always a sensitive kid. The most minor things would severely upset me, especially unexpected loud noises. I’ve been told that the vacuum, toilet flushing, and the blinds being pulled up would put me into a panic when I was a baby. On a night back in 1990, my mother was driving us all home from a weekend visit with my Grandma and Grandpa. First, I was already extremely upset over the fact that I had to leave them. They spoiled my twin and me rotten. Our older sister didn’t mind leaving as much as we did. She was a teenager and had more important affairs to attend to. My mom must have bribed me with candy of some sort for the four-hour drive home we had ahead of us. The candy was fantastic. The aftermath, however, was disastrous. It left me sticky. Even worse, the napkin my mom threw to me in the back seat was DRY. Little pieces of this napkin broke off as I tried with everything in my soul to get my hands clean. I was bawling my little eyes out.

  Not only was I sensitive, I was also very imaginative and compulsive. Let’s go back to my very firsts.

  My First Crush: We all have a first crush. I was only five years old. Seeing him gracefully fly around on his magic carpet, bravely leap from building to building, was all it took to have me completely in love. I had dreams of flying over the city every night. When I woke and realized that the only Aladdin I had with me was a Barbie doll, it practically broke my heart. I just knew that he would return one day to marry me.

  My First Drink: Most all of us experiment with the beverage that so many adults elegantly held in their glasses. They refused to share a taste as they rambled on forever appearing to completely adore life and everything about it. Eventually, I got curious! My mom wasn’t much of a drinker, luckily. But other parents were. My best childhood friend, Holly, was just as curious and excited to sample our first drink. I brought a “water bottle” over to her house that night. It was the perfect night for this trial. Her dad was busy working late, and the only company sharing the space was her brothers. The vodka in the water bottle ruined our attempts to be discreet. We were dizzy in the hallway and giggling about how stupid we felt. Holly lectured each and every brother, three total, about the negative consequences of al
cohol. They had expressions of fear in their eyes as if she’d gone completely mad. It was epic.

  My First Time: How I cringe! I mainly cringe because I was just so young. He was my first boyfriend, and his name was Andy. Even though we were just kids, I still believe to this day that we were truly in love. Clearly, we wanted to move much more quickly than we were really ready for, physically and emotionally. We were together constantly for about a year. He lived with his grandparents, and his grandfather picked up a job out of town about four hours away. Eventually, he had to move. On moving day, my mom dropped me off at his house to help him and his grandparents pack. Another friend of ours, Jesse, was there too. The few hours I spent watching him pack his life away was utter heartache and torture. I had a lump in my throat and it took everything that I had in my soul not to break down and cry. I was too embarrassed at that age to show emotion, and for Andy, it had so much depth to it. We were both each other’s firsts - first in everything in the romance department. When my mom returned to pick me up, Andy pulled one of his childhood stuffed animals out from a box about ready to be taped shut. He then doused the bear with his cologne that I loved. Standing in front of his empty garage, with my mom and twin waiting to take me shopping down the hill with them, I had to make the goodbye as fast as possible before I broke down in front of everyone. Andy and I gave each other our last ever hug and a quick kiss with definite plans to be together again. For the next week I cried myself to sleep hugging and smelling the stuffed bear which was all that I would ever have left of my first true love. It took me about three months to realize that we couldn’t be together. We were too young, and having to wait for four years is a long time to a teenager.

  My first year of high school was a long one. I was quiet and reserved and always thinking that my peers were looking at me and whispering behind my back. I had a boyfriend for most of that year. We were both loners and definitely anti-social. I would have, most likely, enjoyed my first year of high school more if I hadn’t been so caught up in being loyal to him. I had a natural desire to be submissive and completely faithful to any boyfriend I had starting when I was only twelve. It was almost as if I was living in another century where women were married off in their early teens and just had to accept their fate. I must have been born with an old and lost soul - not to mention a stubborn one. The last month of school that year was when my wild streak started. I impulsively broke up with the boyfriend who really didn’t take it so well as he punched the lockers in the hallway. I suppose breaking up with him after a whole nine months of dating wasn’t too nice of me. I decided that I was going to be much more popular than I had been. I started hanging out with more friends and I was feeling more confident than I ever had.

  The snow had finally melted, the sun was just right, and the fresh mountain air brought me to the exciting thought of summer vacation! Something about the sun warming up our cold, icy town had the instant effect of waking me up and getting my blood pumping. The winters were always much longer than the summers. It is almost like becoming free after hibernating in a cold, harsh cave for half the year. For most of the school year, we were restricted to staying indoors and wearing snow boots with double layers of socks. Sometimes I would put garbage bags over my socks to make sure that the snow didn’t soak my feet as I trudged my way into the heated classroom. No more clanking chains on the tires of cars driving painfully slow down the highway. No more shoveling driveways and suffering through stiff, painfully icy hands, and no more stress over walking to the bus stop with fear of slipping on black ice in front of a crowd of students. Summer had finally arrived. The energy at school was elevated, and every student had an eager and excited anticipation for the last bell to ring. Three months of tank tops and beaches could easily put the most miserable person in a better mood.

  On the last day of school, my rebellious group of friends and I thought it would be a great idea to acquire some forty-ounce beers and have a barbeque. I had a small group of friends, and just like me, they were pretty mindless and wild. My twin sister Merri happened to be tagging along. We were really nothing alike. Merri was usually not the type to hang out in a wild crowd. She was quiet and preferred hanging out with her pets rather than humans. Her room was like a jungle. She had a huge, obnoxious bird that I hated with a passion. Every morning at the crack of dawn, this thing would caw like it was being strangled. I wished I were the one doing the strangling. I am convinced it did this just to torture me. Her snakes gave me nightmares on a regular basis. If I were ever forced to share a room with her, I’d probably camp out in the closet.

  Merri was not fond of my friends; she thought they were annoying and dramatic. She was usually pretty good at putting that aside for me and faking a smile when she had to. Today was one of those days. The sunshine must have been bright enough to even get Merri in the mood to socialize.

  As for my friends, Kate was a girl I had met my first year of high school. She was constantly complaining about some serious life dilemma that she made sound more like a mid-life crisis than an adolescent issue. She and I had a few things in common though; we’d rather skip class on any given day to drink and flirt with boys. Kate was about my height – 5 feet 4 inches. She had the biggest boobs ever and bleached blonde hair. She was curvy with a butt that could knock down a sumo wrestler. Boys loved that about her. Megan was the snotty one. She was funny when she wanted to be, but snotty. She was tall, blonde, and attractive. I had become close friends with Megan in seventh grade. She was new to my home economics class, and I had decided to take her under my wing. We instantly became almost as close as sisters. She had quite an ego and loved to give guys a hard time. Megan also loved to try new things and was always up for almost any sort of trouble. When the three of us got together, the gates of hell opened, and we were out to cause some crazy and thoroughly entertaining trouble. The main stipulation was that the trouble must involve the most recent batch of mostly-innocent boys we were aiming to torture.

  As for myself, my name is Elizabeth. At 14, I was a small 115 pounds with long medium-brown hair, and I was frequently given compliments on my perfect lips. I was beginning to comprehend that I had been given the gift of a flawless figure, and when I wanted to, I could easily grab the attention of any guy in my sight. I usually only wanted this when I was drunk and extra conceited. I liked the attention, and even more so, I loved the sense of power I felt every time I caught a guy staring. Even as a young kid, I always looked for reassurance and confirmation that I was worthy of special treatment. This need to feel accepted only became stronger as the years passed. For the most part though, I was bubbly and friendly, but I also had a concealed passive-aggressive personality. I was mostly passive until something annoyed me enough to cause a major meltdown. When I was only five, a little girl asked me about twenty times over if I would be her friend. After saying yes for the nineteenth time, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I started viciously whacking her with my plastic softball bat to shut her up. She ran home crying. To this day, I still feel terribly bad about that. I definitely had my father’s temper. I was born pissed off, and I could not tolerate being disturbed with any sort of extra noise or unnecessary chatter. The alcohol took all of this away.

  Chapter 2

  On the last day of school, we were all talking in a circle in front of the gym about whom we were going to invite to our beer-fest and trying to figure out where exactly this would take place. That’s when I met Josh, a senior at my high school. He overheard us talking and invited himself into the conversation. The tall, handsome senior guy confidently informed us that he would be joining the party. Coincidently, he lived about twenty feet from the back of the high school gate. The location became official and now we were all ready to do this. We walked to the location and quickly began smoking, drinking, and laughing hysterically over pathetic jokes that really weren’t all that funny.

  After chugging half of a beer, I began to feel the liquid-courage pump through my veins. Whenever I caught a buzz, I also caught a c
ase of extremely enhanced self-confidence. In fact, I believed that I was so ingenious that no matter what idea I came up with, it would always turn out in my favor. I was an exception to the rule of consequences. Looking around to try to figure out if Kate or Megan already had dibs on any of these boys, I began to assess which one might be the most attractive and mature. Josh, the handsome and confident senior, caught my eye for the second time. This time, with each glance, I was utterly paralyzed. It must have been his deep blue eyes that were flirtatiously glancing my way every few seconds. It also could have been how I adored the height on this guy, and maybe just his talkative, confident, friendly personality. He was about 6’2”, and to me that symbolized protection. His confidence made it seem as if he were in total control. All of the guys my age were just too short. Some of them still had squeaky voices and that just annoyed me.

  Josh had such an adult appearance. Of course a youthful one, but it became incredibly easy, and almost natural, to imagine a life with him. As he spoke to the rest of the group about things I still can’t recall, my imagination was running wild and his consistent eye contact intensified my ideas with each warm smile. I pictured our new, white, picket fenced home and our little babies playing and laughing. I gladly allowed myself to entertain the idea that Josh just might be the one. Thoughts and fantasies overcame me that I hadn’t yet experienced. My trance like state became very specific. I heard myself telling him I was pregnant. I saw him smiling and happy while holding and reassuring me. This vision, however, portrayed both of us as adults and possibly in our mid-twenties. It was so incredibly perfect. I wanted it. Whatever it was that caused this to cross through my mind changed my thoughts on life and growing up - permanently.