It’s been an hour. That’s enough for today. I walk to my mirror and lift my hair up to see how it would look shorter. It’s always been long, but it doesn’t seem like it would be bad being short. It’s time for a change anyway. I grab the scissors and start cutting. My dark hair is falling around my feet and it almost looks like snakes. House Slytherin. That’s where the sorting hat would place me.
I cut off about six inches and stare into the mirror. I could look like her if that’s what he wants. I could look like someone worthy of him. I take one last look at my dark hair before I grab the bleach and head into the bathroom.
Seventeen
I was ten years old the first time I changed myself for a boy. He liked kickball. I didn’t, but he did. So I forced myself to like it. Pretended to like it. I got my sneakers dirty for that boy, my face as well. I preferred four-square or hop scotch, but he liked kickball so I had to. I had to get his attention, had to make him smile at me. I had to make him mine.
There were other girls on the playground, other girls in our class. You learn young that you need to beat out the competition. Somehow. But you can’t win them all. You learn that young, too.
The score was three to three, tied, and it was my turn to kick. It was almost time for recess to be over. I could always tell when the teachers started glancing at their watches and looking around, counting heads to make sure all the kids were accounted for. My long hair was up in a ponytail. He was on third base, itching to make it home. He looked at me and smiled. A nervous smile. He didn’t know if I’d be able to do it, kick the ball far enough to be able to run. By the look on his face, I wasn’t sure he even thought it was possible for my foot to make contact with the ball. He didn’t look sure of me, didn’t look proud of me. He looked like a boy who had a lot to lose. He looked like a boy who was scared he had to depend on a girl to get what he wanted.
The first time I felt rage I was ten years old, on that field, at home plate, waiting for the ball to roll my way. I never wanted so badly to kick something, hard. I wanted so badly to prove him wrong. And the rest of them. The boys in the outfield, teasing, saying I’d never kick the ball, saying I’d probably kick like a girl.
“I am a girl, you morons!” I think I shouted.
The ball finally came toward my feet. I remember watching it like it was almost in slow motion. The tumbling through the grass. The slow roll. The keeping of my eyes on it. Wondering if I’d kick it hard or surprise them and bunt. When it reached my feet, there was no chance for a bunt, although that would have been smartest. I kicked as hard as I could and sent the ball flying toward third base, toward him, and not on purpose.
I didn’t care what happened next other than making it at least to first base.
And I did. And I kept running. And I made it to second. And I heard one of the guys yell “Out!” and I stopped in my tracks.
The boy guarding third base got the ball and pegged the boy I liked, before he could make it home. The whistle was blown. Recess was over, automatically ending the game, too.
The boy I liked came running over to me and kicked me in the shin. “I hate you!” he said, then he ran toward the school.
I stood there, rubbing my shin, tears burning my eyes.
I never did get the boy. I got the bruise, but not the boy. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, who you try to be. Sometimes nothing you do and no one you pretend to be is good enough. You learn that young, too. But it’s okay. Because eventually, the facade falls away and you’re left with a whole lot of you and there’s no room left for pretending. And really, who could pretend forever anyway?
The next year, that same boy who kicked me in the shin wanted to go out with me.
He asked me on a red piece of paper with words scribbled in classic boy handwriting. The note was passed to me in class, making its way to the back of the room where I sat. I didn’t answer the note the way girls typically did. I didn’t blush or giggle. I didn’t act excited or grossed out. Instead, I waited until the class was over. I picked up my notebook and books and made my way to the front of the classroom where I called his name and waved to him with the same red piece of paper in my hand.
He walked over, shy, a little nervous. A hesitant smile played on his lips. He reached out his hand for the paper and I kicked him in the shin.
“I will never go out with you,” I said. And I tore up the piece of paper and threw it at his feet.
And he doesn’t need a name here. His name stopped mattering once he hurt me, because his name wasn’t important anymore. The only thing that mattered to me was what he did. How he made me feel.
Each time I remembered it, it hurt a little less, but I got a little angrier. And each time I got a little angrier, I wanted to hurt someone like that again.
Because each time I remembered it, it almost felt good. It almost felt a little better each time. Like I could wipe the board clean. Tally it up. A wound for a wound. I guess it’s true what they say, hurt people hurt people.
And he didn’t get the girl. The girl got him. Just not in the way she thought she wanted.
Sometimes I imagine the different route my life would have taken if my plan had worked. If that little boy became enamored with me, wrote my name in his notebook and drew little hearts around it. If he asked me to the dance. If we stayed together throughout our young years. If he made me smile instead of cry.
I occasionally wondered from time to time if I’d be pretending to like sports at that very moment, wearing a different face just for him. Painting on a smile and pretending to be happy. Smiling at the things he’d say. I wondered if he’d be kicking me in the shin still, or if he would have gone on to do something worse.
Sometimes I wondered who I would have become had I not let that boy hurt me.
Eighteen
I told myself I wouldn’t go on his Facebook page. I lied to myself again, because here I am, scrolling. Clicking the right arrow as fast as it will allow me to. Some people get crushes. I get something else. Some all-consuming infatuation, only it’s different because there is a higher purpose for it. It’s not some silly high school crush. It’s not something that can be wiped away with the fact that my person is technically “taken”. Off the market. Just because my guy is someone else’s #MCM every Monday doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Especially when he is with someone you know is not right for him.
Tracy is not for Charlie and he is not for her. She probably sees him as a lost soul, sees the potential in just how amazing he could be with a strong woman by his side, changing his life. Because she’s a woman now, a college girl. Two years ahead of me in every way imaginable. But not in the way it matters, because Charlie is not a lost soul. He doesn’t need saving, or a preppy rich girl to come along and show him the pompous side of life. He doesn’t need to cross that line, from being the boy who had nothing but found something in all of it, to being the guy who was convinced he had everything because of who he was with. He is fine the way he is. More than fine. He’s damn near perfect and just doesn’t see it.
He is not smiling in the majority of his pictures. Most are candid, him caught in the background, tagged by random people. Him at parties, casually sipping a beer. He’s always wearing different band shirts. He’s always so cool. Not caring about the camera, the scene around him. There’s a searching in his eyes. In the random photos of him smiling, it’s always caught off guard it seems. Him, caught in a moment, laughing at something that was funny.
He’s humble. Down to earth. Has absolutely no idea just how beautiful he is. How he captures a room with his presence. I see photos of him with who I imagine is his mother, not his birth mother but the woman who adopted him. They look nothing alike and that’s okay because I can tell she loves him.
I pause on a video that I watch on repeat. I turn my volume up because it was on mute. In the video before it he is driving, recording something on Pandora. I see when I look closer that it’s “Adam’s Song” by Blink 182. At the end of the video he looks li
ke he’s pulling over, abruptly. In the video that I’m replaying, over and over, he has gotten out of the car. He is in the dark and I see a bunch of little lights. I realize after the third play that the lights are fireflies. Tons of them. Lighting up the sky. When I turn my music up I hear the symphony, I see now what he saw then.
It’s almost the end of the song, when the music picks up, and I can hear it on his phone still as he records the sight in front of him. About a hundred or more fireflies, all going off every other millisecond with little light flashes. The full moon hanging above in the distance. The music playing, giving them a soundtrack for the light show. For the beauty he experienced. For this song, so full of sadness but the hope in the rhythm as it speeds up.
It almost seems like it was Charlie’s way of saying, Not me. I won’t end up like that. And if you haven’t heard the song, if you can’t recognize the exact place in it where he would stop to film this and make it so beautiful, and what made it so perfect, then I feel sorry for you.
This video changes me. Haunts me. Gives me goosebumps. I feel now what he felt then. I can almost taste the summer air in the video, feel the heat on my skin and the way it clings to your clothing. See the fog dancing from the rising temperature. I could hear the crickets if the music hadn’t drowned them out in the background. And the moon, just hanging there, completely full, completely eerie. It was just like a movie, and he turned it into one. At least for himself.
And he took the time to pull over and capture it, so he could remember it, so he could share it. So he could relive this moment in time where everything aligned and worked out for once. A gigantic part of me is moved, almost to tears. And as I watch it for the tenth time I start to cry. For the beauty of it all. For the hope in this video.
And I have an idea.
I open my phone. I go to POTG, find his account. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. I search his videos. I start playing them all. I compare the dates to the posts. And I find it. Of course he shared it on Instagram, too. It was too perfect not to post it everywhere possible.
And I realize this is it. My opening. My second chance.
Second chances. Third chances. Isn’t that what life is comprised of? Perfect opportunities such as this? I open our DM.
Seen.
I ignore it. I message him the video he posted.
“Do you mind if I share this?” I ask.
I start my timer.
I pace around my room. I go to YouTube on my MacBook and start playing “Adam’s Song” by Blink. I loop it on repeat. Around and around. Every time it reaches that part in the song, I close my eyes. I see his video. The fireflies. And I wish I could go back to that moment and experience it with him. In person. In reality. Flesh to flesh, my hand in his. Tucked under his arm like Tracy was.
My phone dings. I stop the timer. Twenty-two minutes and thirteen seconds.
“You can share it,” he says. “It’s cool, right?”
I know I should wait, to answer. It’s been so many hours, one too many days. But he’s here now and I can’t lose him to silence again. To the dreaded seen.
I restart the song. I let it finish. I message him back.
“Very cool. It’s so gorgeous. Have you ever considered getting into filmmaking?” I send.
Reset.
I start the timer over. Play the song again. And again and again.
My phone dings.
“Thanks. I thought so, too. No I haven’t. I have no idea what I want to do with my life honestly. Not like there’s much choice,” he says, adding “lol” after it.
And here it is. A momentous occasion. I look at the time. It is 8:16pm when Charlie opens up to me for the first time. I take out a piece of paper from my notebook and write it down. We will reminisce about this one day. About the moment this all meant something, to both of us. And I have to catch him while he’s in this mood. I have to pull as much from it as I can get. I have to put my shrink hat on.
“The options are limitless,” I say. “Why do you think otherwise?”
Reset.
Ding.
“I’m no one,” he says.
“What would you tell someone who thought that of themselves?” I ask.
Reset.
I’ve learned things in my time of trying to help people. Asking them what they would say to someone who put themselves down the way they did. They never like it, but it helps them. It helps them recognize the abusive patterns they have, talking down to themselves, telling themselves they can’t amount to anything or do anything worth doing.
Ding.
“I don’t know haha,” he says.
But I can’t let him get off that easily, not without acknowledging the goodness in him. “Just think of something. Anything. What would you say to someone your age who was on the verge of giving up on themselves?”
I restart the song. I watch the video twelve more times before he responds.
“I guess I’d say don’t do it. Don’t give up. We are more than our pasts. We are more than our trauma-fueled bodies and broken hearts. We are more than the stupid kids they make us believe that we are.”
He sends it as though it isn’t a god damn poem. Line by line, breaking me into pieces. Making my heart ache. “That’s beautiful. Did you write that?”
He starts typing before I even close the message.
“Yeah. You asked me what I’d say to someone and I guess that’s what I’d say,” he says.
“Can we post it as the caption underneath your video?” I ask.
“Sure. Please don’t tag me. Everyone will think I’m a huge pussy.”
“Anonymous. Got it,” I send.
“Who are you anyway?” he asks.
“Just someone who’s here to listen,” I say. I don’t tell him I know who he is. That he knows who I am. Well, he might not know who I am. He might not remember me. My name. My face. The sheer fact that I exist.
“Well, you matter. And that means something,” he says.
“How so?” I ask. I want to keep the conversation going, want it to fill the gaps between us and this distance that time and circumstance has created.
“You’re helping people,” he says.
“We try.”
Reset.
Ding.
“We, or you?” he asks.
I hear the rumble of the first wall tumbling down. I’m not sure if it’s mine or his. I sense the lie in the answer I will try to create and have to stop myself.
“I guess me.” I am honest, and this is where I will start to unravel as Dr. Love. This is where I will blur the lines until I can no longer recognize them.
“Well don’t stop,” he says.
“I won’t.”
Reset.
Seen.
But he doesn’t answer again. Four excruciating hours go by and he doesn’t answer. The conversation ends so abruptly. Almost like it never happened at all.
Nineteen
Aunt V likes to have dinner together every Sunday night. She always says she doesn’t really get to see me that much since I turned seventeen and got my license and car, but I think we haven’t seen much of each other since she got this new place and sent me to the basement. I kind of thought maybe she just wanted a little space from me, so I gave it to her. I went upstairs to make food, to shower, to pee, etc. The rest of the time, I was downstairs or out. She hardly asked.
I’m almost an adult at this point. And once I turn eighteen, she’ll be off the hook. I know she loves me, but she never signed up for this. She didn’t have kids for a reason. She never wanted any. And here she is, with one, for the last five years, pushing six. A kid who isn’t even hers.
Sometimes I feel like asking her if she hated my father for this, but she always tried to make me feel more than welcome, like she was happy to have me. She always reminded me I was her niece, her favorite niece she could have ever had. And I’d remind her I’m the only niece she’s ever had.
She doesn’t have much to compare me to and in a way, I’m gratefu
l for that. She could have had it so much better if she never had me sprung on her. If I wasn’t occupying space in her house, her life. If there was room for someone else.
But she never made me feel like that.
Sometimes she comes downstairs just to check on me, to see if I’m okay, to see if I’m hungry. To see if I’m sad again. I always tell her I’m okay. I don’t want to burden her with anything else, more than I already have. And how do you wave someone away and convince them you’re okay? I’m still trying to figure that part out. I’m not sure she remembers what this feels like, being seventeen. If she’s too far removed from this age, this generation.
She always talks about how different things were when she was a kid. Do you ever wonder if your parents understand you? If your friends even understand you? Sometimes I’m not sure I even understand myself. But I guess that’s the point. I don’t have to. They don’t have to. Maybe if we all had it figured out life wouldn’t even be interesting anymore. Maybe part of the fun is figuring it out.
I go upstairs and set the table for us. She’s stirring something in the pot with a spoon.
“Smells good, Aunt V,” I say.
She smiles. “Doesn’t it? I’m not making anything fancy. Just some eggplant parm with angel hair and garlic bread.”
“Sounds even better,” I say.
She turns to look at me and almost drops the spoon. “Love!” She wipes her hands on the nearest towel then rushes over to me. “Your hair!” She grabs my head, turning it, feeling my hair. “When did you do this?”
I shake my head from her hands. “Yesterday. It’s not a big deal,” I say, turning from her and putting forks on the table.
“Not a big deal? Your hair has always been dark!”
“I know. That’s kinda the point.”
She shakes her head a little bit, like she’s still trying to see if I’m there somewhere under the bleached blonde.
The Gorgeous Slaughter Page 7
