by S. R. Grey
A couple of weeks into October, the most awful morning sickness kicks in. Most days, though, I have nothing to throw up. Allison begins to eye me suspiciously, especially when I continue to drop things I’m working on to race to the outhouse in the back of the barn.
And with increasing suspicion comes more contempt. I am berated again and again over the state of my crafts, all of which are constructed to specifications.
“No, not like that, you dumb bumpkin,” Allison snaps one afternoon. “That branch is crooked.”
It’s a gorgeous October day, the antithesis of Allison’s rotten mood. It also happens to be Flynn’s eighteenth birthday. Allison hasn’t mentioned it, so I don’t think she knows. Just as well. Flynn and I are hoping to sneak off sometime this evening, even if it’s just to one of our rooms. I have a nutrition bar I saved that I plan to share with him. It isn’t cake and ice cream, but it will have to do.
“Are you listening to me?” Allison snaps, rousing me back to the here and now.
“Uh-huh.” Please, just go away.
She twists a limb from the glittery black Halloween tree I’m working on, essentially ruining it. “See, this is no good,” she says.
When I start to protest, she throws the curled twig in my face.
I look around for Flynn, but he’s on the other side of the barn, preoccupied with cutting up wood for the next craft project.
“Maybe the tree wasn’t really broken before,” Allison sneers. “But it sure is ruined now.”
“Because you ruined it,” I retort.
I am too tired and hungry to put up with her shit. Besides, how much more can she do to us?
Flynn stops what he’s doing and looks over. When he sees Allison hassling me, he rushes to my aid.
“What’s going on here?” he says, placing a protective hand on my back when he arrives.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Allison says.
“Anything concerning Jaynie concerns me,” Flynn shoots back.
The look in his eyes dares her to defy him, and Allison is cowed…for now.
Before she turns to leave, she says to me, and only me, “We’ll discuss this more later.”
Later turns out to be that night.
Passing the kitchen on my way upstairs, I throw a longing glance at the padlocked door. There is no dinner tonight. Allison claimed we didn’t make quota, even though Flynn and I counted and re-counted and were sure we had it.
But no, we were told we misunderstood the numbers. Bullshit. To make matters worse, Allison made Flynn stay in the barn to clean up.
Just for the hell of it, I step over to the kitchen door and try the padlock. Just a quick yank, but damn if that’s not enough. The lock falls open.
“No way,” I whisper. “The psycho bitch must not have checked to make sure it was fully clasped.”
Her oversight is about to become my and Flynn’s jackpot. I plan to grab bunches of nutrition bars—and whatever else is available—and sneak that shit upstairs before Allison shows up. Flynn can have a real birthday feast, instead of half a nutrition bar. But when I push open the kitchen door, I realize the unlocked door was nothing more than a trap. I groan, realizing I’ve been had.
Allison is waiting for me, perched up on the counter, expression smug.
“I knew you couldn’t resist an opportunity to steal from me and my mom,” she spits out, feigning outrage.
My mood from earlier persists. I can’t take her shit, not today.
“If you didn’t starve us, we wouldn’t have to steal food.”
She hops off the counter and takes a menacing step toward me. I stumble back, afraid not for myself, but for the baby.
“You little twat,” she hisses. “You think I don’t see what’s going on? If you didn’t get yourself knocked-up, you wouldn’t be so goddamn hungry all the time.”
I gasp. Though I suspected she knew, hearing her speak the words makes my pregnancy feel more real than ever. And in that moment I know I really, really want this baby. Damn the circumstances.
Placing a protective hand over my stomach, I rub the slight swell of flesh pushing out from between my jutting hips. Even starving, baby grows.
Allison’s eyes widen. “Holy shit, you really are pregnant, aren’t you? I took a guess, but wow, I never really thought…”
I am not discussing this with my worst enemy, so I spin around to leave. But before I am able to reach the doorway, the snarling bitch is on my ass.
Swinging me back around, roughly by the arm, Allison yells in my face, “Don’t you ever turn your back on me!”
She then spits in my face.
With her saliva dripping down my cheek, I wrench my arm from her grasp. “Fuck you, Allison,” I say.
She shoves me hard, and I am sent flying across the room, heading straight toward one of the granite countertops. I throw my hands up just in time to prevent the sharp edge from jamming into my belly.
Allison shoves me again, this time twice as hard. Jesus, she wants to ram me into the countertop. I twist my torso at the last second, and only my hipbone makes contact with the edge.
The impact still sends a sharp pain up my side, and I crumple to the floor. When I look up, Allison is staring down at me. She looks feral, eyes wide, hair a scraggly mess. Her hatred for me has never been more apparent as something akin to murder blooms in her eyes.
“Shit.” I scramble to get out of her way.
Rising to my knees, slower than I intend—I am dizzy from the fall, or from lack of food, I’m not sure which—I catch a fleeting glimpse of a booted toe heading toward the one part of my body I have protected so well up until this point.
The kick lands hard, hard enough that I see stars. It’s a direct hit to my abdomen.
I cry out and Allison’s leg becomes a piston. She kicks me over and over again. All the while, I am trying to roll out of her line of fire.
“Stop it! Stop it!” I try to scream, but all that comes out is a raspy whisper.
Some of her kicks land and some are complete misses. She’s in a rage, and I can’t get around her. All I can do is curl up in a ball and pray for her to stop.
When she finally does quit kicking, she steps back, panting and sweaty. I glance up, blinking slowly. A blurry image of her face, hair stuck to her cheeks, burns in my retinas.
I close my eyes, unable to look at my tormentor, and she says. “Go away, Jaynie.”
When I try to sit up, I know the damage she intended to inflict has been done. Behind the pain from the bruising on my abdomen, there is an all-too-familiar deep cramping.
When I choke back a sob, I’m told, “I said, get up and get the hell out of my face, you worthless slut.”
Holding my middle like everything inside might fall out if I were to let go, I scramble to my feet and take off.
I am doubled over with pain by the time I reach the third floor, and I promptly stumble to the bathroom.
Blood, no. Bright red spots stain my panties, not unlike teardrops. There’s no pouring gush, though, not like you see in the movies. This is more like spotting. I guess since it was so early on. “It was barely there,” I whisper.
So, why does the loss feel so bottomless?
I lie to myself, for now. The truth is too painful to deal with. “It’s my period starting. It was just late. It was probably going to start today, anyway. Getting kicked in the gut just hastened things along.”
All my rationalizations and lies to myself don’t change the truth—Allison has made me miscarry.
From that point on, everything I do is done in a daze. My actions are like snapshots blowing in the wind, images flittering away in the aftermath of a loss.
I wash up.
I insert a tampon.
I walk down the hall to the bedroom.
I kick off my worn sneakers and watch them as they soar across the room, seemingly in slow motion.
That last one makes me laugh. And then it makes me cry.
No, no, no. I will not allow
these emotions to cripple me. I’ve been there before—though for a different reason—and I refuse to go back. No more victim-Jaynie.
I take off my clothes, ignoring the purple and blue bruises blossoming on my belly like the world’s ugliest flowers. Calmly, I swap out baggy jeans and a dingy tee for the white cotton dress that once belonged to Mandy. It’s Flynn’s favorite, and the best thing I own. The dress reminds me of happier times. And wasn’t I planning on wearing it for Flynn’s birthday anyway? Sure was.
See how well I’m doing?
When I tug my panties down my legs, so I can change into a fresh pair, my strong façade crumbles.
I unravel…
Clutching blood-tinged cotton in my hand, I throw back my head and scream as loud as I can. I go from zero to sixty, from no emotion to nothing but emotion. I embrace all I feel—denial, heartache, disbelief, anger. I put the first three on the backburner. The anger, I hold onto.
And, guess what? Anger ramps up to rage when you embrace it. A violence builds in me like nothing I’ve ever known, and soon I am vowing, “You are going to die for what you’ve done, Allison Lowry.”
On the nightstand lie the scissors, the ones Mandy never returned to the craft barn. I snatch them up.
But then I freeze. There’s a strand of black hair stuck in the blades. “Cody,” I choke out.
Cody—sent away for no reason, another victim of Allison’s rage, along with his sister.
I want to punch something. Save it for Allison.
Down the stairs, I flee, like I’m flying.
And then I’m standing at the kitchen door. Still unlocked. Good.
Allison’s eyes bug out of her head when she sees me coming in. Crazy girl in white, dressed to kill.
She stares at the scissors clenched in my hand. I let her take it in, the scene before her, what it might mean. It’s her turn to feel fear.
“Jaynie, what’s with the scissors?” she asks, voice shaky. “You need to put them down before someone gets hurt.”
“That would sort of defeat the purpose,” I calmly reply.
“Jaynie, really. Think about this.”
Allison steps back, but there’s nowhere to go. She’s trapped, just as I was.
“How does it feel?” I say.
“Don’t be stupid. Let’s be reasonable here.”
“The time for reason has passed.”
I think of a dozen other things to say to her: You killed my baby. You murdered a part of Flynn, too. This is justice. You’ve had it coming for a long time. I will not be a victim again. I will go down fighting.
In the end, I say nothing. I allow my actions to speak for me. It is not Jaynie Cumberland, teenage girl who fell in love in the wrong place at the wrong time, who goes after Allison. It is Jaynie Cumberland, victim no more.
Allison tries to jump out of the way, but I am faster. Jamming the cold, steel blades of the scissors into my tormentor’s belly feels cathartic. It’s wrong to exact vengeance like this, but I am no longer me. I am a woman robbed of a would-be future, a baby I’ll never meet.
Allison crumples to the floor, eyelids fluttering. She passes out. Not dead. But she will be soon enough. The scissors remain stuck in her gut.
I stare down and slowly, very slowly, her crimson blood blooms around the blades.
I don’t feel any better. I want to stab her again, make her hurt like I do. I kneel down next to her and reach for the scissors, readying to do exactly that.
But then, out of the blue, my plans are thwarted when I am yanked up to my feet. “What the hell?” I grind out.
I then fight like a wildcat against the person who has stopped me. And then I hear Flynn’s soothing voice. “Shh, shh, Jaynie, it’s just me.”
I stop struggling, and he wraps his arms around me. “Calm down, sweetheart,” he soothes. “You have to try to relax.”
I start to cry. “She killed our baby, Flynn. She kicked me and kicked me, and now it’s gone.”
I then tell him everything, and Flynn comforts me, as only he can do. Afterward, he wets a towel and wipes the blood from my hands, soiling his own hands in the process, and essentially becoming my accomplice. Even our sins are now shared.
When he’s done, his eyes fall to Allison. The scissors jut out of her belly as she slowly bleeds out on the floor.
“We have to get out of here,” he says. “We need to keep you safe.”
“Are we going up to the cliffs?” I ask.
“Yes, and you’re going to have to jump.”
“Jump, yes.”
I know I can do it, since I already feel like I am falling.
Flynn
“I’m taking the blame,” I tell Jaynie as we run from the house.
“No,” she retorts, breathless.
She’s wearing the white dress she wore on one of our happiest days. How ironic she has it on this day, one of our saddest.
“I did it,” she goes on. “I should suffer the consequences.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” I say.
I’m only appeasing her to keep her going. What Jaynie doesn’t know yet is that I’m not going with her. My intention is what it’s always been—to keep her safe. Someone has to come back to call the police and take the blame for what happened. Otherwise, we’ll both be fugitives, and the authorities will catch us. There’s no choice but for Jaynie to flee to safety alone.
The idea was always for us to go together, and maybe we should have left ages ago. I see that now. With tragedy comes clarity.
I guess just having the option to go gave us a false sense of comfort. I don’t know. We could have left the day the twins were taken away, but then—bam!—there was a baby to think of.
Now there’s no more baby to worry about.
I should be relieved, but I feel nothing but sadness. I was sort of excited to have a baby with Jaynie. Maybe it was delusional of me to think so, but I kind of liked the idea of walking away from this place after we turned eighteen, already a family in the making.
But no, that would’ve been too easy. I guess I kind of always knew in my heart it would come down to this—running.
Jaynie stops to catch her breath when we reach the old barn up in the fields. Oh, for the days of playing Tag and Hide and Go Seek with the twins.
I place my hand on Jaynie’s shoulder when she leans forward. “Are you going to be sick?”
“No. I just need a rest.”
We can’t rest, though, so I say as gently as I can, “I’m sorry, Jaynie. I know it’s hard, but we have to keep going.”
“Just one minute. Please, Flynn.”
I nod. Since we’re stopped this is as good of a time as any to tell Jaynie the “real” plan.
“Listen, babe.” I take her hands in mine. “I’m going up to the cliff’s edge with you, but I’m not jumping.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” I say. “You have to leave without me.”
She begins to protest, but I share with her my fears, stressing that we’ll never both get away. “I have to stay. At least for now, okay?”
I can tell she doesn’t like it, but what other choice do we have? Everything I’ve said is true.
“How do you plan on calling the cops?” Jaynie wants to know. “It’s not like we have cell phones. And there’s no landline in the house.”
“Allison has a phone. I’ll dig around till I find it.”
“What are you going to say?” she asks, stepping back. “Like, how do you plan to explain how Allison ended up stabbed?”
“I’ll tell them it was self-defense.”
She stares at me like I’m crazy. “Like you couldn’t fight off Allison” She makes a scoffing sound. “Sorry, but I don’t think they’re going to buy it.”
“I’m not planning on telling them I was defending myself, Jaynie. I’ll tell them the truth, but with a twist. I’ll say I walked in when Allison was kicking you and grabbed the scissors to protect you.”
The thought of Allison a
ttacking Jaynie makes my blood boil. I have to stay calm.
“Then I should stay,” she says. “Corroborate your story. Only I’ll say I got ahold of the scissors. My prints are all over them. ”
“No way.” I shake my head. “I’ll go back and handle this. You know how corrupt this town is.”
“Flynn, I don’t know about this crazy plan.”
“Jaynie, please. Don’t fight me on this. You deserve a chance at a life.”
“And you?” Her voice cracks. She’s trying to stay strong, but I can see she’s breaking.
“If I end up in prison, like my dad, so be it.”
“Flynn! Don’t say that. I swear I won’t take another step if you don’t promise me you’ll be okay.”
“I’ll be okay,” I say, hoping, but not knowing, if that’s true.
“You’ll explain things, make sure it’s clear?”
“Yes.”
“And then you’ll come meet me in Lawrence?”
“Yes.”
Our eyes meet. We both know this is a long shot, a mess of a plan. Still, it’s the only option on the table.
Resigned that we are once again trapped, though this time by unforeseen circumstances, we head to the cliff.
Jaynie
“Jump,” Flynn says.
I stare down at the swiftly moving river. “I can’t, I can’t,” I cry.
“You have to, Jaynie.”
From where we stand, on the edge of a cliff made of sandstone streaked with iron and copper, the water, black as night, scares me. Ink swirling in a bottomless well and I’m supposed to jump in?
I toss a glance back to the forest, and Flynn sighs. He knows what I’m thinking. “There’s no going back, Jaynie,” he says softly. “The only choice now is to move forward.”
The cliff, the water, jumping in. He is right. Still… “I’m scared,” I confess.
Flynn blows out a breath. “I know, sweetheart.”
Soft, understanding, Flynn always gets me.
Regrets, the likes of which I’ve never known, wash over me, and I want nothing more than to turn back the hands of time and start this day over. The girl I was this morning, she is no more. That frightens me. Scarier still is who I may become if I leave Flynn. A lump forms in my throat at the thought.
