by L.J. Shen
I felt my dress shirt soaked with her tears. I hated to see her like this. I’d kill a few more Harry Fairhursts with my bare hands if it meant making her happier.
“He is fine,” I said with conviction I didn’t feel, because where the fuck was he, anyway? “Absolutely fine. He is thriving. He is healthy. He is in love.”
The wreckage storming through her body subdued a little. I was on the right track.
“And Harry?” She unglued her head from my shoulder, looking up and blinking at me.
It never ceased to amaze me, the effect her eyes had on my heart rate. She was a wingless angel—divine and saintly, but not in a prude way that made you want to fuck her dirty just to prove she was less than perfect.
I dragged my thumb across her lips. “Dealt with,” I said.
She closed her eyes and took a ragged breath.
“Did Vaughn…”
“No. I did.” I refused to let her finish the sentence, knowing how much it pained her to even think it. “Vaughn went back to his girlfriend, Lenny. He is fine.” A lie. Who the fuck knew where my son was right now? “We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d take the blame.”
“I am to blame.” She shook her head.
I shut her up with a bruising kiss. “No. Harry Fairhurst is responsible. The responsibility for child abuse is on the abuser. Vaughn was surrounded by top-of-the-line nannies on the rare occasions he was out of our sight. We sent him to the best establishments. You gave him everything you could. Despite what happened to him, he grew up to be a boy who adores his mother so much, he couldn’t even tell you to remove that stupid painting from the wall opposite to his door. This is the mark you left on him, Em. Not the ten minutes he was out of your sight. Not the time he moved to Carlisle Castle for the summer after begging us to go there. You couldn’t have known.”
As I spoke the words, I realized I couldn’t have prevented this from happening, either.
I couldn’t shoulder the responsibility, because I’d tried to protect my son with the ferocity of a thousand blazing suns. I knew that, because I, myself, had been abused.
In a very different way, but nonetheless.
“The best thing we can do for him is pretend it never happened, that you still don’t know. Allow him his dignity, Em. It’s the most important thing a young man can have. Now, let’s go home and leave the two lovebirds to clean up their own mess. We’re due back to see his exhibition, anyway.”
I picked her up and took her home.
My trophy.
My girl.
My heart.
My everything.
The entire courtyard was full of them.
Posters of my uncle, Harry Fairhurst, smiling, with the caption: “Rip me if I hurt you.”
The idea was to let people speak up without expecting them to come forward and admit to something still considered shameful and weak in our society. To me, admitting you’d been sexually abused was brave, but I understood it wasn’t my place to judge how people handled their personal tragedies.
I’d printed out one hundred fifty copies of the posters and hung them all over Carlisle Prep. By the next morning, many of the posters had been ripped apart. Some stomped on. Some now included a Hitler moustache, horns, or acne on his face.
I’d spent all night putting these posters up. At sunrise, I’d marched downtown on foot, picked up a coffee and a pastry, and gone back to the castle. That’s when I saw what they’d done to the posters.
I poked my head into classes, went down to the cellar, and threw office doors open on the main staff floor.
Harry Fairhurst was nowhere to be found.
Neither was Vaughn Spencer.
My heart galloped against my ribcage. I rounded the corner to Harry’s office, even though he’d missed the class he was supposed to teach, and was about to open his door when fingers curled around my shoulder. I looked back exactly at the same time I was shoved into his empty office. The door slammed behind me. It was Arabella, and she was still wearing her pajamas, her hair a mess.
“Hi, trash,” she greeted with her fake, cheery voice.
She’d chosen the wrong place and wrong time to mess with me. I was on edge, at war with my father, worried sick for Vaughn and what he’d done, and burning with rage about my uncle. She’d just added fuel to the fire already blazing high and dangerously out of control inside me.
“Thought it was a good opportunity to tell you I decided to leave before that stupid exhibition started. Raphael bores me to death, your dad sucks in bed, and Vaughn is MIA—” She was about to finish the sentence, but I didn’t let her.
I pounced on her like an untamed feline, claws first, pushing her to the floor. She fell with a thud, a scream ripping from her plump lips. I straddled her, like Vaughn had done to me so many times when he wanted to disarm me. She reached for my face, and I jammed both her wrists to her sides. I couldn’t believe what I was doing as I was doing it. I’d never gotten into a fight (if you don’t count the showdown with Arabella herself). I could only imagine what my parents would think about such thing.
But your parents aren’t here to judge you. They’ve been out of the picture for a while.
Mum was dead, and Papa turned out to be someone I had no desire to impress. Plus, it’d been a long time coming. Arabella had taunted and bullied me every step of the way for the past year and a half.
I leaned down and breathed into her face, trying—and succeeding—to sound crazy. Perhaps I’d always been dancing on the invisible line between insanity and despair. “Scream, and I’ll make you sorry you were born with a mouth.”
She spat in my face. I could feel her warm, thick saliva running from my chin down to my neck. I let go of her wrists, curling my fingers around her neck and straightening my spine, leaning back so her hands couldn’t reach my face or neck.
I squeezed her throat, adrenaline swimming in my bloodstream like a drug.
“Everyone snaps, Arabella. Even—and especially—aggravated vampires. Now tell me, why do you hate me so much?”
She opened her mouth, but all I could hear were muffled gurgles. Her face was red, her eyes watery. I wanted to stop choking her, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, I understood just how hotly Vaughn had hated Uncle Harry. I couldn’t blame him for what he wanted to do to the man who’d ripped the innocence from him when he was only a wee boy.
“Answer me!” I slammed Arabella’s head against the floor.
She’d hit me before. I never retaliated. Never fought back. Not really. I just sassed and made her feel intellectually inferior. As if she cared. That didn’t do me any good.
Arabella desperately tried to pry my fingers off of her neck now. Finally, I let go, pinning her hands to the floor again. Her neck was marred with purple and black Dalmatian dots. My fingertips. I swallowed, refusing to dwell on what I’d done to her.
“Why!” she screamed in my face, twisting like a snake behind me, trying to break free. “Because your asshole father had an affair with my mom, and now my family’s falling apart, and we’re about to lose everything! That’s why! Because one day he came into our house to drop Poppy off, and he never got out of there. My mom is suicidal. My dad is MIA. My sister has no one. All because of you and your stupid family. You should’ve stayed in England!” she roared, throwing her head back and bursting into a sob.
Too shocked to decipher exactly what she was saying, I let her slip from my grasp. My body slacked, and she took advantage of my surprise, pushing me back.
She shook her head. “You are so fucking gross. Like I would ever touch your dad. But I want you and Poppy to burn in hell. You came in with your stupid accent and clothes and bullshit and torched everything I knew and loved. You tore my family apart. Poppy stole Knight. You have Vaughn. What was I left with?” She pushed my chest again, harder. “Nothing!”
“So you and my dad…?” I tried to make sense of what she was saying, let it all sink in.
“Nothing,” she ground out, throwing her arms in th
e air. “Your dad and I are nothing. But my work here is done. He is miserable. You are going crazy. Poppy lost Knight, the only thing she cared about in America. As for Vaughn? You’re crazy to think he won’t dump you, if he hasn’t already. He’s wired differently.”
I watched her scramble to her feet from my spot on the floor. She wiped her face clean, patting her neck and wincing as she felt the bruises.
“I’m sorry your family is falling apart, Arabella.” Genuinely, I was. Compassion didn’t cost a penny. I knew what it felt like when my family collapsed and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I didn’t wish it upon anyone else—not even my enemies.
So many things collided together in a burst of realization and understanding.
Papa hadn’t touched Arabella.
He had moved on from Mum, eventually, and had an affair.
And the truth behind Arabella’s declaration that Vaughn was different from other boys, that he would leave me. Frankly, he already had.
“Whatever, Lenny. I don’t need your pity.” She flipped her hair, as she did when she was pretending not to be upset, huffing.
Lenny. Not Drusilla or Vampire Girl. That was new.
“You have no idea what it feels like to be me,” she added.
“Do I not?” I stood up, bracing myself on the edge of Uncle Harry’s desk. I was dizzy from all the things that had happened in such a short period of time.
“I lost my mum a week before I got my first period. I had no one to talk to about it. Poppy was so upset, she wouldn’t leave her room for four months afterwards. I arranged toilet paper in my knickers to absorb the blood every month until I found Poppy’s sanitary pads one day. I woke up every morning for a year expecting to see my mum, before remembering she was dead. I secretly hated my father for a while for not being the one to die. He was the one I needed less.”
She swallowed and looked away, blinking at the bare wall where Harry’s painting had once been.
“I stayed here and let my father and sister move away because the day my mother died was the day we stopped being a family and became a man and his two daughters. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. I didn’t feel connected to anything, anyone.”
Arabella sucked her cheeks in. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“Not your fault. I came to All Saints High already saddled with an open beef with Vaughn Spencer.” I refrained from getting into the details. “The black eyeliner, hair, piercings, and wild stories about trips to Brazil were camouflage. Obviously, they didn’t do the trick.”
“Obviously.” She rolled her eyes, and I chuckled.
I needed to get out of here. To find Vaughn and Uncle Harry. To speak to my father. Make sure I hadn’t gotten myself into terrible trouble by spreading those posters everywhere.
I walked toward her, brushing my fingers over her arm. She looked up in surprise, a little gasp escaping her wounded throat.
“I hope it all works out when you get back,” I said grimly, despite everything. “I think we both haven’t had it easy, and I hope we can prevail. I think we can, Arabella. I think the best is yet to come.”
“I hope…” she trailed off, pressing her eyes shut. “I hope you’ll be fine, too, or whatever.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “I’ll take it.”
We both hobbled toward the door at the same time, pouring out of it in different directions.
I spent the next hour looking for Vaughn everywhere. I tried calling his cell. It went straight to voicemail. Exhausted, I crawled up to my room, flinging myself over my bed and closing my eyes.
“Not so fast,” a voice boomed. “We have to talk.”
“Papa?” I whispered.
He stepped out of the shadows, a deep frown etched on his face. He looked so much older than he had before my birthday. Before our falling-out. Before we’d both slinked entirely to our separate corners of the world, ignoring each other’s existence.
I could see now that he didn’t know what had riled me up, and I hadn’t known why he didn’t crawl back to me, begging for forgiveness.
It was a huge misunderstanding, and we could have talked, if it wasn’t for the fact that we didn’t talk. Ever. Not really. Communicating our feelings had never been our strong suit, especially since Mum died, and now we were paying for it.
I felt my bed dipping and held my breath, the weight felt familiar all of a sudden. Flashbacks of hundreds of nights when he’d sat by my side to read me a story or to tell me a Greek legend flooded my mind. My throat went thick with emotion.
“Lenny.”
I pulled my lips into my mouth, trying not to cry.
“I should’ve come sooner, darling.”
I felt the mattress move beneath me as he shook his head. Everything about him was massive, imposing, out of this world—even his sculptures. Maybe that was the problem. My father was always so much bigger than life in my eyes, I’d had to reduce him to nothing before I could look at him as a complex, flawed person. As an equal. Human.
Wordlessly, I began to twist my fingers together, just to do something with my hands.
“I wanted you to know, this thing you said…you talked about…with Miss Garofalo…”
“I got the wrong Garofalo.” I sighed into the dark, feeling my shoulders slump. “I know. She caught me up to speed. A married woman, huh?” But there was no power to my judgment. I felt soggy with despair. Tired.
“Would it matter if I said I was lonely?” he asked.
I could hear the defeat soaked in his voice. I shook my head again, knowing he could feel it in the movement of the mattress underneath us.
“I am devastated over the decision I made.”
Decision, I noticed. Not mistake. The devil was in the details, and my father still believed he needed what happened there to happen—maybe to feel like a man again, and not just an artist.
What he did was awful, but it wasn’t unforgivable. To me, anyway. His daughter. I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t his wife. He had no wife. It wasn’t me he’d betrayed.
“It’s not the only devastating decision I’ve made since moving to Todos Santos.”
“Oh?” I asked.
He scooted over, pressing his back against my wall. My face heated in the dark when I thought about all the things this bed had seen recently. Vaughn handcuffed. Me and Vaughn having sex. The room was soaked with him, every crack in the wood floor filled with Vaughnness. The undertone of his cool, fresh scent still stuck to the walls. His rare smiles inked to my ceiling. I wondered if Papa could feel that he was here, with us.
“I gave Vaughn the internship, but not because he deserved it, you see. I gave it to him because I knew you didn’t want to fall in love—never wanted to fall in love—thinking it was safer and that you’d be happier. I couldn’t take that chance, seeing you lead a lonely life. I’m lonely, and it’s killing me, Lenny. So I summoned him here.”
I choked on my own breath, coughing. “You…”
“No. Don’t. Please don’t scold me, or ask me why him. There was something about the two of you in a room—any room, at any point of your childhood—that made the air sizzle, seconds before you put your hand to the material and made a masterpiece. There was magic there, and it was tightly woven. I wanted to pull it thread by thread by thread until I unraveled it completely. Your mother noticed it, too, the day Vaughn sneaked you a brownie.”
My mouth fell open. I saw the corners of his mouth lift, even though it was so dim in my room. “She always watched you like a hawk, Lenny.”
“She did,” I whispered. “God, she did.”
“I miss her so much. It was in a moment of weakness that I thought I could drown in someone else to hush the aching, screaming need for her. It was the worst choice I’ve ever made, next to picking Vaughn just so you two could be here together and fall in love. But as it turns out, not all is lost.”
I waited patiently for him to drop the bomb I had no doubt was coming.
“You got the Tate Modern exhibition spot. Vau
ghn dropped out,” he said.
I couldn’t breathe.
The sensation was foreign, unwelcome. I tried pulling air into my lungs, but I couldn’t accept any oxygen. My body rejected it. It seemed to reject the very idea itself.
“Vaughn told me about your assemblage sculpture, said it was gorgeous and far more deserving than another piece of stone. I tend to agree with him on that point. He packed his belongings and left the premises earlier today. I’m terribly sorry, darling.”
“Where did he go?” I jumped out of the bed, clutching Papa’s shoulders as I stood in front of him.
He shook his head. “He didn’t say. I don’t think he wants to be found, Lenny. But I found this letter under your door when I walked in. Must’ve blown over to the other side.”
He reached for his pocket and passed me an envelope. I wanted to scream.
How could he let him leave?
How could he let—no, force me—to fall in love with Vaughn, then watch as he left me?
But he’d never intended Vaughn to leave, had he?
And then the inevitable dawned on me, heavy as the rocks Vaughn fought with to create art.
I was in love with him, wasn’t I?
He was psychotic, erratic, eccentric, and completely unlovable in any way…and that made me love him more. Because I knew how completely doomed he was. How much he needed it.
Our love was so much more than love. It stripped us of pride and anger and hate and insecurities. We were bare and beautiful and pure when we were together.
And now he is gone.
I clutched the letter in my fist, my hand shaking. The rest of me, too. I was losing it.
Papa stood and brought his lips to my forehead. “All those months, I gave you time to figure yourself out, Lenny. But I never went away. I was always here. Always loving, hoping, praying. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I love you now. Then. Always.”
Len,
The first time I saw you, you were reading a book, your back pressed against the fountain. It was an impactful moment in my life. Not because you were pretty (although you were very pretty, but also very young—I don’t think we liked each other the way we do today), but because I vividly remember being appalled by the cover.
