Crossed Lines

by Lana Sky

  He’s the only one who sees me, dear diary.

  I’m the only one who sees him. Really sees. I know why he watches the ocean late at night. Elaine was wrong. He doesn’t hate the beach.

  He craves it. The water calls to him, and ignoring its lure is the only way he can still feel alive. If he gets too close, dips one toe inside…

  He might never stop walking and he doesn’t intend to swim. Drowning is sweet, tempting bliss.

  He didn’t leave me behind because of the responsibility. He lied:

  It’s because he is my ocean. He always has been.

  He always knew.

  And that terrifies him.

  We survive another week without Elaine. Mainly out of spite.

  Our only true interaction comes on the weekdays when he takes me to Walden for one teasing class. Then it’s back to Thornfield, where Jane struggles to cram everything I need to learn into my brain by the year’s end.

  In the meantime, Thorny does everything short of jump off the balcony to stay out of my way and I continue with my homework.

  A hypothetical Thorny, lusting over a hypothetical me, would want my soul…

  Interesting. I pinch the tiny ridge of flesh sticking out over the waistband of my skirt and give it a wiggle. Is my soul hiding in here, lurking among the fat? It doesn’t sparkle. Or glitter. Or any of the other dumb shit souls are supposed to do. It just exists.

  I snap a picture of it anyway. Holding it up to the light, I don’t find anything special or alluring someone might want remembered. I could just be a shit photographer.

  But no. Thorny wants me to dig deep. He wants me to put myself in his theoretical shoes—as a pervert—and think using his theoretical motives.

  Lust? No, that’s too easy.

  Curiosity. Yep. That’s the dangerous one. You don’t realize you’re even feeling it until you’re on your knees, peeking around a corner to watch someone mount the staircase for the first time in days, it seems like. Unsteady on his feet, he wanders down the hall, chased by a flickering shadow. I hold my breath as he passes my room without noticing that my door is slightly open, my face pressed against the crack.

  He takes his time, coming just beyond the curve of the master bedroom. There, he hesitates, his shadow swaying behind him. He takes a step toward the doorway…only to turn and march back the way he came.

  He’s out on the balcony minutes later. I can hear him cursing under his breath while setting something made of glass on the railing. He lifts whatever it is and sets it down. Up. Down. Up.

  Then he sighs so heavily that the sound resonates through the entire house.

  Love is sacrifice, he claimed. And maybe it is. You can sacrifice your sanity and wellbeing using the whims of another person as an excuse. You aren’t the broken one—they made you this way. They imparted the first lethal crack.

  After that…

  Who could blame you for falling apart?

  No one.

  I wake up feeling like Satan is kicking me in the stomach. The moment I sit up, wet warmth trickles down my legs. I halfheartedly peel the blankets back and switch the light on.

  Did I pee myself?

  I wish.

  I find blood on my inner thighs instead. Mother Nature has made her presence known, as irregular as ever. I think she was due a week ago, maybe two. Long after I expected to be either institutionalized or in an environment dominated by other cursed females.

  Thorny wasn’t supposed to keep me this long.

  I tear my suitcase apart, hunting for the rare stray tampon or pad I might have forgotten. All I find is lint and loose sequins.

  Elaine, the good housewife, probably has a stash hidden far beyond her husband’s reach. Sighing, I head down the hall and into the master suite, checking every cabinet in the bathroom.

  So many secrets lurk beneath the Thornes’ pristine marble countertops.

  Elaine’s on sleeping medication, with old bottles stacked in a pyramid on the left-hand side.

  Maybe that’s why Thorny stole mine? He thinks I took it from her.

  I can laugh at that, even as I turn my attention to a bottle of shaving cream which hasn’t been used in ages to combat the stubble growing on Thorny’s chin—he looks like a fucking lumberjack now. He even has a fancy silver razor that prickles when I run my finger over it. There are piles of spare washrags and a neat array of beauty supplies.

  But no pads.

  Bashful, Elaine? I bet she went out of her way to hide such unseemly things from him.

  Under the bed, then.

  Crouched on all fours, I don’t find so much as a stray piece of dust. This couple hides their secrets well, it seems.

  I have no choice.

  He’s lurking on the balcony when I enter the living room. Surprise, surprise. There’s no beer bottle in his hand though. He just glares at the sky, tearing his hands through his hair as if manually rummaging through his thoughts. Where did it all go wrong? he might be asking himself.

  When did she dig too deep?

  How did I let her hurt me?

  Should I finally fucking do it? Sink or swim…

  Elaine hasn’t called in nearly seven days. She’s busy fucking her mystery man and has forgotten all about old Thorny.

  “I’m on my period,” I tell him the moment I reach the mouth of the sliding glass doorway. He left it open and the whole house smells like the ocean. Like him: imbibed with salt and bitter, fresh things. “I need pads. Where does Elaine keep hers?”

  He looks back, his gaze aimed toward my legs.

  Most men react the same way when presented with the realities of biology. Men sport morning wood and women bleed from their “special places” every month. You’d think a sex that spent ninety-nine percent of their time trying to shove their way into said special place might be unconcerned by the occasional plumbing issue.

  “Where does Elaine keep hers?” I repeat, resisting the urge to stamp my foot. Daddy is on the tip of my tongue. I swear it is. Until he looks up…

  And he isn’t frowning. “She had a hysterectomy,” he says. “She doesn’t have any.”

  I gasp and mouth that word to myself: hysterectomy. The tabooest surgery in all of female-kind. My teachers used to mention it in hushed whispers when referring to a colleague with ovarian cancer. Now, she could never have children. The horror!

  Almost as horrifying as bleeding freely before a grown man with no way of stopping it.

  “Fine, then.” I stick my hand out. “Give me ten dollars and I’ll walk to Thornton and go to the gas station.”

  “No,” he says, rising to his full height. “I’ll go get them. Pads?”

  “Y-you’ll get them?”

  “Yes.” He makes it sound so simple. So obvious. He’ll drive to town in the middle of the night for feminine hygiene products.

  Because…

  “Why?”

  He scoffs rather than dignifying the question with an answer. But I want one. I chase him into the entryway for it, hugging myself tighter as he throws the front door open.

  “But—”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He slams the door. Not in anger, I realize as the walls shake in his wake. He left in a hurry for a reason I don’t understand until now. It’s this house, messing with his head, driving him to the very outskirts of it.

  This errand gives him a way out.

  But still.

  Caroline’s husband erupted in a rage when I dared to mention my monthly curse in his presence. It was sinful to speak of nature so crassly.

  Almost as sinful as what he did to the babysitter when Caroline wasn’t looking.

  Blaming me gave her the easy way out. The way she could save face before their perfect neighborhood and perfect friends. Jeff wasn’t fucking teenagers because he was just a perverted freak who lingered outside the bathroom door whenever I showered.

  No. He was a wholesome family man whose life was ripped apart by a vicious, spiteful little girl who spit naughty ac
cusations. How mean.

  Jeff would be a great basis for my theoretical predatory Thorny. In theory. In reality, Jeff didn’t love the ones he sought to corrupt. He didn’t really lust after them, either.

  It was power he craved. The thrill of being the one to pop his little conquest’s cherry. The one to make her cry, “Ow, ow, you’re too big,” like Becky did the day I caught them screwing in the master bedroom. A man like him thrived on feeling large and in charge.

  It was the only way he could get off.

  My theoretical Thorny is too damn stubborn to give in to such “base” impulses. No, he’s after something more exotic. Something alluring enough that he’d try to find it in his irritating not-really-niece. Something dangerous.

  He’d play with it, my imaginary Thorny. He’d want to be the only one who could ever say he claimed it: a hypothetical popped cherry.

  But, while Becky just bled all over Caroline’s Laura Ashley bedspread, my hypothetical Maryanne might experience far worse. She couldn’t just wipe away the mess left behind and toss it into the washing machine before the lady of the house came home.

  She’d be ripped apart forever. How dramatic.

  Almost as dramatic as literally bleeding all over the floor without a popped cherry to show for it.

  In the end, he finds me in the dry bathtub of the guest bathroom with towels all over the floor in a vain attempt to clean the mess up.

  “I’m coming in,” he declares at the same time I tell him to, “Leave the stuff near the door and go away.”

  Like always, Thorny makes a point to do the exact opposite of what I want. The door opens, revealing him standing there with a white plastic bag filled to the brim.

  A box of pads. That’s all he had to get.

  He got me two, along with two boxes of tampons for bonus points. He sets them in a row on the counter. Then he tosses the rest of the bag into the tub.

  I expect to find a receipt, but the bag is too heavy. One by one, I pull out the objects inside, feeling increasingly wary. A bag of chocolate. A bottle of Motrin. A heating pad.

  My brain short-circuits as I eye the bounty spread on my lap. I should say something nice. Thank you?

  My lips part and the wrong words spill out. “James. Did you make Elaine get the hysterectomy?”

  He didn’t want kids; he said it himself. But he didn’t realize how women like Elaine operate.

  We can be happy together, he probably told her. The answer is written on his face. Get the surgery. I’m putting my foot down. We can’t be together if you don’t.

  So she did. But Thorny is a hard man to love. Affection from him is like wanting blood from a stone. He made her take away the one thing that could give her an unconditional source of love—that’s why people have children in the first place. As a backup when the marriage cools and emotions wane like finicky waves.

  Elaine couldn’t stay in this big house alone, no siree. What else is a girl supposed to do but flock to the next source of pretty words and admiring looks? A woman like her won’t remain beautiful forever.

  And, now, Thorny’s lost her for good.

  “Good night,” he says, storming into the hall. He goes the wrong way, however, avoiding the stairs and heading toward the back of the house. He makes it fully inside the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  Oops. I said the wrong thing.

  The mean thing.

  The truth.

  He makes me pay for that, old Thorny does. He leaves me alone with Jane for days and days. He doesn’t even take me to class with him. I have to continue our assignment on my own, scribbling passages into my journal in between lessons.

  He makes me feel strange things, dear diary. Naughty things in the dead of night when no one’s watching. That’s the scary part.

  No one’s watching. There’s no one to scream for. No audience demanding I pretend.

  Is this what feeling feels like?

  The pages can’t answer back. I raise my pen over the final line, ready to scratch out every single word and throw the paper to the wind. The moment I press the nib down, the floorboards rattle.

  “We need to talk,” Thorny demands through my closed door. “Now.”

  He leads the way to his chosen battlefield: the master bedroom. He waits for me to enter before shoving the sliding glass door open and stepping onto the balcony.

  It’s getting hotter. Summer is a sweltering bitch who likes to linger even after the sun goes down. A layer of sweat coats my skin already, and Thorny’s hair is slightly damp with perspiration.

  “What you said,” he begins while curling his hands around the railing. “Did you hear her say something? Mention something?”

  Oh. About children.

  “No,” I say, telling the truth.

  “Really?” He scoffs. “Funny, because she’s the one who didn’t want children.”

  I wasn’t supposed to hear that. It was grown-up talk, that mythical conversation which little girls aren’t meant to partake in. It’s like crack, they say. You get a taste and boom. You think you’re entitled to something.

  Like more brutal honesty. It’s salt upon your bitter, fragile soul.

  “You did?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  But it does. It does to me. I need him to say the right answer, the one I’ve consoled myself with all along: he didn’t want me because he didn’t want children in general. Not even ones attached to obscene amounts of money. That’s why Grandmama tried to force him, kicking and screaming, to be a pseudo-father to me.

  He all but spit on her proverbial—and then literal—grave.

  For Elaine? My fingers curl, my nails digging into my palms. No. That’s not it.

  “I guess adoption wasn’t an option,” I croak.

  He laughs. The bitter sound makes my stomach hurt. My period ended a few days ago, but maybe this is a lingering symptom of PMS?

  “You always have to make everything about you, don’t you?”

  I frown. About me? Not always.

  But him? Yes.

  “Look at me.” He grabs my chin, forcing me to face him. He’s drunk. I can smell the alcohol on his breath, though his touch is surprisingly steady. And hard. He tightens it when I flinch, peering deep into my eyes, hunting for every little lie. “Do you want to know the truth? Really? Yes?”

  Nervous energy consumes me as he tugs my head forward, forcing me to nod. “Okay then. Elaine is the one who didn’t want you.” He watches me to see how the confession lands.

  Does it sting? I don’t even know.

  “She begged me to pawn you off on one of my sisters who, and I quote, ‘already has that burden’,” he adds. “Pleaded. I’m not the one who turned you away, so stop fucking treating me like it.”

  “Like what?” My voice is a whisper, empty and soft.

  “Like…” He shoots me a look that robs the air from my chest. “Like I broke your fucking heart. Did you really mean what you wrote? He is my ocean—”

  “Do you want to know something too, James?”

  He becomes rigid at my tone, his hands clenching the railing so hard they squeak over the marble surface.

  “Why she let you take me back now?” I add before he can cut me off. It all makes fucking sense now. Elaine is one sneaky bitch. “She wanted an excuse to leave, you see? But she was afraid to leave you alone—”

  “Oh, is that right?” He looks at me again. Really looks. One ruthless sweep of his gaze covers my ratty, unwashed hair and my pink nightgown with the holes worn over the left leg. He hones in on the largest one, catching a glimpse of pale skin that quickly turns red. “What about you? Why wasn’t she afraid to leave you here with me, if I’m so fucking unstable? Because we’re so fucking alike?”

  But that’s where Elaine’s true twisted logic comes into play. I remember the way she looked at me that first day. Wide-eyed. Relieved? “You look so much like…”

  “I’m just a distraction,” I tell him, watching how the water sparkle
s like glitter. “To keep you busy so that you won’t wander down to the beach and do what she knows you’ve been dying to do for years.”

  God, his laugh hurts. It stings, mixing with the stifling air. “You think you’re so fucking smart?”

  “No,” I admit, my throat tightening. “I don’t.”

  He said it himself. We’re too much alike. Angry, bitter creatures, desperate to lash out, even if we have to scream to be heard. We’ll do it. Anything. We’ll poke the bear just to make him attack.

  Because violence is better than being ignored.

  “I…” The hint of sea salt tickles the back of my throat and I swallow hard, spitting out the first words I can. “I wrote something new.”

  “Well, I don’t want to fucking read it.”

  Fine. I recite it out loud. “He wants me to be honest, but I can’t, dear diary. Honesty is poison. It’s what drives everyone else away in the dead of the night—or the middle of the goddamn day. It makes them—”

  “Enough.” He grabs my arm so tight that I wince and grit my teeth against a gasp.

  “It makes them hate us, dear diary. Because we can’t pretend like they do. And that scares them. It makes them—”

  “I said enough!” He pulls too hard and I trip face down onto the lounger. He’s there above me, pressing his knee to the small of my back. “Stop.” He means it. I hear the telltale hiss of a leather belt being unwound from belt loops and folded in half.

  “It makes them run,” I croak, grasping the sides of the cushion in anticipation of what I know is coming. I poke.

  He reacts.

  Thwack!

  He hits me hard. Harder than I deserve. My body goes limp, and the next blow makes the lounger jump across the wooden flooring. Bounce. Thwack. Bounce.

  “It makes them leave,” I hear myself admit in between sharp, stinging strikes. “They leave us alone.”

  “You think I fucking want to live like this?” he demands, striking me again. “I don’t fucking… I can’t…”

  He stops, panting into the night air. Beneath me, the cushions squeak with added weight. I’m being crushed. His face is in my hair, spilling warmth onto the back of my neck. Blood? It drips over my skin in the same way, sliding down beneath my shirt, inflamed by his breath.