Almost Alive

by Christina Barr

  He cocked his brow and smiled. “And what if a man told you that you looked better without makeup?”

  “I wouldn’t believe them.”

  “Sexist,” he teased.

  “Hey!” I playfully punched him in the arm. “I’m just trying to help you out.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just me. I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe I’ll grow out of it; maybe it’s me for life. I don’t know. I just like the look.” It wasn’t a bad look. I just thought he would look better if he were clean-cut.

  I guess it didn’t matter. He might have been my knight, but he wasn’t exactly my Prince Charming. “Thank you for coming to my rescue last night.”

  “Nobody really came to mine, so I feel protective of you.”

  “What about your mentor?”

  “He showed up a couple of months after I came back from the dead. I had to go through a lot on my own.” I felt terrible for him as well as incredibly grateful that he found me.

  “Maria said you ran away a couple of times and that you were doing drugs. She said you were even violent.” I felt bad for bringing up his past when I knew he didn’t really wanna talk about it, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. “Did the demon take over your body?”

  “I don’t think so. It just suggested a lot of things that I didn’t fight against. I didn’t know how. I thought it was my own mind and it made sense. If I wanted to die before, why should I try to live healthy? I needed to have fun. If I ran myself into the ground, what did it matter?”

  “It talked to me last night. We had a full-blown conversation.”

  He slightly glared. “I told you not to.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” It all happened so fast, I could barely grasp what happened. “It did exactly what you said. It offered me things, and I didn’t believe it. Then the demon told me that it didn’t need my cooperation and then I blacked out and woke up drunk and high at that club, dancing with a child molester!”

  I thought Julian might still be angry, but it was worse that he was so concerned instead. “That is a bit of a problem.”

  If his demon didn’t make him blackout, what did that mean for mine? Was my demon that much stronger or was I that much weaker? Either way, it was bad for me. “What do I do?”

  “Follow my rules. Always fight against the demon and don’t sin. Every time you do, the demon gets stronger.” He glared again. “You didn’t take any drugs of your own freewill last night, did you?”

  Most of the night was a blur, but I quickly recalled the glass of beer and whatever was in it. There was no way to guess. “Maybe a little bit.”

  He pouted and though he looked almost like an adorable child, it was with enough authority to make me feel like a complete and total failure. “That’s not good, Michelle.”

  “I swear I’ll listen to you. Just help me out. I’ll do better!” I was desperate. I couldn’t handle another night like that. I wasn’t that type of person. There was nothing fun, cool, or sexy about not having control over my own actions. It was terrifying!

  I thought Julian was gonna be the hardest teacher in the world, but he totally caved and wrapped his arm around me for a hug. “I believe in you, Michelle.” I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be such a softy or that he would have such a nice man chest. “We’re gonna get through this together.”

  I was gonna take school one step at a time and try to avoid everything else outside of it. I would ignore Michael, but I wasn’t sure how to ignore another problem. “What about Maria? Is she really dangerous or are you being paranoid?”

  It was obvious that Julian didn’t hate his sister or even dislike her. I could tell how torn up about it he was. “Sometimes the people we love aren’t right for us. It’s painful, but we have to deal with the facts.”

  I didn’t realize how close we were. Yeah, we were sitting next to each other on the bed and facing each other, but we were super close. We were “almost a breath apart, I could lose my balance, and fall into his lips” kind of close. The day before, that notion would have forced me to vomit. One night of revelation had me feeling completely different. I was almost intrigued. “How can we tell?”

  “You just have to be strong enough to accept it.” I didn’t mean to feel something, but I did. Julian wasn’t being himself either. He didn’t have a tough face, and he wasn’t playing any games. I think he was intrigued as well. He didn’t know what the connection was between us and I think he was brave enough to explore how far it would go as soon as I started inching toward his lips.

  “I’ll see myself out.” He quickly got up and ditched me. He bailed like a coward. It was completely unlike him.

  I wasn’t sure if I should have been upset or if Julian were being the strong one by pulling away. It was stupid for me to think about kissing him when I just hated him. My emotions were all over the place, and I couldn’t trust myself. He was only trying to protect us from ourselves.

  Or he really wasn’t interested. That notion scared me the most.

  I ran out of my room and watched him from the balcony. Julian stopped right at the front door and met my eyes once more, and I knew. All of his witty remarks weren’t meant to mess around or be banter because I started it. He was trying to cover up the fact that he actually cared about me. Julian totally had a crush on me, and since I was finally free enough to realize that I only had lust for Michael, I realized that I had the tiniest crush on him too.

  He left through the front door, and I slowly backed up into my room and shut the door behind me. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into and how complicated our subtle moment had made our relationship.

  We were screwed.

  Chapter Five

  I was really sluggish getting ready for school, but I was making good time. I wasn’t determined to be particularly cute. It was a jean and a T-shirt day for me and no boy, jealous female, or spark of fashion genius was gonna change that. I had taken some pain reliever and put on a pair of sunglasses and was good to go!

  I started heading out the door with a couple of minutes to spare, but Mom and Dad emerged from the kitchen and bum rushed the door with dead serious faces. “What’s going on?” If I didn’t know any better, I would have suspected that they were going to try to have some sort of intervention.

  Dad was the most pissed out of the both of them. “Where were you last night?”

  I didn’t usually have secrets about myself, but that was one I would have rather lied about if I could even do that. “That depends what time last night.”

  “Don’t get smart!” Dad yelled. “Where were you?”

  I had never dealt with Dad that angry before and I just didn’t know how I was supposed to react, so I just went with my first reaction and retaliated with a yell. “You must already know!”

  “Yes, I do know you were at a club an hour away, because the police called me about my missing Mercedes. Your purse and your phone were left inside of the car. How did you even get home?”

  I was already embarrassed about it. I was hoping that no one would ever find out about the things I couldn’t remember. “A friend picked me up.”

  “You were drinking?” Mom asked horrified.

  I spoke quietly. “Among some other things…”

  “So you stole my car, even though you could have taken yours. You went to a club, you did drugs, and then you took your boyfriend back here to have sex?”

  “We didn’t have sex!” I didn’t even understand. If they had a problem with Julian, why did they wait? “He helped me get better, and that’s all!”

  “It doesn’t matter. You are absolutely not allowed to have boys up in your room.”

  “Oh?” I became so angry that I didn’t know if I could contain myself. Julian cared about me more than they did, and I had been giving him hell since we had met. They were supposed to give me unconditional love, yet they constantly ignored me. So what if they were making some attempts? They only acted because they were guilt ridden after my suicide. It was a little too late! I w
ould never forget the reasons why I sentenced my soul to hell in the first place!

  “You’re one to talk, Mother! How many boy toys have you had over the years?” Both of their eyes bucked, but I don’t know why. How could Dad not know and how could either of them blind each other to the point where they thought I didn’t?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” All of that time I imagined all of Mom’s dirty secrets coming out, I assumed she’d be a better liar.

  “Don’t bother lying!” It was insulting how much of an idiot she must have thought I was, and it was even more infuriating that my father chose to be that stupid! “I know about you and your yoga instructor, but he wasn’t the first. Was he?”

  I waited for her to respond, but she could only stutter her lies out. Then I became so much angrier. “You’re such a whore!”

  “Don’t talk to me like that!” she yelled back.

  “Is what she saying true?” Dad erupted, but he surprisingly seemed hurt from Mom’s betrayal.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “But is it true?”

  I didn’t understand Mom. She had tears in her eyes as if she cared what Dad thought of her. Why would it matter to her? If it did, then she should have thought about all of that before she started parading around with other men! How could she force out those pathetic tears and try to convince us they were real?

  “Of course it’s true!” I told Dad. “Why do you think she always makes sure we’re out the house on time?”

  Little by little, Dad started rummaging through his memories. How could he be stupid enough to miss all of Mom’s tells? He was probably asking himself that a thousand times over at hyper speed. “How could you betray me like this?”

  I saw how heartbroken he was, and it turned my stomach inside out. “You’re one to talk!”

  They both looked at me in shock while I yelled at the hypocrite. “How dare you stand there and act like a victim when you know for a fact that you’re no different than her!”

  Mom instantly broke out in a fit of angry tears. “You’ve been cheating on me?”

  Despite her breaking heart, I felt the need to rip it to shreds even further. “With his secretary!”

  Then Mom wasn’t defenseless and hysterical. She was pissed. “You swore there was nothing going on between you two!”

  “And you promised me the same!”

  “And you tried to make me feel guilty?”

  “And you’ve been exposing our daughter to your whoredom the whole time? No wonder why she has problems!”

  “Don’t you dare pin that on me! I didn’t tell her anything, but she must have figured things out about you and Jenny!”

  They had never argued before in front of me, but I had secretly heard some of their disagreements. Their problem was that they didn’t talk to each other and found solutions outside of each other. Now that they had finally started yelling, I don’t think they knew how to stop. It all went to a really dark place when Mom let out a bloodcurdling scream. “I want you out of this house now!”

  Dad’s nostrils flared, and his face turned beat red. He seemed to rise higher and stood so far above her, and I was afraid that he would strike her down. “This is my house! You’ve been sucking every bit of happiness and blood out of my veins for years, and you think you’re getting my house? You hit the streets like the whore you are!”

  “You’ve been making me miserable and engaging in an inappropriate relationship at work. Oh, I’ll get this house. I’ll get this house and full custody of Michelle!”

  “Over my dead body!” Dad screamed with so much rage that I stepped back afraid, but Mom didn’t cower. She got right in his face, and they started screaming at each other until it all became inaudible noise. They didn’t see how close they were to strangling each other, but I saw, and I was completely terrified.

  I should have stopped them, but I reverted into a small child and backed away slowly while I whimpered to myself until I couldn’t take it anymore and ran out the front door. Mom and Dad were too busy arguing to notice my panicked escape, which was good and bad. I wanted them to calm down. I should have done something, but I was too frazzled. I jumped in my car, but my hands were shaking so bad that I could barely put the keys in the ignition, and after I did, I rested my head on the steering wheel and started to sob.

  There was a reason why I didn’t explode all of their secrets when I found them out. I knew their marriage was no good, but it was better than nothing. It was better than fighting over which one of them deserved me when the answer was easily neither. If they didn’t know about each other’s infidelities, then maybe they could have gotten over the distant thing and pretended to love each other again. Their relationship had officially exploded, and even though I didn’t create the bomb, I overdid the timer and made it implode prematurely.

  There had to be a way to fix what I had done. I rushed off to school to see Julian. He would know if Mom and Dad were actually done or if I had somehow made their hatred worse than what it was because of the demon. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going to a place where everyone thought I was a big whore, but my guilt outweighed my embarrassment.

  I avoided everyone’s eyes when I got inside the school and kept my head down as if that would make me invisible. I heard harsh whispers and felt them all staring, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

  I didn’t know where to meet Julian at, so I went to my locker first and hoped he would find me. The only problem was that Maria was there instead. I tried to elude her before she could notice it was me hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and my hand, but she saw right through my feeble attempt and waved at me. “You disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” I said very awkwardly while trying not to. I still didn’t feel right about treating her like a demon, but I couldn’t stop thinking about those movies with body snatching aliens. She might have been trying to be nice, but maybe there was pure and cruel evil inside of her. “I kind of couldn’t take everyone staring at me like a freak.”

  “Welcome to the club.” She casually reached out and touched my arm. It seemed like a harmless gesture, but my heart began pounding and my whole entire body was freezing. I thought I would start shivering any second, but I was too distracted by the sinking feeling in my gut. I was sick all of the sudden and I knew I should run away, but I didn’t know how.

  “Get out of here, Maria.” Julian came to my rescue from nowhere, which was good and bad. I could finally see that I had to get away from Maria, but Julian looked like a tyrant.

  “I’m just having a conversation with my friend.” I didn’t know if Julian were right about Maria. It was hard not to trust her when she acted so sweet toward me and like she was so defeated when Julian was mean to her.

  Then Julian really did look like the bad guy the way he glared at her and spoke so menacingly toward his own flesh and blood. “Get out of here.”

  If she were so terrible, why didn’t she cause a scene or put up some kind of fight? She practically ran away with her eyes glistening like she was running off to a private corner to ball her eyes out. “Was that necessary?”

  “Maria is your enemy. Get that through your head.”

  I tried to just take him at his word, but it really bothered me how upset she was and then I’d have to see her in gym class and then ignore her while the mean girls gossiped about how much of a slut they thought I was. Maybe this was stupid and a bit selfish, but I thought I needed her to survive the hour. “What did she do to deserve that?”

  “Just trust me!” Julian placed his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. I guess he was short on time while he was getting ready for school, because he didn’t put on any eyeliner. I found myself wondering what he would look like completely normal. What would he look like in a sweater or just a nice dress shirt? What if he ditched all the metal that distracted from his features? What about a normal haircut? He was already pretty cute. I think he would have been so attractive! “Please.”

&
nbsp; I had to snap out of it! “Okay.”

  “You seem upset about something. Is it just Maria who has you rattled or—”

  “No. I did something I don’t think I should have.” I was so embarrassed to talk about it. Not even my closest friends from my old school knew about my parents and their affairs. “My parents have both been cheating on each other, but they didn’t know it. Then they accused us of being together—”

  “Us?” he asked surprised, but with a small twinge of a smile on his face.

  “Yeah. Crazy right?” I didn’t mean to smile at the notion of the two of us actually being an item. I hated him not even twenty-four hours ago and suddenly, I was crushing on him. It was wrong and weird and probably another trick from my demon. “But they got so mad like you were bad for me and then I just exploded all of their secrets. They started screaming at each other with the worst possible hatred. They could have killed each other, and I wouldn’t know because I left.”

  Julian appeared pretty nonchalant and shrugged his shoulders. “You probably shouldn’t have done anything.”

  I became instantly enraged. “But they don’t deserve to get away with what they’re doing!”

  “You didn’t operate in wisdom. You operated in anger. That’s not safe. It doesn’t really matter what the circumstances are.”

  He was right, so he calmed my anger, but I was still upset. “Do you think any less of me now? I’m the messed up rich girl with the cliché parents having affairs.” I felt dirty with him knowing my secret, like their affairs were somehow my fault. I knew that was stupid, but that’s just how my crappy parents made me feel.

  But that’s not how Julian looked at me. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he was completely uninterested in what I had to say. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I knew about your parents affairs.”

  “How?” I asked shocked.

  “Because I could sense the lust in the house. It’s really a terrible place for you to be.”