Without Scars

by Jones, Ayla

  “Hey? What’s up? We’re on the way to Tin Roof. Are you okay? Is Ty okay?” I said to Lola, fright igniting my nerves. He’d been spending today with his friends. My mind became a flipbook of accidents and traumatic injuries: someone ran him over with a jet ski and he cracked his head open. He was jumping from a roof into a pool on a dare and he cracked his head open. He was running and he cracked his head open.

  His head was cracked open.

  And every time I imagined that it involved alcohol.

  Oh God, I didn’t want to be right.

  “No. It’s… He got into a fight with Jimmy. They keep…oh God. Jimmy, stop! Please come, Nikki! I don’t want them to do anything to him. Please come!”

  “Jimmy Dunham?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re at their beach house?” I whispered. I really didn’t want to go there.

  “No, my house. People came over earlier today, and it got a little out of control. We’ve been trying to get them to leave, so we could meet you. Just…please.” She hurriedly gave me the address, and I repeated it for Charlie.

  Then there was another voice on her end. Really close to the receiver. Maybe Tyler’s. I couldn’t be sure. She dissolved into sobs and her end got unintelligible for a moment. She was screaming when the sound was clear again. “Tyler! Don’t. Stop! Stop fighting! This is so stupid. Stop, you guys!” Then the line went dead.

  It started raining on the drive, and the overcast sucked all the color from the world. I adored the rain showers in Miami; I usually found them calming. But right now it wasn’t helping to ease my anxiety.

  I tried to call Lola back on the way, but it was going straight to voicemail. She’d been calling both of us for an hour before she reached us. Between the messages on our phones we figured out that some joke amongst the guys had gone too far. Lola wasn’t in the house at the time, but Jimmy Dunham was bleeding and threatening Tyler by the time she heard them yelling at each other over the music. The disagreement kept escalating and the boys kept exchanging blows. Now her stepsister was insisting that Tyler leave or she would call the police on him.

  The trip lasted forever, but at least the rain finally let up before we got there. Lola and Ty were huddled together, sitting on the curb down a ways from her house. She was in her bathing suit and my brother was in surfing shorts. Thank God his cranium was intact.

  The smell of alcohol wafted off them. Lola stood up and hugged me, pressing her wet face against me. My brother remained sitting and staring at the asphalt. He was bleeding from his face—each cut was small and superficial, but all together it was clear that he had taken a beating. He’d doled out one, too. His knuckles were red and swollen.

  “What happened, Ty?” I asked, kneeling in front of him. He got up with such force that he almost knocked me backward. He glared at me with fury.

  “Hey,” Charlie said, gripping my brother’s shoulder as he tried to walk away, “she’s talking to you.” Tyler yanked away from Charlie’s grasp. Then oh my God he swung. He fucking swung a fist sloppily at Charlie. Lola and I both gasped. His hand smashed into Charlie’s jaw. An audible pop sounded.

  I stumbled backward from a sudden dizzy spell.

  Time didn’t stop. But, oh God, I wished it had.

  “Charlie…please. He’s…” I didn’t know what to say. I had no explanation for Tyler’s behavior. Until I did. “Drunk.” He’s me. He’s like me.

  Charlie shoved him back once and laughed bitterly. “Dude, you don’t want to do this.” But my brother only became more agitated. He stormed toward Charlie, who looked completely unfazed that he’d taken a hit to the chin. My blood ran cold. My breaths were getting shorter.

  Why the fuck was this happening right now? Why couldn’t I move?

  “Tyler!” Lola rushed him. “Stop. Stop this. You’re scaring me. Please.” He pushed away from her, too, walking off.

  “Lola?” The only word my lips could form. My brain was moving at a hundred miles an hour, and I couldn’t put together any other words well enough to speak them.

  Pity but also kindness was taking shape in her eyes. “The guys…whenever it’s someone’s birthday, they do, like, a roast thing. They make fun of you. It’s supposed to be funny, but I don’t really like it. They say really mean things about you. It’s so fucking stupid! They always go way too far. They were picking on him…about you. About your accident.”

  All the air left me in one breath.

  My accident?

  This was something to taunt him about? Oh my God…had they said something horrible about our dad? Anger built inside me, piling into a hot swell of sadness in my chest. I was going to cry soon.

  “They had your mug shot, Nicole!” Tyler screamed. “They all posted it on Instagram and tagged me.” The picture flashed across my mind: me, fresh from the hospital on the day I had ruined lives, with bedhead, a bloated lip, and a deep scratch across my cheek. But scarily innocent-looking. “Everyone was laughing at me. Then Jimmy said his sister told him that there was a video of you doing stuff with—”

  “That’s not true, Ty. That never happened.” Something sharp and twisted sliced through my stomach. I felt like someone’s voodoo doll. Lola grabbed me. I might have stumbled. I didn’t dare look at Charlie, but that fucking bitch Rebecca was a liar. Would he even believe me? Could he take my word when I had once admitted to spending a lot of time with Rebecca while I was drunk?

  Tyler walked straight up to me, lost in blind rage. I took a few apprehensive steps backward. “I got mad and I hit him. I was trying to defend you. You. You. You.” He punctuated his words by pointing in my face. Each time, it startled me. He was looking into the eyes of a complete stranger; he didn’t even see me. Maybe this was who I was to him now. For the first time in my life I was terrified of my brother.

  “This is my problem, Ty. I’m sorry.”

  “Your problem? Your…problem. Yet, my fucking birthday thing ended up being about you. Like everything else in my life. Because every fucking thing always has to be about you.”

  “That’s not—”

  “You fucking ruin everything.”

  “So what then? You want to hit me, too?” I asked him desperately. Hopelessly. “You want to fucking hit me?” I got in his face and grabbed his hands before he could react. “Would it fix everything? Would hurting me fix it? Would it fix you? Tell me! Fucking tell me! Because I am so fucking tired of this. Tell me, so I can let you do it! Maybe if you beat the shit out of me, you will stop looking at me like I am the worst thing in the world! So, fucking do it! There! There’s your permission.”

  “Whoa. Okay. Babe, no, stop…just breathe, okay?” Charlie whispered. My biceps were hurting. Charlie was holding me back. Then he stepped in front of me and shoved Tyler away. It was so hard Ty fell. “Hey, ease up, man,” he warned him. “Ease the fuck up. I’m not going to tell you again.” The stare he trained on my brother surpassed Tyler’s anger. He was controlling himself with every ounce of will. Not because he didn’t really want to punch my brother I didn’t think. But because he knew it would hurt me, regardless of what was coming out of Tyler’s stupid mouth.

  And thank God. I couldn’t shut off my protective instinct easily. I didn’t want to see Tyler get hurt. Suddenly, I was having a memory of him from when he was twelve. I was on a break from SCB and I came home for a visit. On my way to the school bus stop to surprise him, I saw a kid push him off the bus, take his book bag, and dump his belongings onto the sidewalk. Tyler looked so dejected. Like he’d gotten used to the ill treatment. He was just accepting it. I went after that asshole kid, who towered over me at his age and outweighed me by a lot. But my adrenaline provided the strength and momentum I needed to make him fall to the ground when I grabbed him by the backpack. Word for word I told him: “You better never fuck with my brother again, or I will slam your face into the pavement, let him record it, and then put it on YouTube.” I didn’t mean it and I immediately felt horrible for saying it. But my brother found out that da
y family was there to protect you. So, the current situation was a blade in the heart: Tyler was bullying me for having to be my protector.

  Someone put a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know where his keys are, but I’ll find them and drive his car back later.” It was Lola. “I’m really sorry about dinner.” My family’s mess was playing out in the streets of Miami, and the two people Ty and I cared about the most were treading through it. Guilt swept through me when I took a peek over at Charlie. I’d had dinner at his parents’ place a few nights ago. They were so sweet. They had a beautiful home. There was pleasant conversation. A delicious dinner. Gorgeous, funny daughters.

  Not this.

  A light burn simmered under my eyelids. “Okay, Lola, thank you. Just make sure you’re completely sober first, okay?” My throat felt like it was full of broken glass.

  “Oh, that’s rich. You think because you were drunk the night you almost killed Dad that other people are fucking stupid, too? Not everybody drives drunk.” Tyler waved dismissively at me. He was in my face again. “And I’m not going with you.” My tears finally fell.

  Charlie’s arm plowed into my brother’s chest, and he pushed him back until he was against someone’s car. “Get in my fucking car right now.”

  “Ty, stop being so fucking stupid! Go with them. Heather is going to call the police on you,” Lola urged him. She yanked him toward Charlie’s car and stuffed him inside, in the back.

  “Thanks, Lola. Sorry about this.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” she said, squeezing my hand.

  Didn’t I? I’d had the audacity to be happy. People like me weren’t entitled to that anymore. Charlie was wrong. I wiped my eyes. “Do you know where his shoes are?”

  “By the pool I think. God, I don’t even want these people here anymore. I only let them come over because of him.”

  “You want me to help get them out?” Charlie asked her.

  Lola nodded. She held my hand tight a final time. “No one really talks about it—what happened with your dad. Not our really good friends, anyway. And I try to tell him everyone’s family has something. My mom is on her third marriage and heading for a third divorce, for fuck’s sake. We shouldn’t hang out with these people anymore, but he wants their approval so badly for some reason. They’re shitty. And it’s worse because they don’t even know it. Or don’t care. There’s a girl who was laughing at him and making fun of him…and she found out last year that her dad has a whole other family in Texas. She knows how awful it felt when everyone at school was talking about it. She was in there, laughing. Can you believe that?” I could. A lot of human interaction involved other people trying to convince you that your life was more fucked-up than theirs.

  She and Charlie weren’t in the house for very long after they walked away. The music cut off suddenly. I heard him telling everyone it was time to go. Then people were hopping into cars and calling him a narc. Lola came out with Tyler’s belongings. I spied him once when she opened the car door, but I was too hurt or scared or confused to really look at him.

  “You think you’ve got this under control now?” Charlie asked Lola.

  “Yeah.” Then Lola hugged me. “Tell Tyler not to call me for a few days.”

  “Baby…” Charlie said to me after Lola went back inside.

  “I just want to go home,” I replied, and without another word he got behind the wheel. His eyes were on me my entire walk to the passenger side. The anger in his gaze made me shrink in the seat. I rubbed my palms together until they burned. My mouth was so dry and scratchy. A distant itchiness coiled under my skin.

  “If a guy did that to either one of my sisters, I’d be in handcuffs right now.” Charlie was trembling when he started the car, his arm muscles twitching from his squeeze on the steering wheel.

  “I hit him, didn’t I? I probably don’t have friends anymore.”

  “Friends? Those people aren’t your goddamn friends. Anyone who would fuck with you over something that painful is trying to hurt you. And whether a gang of douchebags likes you is the least of your fucking problems right now. I’m talking about what you just did. I would’ve beaten the shit out of any guy who screamed in my sisters’ faces like that.” He let out a flat laugh. “He would have a lasting memory of the consequences of fucking with what’s mine. And I’ve never even hit anyone before. I would that day, though.”

  Charlie skipped to my favorite Kings of Leon song from the first album and touched my knee. He left his hand there, squeezed over and over. He always did that when we were in the car together. When it was quiet. When we didn’t have to talk. When we knew everything already.

  I started to sob.

  His palm slammed the wheel. “Please appreciate your luck, because I want to fucking hurt you so badly right now, Tyler.” In the periphery of my teary vision I saw Charlie’s head turn to me.

  “Charlie—”

  “Nik—”

  “She’s not a fucking saint.”

  “I’ve known about Camryn and your dad since the day we met, smart ass. She didn’t hide that shit from me.”

  “Oh yeah? She left Dad at the accident scene. At the fucking accident scene. Did she tell you that?” Tyler said with spite. “Her own father.”

  My stomach plummeted. Burning bile filled my mouth. “I had to go get him help. I couldn’t find my phone. The car was just…it was scrap metal around us. I didn’t—”

  “You don’t have to explain a goddamn thing to me,” Charlie said.

  I grabbed his arm. I think I clawed it. “I was confused. I tried to wake Dad but I couldn’t. His leg…oh God, his entire body. It looked so bad, and he needed help. I was in some pain. I think I hit my head on the window.” I needed to get out of this car. The seat was uncomfortable. It was too hot. I was choking. I pulled the seatbelt away from my body. I just wanted air.

  Out. I wanted fucking out.

  Tyler laughed. “Cut the shit. The airbag scraped her nose and she got a seatbelt burn and a fat lip. That was it.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Tyler,” Charlie said. The car jerked forward. His grip on the steering wheel could’ve crushed it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to stop shaking. I wanted to explain. To Charlie. I wanted his compassion again. “My head was hurting. I was afraid I would pass out. I wanted to find someone for Dad.”

  “Yeah…but he lost his leg anyway. So you fucked that whole ‘getting him help’ thing up, didn’t you?” Tyler pulled himself forward with Charlie’s seat. Spittle flew onto the dash. “Did she tell you that our dad had massive internal injuries, too? He was embedded in the fucking dashboard. If the fucking ambulance hadn’t gotten there when it did, our mom would be a widow and she’d be a murderer.”

  “Tyler…stop!” Charlie yelled. “Stop talking right now!”

  “He was recovering from those injuries for months and months. He kept getting infections. He almost died. Every single bad thing that has happened to our family since that day is because of her. She fucked everything up.”

  His words wrung my insides then tore them out. I willed Charlie to look at me. I almost begged. Except I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. And I wanted to not exist.

  “And you’re a fucking eggshell, so no one can talk to you because you’re so fucking weak that you might just go get drunk and almost kill someone else. You know what I said during therapy? You wanted to know so badly, right? I told her I fucking hate you, Nikki.” His breath hit my ear. “I fucking hate you. We all do.”

  Charlie swerved us out of our lane, took an exit, and pulled into a grocery store parking lot right off the highway. With the car engine still running, he got out and dragged my brother to the ground. My trembling hands clicked the window control twice by accident before I managed to hit the unlock button, swing my door open, and get out.

  I was sweating sheets; my dress was pressed to me like another layer of skin. A drumming started in my head. Then an ache moved into my arms. It would go away if I had one drink, thou
gh.

  One sip from a cold glass.

  One.

  One.

  Just one.

  I fished a twenty from my wallet. The grocery store glowed like a beacon as I walked toward it. Yes…I could get a small bottle here. It wouldn’t be hard liquor. That was always my problem. I’d settle for a wine cooler. Middle schoolers drank that. Anything I could fit inside my purse. Then I’d be patient in the car. I’d waited two years. I could wait fifteen more minutes.

  With each step toward the supermarket, the pain was lifting, and God, the thrill replacing it was exhilarating. In my head I practiced telling Charlie I was all right, for when he asked. At home, I would down whatever I bought quickly in the bathroom and brush my teeth right away. Maybe take a shower. Charlie would never see. Just one drink to get me over and through tonight. Then sobriety again tomorrow. That was all I had to do. I’d control it. Wasn’t this really what I had been working toward? Drinking again but managing it? Or hiding it better?

  Almost there.

  “Baby! Nik!” Charlie called out. The sound of his footsteps got heavier. No! No! No! “Where you going?”

  I slowed my steps until he caught up to me. “To get water. My throat really hurts.” I looked at the grocery store, disappointment expanding in my chest.

  “I can get you some. Wait here. I was gonna get some for Tyler. Are you okay?” Charlie folded his arms around me. Sometimes his hugs really hurt but I always wanted them. “I just couldn’t drive anymore with him saying those things to you. Does he do that a lot? Talk to you that way?”

  “No. He never has.” I had more to say: Our family was exactly like yours. Tyler used to be one of my best friends. Please keep seeing all the good in me. Please don’t stop loving me.

  “Stay out here. I’ll be right back.” As he turned to go, his smile was kind, but the undercurrent of anger in it shook me. I brushed my hand over my mouth. My palms were clammy, and my face was drenched. I paced out front, tempted to see if I could beat him to one of the registers inside.