“I don’t want to argue with you about this, okay? Please just stay out of it.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I insisted. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
She groaned and tilted her head back. “I’m so sick of you trying to tell me what the hell to do. Why don’t you let me make my own decisions for once?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing,” she said, looking straight at me. “I haven’t forgiven him. So let’s just stop talking about it.”
“Fine, have it your way,” I muttered, pushing myself up from her bed. “But don’t think I won’t say I told you so when this shit happens again.”
Her voice lowered. “Maybe I need to see for myself. Maybe I need to make my own decisions and let someone else help me with my problems.”
I smacked my chest. “And why the hell can’t that be me? We’re friends, Tessa. I’m your friend who’s there for you and you’re running away from me and into his arms.”
“You can’t help me because you are the one who made me this way!” she screeched.
I stumbled back. “What?”
Her lower lip began to quiver. “If you would’ve just let me do what I wanted that day, I wouldn’t be going through this.”
“What are you trying to say?” I asked, my stomach cramping. “Please tell me you’re not pissed at me because I wouldn’t let you go out and get yourself killed. You think I would let you walk into a death trap?”
She shrugged. “I think you should’ve let me decide what I wanted.”
I ran my hands over my face in frustration. “You want to be dead? Is that what you’re telling me?”
She looked away from me and at the comforter on her bed. “Most of the time, yeah. I wish I was with him.”
What the fuck? I walked the few steps to her and leaned down so our faces were directly across from each other. “If you’re feeling like that, you need to talk to someone. Drinking and partying with that guy isn’t going to help. You need to talk to your parents, and you need to go talk to a therapist or something.”
Her light blues eyes narrowed my way and almost turned to ice. “Just because I say I feel that way doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it. I just don’t feel good right now, and at times, yes, I wish I was with him.” I moved to sit back down beside her, but she stopped me. “I’m not in the mood. I’m rambling because I don’t feel good. I think it’s normal to feel like you want to be with them at times, and I just miss him today.”
“Babe,” I said softly, slowly rubbing my hand over her arm, but she pulled back.
Her eyes slammed shut. “Please, just go. I’m not in the mood, and you promised Derrick you’d hang out with him.”
I wanted to stay with her. I wanted her to confide in me. She didn’t want that unless she had all of me, and I couldn’t give her that.
“Okay,” I said. “If you need me, call.”
She looked away from me, and it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. She was no longer Tessa, and I wasn’t sure who the new one was or what the stranger across from me was thinking.
We’d moved to Indiana to be closer to my father, but it was still a forty-five minute drive to get to him. He was in the middle of nowhere, and my mom had to be able to get back and forth to her job without paying a fortune in gas. I’d only visited him three times in the five years he’d been there, and my mom had forced each miserable occasion.
I drove across railroad tracks, and the large, brooding building came into view. Two tall guard towers were in the middle of a barbwire-fenced yard that led away from the long, brick building. “I hate this damn place,” I muttered to myself as I pulled into the eerie parking lot.
I slid my phone into my pocket, got out of my truck, and headed toward the entrance. My mom had threatened to kick me out over him before, but I wasn’t sure if she’d actually go through with it. Deep down, I was scared to find out. The thought of her doing it made me physically ill, not because I’d be homeless, but because that meant she chose him over me. That would hurt more than anything.
I walked through the front entrance, landing in a frigid room, and noticed the place was empty except for two guards standing to the side, and a correctional officer sitting behind a desk. I stalked to the front counter, and the woman looked up at me.
“Driver’s license,” she said quickly. I pulled it out from my wallet and handed it over to her as I signed my name on the sheet in front of me. “You’re here early,” she commented, punching her fingers across the keyboard to the computer in front of her. I always came early to avoid waiting on rotations. The earlier I got in, the quicker I’d get out. She handed me back my driver’s license. “We’ll call for you when we’re ready.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled, pulling out two quarters from my pocket, and turned around to the row of lockers perched against the wall. I opened one up, listened to my loose change, phone, and keys rattle as they hit the metal, and slammed it shut. Taking a seat in a cold, plastic chair, I shut my eyes and took in a deep breath. He wanted something. I was sure of it. I was only summoned when he needed something from me. And I hated doing anything for this selfish asshole. I stared straight ahead, reading the poster of approved items to bring in with you, as people began to trickle in.
“Thomas,” an officer called out, and I lifted myself out of the chair. I walked up to him, stopping at a taped line, as he read off more names from a list and a line formed behind me. I grabbed a large, plastic container, slid my belt out from my jeans, and tossed it inside. Sliding my shoes off, I dumped those in and watched it streamline on the conveyer belt through an x-ray machine. I moved my sock-covered feet through the metal detector, and a guard was waiting to pat me down.
“Good to go,” he said, and I grabbed my belt and shoes. I was led into a smaller room as the people behind me began to crowd in. The automatic doors shut as the guard gave another “all clear.” The door on the opposite side opened, and I walked into a large room packed with inmates sitting at small tables, waiting anxiously. I led the line, walking to a counter in the front of the room, and telling them my name. A woman scanned the sheet in front of her and pointed to him. I turned around, my muscles tightening, and he had the nerve to smile and wave. Fucking asshole.
Fluorescent lights hummed and flickered above me as I made my way to him. I took in the pungent smell of bleach and what smelled like sewer water as I took each dreaded step. I watched people greeting their loved ones, giving them hugs, and some tears being shed. I didn’t want anything like that with him.
“Nice of you to finally visit your old man,” he greeted, standing up and slapping me on the back in a half-way-hug kind of way. I didn’t hug him back. I just took a step back, pulled out a chair and sat down.
“I’ve been busy,” I said. It had been a year since I’d seen him, but his age was beginning to take a toll on him. He’d cut off his long beard, now having just a small goatee. His blonde hair was shorter, his hairline beginning to recede, and pulled into a small ponytail in the back. Wrinkles crisscrossed each other like cracks along his face.
He rubbed his calloused hands across his goatee. “Your mom said you’ve been going through some shit. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’ve been going through it for four months,” I bit out. I wasn’t buying the sympathy bullshit.
“I understand. I’ve tried getting you to come see me, but your mom keeps saying you’re busy. I’m glad you finally came.”
“It hasn’t been easy.” I looked down at the table and played with my hands in front of me. This wasn’t supposed to be some father-son bonding time. I wanted to get to the reason why he wanted me here so I could leave.
“Son, as you get older, it gets easier.”
I looked up at him. “What does?”
“Losing people. This is the first person close to you to die. This is your first friend to lose, but it won’t be your last. I can promise you that. As the years go by, it will happ
en again. And again.” I shivered, not wanting to think about anyone else I cared about dying. I couldn’t lose anyone else.
“Your world is different than mine.” My friends weren’t in prison or out committing federal crimes.
He gave me a cruel, condescending laugh. “Only one world, and we’re all livin’ in it. Ain’t nothing different, just different perspectives, but in the same world. I bet you didn’t think your friend with the loaded parents would be dead, given that he was squeaky clean and stayed out of trouble, but it happened. There aren’t separate worlds for good and bad people. We don’t live in a place where Heaven and Hell are separated. That’s only when we die. Until then, we’re all stuck in this shit hole together; the good, the bad, the ugly, and the evil.” He had a point. His bad decisions affected the good, the bad, and the innocent. He’d killed a man, took him away from his wife and kids, because he was a coward. He took a life because he was too lazy to go out and find a job. He wanted the easy way out and now he was sitting in prison for it.
“What do you want?” I asked. I knew he didn’t want me here to talk about my loss. The man didn’t have one empathetic bone in his body.
“I have a parole hearing coming up.”
I threw my hand up. “And there it is. You could’ve saved both of our time by being upfront with me or just giving me a phone call.”
He leaned forward, lacing his hands together, and setting them on the table. “I need you to speak on my behalf. Vouch for me.”
“Vouch for you?” There was nothing to vouch for him about. What he’d done was black and white. The evidence was so strong he took the plea, or he knew he would be facing a lot more time than eight years. He’d ruined a family. He didn’t deserve to walk free after only serving five.
“I need you to tell them how much you need your dad right now. You’re a survivor from a tragic school shooting, and you’re taking it hard. You need your old man by your side to help you get through it. I’ve been on good behavior, and with you and your mom’s statement, I could be out of this shit hole soon.”
He was using my loss as his advantage. He’d never change. “So you want me to lie?” I knew if he got out, he wouldn’t stay around long. He’d use my mom until we were broke and run off to do more stupid shit.
He grimaced. “I’ve done my time, I’ve paid my dues.”
“You paid your dues? How do you pay your dues for what you did?” I asked, my voice getting louder and harsher, causing a few people to look our way. “You can’t bring someone back to life.”
“You know that was an accident.”
I scoffed. “What, you tripped, fell, and the trigger pulled while you were in the middle of robbing a bank?”
“The cameras showed it was an accident. That’s why I got manslaughter. I didn’t go in there with the intention of killing anyone. He was fighting me for my gun, and it fired.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been robbing a bank in the first place, and none of this would’ve happened.”
“I was trying to provide for our family.”
“Spare me the bullshit lies, you didn’t provide shit for us. Mom did. Everything you did, you did for yourself. We never got a dime from you.”
He shuffled his hands through his hair in frustration. “You’re a good boy. I can see it just by looking at you and from what your mom says. Not sure how you turned out that way ‘cause of the way I am, but I like that you are.”
I was his perfect pawn. “I stay out of trouble because I have to take care of us, you know … the family you bailed on.”
“You can hate me all you want, but I’m still your father, your blood. You need to respect and look out for your family. The hearing is in a few months, I’ll keep you updated.”
I felt my veins straining against my skin. “We finished here?”
“Your mom said you haven’t opened any of my letters.”
“You’ve sent me two, Dad. Two in five years.”
He winced at the truth. “Read them.”
“Kiss my ass. I’ve gotta go.” I started to get up, but his hand shot out to stop me.
“We still have thirty minutes,” he said, turning around to look at the clock on the wall.
“I’ve got homework.”
He nodded, fully aware I was blowing him off, but choosing not to say anything. “All right. I love you. Come visit me, again.”
“Yeah sure,” I grumbled and walked away.
Tessa
“Babe,” Reese said, looking down at me and stroking my chin. “You’ve been quiet as hell all day. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
The couch cushion caved in as he fell down next to me. He stretched his arm out and drug the small coffee table across a thin, washed-out blue rug. I couldn’t quite distinguish the exact color because multiple stains covered the fabric. He stopped when it was close enough, stretched his legs, and propped his feet up on the table.
I wasn’t sure how to describe my relationship with Reese. Things were growing. We were spending the all of our free time together, and he sat with me at lunch everyday. He called me every night we weren’t hanging out to tell me sweet dreams. He’d also apologized about the bonfire disaster, telling me he only acted that way because he was drunk and pissed off that I was leaving with Dawson. He felt like I was cheating on him. I’d fired back with what he’d said about hooking up with other girls, but he insisted that he was lying because he was pissed. He swore he went home alone after I left. I believed him. Or at least I forced myself to believe him. But deep down, I wasn’t sure if I could trust him.
He’d fulfilled his promise of making me immune to the pain beating through my body, pulsating through my veins, and bleeding through my skin. He was taking me to parties, leading me into the world of alcohol and other things, until I felt it fade away. The pain had stopped and the blood was dried. Every ounce of torment had drifted away from my body. And I liked that. It helped. Until the feeling came back, and I’d run to Reese for another hit. I was latching onto him. I knew what I was doing was only a temporary fix, a Band-Aid covering my wound, giving me momentary relief to my agony. It wasn’t going to last forever. I knew eventually that bandages would strip away, and my lesions would be bared again, but I didn’t want to think about that day.
“My friend left,” I replied, eyeing the clear, plastic baggie he pulled from his pocket.
“What friend?” he asked, setting the baggie on the edge of the table and pulling a tattered magazine from the other side. He positioned the magazine on the table and set the baggie down on top of it.
“Daisy,” I answered.
He nodded in recognition. “Ah, the weird mute one.”
He’d met Daisy a few times when she’d actually shown up to school. She’d sit with me silently for a few minutes before saying she had to go and ditching me again. Reese said ‘hi’ to her every single time. She’d grimaced, and not said anything back, like he was carrying some contagious, life-threatening disease.
“She’s not weird,” I argued. I’d let him call her a mute because that wasn’t necessarily a lie. But I was the only one who was allowed to call her weird. No one else was allowed to insult her.
He shrugged and pulled out two, long white pills from the bag and began breaking them with his fingernails. I felt my mouth immediately go dry when he fished out a lighter and some type of membership card from his pocket next. He pushed his thick thumb against the release on the lighter a few times until a faint flame came through the metal. His focus stayed on the pills, heating them up, and crushing them up with the card.
“I think she’s scared of me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders like the fact he was crushing up pills was normal.
“She acts like that towards everyone.” I missed my best friend. I missed her so much. She used to be so full of life, and now all of that energy had been sucked out of her.
“Be right back,” he muttered, setting the magazine down and walking into the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulders,
watching him shuffle through drawers in the tiny space, before turning my attention ahead, and taking a hard look at the crushed up substance on the magazine.
I jumped back when he sat down with a straw in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. “Where’d she go?” he asked, using the card to create a line before sticking the straw at the end of it and sliding it across the table as he snorted it up his nose.
I gulped and ran my hand over my own nose. That’s one thing I’d never tried with him. I’d drunk with him, smoked a few joints with him, and popped a few pills he’d given me, but I’d never snorted anything.
“Atlanta, I guess. She has an aunt who lives there,” I replied. Her mom had called me, telling me her dad said it was either she had to stop skipping school or he was sending her to live with her aunt. Daisy chose her aunt and left a few days later.
He finished the line, pulling at his nostrils, before breathing in hard and shaking his head. The first time I watched Reese snort pills was a few weeks ago at a party with Bobby. I was shocked, but the more he did it, the more I grew used to it. It still made me sick to my stomach, but each time it grew more familiar and made me more intrigued. He’d offered it to me once, but I’d declined, and he’d never brought it up again. At times, I wish he would’ve. I looked down at the magazine, noticing a few grains he’d missed, and wondered what it felt like doing it. He acted like he was at the top of the world when he was high. But I was too afraid to ask.
“She didn’t even tell me she was leaving. Her mom did,” I added. That’s what hurt me the most. I got nothing from her. No warning, no call, no text, nothing. It was like I didn’t matter to her anymore.
He pulled a rolled up joint from his ear and lit it up. He dragged it to his mouth, taking a large hit until the tip turned bright orange, and let out a cloud of smoke. “That was a pretty fucking bitchy thing to do. Atlanta sucks ass, babe, so she’ll regret that shit. I went there for a buddy’s show last year. Too many fucking people. Too much fucking traffic.” He took another hit and bent his wrist my way.
Revive Me Page 9
