The Scars That Made Us

by Inda Herwood

  Her pinched face takes on a nearly panicked look, the lines around her eyes puckering at my refusal to take the physical manifestation of their future for me. “Please, take it. Just –” Hearing the instability in her voice, she quickly schools her features again, that fake smile she gives her high society friends aimed at me now. She always acts like there are people watching – just waiting for her to trip up and act less than perfect. Even around me, a girl who doesn’t give a damn about where she bought her shoes from.

  “Honey, this is important. Whether you choose to do this or not, you need to know all the details before making your decision. All I’m asking is that you look through it, see what you think of him. I’m not asking for an answer, just that you’ll try.” Once again, she’s pushing the file towards me, practically begging for me to take it. My mother never begs. She never has to. Just the fact that she’s acting so…off, has me taking the thing from her, if only to stop this alien version of my mother from continuing further.

  Staring down at the thin file, I’m slightly baffled but not surprised. Though I figured they had picked someone out already, I had no idea they would have an entire file on him, or the revelation that they would allow me to look through it.

  Still staring at it, I ask, “What kind of process did you go through to find him? DesperateandAlone.com?”

  “Oh, Cyvil.” Her voice sounds disappointed. She’s never cared for my sarcasm. “You know your father and I are only looking out for you. We just don’t want to see you live a lonely life. I hope one day you’ll realize our intentions have been nothing but pure.” Standing up suddenly, like she forgot she has somewhere to be, which she probably does, she carefully smooths away the non-existent wrinkles from her Gucci skirt, walking towards the door again. Turning around before she shuts it, she says, eyes earnest, “I love you, honey. And one day, I know the man in that folder could too.”

  The door closes, not making a sound.

  I would almost prefer she had slammed it.

  Letting out a frustrated breath, I ask myself, why doesn’t she get it? How does she not understand how ridiculous this is, how wrong it is? As a fellow woman, you would think she’d be against another female’s choice being taken away. But apparently, she hasn’t heard of a little thing called modernism.

  Grumbling to myself in the quiet room, I stand up and walk over to the window, sweeping back the curtain blocking out all the light. The sun is blinding at first, painful after living so many days in the dark. But it makes me realize something: my mother was right. I need all the details, even if they have no chance of changing my mind whatsoever.

  I also want to know what kind of man would agree to marrying a complete stranger.

  Hating myself for being so curious, I let the folder fall in my lap again, the thing staring back at me like it knows my need to see its contents. Sensing my unease, Grim jumps up onto the window seat with me, laying her warm body over my feet as her little tail compulsively twitches from side to side. I smile at her, letting my hand itch behind her right ear, her favorite spot. “Should I open it, Grim?”

  Her response is to rest her head on my legs, settling in for a long nap.

  Okay, so that’s one vote for snooping.

  Breathing a weighted, guilty breath, I let my finger trail along the edge of the dark green folder, feeling like if I open it, then I’m sealing my fate. I’m following along with this horrible scheme, a puppet for my parents to dance around and do their will. But my mother said none of it was final. All she wanted to do was give me some extra information to help me out. It’s not like I’m signing on the dotted line or anything. This is just…research.

  Grim swishes her tail a bit more forcefully as I think it over, the force of it sweeping the cover open to expose the file’s keepsake. I give her a raised brow. Her response is a careless look of her own. Looks like she’s going to make the decision for me.

  “Fine. But only because you made me,” I mutter at her as I look down at the crisp piece of copier paper staring up at me.

  In the corner of the paper listing his resume and hobbies, is a small, wallet-sized picture of this supposed Jagger Jenson Wells, aged twenty-two years and five months. The photograph looks like the kind you would find in a passport, very mugshotty. I huff a sarcastic laugh, thinking of my parents having to find a parolee to marry me. I wouldn’t even be surprised. They certainly seem that desperate to get rid of me.

  I have to admit, even with the bad lighting and the poor angle of the shot, he isn’t hard to look at. With black hair and dark steel eyes, a jawline that could cut Mount Rushmore in half, and a dangerous edge in his grin, he’s definitely a looker. My father could have done worse. Much worse.

  Dragging my eyes away from his, I skim down the paper, seeing that he graduated last year from Stanford with a degree in economics. I tilt my head at this. He certainly doesn’t look like the math sort, or even the college sort for that matter. I dart back to his picture. With that leather jacket just barely creeping into the frame, and that womanizing tilt to his eyes, I remain slightly doubtful. If my cynical deductions are correct, I would guess that his parents told him to get a degree or else. In way of our families demanding our futures, we are similar.

  Other than that, though, I can’t find a single thing we have in common.

  It says he owns a motorcycle.

  I hate two wheeled death machines.

  Apparently one of his hobbies is car racing.

  Seriously?

  He owns an apartment in New York City, but it doesn’t say where exactly.

  I hate noise.

  Everywhere I look I’m seeing an extrovert that loves attention, money, and girls. Lots of them. I doubt my father took notice, but in the extra pictures of Jagger tucked into the back of the file, there’s a female arm, leg, hand, or half a head in every shot, usually with him looking down at someone with a dancing smile on his lips.

  Great, so my father picked out a player for me to marry. A man that has his own reasons for going along with this plan to marry a girl he doesn’t even know, sight unseen. Like I said, I’m sure my father is sweetening the deal with a large check, full of zeroes to get him to do this.

  Another thing that bothers me the longer I look at him?

  He’s too pretty. Too…untouched.

  Standing next to me, everyone would be silently laughing to themselves, seeing the unmatched beauty of us. Him all bronzed skin and symmetrical perfection, and me, well, you know. Not. And yeah, I know what you must be thinking right now. Either the girl has low self-esteem issues, or maybe she’s just extremely self-deprecating about herself, but the truth is, I know how I look. I know what beauty I once had was destroyed as a child, no matter how many plastic surgeons my parents drag me to. It’s a simple fact, one I accepted long ago. And honestly, I don’t care about looks. But on some level, I feel bad for this guy. There aren’t many people who would be fine being attached to someone like me, someone so visibly and not so visibly scarred. He doesn’t even know what he’s getting himself into. In that, I can share some sympathy.

  With the sad thought taking up my mind, I throw the stupid folder on the floor, running my hands over my face, suddenly feeling tired. Not in a physical sense, but in a, my-parents-suck-for-doing-this-to-me, kind of way. I just want to be a normal girl, in a normal household with a mom who cooks and a dad who comes home every night from an honest job and kisses me on the head, asking me how my day was. And I know that sounds ungrateful, considering the plush life I’ve led for so many years. But I would trade it in a second if it meant I wouldn’t have to do this. And by this, I mean give up my choice, my future, my life, all because I was taken when I was seven years old.

  Those people took more than just my beauty that day.

  They took my happiness and hope with them, too.

  -3-

  Awkward

  “So, is he hot?” Atillia asks, hearing what sounds like a cookie being shoved into her mouth over the phone.


  “Your hormones are making you lose IQ points, sister.”

  “He is, isn’t he?” she says with a smile in her voice.

  I feel like doing a face palm, but I’m in the middle of an airport, and I would look pretty stupid if I did. And anyways, I already have enough eyes on me as it is.

  “I can’t even talk to you anymore. It’s like dealing with a teenage girl.”

  “Which you are.”

  “But you aren’t.”

  “You’re stalling. Answer the question.”

  This is the thing about Atillia. She was meant to be a lawyer, which she became, but in college she met Quincy, got married, got pregnant, and then never really got to use her education on the public. And since she has so much of that arguing expertise in her, just begging to be unleashed, I’m usually the target. Which means if I don’t answer her now, she’ll just go on badgering me for another twenty minutes until my plane finally boards.

  With a relinquishing groan, I admit, “Yes, he’s attractive. Too attractive.”

  The line goes silent as a lady in her mid-thirties sits down next to me in the terminal, what I assume is her four or five-year-old daughter resting on her lap. The little girl looks up at me with a bright smile, a doll in her hands, but it quickly dies when she spots the deep scars on my face.

  “How can someone be too attractive? That’s like saying there’s too much chocolate in the world,” Atillia says in the background.

  I try to smile at the young girl who watches me with scared eyes – let her know that I’m not the monster I look. But somehow it backfires, her pupils going wide; her chubby fists balling at her mother’s shirt from my acknowledgment of her.

  I pick up the doll that she dropped and attempt to hand it back to her.

  She screams, then starts crying.

  I feel like joining in.

  As her mother tries to console her, taking the doll from me with an apologetic look, I hastily move to another seat, out of her sight. My heart drops at the thought of her possibly having nightmares because of me.

  “Hello? Are you still there, Cyv?”

  Deep breath. “Yes. Sorry, what was the question?”

  She repeats it for me. I almost wish I hadn’t asked. “You’d know what I mean if you saw him. His name is Jagger Wells.”

  I can almost imagine her ripping her laptop open like a quick draw from a western, her fingers running over the keyboard, googling him for proof. And a minute later, the picture materializes with her whistling appreciatively. “Dayum.”

  I manage a small chuckle, trying to forget the incident from a moment ago. “Don’t forget about that little rock on your left hand, sis.”

  “Hey, just because I’m locked down doesn’t mean I can’t look at the merchandise.” A pause. “Jeez, Dad picked this guy out? He really wanted you to say yes, didn’t he?”

  Just as I’m about to tell her to pick a side in this war, the lady over the sound system says, “Flight 316 for New York is now boarding.” And that’s my cue.

  Grabbing the handle of my bag, I say, “Sorry, Till, I have to go. My flight is about to leave.”

  “Ugh, I hate flying coach,” she complains, another cookie going in. “I know you’re on strike with Mom and Dad, but couldn’t you have fudged your principles just for a couple of hours?”

  No. I couldn’t. Because flying private would have meant being in close enough quarters for Dad to corner me and tell me how I’m ruining my life. For Mom to give me those unreadable looks. For me to have to not punch something while we flew over the Atlantic Ocean, wishing I could open an emergency door and jump out.

  “Unlike some, I don’t mind slumming it,” I tease, knowing she’ll understand that I’m just joking. Kind of.

  “Ha, ha. See ya later, Miss Ungrateful.”

  “Bye, Wide-Load.”

  “You little b–”

  I hang up before she can finish, grinning at the small win.

  ***

  It was an uneventful flight. Thankfully I wasn’t sat next to any children, and the horrors of my life weren’t placed upon innocent eyes. Not to say I don’t get looked at everywhere I go, but scaring children hurts me the most. It’s just a reminder of how easy it is to forget that the world sees me as something less than human.

  Landing in NY much later, I’m met with our family driver, Kendall, outside the airport. We load my minimal amount of luggage, plus Grim, who has been in a carrier crate for far too long, and head home.

  My parents live about thirty minutes outside the city, close enough for Dad to commute, but far enough that it feels like a country setting, free of people, noise, and taxi cabs. Of all our homes, it’s my favorite. Mainly because it’s the least extravagant we own. Sitting on ten acres with a small gazebo and pool out back, the house mimics the Cape Cod style my mother is so fond of. Beautiful Japanese cherry trees blossom in the spring all around the property, their colorful petals lining the driveway and framing the house. The gardeners do an amazing job of keeping up with my mother’s insane flower obsession, her adding another bed every year with the more exotic species she discovers, swamping the border of the shingled house.

  Rolling down the driveway, I can’t see any of it with night having fallen an hour ago.

  Kendall takes me past the main house, lit up in lights, signaling that my parents easily beat me home, and instead drops me off in the back, where the guest house is. What with things being so awkward with my parents right now, I think it a better option than taking up my old room. Less chance of my least favorite conversation topic coming up at the breakfast table.

  “Thanks, Kendall,” I say as he shuts the trunk with a snap, brushing his hands of dust as he faces me with a smile.

  “Any time, Miss Montae. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He returns to the car as I face the dark façade of the guest house, basically a miniature version of the main one my parents share. It has two stories, the upstairs containing a small loft for a chair and side table, the downstairs open concept with white furniture to make the space appear larger. It’s hardly ever used, mostly because the main house has enough spare bedrooms for when guests come over. But right now, I’m very glad of its existence.

  Opening the front door, which is unlocked for some strange reason, I set my bag down on the hardwood floor before opening Grim’s crate, letting her walk into the unfamiliar space to get used to her surroundings. She sniffs the air, her tail quickly jumping from side to side. First thing I’ll have to do is get her water –

  I freeze the minute I catch something out of the corner of my eye, in the living room. With the moonlight just barely creeping through the windows, I turn fully in its direction; the shape not that of furniture, I can tell. Squinting, I can just make out the humanoid figure of someone lying on the couch, their feet extending over the end of the armrest, showing how tall they are. By the size of it I would guess male.

  In an instant my survival training kicks in, not allowing time for fear as my feet quietly take me to the kitchen. I discreetly open the drawer closest to me, taking out the first thing I can find.

  A butcher’s knife.

  My instructor always told me that anything can be a weapon. It’s how you use it that matters. I think he would be pretty happy with my choice.

  Eyes still on the intruder, a flashback suddenly steals my focus for the second it appears. Me in the child-sized chair, the masked woman coming at me with a tiny pocket knife, rusted at the edges. And then the memory is floating away, just there long enough to get my heart racing, to inject me with another dose of adrenaline.

  Phone already dialed to 911, I place it in my pocket as I approach the stranger, possibly to ID him first before I make the call. I keep back a few feet just in case he has a weapon of his own. Just then, Grim takes notice of our unwelcomed guest, her fur rising on end as she bays at him angrily. Apparently, it’s enough to startle him, because he jumps at the noise, his head, which was laying back on the couch, sprin
gs forward. The idiot must have been sleeping.

  Now with him being conscious, there isn’t enough time to call the cops.

  I have to attack.

  And I do, just how Redman taught me.

  My hand lands in a karate chop to his side, hitting him in the ribs as he attempts to stand up. It’s the right move, because it bends him over at the waist, distracting him long enough for me to grab his arm, flipping it unnaturally over his back, careening him to the floor. A pretty crystal vase goes with us, crashing loudly in the dark room. He groans in pain as I use his weight against him and flip him on his stomach, my body locking his hands behind his back, face to the floor. Like a well-oiled machine, my muscles having practiced this move a thousand times, my knife easily fits under his chin in the same motion, my voice guttural when I yell at him, “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Holy –” I hear him say before I’m tightening the knife to his major artery, effectively shutting him up.

  “Can’t,” he gasps, “breathe.”

  Grim at my side, still baying at him like he’s the anti-Christ, I quickly change my stance, flipping him over in one quick maneuver. When his eyes connect with my face for the first time, they widen in shock and a small amount of horror.

  With one hand locking both of his over his head, the other still with the knife to his jugular, I repeat, “Why are you in my house?”

  “Hell, what are you, the Hulk?” He struggles underneath me, trying to move. I give a swift jab of my foot to his shin and it quickly puts a stop to it.

  “Are you incapable of answering a single question? Who are you?”

  As his lips move to answer, the clouds shift outside the window, a stream of moonlight seeping in, washing across the stranger’s face. For the first time, I get a good look at him, and when I do, the knife goes clattering to the floor, Grim skittering away from it.

  With his first breath of air, he coughs, “My name is –”

  “Jagger Wells,” I finish for him, my muscles frozen in place.

  Those smoky gray eyes narrow in confusion, looking even darker than in his pictures. “Wait, how do you know my name?”