by L. Jayne
Every now and then, I’d fall asleep in either the middle of Civics or late into the evening and later, get dead beat when I was awake. My self-screwing is inescapable.
I muffle my slight moan with my arm as the alarm clock goes off the second time in the morning. I swear under my breath and roll off the bed, hitting my hipbone on the bedpost as I get up. I wince, hobbling to the door, pulling a crinkly blue shirt over my head, my dark hair sticking to the cotton in a static electric mess. In the bathroom mirror, I look like shit. My eyes look bloodshot green from the lack of sleep caused by the blow-out party last night. I vaguely remember the laughing girls pressing up against me, the cloying perfume clinging to them, the black smell of barbecue and smoke, jarring laughter and flashing lights.
I stumble down the long winding stairs, in a half-drunken stupor and enter the kitchen, coming face to face with my adoptive dad. “Don’t think I’ll let you go so easily,” he says sharply, turning his judgemental eyes on me. “I just got a call that you got into a fight with Kingsley’s kid yesterday. He was supposed to go to a football tournament today but he had to cancel because he ended up with a mild concussion.”
“Oh, really?” I say sardonically as I settle down at the huge oak table, shaking cereal into my bowl and watching his face grow increasingly red.
“You better watch it,” he replies menacingly, pointing a finger at me. “We’ve tolerated enough--”
I cut him off, standing up so abruptly that my chair bangs to the ground. “You’re not my fucking father. So don’t try to control me.”
“That’s it.” He stops and slams his hand on the table in rage, making the crystal glasses shake. Just then, my adoptive mother walks into the room wearing a robe with fuzzy slippers and stops once she sees us.
“Greg? What’s going on?” She asks, a crease between her brows. “Look--”
“See? This is what you get for agreeing to raise a baby we didn’t even know,” he says angrily to her, cutting her off.
“Wasn’t he one of your colleague’s sons?” She objects, her eyes thin when she glances at me.
“I thought we were being kind for taking him in but now look at what our kindness has done,” he spits, his eyes brutal. “Wasted!”
They’re talking about me as if I’m a dog that hasn’t been trained properly. Rage simmers under me and I want to break things. A lot of things. I take a couple of plates and smash them to the floor, hearing the satisfying cracks as they hit the tiled floor. My adoptive mom gasps audibly and a dead silence follows.
“Little bastard!” My adoptive dad snarls and he raises a hand as if to hit me.
“Go ahead, punch me,” I say, gritting my teeth, daring him.
For a while, he looks like he wants to kill me but he doesn’t do anything. Finally, he just sets it down and growls, “You’re grounded.”
I almost want to laugh. “Yeah, sure.”
I’m just like my biological dad. Doing, doing, and still not being enough. I’ve never known him but I heard stories about him. My real mom would rage on about him while she was drunk when I was five. To her, I was the “bastard child,” a kid that she didn’t want to have but gave birth to anyway. She knew that I would grow up to be my dad.
And I did. I ditched classes, got drunk, went to night bars with fake I.D., slept around, and the typical shit.
I’m spinning downwards like a drain.
The sad thing is that I don’t give a shit.
I pick up my jacket and sling it over my shoulder, heading for the door.
“Where are you going?” My adoptive dad yells. “Come back here!”
“Well, I don’t answer to you,” I answer crisply and open the door.
“Don’t you go out that door!” He shouts angrily behind me. “I’m still talking!”
Without another glance, I grab my Cadillac car keys before going out, letting the front door slam hard behind me.
Ψ Ψ Ψ
AVENA
After school finished and I felt like the entire day was drowning me in exhaustion, I took the car to Verona Shores, a private coastline beach on the side of a few enclosed houses on a cul-de-sac. As soon as the car is parked on the side, I take off my shoes and my toes curl into the soft, chilly sand. I’m glad that there’s not a person in sight because I feel the need to be alone. The feeling of the freezing cold water calms me as I dip my fingers into the pool, making a slight ripple. I’m by the seashore, tasting the familiar breeze. The stretch of sand and the fields of long grass seem infinite. The gray rocks guard the shoreline, grazed and scored by the roiling waves.
I lean back on the sand, tucking my chin on my knees, staring out at the expansive shimmering lake. Seagulls crow down at me, gliding lazily above my head. I toss them a few of my half-eaten crackers and they swarm over to fight for the crumbs. The red-golden setting sun’s beams hit the crashing waves just right and I tilt my head under the syrupy rays. This is my getaway place. The place I want to go when I feel like I want to just laze under the sun and feel all the weight on my shoulders being melted away.
The silence seems almost trancelike now, making me feel like I’m the only person alive at this hour.
All of a sudden, I just want to cry. This used to be her special place too. Ever since I was ten, we’d come up here and pick out seashells together. She’d teach me what stone was what and we’d collect a bunch of different rocks to carry home. On one warm summer day, we’d built this huge sandcastle with its own moat, stairs and towers. When I came back to admire it the next day, it was gone.
“The waves must’ve gotten it,” Mom said, gently combing my hair with her fingers.
“They stole it?” I was indignant and even then, I was a stubborn ten year old. “Well, I want it back!”
She laughed. “No, the tides come in the night time and the castle probably collapsed.” She sighed and shook her head derisively, the laughter draining from her eyes. “Like they say, good things never seem to last, do they?”
I held on to her hand, my eyes taking in the spot where our sandcastle once was.
I close my eyes against that memory, its end stinging me. The hole that I’ve been trying to escape from threatens to consume me again. Bottomless, dark. I’m scrambling to fill it with everything I had, it still devouring its way through me.
Unable to take it anymore, I spring up, eyes soaring open. I roll my pants up to my knees and weave through the tides into the water. The sea wind blows my hair back and I like the free feeling that runs into my blood. I spread my arms out, lifting myself to the wide open lake.
The waves splash over me, withdrawing, and coming back at me full-force. All of my emotions boil to the surface, all the confusion, anger, and sadness hitting me, almost knocking me over, and leaving me breathless.
Caught up in the feeling, I spin around and around in the lake, the water swirling around me like a mini whirlpool. I keep on going around in circles, breathing in the salty air, feeling a rush so powerful.
When I stop, the dizziness catches up with me and I blink once, twice. The water seems to dancing below me, spinning on its own, out of control.
Just like everything else.
Then I hear my name being called.
Squinting in the sunshine, I see a silhouette coming towards me.
“Avena?”
With a startled noise, I realize that it’s Adrian, his hair windblown, jacket open, coming down the shoreline. He’s wearing a pale blue button-down and ripped denim, padding barefoot on the sand. His eyes are wary.
“What are you doing here?” I say, shocked that he’s here. He was absent in school today and I had wondered for a second where he went.
“That’s for you to guess,” he answers, raising an eyebrow.
I shake my head, ambling back to the water’s edge. “So here’s the place you go to as well, huh?”
“What are you talking about?” He sits down on the sand, lighting a cigarette.
Hesitantly, I sit beside him, meeting his u
nbarring gaze.
I realize that this is the first time we’ve been together without mocking or insulting the other. We sit in quietness for a moment, both of us having nothing to say to each other for once. I remember all those times we’ve fought, the bitter and angry feelings I had after a conversation. We were always caught up in a storm. Right now, it seemed like all of that had been erased.
He stares straight ahead, inhaling the smoke. “What are you trying to escape from?”
I don’t answer him for a moment, thinking. Then I say, “The usual. Traffic and loud environments. School. You?”
Adrian nods, his eyes half-lidded. “Probably the same.”
I find that I don’t have anything to say to that.
And as we sit there and look at the same sky, I feel myself crumbling.
chapter six
AVENA
The funeral is scheduled the next day. The car ride to the funeral home with Dad driving was quiet. Unearthly quiet. His hands gripping the steering wheel tight are white and ever so slightly shaking. I put on headphones I’d borrowed from Hayden and try to block out everything else, cranking the music up until the louder, faster, and angrier beat takes control.
A memory of Adrian talking to me that day on the beach floats back to me despite myself. I was ladling sand with my fingers, letting the grains fall through. We were sitting not far apart but not close either, as if there was invisible barrier that separated us.
He finally spoke. “Do you ever feel like you want to just get away from it all?” He suddenly said, his eyes softening as he looked at me.
Somehow, I felt like he wasn’t talking to me, not really, but to himself. There was something in his tone that made the frost around my heart dissolve a bit. But my walls were still in place. “Yeah,” I replied stiffly. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Adrian lay back on the sand, his eyes flickering back to the sky. “I guess we all have something in our lives that we want to erase.”
That flashback fades before my eyes and I settle back into the music playing in my iPod. We get there after an hour of tense silence and I feel thankful to get out of that car. The funeral home is a gray building, surrounded by a few wilting gardens. We make our way through the winding halls until we push through wooden double doors. The side room is filled with Mom’s colleagues in suits and close acquaintances. The wallpaper is a dark mournful blue and the polished wooden pews give me a sense of melancholy. One of her past co-workers rushes up to us and coos phrases of comfort to me, her eyes filled with thinly concealed pity. I push her words away with a sharp smile, looking over to the firmly shut casket in the centre of the room. It’s a night black colour as if all the ravens in the world clustered together to merge as one.
Dad talks to a few families around him and I retreat to a corner to where a couple of cushioned chairs are, watching the room surroundings. I try not to look at anyone because they’re all looking at me and whispering words of pity.
It seems like a century before the funeral director begins and all air is sucked out of the room. He’s a tall and wiry old man, skin pale and there are hollows under his cheeks. His voice is crackly like thin paper. “Mrs. Margaret Rivers lived an incredible life, one that affected all of the people gathered here. She was serene, and giving with her time and love. Today is a sombre day for all of us because such a warm-spirited and strong person had passed away.” He bows his head and everyone else does too.
Dad puts an arm around me and I look at him, blinking away pain. Surrounding people give us sympathetic looks and anger stirs in me. I force my attention back to the speech but the words all blur together. When it ends, we all close our eyes and say the prayer with me barely mumbling. Everyone takes turns paying their respects to Mom lying in her cold, dark coffin. When it’s my turn, I stare blankly at it. I can just imagine the way she looked like in those last seconds. Her closed eyes, lips almost in a smile, numbingly cold hands clasped neatly together. I cover my mouth; make an unintelligible sound and Dad pulls me into him. My vision distorts.
When Dad goes up the dais to talk, I can tell that he’s barely breathing. “Margaret was possibly the best person in this world. She had a warm stance on life and believed that anything was possible. Determined to never give up, she spent years on trying to publish her own novel and her dream has been finally accomplished. She was also such a caring and loving mother and wife, besides being an amazing woman with great strength and a forward look on the future. She didn’t believe in the past, only the now.” And by that time, his deep voice has broken and he’s up there wiping tears off his face with a tissue.
I’m trying hard not to cry. So hard. I’m steady and calm on the surface but inside I’m breaking. The unfeelingness dissipates until the hurting rushes back to me. I look down to see my fists clenched so tightly at my sides that when I uncurl them, red fingernail prints are imprinted on the tender skin.
The ride home is as uncomfortable as the first. I turn the radio on but all I’m greeted with are bubbly pop songs, not the ones that I need. It’s raining heavily, the sky a winter gray above us. I listen to the rhythmic sound of the wipers moving across the watery windshield in front of me. This whole day has been like a hallucination.
Thunder rolls across the sky and it starts raining harder. When I turn to look out the window, I can’t decipher between what is tears and what is rain.
When we’re back at home, the clanking and hitting of pans together in the kitchen make up for the empty silence. I’ve skipped lunch so I’m starving. Dad is chopping lettuce fast and I help him with grating the cheddar. Dad swears suddenly, letting the knife clatter to the sink.
He nicked his thumb while cutting and blood oozes out of the cut. He clutches his hand with his shirt, still cursing under his breath. Surprised and nervous, I rummage in the drawers for bandages.
Dad’s standing there in the middle of the kitchen, looking down at the tiles. A vein in his forehead pulses. Then he sweeps aside the chopping board, the bowls, and plates on the countertop. I’m too shocked to catch the dinner pieces as they smash to the ground and splinter to ceramic pieces.
A haze goes over his eyes and he slumps to the ground, hiding his face in his hands. His shoulders tremble and sobs come out of him. I don’t know what to do. It’s one thing to cry yourself and another to see your dad cry. I kneel beside him, reaching to pat his shoulder.
“It’s been over a year,” I say in a soft voice. I’m coming close to crossing the invisible line. “We’ve got to let her go and move on with our lives.”
I try to pull him up but he just keeps on kneeling on the ground, weeping. Knowing that I can’t fix this, I leave him there on the kitchen floor and run to my bedroom upstairs, grab the picture of Mom under my bed, hurling myself onto the bed.
Her affectionate smile and sparkling eyes looks back at me. I run my fingers over the wooden frame, wishing that I could just throw this all to the tide. Wishing she is here.
Can’t look at her familiar face anymore, I bury my face into the pillow, starting to get hysterical. I feel like I can’t breathe, all my sobs are choked in my throat. I can’t feel anything, like my body is numb. Memories of her are eating greedily at me. Like the time I hit my head hard in the mirror when I was six when I thought that it was a time portal to another world. A jagged cut ran along my forehead and bits of glass were embedded in the skin.
Mom looked terrified when she found me crying loudly on the floor. “Oh, Avena, what did you do?” Mom said, wrapping bandages all over my head, tsking. “Silly child!”
Tears ran out of my eyes as I wailed. “It hurts!”
“It’ll all be better soon.” She brushed my hair out of my eyes and kissed me tenderly on the forehead. “I swear it, okay?”
“What about the next time I get hurt again?” I asked petulantly.
“I’ll make the pain go away.”
The flashback fades and I scream hoarsely, pressing my hands to my ears. “The pain is not going away!” I yell
feverishly, weeping uncontrollably. “You said you’ll be here for me when it hurts!”
Silent sobs send quivers through my body. I gasp for air, needing some kind of escape. I grab the end of the picture frame and fling it hard to the opposite wall. The glass breaks and shatters into little pieces on the floor like my heart.
Ψ Ψ Ψ
Going back to school on Monday is almost impossible. I feel like an undead zombie as I trudge through the busy hallway. Even though there are so many bodies passing around me, I feel as lonely and lost as ever. My stomach feels sour and twisted. Whispers skitter in the room as I enter into calculus and settle myself into my seat in the far back, trying hard not to just break down in front of the entire rapt audience.
“So what’s up with the shitty mopey face?”
I look up to see Adrian and the memory of him sitting beside me on the beach the other day intrudes my mind. We’d sat there almost for the entire afternoon, feeding the seagulls and watching the sun move down the horizon. All that earlier kind of vulnerability has vanished and in its place is the usual cockiness. If he’s going to act like that day never happened, two can play at that game.
I dump my textbooks onto the desk, jarring him with the loud thud. “That’s none of your business.”
He shrugs. “Jesus. Just wondering. You’re pretty unexpected, you know. Going from being this let’s-all-hate-on-Adrian chick into this incapacitated lobotomy patient in less than two weeks.”
I sneer but he ignores me. I realize that this is what I need, diversion. I want him to argue with me. I need something other than this pit of grief in my stomach and overwhelming bitterness. Gripping the side of the table, I turn to look at him. “So does this mean you’ve acknowledged the fact that you almost jammed your disgusting tongue down my throat that day?”
“Hey.” Adrian shrugs. “You were there; I was there, my frustration overflowed. It just happened. And it wasn’t like you didn’t respond.”
