September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series

by A. R. Rivera

  This situation leaves me nothing to smile about. I used to think of my nomadic life as a curse, but I would give anything to go back and live there again. To just pick up and go like I used to. If one of my foster parents said I couldn’t do something, I would just wait until they went to sleep, or went off to work. Then I would cut and run: do whatever the hell I wanted for as long as I wanted to. Then it was wasting time in juvenile hall—which was like a freaking vacation compared to some of the places I stayed in—or doing time in a shitty group home until they placed me with another foster family. I was disposable, but so were they. That was my way of dealing: at any moment if things got too heavy, I could always walk away. Life got heavy a lot back then.

  Then, I met Jake. He changed the way I thought about my life and the choices I was making. The way I looked at myself. He saw something in me. He valued me, I know he did. It seeped into every word he said and flowed from his eyes like a great, winding stream. His care was steady and I grew to need it like my next breath.

  I am rotting in this place, decomposing on this thin cotton bunk with its one scratchy blanket and concrete walls—it makes me wish for the one thing I thought I never would. That I had never seen him, never talked to him or heard his voice singing my name. I almost wish I never felt the love he gave and took away. Because being here, knowing all of that is gone is the worst kind of punishment. Being trapped in this place makes even the best, sweetest moments sting with bitter loss.

  +++

  My freshmen year in high school, I learned to speak French in two weeks by reading a French-to-English dictionary that the teacher handed out and forgot it a month later. I took a semester of Spanish and quit because it was too remedial; my brain absorbed everything in the text book before we had our first major test. I’ve retained that easier than the French, but still forgot most of it. I was like that with algebra, too. When I looked at the problems, I knew the answers, but struggled for that A because I didn’t know how I knew the answers and couldn’t show my work on paper. Most times I can look at a puzzle and know how the pieces fit together without having touched a piece. Fat lot of good that’s done me.

  All of that stuff that never mattered, I could perform easily. I can still memorize nearly anything on a page, written words and visual aids, too, but most times, that ability doesn’t apply to names. And sometimes I blank-out on entire conversations. So many times I have been talking with a person, trying to open-up and let them in on my idiosyncrasies, only to have them tell me they already know. I told them just yesterday or a half hour ago, don’t I remember?

  Now, I spend most of my days feeling like a dumbass trapped in a fog.

  But according to my medical records, I was always an extraordinarily intelligent child, speaking in full sentences by age two. I was reading chapter books by age three. I skipped preschool and kindergarten, hopping straight into second grade.

  Then, the accident that did far more than fracture my skull. It took time to heal. By the time I was well enough to return to school, I was the same age as everyone else in my class. And ever since, for as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with recall. How’s that for irony?

  Yet, here I am, six years after the most traumatic night of my life, wishing for the strength to forget, dying to remember, and being asked to give every filthy detail.

  The assholes in overcoats: my lawyer, the lady with the tight hair bun, and the quiet man with the sodas, seem especially interested in the most painful parts.

  As much as I love revisiting the time I spent inside Jakes world, I know that telling these new strangers what happened won’t help anything. It never made a difference before and nothing with me or my case has changed so, I don’t see what’s so unique about right now. But this is how it goes for me: I have to do what they tell me.

  My lawyer showed up at Canyon View a couple months ago, trying to tell me that I had to appear in front of this review board, even though it’s only been a few months since the previous appeal was denied. Obviously, it’s to review my case—like that’s never been done before. But he swears there’s a good reason for it and that it’s in my best interest to play along.

  I don’t know why the state wastes its’ time or money on this shit. No matter what I tell them, no matter how much truth I give them, it can’t make a difference. I am convicted; have been for the past six years. But I still have to talk to them because it’s all about the routine. Making sure every T is crossed so they can pat themselves on the back and say, “We done good.”

  Everything in these places is routine. You wake up every day at the same time and go to bed at the same time. Your meals are all planned out and served up at the same time on the same day of a different week. You wear the same clothes, sleep in the same bed. And if you’re not in your cell when the need strikes, you have to ask to go to the bathroom. They usually make me hold it.

  This routine review comes up every year. It starts with phone calls between doctors and the lawyers. Then, a couple people request my presence at one place or another. They tell me to revisit the places and people I’m dying to forget, but never will. They want to know all about my relationship with Avery—which is stupid because I don’t have one. Then, my lawyer calls again or visits, and he’s always wearing a stupid jacket. Even in August. Then, after a little more time passes, I get a lengthy letter explaining why I don’t matter. They take three pages to say what could easily be summed up in four words: you’re full of shit.

  If the case reviewers do not come to me, I have to go to them. That means waiting for the transfer order to go through, before I get carted off to stand before the next set of judges. Though, there are no robes or gavels in these hearings, there is always judgment and a hefty price for reliving those days.

  This is how it is for me: I am confined by their rules.

  I hate seeing it. Not that I don’t, because I do. Constantly. Vividly. My memories have never stayed shut up in that box. They constantly flail around me, like small birds caught up in a heavy gust of wind. Or dust particles from the musty air vents.

  Every day is the same as the one before, except now, I have to take everything I have internalized and spew about how and why I came to be the monster. A number on a shirt. A problem on a sheet of paper. It’s because my life is fucked beyond belief, because nobody I knew ever really gave a shit, except the people I destroyed, and the ones that destroyed me. Why do they want me to clarify the difference between what was and is when no matter what I say, they tell me it doesn’t matter?

  I meditate on the question, slowly drifting into oblivion.

  + + +

  9

  —Avery

  My right hand glides along the smooth wall of my cell as I pace. It’s already late. The day has completely disappeared. Not that it matters. Every day blends into the next when you’ve got nothing to do. Every moment plays out like the one before. No appointments, no one to talk to, nothing to do or look forward to. Nothing to distinguish Monday from Friday, just a ghostly nothing, no matter the time of day or night.

  Its five long strides from one corner of my box to the other. On the last step, I pivot, snapping back around to walk toward the opposite corner, my left hand now scraping along the dull wall.

  As my body moves back and forth along the wall, I force my mind roll back to another time, another place—a moment when the possibility of ending up in a world like this had never entered my mind . . .

  +++

  It was another shitty Monday. I was strolling into Chemistry, tardy again.

  Ms. Shine looked down over the rims of her glasses and scribbled into the attendance log. Changing the absent A to a T. Not wanting a show, I tossed her an apologetic look and mouthed ‘girl problems,’ while gesturing to my stomach.

  Ms. Shine acknowledged with a slight nod before standing from her desk and calling the class’ attention to the white board where she’d written the assigned reading to prepare for tomorrows’ lab. The class was to commence learning right a
way.

  I sat in my assigned chair at the table I shared with Troy Bleecher. As with most days, he did not acknowledge me. He’d already opened his textbook and was searching for the assigned page.

  I wasn’t usually the one who started our conversations, I left that up to Troy, but that day was different. I needed to talk to him. But no one could ever accuse Troy of making things easy.

  I’m not saying anything, I thought stubbornly, leaning down to unzip my back pack. Glancing up, I saw that he wasn’t facing me. In fact, the way he was turned, it looked like he was concentrating on ignoring me. I took my binder and text book out to begin the reading assignment as the burn of resentment welled up and I decided he could go fuck himself.

  Half way through the second page, Troy had the nerve to lean in. Not much, but just enough for me to know he was going to speak.

  “Why did you bother telling me if you weren’t going to let me do anything about it?” His voice was so quiet, I could barely hear.

  I didn’t turn, but effectively glared from the corner of my eye. “Your doing is the reason I’m in this situation. How’s your girlfriend?”

  Troy had been dating this bitch named Rosa on and off since the previous summer. I suspected, from a fight that had taken place in the girls bathroom earlier that day that Rosa was trying to use Angel to get to me, and from the blank look on Troy’s face, I knew the rumors were true: they were back on.

  “Good news travels fast.” His tone was flat, barely audible.

  I cast a quick glance at Ms. Shine before drawing my loaded gaze back to Troy. “Why?” I asked, truly curious, but sounding forceful. I wanted to sound as if I were talking about the assignment instead of our secret, non-existent relationship. “Why did you go back with her?”

  Troy shook his head the way he always did when he sensed I might want something from him, like common courtesy or respect. It was his way of warning me that I should lower my voice and the bar of expectation.

  “It’s not like you don’t have your own things going on.”

  I acknowledged with a tight nod. “You can lock your window from now on.”

  “I will.” He turned back to his book.

  For some reason I couldn’t unearth, I liked that douche bag. He really was a terrible person and I couldn’t stay away from him. Troy was an absurd contradiction of cocky and sweet, smart and stupid, funny and lame. And I had been sneaking out two or three nights a week to see him for the past several months. Even though we would meet in different places—the street outside his house, the park down the road from his place, or sometimes at the stop sign at his corner—it seemed I always ended up sneaking into his bedroom (it’s not like anything in Carlisle was open after nine) and letting Troy do whatever he wanted, before walking myself home as if it never happened.

  Once, I didn’t leave his place until four in the morning. I lived over two miles away and he didn’t even get out of bed.

  Another time, I left around one in the morning and as I was walking myself home, I noticed a guy on a BMX bike following me. I walked faster, but the strange boy kept peddling, slow as could be, like he was trying to keep pace with me, but also stopping here and there to tie his shoe or light a cigarette—which kept him a creepy half-block behind me the whole way.

  When I was nearly home, the boy suddenly sped up beside me. That was when I got my first real look at him. He was about my age—seventeen or sixteen—with extremely thin lips, straggly blond hair, and acne scars. He also had a long scar across the bridge of his nose that curved down to his lip and over part of one cheek. It wasn’t an ugly scar, but was thin and long, as if someone had slashed him with a pink marker.

  When he spoke, he started with an apology for scaring me. I told him he didn’t, but it was a lie. The boy asked if I lived close by, because he had just passed his own house and wanted to make sure that I’d get home safe before he went on his way. It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever worried about me. I was blown away—a kindness being offered without expectation? Did people actually do that—give without taking?

  Troy certainly didn’t.

  I had never seen the boy before and decided to test the waters. I told him that I was walking home from my boyfriends’ house. He said my boyfriend was an asshole to make me walk in the first place, and a total dick for making me go alone, in the middle of the night. He recommended that I dump his sorry ass.

  That made me smile. I told him not to worry, that I was almost home, anyways. Then I pointed to my house.

  He nodded. “I’ll watch from here, until you get inside.” On any other night, it might have freaked me out, but that night I felt safe.

  That nice boys’ face came back to me just then, as I sat in the middle of chemistry, right beside the person that a complete stranger had so aptly labeled.

  “You are an asshole.”

  Troy’s gaping mouth, along with surrounding murmurs told me I spoke the realization a little too loud. I looked up at the white board to find Ms. Shine staring at me. And she wasn’t alone. As I searched the room, everyone else seemed to have their eyes locked on me, too. Ms. Shine walked down the aisle, dropping a pink slip onto my open textbook.

  “I know the drill.” I said, gathering my things.

  Troy’s face took on that dead look, the one he used when other people were around. It only came to life when we were alone, which only happened in his bedroom.

  “Never again,” I whisper-yelled, rising from the chair and trying to hide the utter shock of my eyes blurring. He was a horrible person; so not worth crying over. But that didn’t matter. The melancholy fit came on against my will, emptying me completely.

  + + +

  10

  —Angel

  The morning finds me wide awake. I don’t know when I fell asleep, I usually have a tough time of it, but I can tell, when I stretch out, that I feel okay. My brain is foggy, but in a good way.

  The clock radio on my small shelf plays an AM station. The Bach piece sends my thoughts immediately to Jake.

  If the music of Analog Controller was the soundtrack of my youth, then Jake was the vinyl it was pressed in. Yeah, I had other shit going on; bully’s at school, damn appointments to keep and no viable transportation besides my legs, keeping my grades up, and trying to work out how I was gonna pay for college—but none of it was as important to me as my relationship with Jake.

  Jake was my heart and soul.

  Avery was the friend that always had my back, my voice of reason. We were synchronized, like one organism. Symbiotic. Full of heart and hope. We had potential. We had promise.

  Or so I thought.

  +++

  Inside the interview room once more, I look across the table and sigh.

  I still don’t know their names: the lady with the gray overcoat and tight hair bun; her name badge is still flipped over. So, I don’t know who she is or what she does. It’s almost like she doesn’t want me to see it, she doesn’t want me to know. And the quiet man, I can’t read his badge, either. The letters look smeared. I wonder if that means I need glasses.

  The committee of two stares quietly back at me while my lawyer and his awful jacket—that is also gray today because it seems he’s joined whatever little club the other two are in—stares off into space, chewing on the cuticle around his thumbnail.

  Biting back the irritation, I speak up. “I’m jumping ahead to a few weeks before the big tour started.”

  I close my eyes to focus, imaging the moments I picture are wrapped onto a reel of film, fast forwarding until I get to that time: the one where my world was spinning in two different directions, simultaneously ripping forward and back.

  “Everything was coming together and falling apart . . .” My hands unconsciously grip the chair as I open my mind and let the memories fly out, rearranging the space.

  Transporting me.

  +++

  Analog Controller would get their shot. One chance to make their dreams come true.

 
And with that, the threat of being forgotten became all too real for me. I was happy for the band. I wanted them to succeed. More than anything, I wanted what was best for Jake, but I was terrified I’d be left behind in the process.

  It was a real tour with three other bands, a piggy-back set of gigs and a huge source of stress. Mostly for me, because of that fear of separation, of not being enough. I tried to keep it in check, especially since everyone else was so excited. It was a huge opportunity and the biggest tour Analog Controller would be a part of, up to that point. They’d been invited to play six dates with Anemic Psychos. The Psychos had a label backing them, an album dropping, and were known throughout the state. They invited Analog to fill a spot that opened when one of the touring bands had fallen out of the lineup for whatever reason. Some of those dates were filled right away, but someone from another group on the tour, the Proselytes, threw Analogs name out there (Jake had played with them before) and the invitation to finish off the last leg of the tour was extended.

  It was so easy, like filling in a bubble on a Scan-tron test. Everything was complete once Analog answered. All they had to do was show up.

  The scariest part for me was that the band was actually going to play a few shows in Southern California. The scary part for the band was that they had little time to prepare.

  Jake was determined. Los Angeles was the place to be if you wanted a record deal. And to get that, you needed exposure. And to get exposure, you had to be a part of the music scene. That scene played out mostly in Los Angeles and New York.

  My mind gnawed on the meaning of this huge opportunity as my feet crept along the wide corridor, aiming for the back parking lot and then the waiting school bus. There was a smear of gum on the bottom of my sneaker. Every other step left a stretchy pink trail along the asphalt. The black diesel fumes coming off the line of buses was unbearable.