Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2

by Nikki Roman

  “No, really, I was too drugged to remember it all…I think he just ripped my clothes off but I can’t be positive…” I say. “I’m sorry, I wish I could remember.” Not really. “His shorts were still on…”

  “Then maybe he didn’t,” Sarah says with a small, eye-crinkling smile.

  “But that doesn’t change what happened—and something did happen. Someone put their hands on me before Spencer and now I’m damaged goods,” I say. “Who wants damaged goods?”

  “You worry that Spencer will think you’re damaged?” she asks incredulously.

  “Well, I am, aren’t I?” I say. “I guess I’m still a virgin but God, it ain’t the same. Not. At. All.”

  “Spencer’s totally wrapped up in you and nothing could ever change that, especially not some guy who took advantage of you.”

  I throw my arms around her and she falls backward a little from my unexpected embrace. “Thank you, Sarah,” I say into her hair, which is down and wavy, not pulled back in the ponytail that makes her look perpetually angry.

  She hugs me back with equal verve. “You’re so welcome.”

  I laugh and wipe away her tears with the corner of my blanket—if only bad memories could be wiped away as easily as the tears from her face. Just the swipe of a hand and, like magic, you’re granted a clean memory.

  I notice for the first time that Sarah resembles her mother. Today she looks younger than usual, as if her severe ponytail had made her deceptively old.

  “Should we let Spencer in, now?”

  Sarah nods.

  “Spencer, you can come in!” we yell in unison.

  He bursts through the door like he’d been standing there the whole time. “’Bout time you girls stopped crying, felt like I was going to a funeral!” He chuckles. “Okay, my turn to be alone with Bailey. You’re just so popular we have to fight for your attention.”

  “Okay, I’m going. Hope you feel better soon,” Sarah says, leaving Spencer and I alone.

  “I assume he didn’t…”

  “No. And can we leave it at that? If we keep bringing it up then it will become a part of me—it will only add to the darkness in my head.”

  “Yes, and just one more thing,” he says raising his finger, “someday, I’m going to show you real love.”

  “Can’t wait till then,” I say.

  “I have something to show you. Can we go to the park?”

  “Oh…I don’t think we should… the birds, the tree…it wouldn’t be good for me.”

  “That’s exactly why I want you to go. And trust me, it will be good for you.”

  “Dressed like this?”

  “It’s not like anyone’s going to see you,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  We get up from the bed, and I follow him to the front door. “Hop on my back,” he says.

  Holding onto his shoulders, I leap onto his back and he grabs my legs. I wrap my arms around his neck. “Don’t drop me!” I say, as he jumps down the porch steps.

  He leans back pretending to lose his balance. “Whoahhh, hold on!”

  “Oh, stop it!” I giggle, squeezing his neck tighter.

  “Are you trying to choke me?”

  “That depends! Are you trying to drop me?”

  “Nooo…” He chuckles.

  “You’re supposed to be at work,” I say. We’re on the street leading to the park now, and my legs are getting sweaty from the heavy pajama pants he let me borrow. I can feel myself slipping.

  “I took the day off.” He shrugs, shifting me so I won’t fall. “I’m going to stay home and take care of you.” He reaches his hand around to the back of my head and ruffles my hair.

  When reach the park, Spencer crouches down and lets me off his back. We walk hand in hand, him leading me to the tree stump. Nestled in a mound of dirt, a grey tombstone and a bouquet of flowers mark the birds’ burial site. The stone is carved in the shape of a heart, two doves encircling it- their wings spread out as if they are about to take flight.

  “And look here,” Spencer says taking my hand again. A little ways off from the gravesite is a newly planted tree, an oak rising from the ground young and healthy. He takes me back to the stump and sits down, pulling me onto his lap. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. “The flowers, the stone, the tree—all of it.”

  “Someday, the tree will be as large as ours was and then our children can lie beneath it, watching the clouds and sun like we used to,” he says, rocking me.

  Just when I think I can go no further, Spencer saves me by showing me there is life. Life can flourish because death has taken place. Now, I think of how Clad tried to save me by pointing a gun to my head, threatening to take my life. Funny how a few flowers and a baby tree can have the same effect.

  “What are you thinking about?” Spencer asks pivoting his head so that our eyes meet.

  “About how this is all I ever want and need,” I lie.

  “I was thinking,” he says, “maybe you shouldn’t visit Clad, anymore. Maybe you should cut him off.”

  “We’ve been thinking the same thing,” I say.

  “I mean, he did what he had to, right? He kept you from killing all those people, but that’s where it ends. How could you ever love him the same way again? How could he love you the same way?”

  I try to think of an argument but my mind keeps going blank. I see the bottom of the bathroom stall door in the men’s restroom at Indigo and nothing more. No words or sentences form that could contradict what Spencer has said.

  “He aimed a gun at you. Lover Boy turned into Gun Boy. I don’t see how you could go back to him.”

  If Clad is Gun Boy and I am Gun Girl, then doesn’t that make us perfectly compatible?

  I see Clad’s gun in my face, the threat of it forcing me to my feet, pointing me out the door of the men’s restroom and to the exit.

  “Love has a crazy way of showing itself to you. It takes many forms, Spencer,” I say. “Yours is the form of flowers and Clad’s is the form of a gun—it doesn’t make either any less true.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think what you just said was worthy of owl status.” He grins.

  “You’re rubbing off on me,” I say.

  A cold breeze whips around us, playing with my hair and blowing across Spencer’s face. He closes his eyes and says, “You feel the breeze?”

  “It’s only around us,” I say. Not a leaf is stirring on the trees. “The whole park is unmoving.”

  “It’s the birds.”

  •••

  Later that day, we return to the stump with sandwiches Sarah made for us and two bottles of lemonade. Spencer spreads a blanket out in the grass and I lie with my head in his lap.

  My mouth hurts too much to eat and the pain in my head is rising and falling in a constant crescendo. “How bad is the bruising?”

  Spencer paints his hand along my hairline. “Bad,” he says. “How does your head feel?” He picks up a bottle of lemonade and places it against the side of my face.

  “That’s better,” I murmur.

  “Guess what sound this is,” he says, whistling and then kissing my lips.

  “I don’t know. Do it again.”

  He repeats the whistle and the kiss, my lips opening in a grin when his brush against mine.

  “Got it?” he asks.

  “No not yet, better try one more time.” I giggle.

  He whistles quickly and then comes in for the kiss again, his mouth a guest on mine for an extended stay.

  “You’re enjoying this more than me,” I say, amidst our kiss.

  “Then guess it, what’s the sound?”

  My mouth drops open. “The birds!” I say. “The whistle, the kiss—it’s the birds’ chirp!”

  We pass out beneath the open sky, surrounded with the memory of the birds; our little tree shadowing the flowers and keeping them from wilting under the sun’s blistering rays
.

  Sarah shakes us both awake as the sun melts into the sky. “I feel like I’ve just interrupted a scene from a Nicholas Sparks movie,” she says.

  “Yeah, we’re at the best part, why’d you have to come and ruin it?” Spencer says.

  “Sorry, Mom wanted you to come home and help clean up the house. And you’d better drive Bailey home before it gets any darker, her mom probably wants her.”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” Spencer says, hopping up.

  I stretch and yawn while he gathers the blanket and uneaten sandwiches. He squats down for me and I jump on his back.

  “Hey, you never give me piggy back rides!” Sarah squeals

  “That’s because you’d break my back,” he says. “Here, carry the lemonades.” He thrusts them into her hands.

  Letting me off at the steps, Spencer runs inside to get his keys. I stand halfway out the door to avoid being seen by B.B.; she has a way of making my resolve go weak.

  “Hello, Bailey. How was the picnic? You look like you slept well,” B.B. says, showing up right when I was hoping she wouldn’t. She comes out of the doorway and more into the light. “What happened!” She gasps, reaching for my face.

  “Got the keys! We have to go, Mom, see you later,” Spencer says pulling me along by my hand, I trip over my feet.

  “Okay,” B.B. says. “Be careful—”

  Spencer shuts the door in the middle of her sentence. “Sorry ‘bout that, you know my mom—chatter box.”

  I buckle up in his truck and we pull out of the driveway. With Spencer’s focus on the road I can get away with asking him anything and not have to see a physical reaction in his copper-toned eyes. I ask the question that’s been swirling around in my head since he miraculously showed up at Indigo last night, like he had been teleported to me. “How did you find me?”

  “Your mom called me, worried. She said she put you to bed, and then came to check on you and you were gone. She wondered if maybe I had come and picked you up.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, I thought about where you could be, and then I remembered how you told me that Clad wanted you to go to Indigo when you were both still in school. I told her you were with me. At the same time, I was jumping into my truck on my way to Indigo.”

  “You’re too clever,” I say.

  “Yeah, now if only I could predict bad things before they happen to you, then I’d really be one clever son of a bitch.” His eyes must be watering now, or squinting in anger. He doesn’t even need to turn his head; I know how those eyes change with his every word; an emotional gauge.

  “No one else would have known to look there, you must have sensed something.”

  “Maybe a little something… my senses sure were buzzing when you told me what Cai had done to you, though. All five of them had me trained on ripping that guy apart,” he says. “I’m just sorry he was able to get up and walk away.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  “That bastard got up and walked off like it was nothing,” he goes on. “But I had to carry you after he was done.”

  “Can we stop talking about it?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry,” he says. “But you are the one who brought it up…”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have.”

  He turns the radio on to fill the silence that grows between us. I concentrate on how many red cars we pass until we are at the apartment; twenty three.

  I give Spencer a quick peck on the cheek and then walk up to the door. I twist the knob, checking if it is unlocked, and step inside. I close the door and wait for the interrogation to start.

  “Hi, darling,” Mom says. She’s folding a basket of laundry; amongst the stacks of clothes is Spencer’s plaid shirt.

  “Hey, Mom, how’s it going?” Maybe if I come at her with questions first she won’t be able to ask me any.

  “Spencer told me you got upset and had him pick you up. I didn’t even hear you leave. Everything okay now?”

  “Yeah, I’m great. I slept really well at his house.” I make my lips curl into a smile but the expression is ill-fitting on my face.

  “That’s good, sweetie. I came home early from work because the baby was making me nauseous.”

  “You should lie down,” I say. “I can do the laundry.” My clunky smile twitches at the corners; I’m at risk of losing it, of being caught in my lie.

  Mom raises an eyebrow. “You’ve never offed to do the laundry,” she says. “What’s going on?”

  Ignoring her, I pick up Spencer’s shirt and sniff it. “You washed away his smell,” I say, frowning. I’m so happy to lose my fake smile that I almost smile for real.

  “I didn’t even think about that, sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, and then in a rush, “I think I’ll just go to bed now.”

  “I thought you said you slept well at Spencer’s?”

  “I have a headache,” I say, not really lying.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll come in to say goodnight when I’m finished folding.”

  I take Spencer’s shirt with me.

  Angel is smack dab in the middle of the room. I get on his level. “Go to Indigo, huh?”

  He whimpers.

  “Dumb idea, boy.”

  He licks my bruises.

  “See this,” I say, “because I went to Indigo.”

  He drops his ears, as if it to say that I’m ridiculous for taking advice from a dog in the first place. “It’s you or the Vicodin and the Vicodin doesn’t listen!” I say. “However, it does take the pain away.”

  Mom’s back is turned when I shuffle back into the kitchen. Carefully, I slip the bottle out of the drawer and return to my room. I gulp down seven—one more than last time, for luck.

  I take off Spencer’s too large pajamas and put on his plaid shirt. The sleeves are long, hiding the bruises on my wrists and the collar covering up my chest. I curl up on the floor and whistle Angel over. “I forgive you, boy,” I say, scratching under his chin.

  I pat my hair for him to sleep in. He hangs his tongue out at me. Mom comes in with a stack of clean nightgowns and puts them in the closet. “You need the light?” she asks.

  “Always,” I say.

  She turns the light on my fan. Then she looks down at me under the light, her mouth opening wide, eyes matching it in gaping shock. “What the HELL happened to your face?”

  “Do we have to talk about it?”

  “Did Spencer hit you?”

  “No,” I say, “I can’t believe you would even suggest that!”

  “What happened? Is it those girls from your school again?”

  “It’s not them,” I say. “Spencer was giving me a piggy back ride, and I fell off his back and hit the road with my face.”

  “Oh,” she says not bothering to inquire further. Some secrets are better left alone.

  She bends down to give me a kiss goodnight but her full belly stops her short, so I meet her in the middle.

  “Sweet dreams,” she says.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  My dreams are sweet… when I’m on my meds. At least they have always been, until tonight. When I close my eyes, monsters and demons of every kind visit me.

  As the Vicodin slowly dissolves the monsters go with it, but still I dream in nightmares that play on my every fear and insecurity.

  •••

  I’m in a prison cell too small to lift my arms in. There’s a single light bulb flickering, threatening to die out completely. Clad stands on the opposite side of steel bars, tattoos marking his arms and neck, filed down toothbrush in his fist. A crooked smile plays on his lips, difficult to distinguish whether it’s crazy or happy until his arm reaches through the bars, lashing at me with his toothbrush-knife. I place the attack as something akin to Mom stomping on a plate of cookies in a brief moment of insanity.

  I push my back against the concrete cell wall. He swipes at me a second time, only centimeters from slicing open my cheek. Then a bell rings. “Times up,” Clad says. “If
I don’t get back to my bunk, the screws will put me in the hole.”

  The bell rings and rings and rings…

  I surface from my sleep and out of the horrible nightmare.

  Slipping on Angel’s tail, I spring to the front door. I unlock the deadbolt and jerk it open, greeting the fierce doorbell-ringer with an unwelcome, “What do you want?”

  “You have to come with me,” Ashten says quietly, as if she had actually been the doorbell and had lost her voice from ringing so much.

  “Um, come with you where?” I look down and see a knife in her hand, the tip of the blade inches from my stomach. She continues talking, as if holding knives to people’s stomachs is the most natural thing ever.

  “My brother has gotten really strict at the Allie. He says you have to join or I gotta’ kill you.”

  “What about the cops?”

  The blade pokes me as she pushes it closer, her eyes never leaving my face. “What about em’?”

  “They know about your gang and you aren’t making them join.”

  “Bailey, please,” she says, her voice shaking. “I can’t kill you. You’ve got to come with me.”

  “I can’t,” I challenge her. “I won’t.”

  She jerks the blade across my stomach, ripping open Spencer’s shirt and barely missing the skin underneath. I stare down at her fist quivering around the handle of the blade.

  “All right, I’ll come.”

  Chapter 14

  Ashten stands in front of my bedroom like it’s guarded by a pack of Rottweilers. “Come on,” I say waving her in.

  “I was going to kill you, and you invite me into your house?”

  “I guess I’m a better person than that,” I say. “And I guess I’ve been in your situation before.”

  “How?” she says. “How is any of this similar to what you’ve done?”

  “I choked Cecil so she would get the tape from Miemah. You know what Miemah did to her?”

  “That was because of you?”

  “I’m not exactly proud of it.” I shrug and dig in my hamper for a not-so-dirty pair of jeans.

  “I tried to tell my brother how you saved my life, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

  I hop into my pants and slip my boots on. “Apparently, your life isn’t worth much to him.”