“What am I going to go to college for, Mom? To fail? I’m a Sheridan; look at what happens to us. Dad’s father was a woman beater and a drunk, and Dad is a selfish cheater who walked out on his family. I’m bound to screw up something along the way too. I might as well learn that sooner rather than later.”
Shocked by his words, she grabbed his hand and rubbed her thumb over the back of it. From the moment he was born, Brice literally became her entire world. The only thing she ever wanted was to see him not only succeed, but for him to have all the happiness in the world. Seeing him degrade himself broke her heart into a million pieces. “Brice, you’re so much more than what you’re making yourself out to be right now. So what if you have the Sheridan name? That doesn’t mean anything. Your grandfather and your father might not have ended up on the successful side of life, but they didn’t try either. They took the easy way out and I know that I raised my son better than that. You’re a straight-A student with a 4.0 average. You’re already doing so much better than they ever did. Don’t you want to see where you can go with that?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I just don’t see how I’ll ever succeed.”
“By being you, that’s how. I’m not saying that you have to go; this is your choice. All I’m saying is that you should think about it. Don’t say no just because you’re afraid you’ll fail. If you say no, do it because you actually have no desire to go.”
Sighing, Brice rubbed a hand across his forehead. He knew his mom was right; she always raised him to think before he acted, not that he ever took that advice, but this was probably one of those times where he really did need to sit down and think about it. “Okay, I’ll think about it, but that’s all I can really promise for right now.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” She smiled, glancing down at her watch to find the time. “I have to get going back to the office, but I’ll most likely be home early tonight. Would you like to go out to dinner,” she asked him. She realized that she’d been neglecting him so much lately, while investing so much of her time into the case she’d been working on, and she hated that realization. She wanted nothing more than to give her son the attention he so rightfully deserved.
“Yeah, I would really love that, Mom.”
“Brice, I know things aren’t easy, but I want you to know that I’m trying my best, and if you need me, I am always here for you to talk to me. I know I’m not the perfect mother, and I know you blame me for what happened…”
“Mom, no. I don’t blame you for what he did. I blame him. He left us. He chose to abandon us. Not you. And you don’t have to be the perfect mom, you’re a great mom. And I love you more than anything,” Brice declared, cutting his mother off. She couldn’t be more wrong. He couldn’t ever blame her for the actions of his father. She ended up being just as heartbroken as Brice had been, if not more.
“Sweetheart, I love you, and I’m sorry that you ended up in this predicament with me. I hate that your father hurt you so bad. The only thing I ever wanted was for you to be happy. After I learned of your father’s infidelity, I vowed that I wouldn’t let my pain get in the way of your relationship with him, and Brandon, I tried really hard. I really did and I’m so sorry.”
“Mom, I know, it’s who you are, and I love you for that. I don’t blame you. Not for one second.” Brice spoke honestly.
“I love you, don’t you ever forget that,” she stated, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before she headed out. There was no questioning that; he couldn’t even pretend+++ his mother didn’t love him after all she’d given up and done for him. She truly was the best person in his life.
***
Dear Diary,
I’ve haven’t seen much of my parents in the last few days, and the nightmares are increasing. I hate being alone, I hate it so much. It only tends to drag me farther down in the hole I fell into.
They work so much, and I know I’m not much company anymore. I know that I’m not fun to be around since… Well you know, but I just miss them, and I need them more than ever right now. I can’t help but to feel like they’re avoiding me. They might not have a clue about what happened to me, but my behavior and moods did a complete one-eighty in the last several months. I can see it in the way they look at me; they notice it. They know something is wrong, they know I’m breaking apart, even if they don’t mention it very often.
I hate what I must be making them feel, I hate it so much, I want nothing more to be able to go back to the girl I was a year ago, but I can’t. I’m only eighteen, yet I’ve been doomed to a life of hell.
***
Shay sat at the Heart Attack Grill at the table closest to the door, with a nice view out the window. It was a Friday night and even though Shay knew that it would end up being packed, she still came; it was better than the alternative.
Granted, she hated being in a room that was full of people, she had the fear of being touched, but the silence that filled her ears in the empty home she would be sitting in was much worse than having to be around people for a little while. After the incident all those months ago, she ended up having panic attacks if she was around too many people with no way out.
She clutched the necklace she wore around her neck under the oversized sweater that hid her body, jerking her head up to see the waitress approaching her.
“Hi, I’m Amy.” She was a brown haired woman, probably in her thirties. She was cheerful. Shay despised her for being able to be as happy as she once was before it was all taken from her. “What can I get for you?”
“Can I please just have a coffee?” Shay asked.
“Of course. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Amy said, smiling.
She then left the table.
Looking out the window, Shay scanned the view. She was surprised how fast she fell in love with Chandler. She missed home sometimes, but it was perfect here. Although she hated the circumstances that drove her here, she loved her new home. She missed her friends, but this was her first step to healing from her secret. She couldn’t bear to tell anyone else, and she couldn’t bear the thought of someone pitying her. She didn’t want to have to deal with it if her father found out and never looked at her the same way again.
She felt dirty and destroyed beyond repair. She was broken. Nothing. Just a shadow of the girl she used to be. She used to be young and innocent, but her innocence was taken from her at the age of seventeen. She’d been through something that no seventeen-year-old should ever have to go through. She closed her eyes, trying to forget, but instead it all came back in flashes. Everything was there in black and white. A touch on her shoulder made her jump. When her eyes flew open the waitress was back.
“I’m sorry,” Shay said, taking calm, slow breaths. “I just didn’t see you there.”
“It’s okay, hon. Here is your coffee. Enjoy,” she said nicely, and vanished from the table.
After finishing her three coffees, and later a side of fries, she finally worked up the courage to go back to her empty house. She hated the thought that her parents wouldn’t be home until midnight, and it was only seven thirty. She hated being alone, and yet she was more alone than she could ever imagine.
She got up from the table and started heading towards the door, but the next thing she knew she was on the restaurant floor covered in a milkshake, burger, coke and fries. Great. Just great. After looking down at her freshly ruined shirt, Shay looked up, glaring at the culprit. Standing there was a guy not much older than her, from what she could tell. She was furious at him for not paying attention.
“Maybe you should watch where you’re going,” he spat, his green eyes glaring down at her.
“Sorry,” she muttered as she picked up her belongings. When she picked up her iPod, she noticed it was covered in soda. “Just great.”
He sighed. “What’s your problem,” he asked, his tone softening as he offered a hand.
“I don’t need your help, and you got soda all over my iPod and now it won’t turn on,” she said furiously.
> “You should have watched where you were going then.”
“You’re blaming me for you not watching where you were going. This was your fault.” Shay raised her voice. She wasn’t one to argue with someone, but with all the horrible cards she’d been dealt lately, something inside her was beginning to snap.
“Listen little girl, I’m not going to apologize. You should have been paying attention. Who brings an iPod into a restaurant anyways?”
“Obviously nobody.”
“You shouldn’t bring technology into places like this. You never know what might happen. You must be new around here, I’ve never seen you.” He was starting to sound curious, like he cared about who she was.
“It’s none of your business. It doesn’t matter who I am. Just get out of my way, I need to go,” Shay responded. She already hated him. He was cocky, rude and didn’t even care about the fact that he’d been the one who’d knocked her over, ruining one of the only things she had left in the process.
“Well okay then.”
“I have to leave now,” Shay said, moving around the beautiful stranger. She left, flinging the door wide open. Running to her car, she sat there and cried for what seemed like hours. Her life would never get easier, would it? Everything bad always happened to her; she hadn’t had good luck in months. She was a broken mess and she had no one that was there for her. All she needed was someone to wrap her in their arms and tell her that everything would be okay, but it wouldn’t happen.
Chapter Three
Sitting in her room, Shay sat in front of her desk with her journal open and a pen in hand, letting the poetry flow out of her. After all she’d been dealing with lately, she found herself needing an outlet, and poetry let her vent in a way she couldn’t with anything else. Thinking back to earlier that night, at the restaurant, she let her emotions get the best of her. She couldn’t understand how she was at fault for that guy running her over, destroying her iPod in the process.
Who the hell did he think he was? He was just like every guy in this God forsaken world.
She remembered back to the time when she believed in the goodness of people, but that valuable trait was stolen from her, and as hard as she might try, Shay couldn’t forget and move on, though God knows she’d tried.
Every single day she woke up to live, she wasn’t even really living. She was breathing, but she wasn’t living. Her life had been taken from her, and she didn’t know how in the world to get it back.
The emptiness of the house made the memories come back in flashes. The way he looked at her, the way he had spoken to her. It always came back when she was all alone. Her past haunted her with each and every waking day, and she couldn’t stop it. For now, she’d keep on barely living.
“Shay?” She heard a soft knock on her door, then her door opened, revealing her mother, Jennifer. She was wearing a black strapless dress with sparkles that ran throughout it. Her hair was a chocolate color and had been thrown into an exquisite bun.
Relief flew through her as she realized her parents came home early. It wasn’t a secret that she was distant from them, but she would admit that she felt much safer having them around than she did when they were gone.
“I thought you and Daddy weren’t going to be home until later tonight.” Shay recalled them telling her they’d be at their fundraiser until around midnight, as they always were with those events.
“That was the original plan, but Dad started feeling ill after dinner, so here we are,” Jennifer explained, sitting next to Shay on her bed. She stared at her daughter with fearful eyes, knowing that she was no longer herself. She wanted nothing more than to hold her the way she used to. She knew deep down that something was going on, and it was something big, but knowing what it was like to be a teenager her age, she wouldn’t let herself push her daughter the way her parents had done to her. “Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine,” Shay lied. She was getting quite good at it too, if she had to say. She wasn’t fine at all, she was slowly breaking apart, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop that realization.
“What do you say to a Vampire Diaries or True Blood marathon,” Jennifer offered her daughter in hopes that she’d say yes, especially considering how they’d rarely spent any time together whatsoever since they’d moved. Jennifer hated how much she had rarely seen Shay lately. She was her entire world and there was nothing she wanted more than to spend as much time as she possibly could with her.
“No thanks, I’m really tired. In fact, I was heading to bed before.” Shay yawned. She was tired. Hell, she was more than tired, she was exhausted, but she knew like every other night she wouldn’t sleep; the nightmares would haunt her, they always did. Nighttime was the worst for her. She just tried to bury it further and further in her soul. It was a secret that was ripping her apart inside.
“Okay, sweetheart. Are you okay? I mean, here in Chandler. Did Dad and I ruin your life by moving you here? We are just so worried about you. We knew you were upset when we first revealed that we were moving here, but we thought you’d made peace with it. I mean, even before we left Tampa, you wouldn’t come out of your room, you cried all the time and you never wanted to see your friends. Baby, we’re lost here. We don’t know how to help you if you don’t open up to us, we really only want you to be happy. That’s all.”
“Mom, I’m fine. Nothing is wrong. I know I’ve changed, but I’m fine. I promise.” Shay lied. She had no words to say, she couldn’t tell her the truth, it was for her own good, it was for everyone’s own good that she kept her secret buried inside.
“You’d tell me if something was bothering you, right,” Jennifer asked with caution. The girl she was staring at in front of her, it wasn’t the girl she knew her daughter to be. She couldn’t pin point exactly what was wrong here, but she wanted nothing more than to take her in her arms and beg her to let her in. In reality she knew when the time was right, Shay would come to her. Or so she hoped.
Shay sat in silence for a long moment as she thought of the answer to her mother’s question. Would she tell her if something was wrong? If she was being completely honest, under any other circumstance she’d tell her mother what was bothering her, but she couldn’t tell her mother what happened to her. It wasn’t fair to her; her mother always chose to see in the good in the world. She wasn’t going to take that away from her mother. She wouldn’t be the person to take away her happiness, and Shay knew that.
“Mom, of course I’d tell you, but there’s really nothing to tell,” Shay assured her, wanting to stop talking about this.
“Baby, I’m sorry to keep pressuring you, it isn’t what I want. It’s just, you’re my entire life. I’ve loved you from the moment that I found out I was pregnant with you and I’ve never stopped and you didn’t just change a little bit. You went from being the beautiful, careless little girl I’ve always known to being this lost girl who wears all these baggy clothes. You spend most nights in your room. I just want to know that you’re okay.”
“I’m fine mom, I promise. I’m really tired. Can I please just go to bed?” Shay stood in front of her mother with her arms crossed over her stomach.
“Of course,” she said sadly and left the room.
Shay felt the stillness after her mother left. She knew that she was worried, and for that she was sorry. She hated lying to her parents. But, technically, she wasn’t lying to them; she just wasn’t being completely honest. She was becoming a complete zombie.
She missed her old life; the way things had been before it was taken from her. Her mother always told her, “Never live with regrets. Be thankful for everything that happens to you because in the end it’s all a part of who you are.”
Shay used to believe in that saying. She used to embrace it up until the night he stole her life.
***
“Everyone calls you Shay; I think I’ll call you Shay. My Shay banana.” He says as he touches my face. My heart begins to race. What is he doing?
“You�
��re so beautiful. Your hair is so silky and long. I just want to run my fingers through your hair,” he says as he raises his left hand to my hair.
“You shouldn’t be in here. I need to finish putting my things away,” I tell him, but before I can get away, he slams me into the gym locker and covers my mouth.
“Shhhhh. It’ll be over soon.”
***
Gasping awake, Shay was drenched in her own sweat. Her nightmares were common – she’d been having them since the night it happened – but lately they seemed to occur more often than not. The twisted memories came flooding back and she found herself sobbing violently.
Gripping her pillow, she held on for dear life and pretended it was her mother. For one moment, she pretended it was killing her. She pretended that it wasn’t a secret and she’d let her mother inside, revealing her torment.
She just wanted her mother to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay. She wanted her to say that no one would ever hurt her again. The pain was terrible as she got out of bed and looked out her window.
It was daylight, and she was beyond thankful that the night was gone.
After showering and dressing, she decided to go for a walk, and found herself crying in the park at a picnic table. She hated who she was becoming. She hated the person he was turning her into. She hated dresses, skirts and anything else girly. She hated everything about herself. It didn’t matter how many years would go by, she’d never be able to forget that horrible day in the locker room. She’d never be able to forget the filth she felt even months after.
“Are you alright,” a familiar, deep voice asked.
Looking up, Shay quickly wiped her tears, noticing the guy who’d been so viciously cold after spilling his food on her standing by a tree.
“I’m fine,” she said, moving from the table so she wasn’t facing him. She wiped her eyes where she hoped he couldn’t see.
Break Me Down Page 2
