He tells her not to worry and that the air has done him good, that he feels less queasy now, anyway.
They stroll further through the park, deeper, where eucalyptus trees line the grounds and bushland is speckled across underneath. Katie looks across the park and can see the silhouette of Cooper, madly hopping up and down on top of the monkey bars.
“What was that about before? Coop was strange.”
“It’s best if you don’t know what he’s into. If you get what I mean.”
“Oh.”
By now, the night is much cooler than when Katie first got here. She has to tuck the ends of her cardigan into her folded arms to prevent the wind feeling like it’s slamming at her chest. Not that her flimsy cardigan is doing much anyway. When she shivers, Marco notices.
“Hey, you cold? Would you like this?” He pinches his sweater and flicks it up.
“No, no. I couldn’t ask—no, thanks. I’m really not that cold.”
“Uh-huh.” He grins and wraps his arms around his waist, shimmying the brown sweater off his torso. He thrusts it into her hands and simply shakes his head when she tries to retaliate. In the end, she thanks him and slides through the sweater.
“You’re different to what I thought,” Marco says.
Frown lines replace her smooth skin. “Different?”
“In a good way. You’re deeper inside than you first appear to be.”
She stays quiet.
“Put it this way—you’re more than a pretty face. I can pick my own kind. Oh, not that I’m saying I’m pretty or anything. Damn.” He tuts. “I know the quiet thinkers, the ones who over-analyze everything. It’s weird seeing me mirrored in you.”
Katie bites her lip and nods. Someone who’s known her for a few hours has left her speechless. She attempts a giggle and then looks around for her drink.
“It’s not here,” Marco tells her.
“What’s not here?”
He lifts an open fist and jingles it.
“Oh.”
“Don’t leave. We can have a drink later. It’s nice here.” He seems to like this awkward situation for reasons unknown to her.
Pulled from their conversation for the moment, she hears vague yells, laughs and bits of conversations in the distance where Cooper must be talking to himself because Brent’s still slumped against the pole.
Marco’s simple questions ravel into a noose that only tightens around her neck. She won’t risk anyone discovering her secrets. She doesn’t know what to say, or how to begin, and Marco will judge her.
“Hey, come back here for a second, Katie, Marco,” Cooper calls.
“We’ll be over in a sec,” Katie calls across.
Marco looks at her somewhat disheartened, but she grins and skips back. Cooper finds a snug spot around her waist.
Marco steps near Katie, hand outstretched.
It doesn’t make sense to Katie, but Cooper tells Marco, “Don’t even think about it.”
My eyelids flutter open. There’s a gray ceiling above me. Running through my mind, I feel silly for wondering if I’m home. None of the rooms in my house have gray ceilings. This is a silly, hopeful moment.
Maybe, maybe.
When I curl my legs by my side, pain shoots through them. I feel my ass cheek with the heel closest to me. My body quivers to shake off the feeling.
Everything is new, strange. Perhaps this thought is why the throbbing between my legs fades. It’s still there, making my muscles tighten but my mind is latched onto this bed, the room. The why?
A wave of panic flushes through every vessel, in every inch of my body. I shoot upright and thuds pulse through me. Each breath sounds heavily drawn.
There are fluffy pillows surrounding me. When I press down on one behind me to hold my weight, it’s soft, but sturdy. And stuffed in a silk pillowcase. The sheets are also silk. The value of it makes my car service seem like spare change.
I think of the things I know to ground some rationality.
Bedroom.
Stranger’s house.
Shit. Rationality sucks.
As if to distract me, light streams through the draped curtains. I squint against it.
There’s a throb in my head. The pain has snowballed from when I first woke. It feels like an alcohol-hangover ache, though that’s not all of it. I’m gluggy and this feeling conceals my memories from the last twenty-four hours. This is me now, and last night never existed.
Ella!
Not knowing where she is, who’s looking after her, if she’s okay, pounds at me, and I have to rasp to suck in air. My lungs feel small.
I look down to my chest and see a brown sweater hanging off my frame. It’s a few sizes too big.
I let out more quick rasps. The more I see, the more disgust forms in my stomach like the feeling of someone else’s spit-ball landing on my face.
The four-post bed I’m in is tall and painted in shiny black. There’s a canvas photograph capturing a drop of water the moment before it hits the surface sitting above a matching shiny, black chest of drawers. I’ve never seen any of this before.
Where am I?
The last thing I remember is arriving . . . why am I remembering arriving somewhere? Okay, yesterday was Saturday. Rationality: good.
Mom’s birthday party was yesterday.
Then, here.
The backtracking helps but now it’s obsolete and I’m alone in an endless pit.
I slap my palm to my forehead. I don’t know why, but it hurts my wrist more than my head.
My stomach churns. Ella. Where is she? I want to run, find her. Instead, shock roots me down. Fear has that effect—gobbles up your sense of self.
Another instinctual reaction takes over when I feel bile in my throat. I clamber out of the bed toward an en suite. In my peripheral vision, there are possibly muddy prints on the large white tiles, but I’m focused on the square basin, getting there ASAP.
Relief doesn’t hit me after I let the sickness go. Concern pools in my raging thoughts and tight chest. And from it, there is no distraction.
Back inside the bedroom, my dress lies on the carpet. The familiarity of something I recognize sends a buzz through my head. I could be okay.
When I stop shaking enough to walk, I pinch both corners of the top of the dress and watch the rest fall loosely in my grip. There is a rip down the side. Why would I rip off my favorite dress when the zip is so easily accessible? There’s a hole at the bottom of the dress along with red crusting outlining patches of the bottom stitching. I hitch up my knee in mid-air, as though resting below is a counter, and drape the material over my knee. I scratch at the crusty matter, and it falls away in pieces.
It’s then, as I scratch off the dried blood, that I notice the markings on my wrists. They have been pounding alert to me but I’ve been too busy trying to understand where and why I am here to pay them due attention.
I scrunch up my sleeves above my elbows. Everything else seems like a blur. I twist my arms from left to right as though seeing the sickly marks roll in circles can erase them. I have to blink, hard, to check the discoloring painted through my skin is actually there.
Oh my, they are new. Yet to fill their color. Tomorrow, or in a couple of days they will be a deep purple.
The marks measure the length from my wrists to elbows. I cower when I try to touch them, and pain settles to the core of my bones.
This new knowledge legitimizes my pain. It isn’t just my arms. There’s tenderness around my lips, the middle of my chest and in a U-shape between my thighs.
The pain thumps harder; reminds me of what’s happened—what I don’t want to know. The room, the sweater, the loss of memory . . . I’ve never buried like this before, digging so deep I can’t remember a night. Blu
rry yes, confused and timeless, yes.
Not gone.
If I’ve taken my sleeping pills with alcohol, would I wake up like this?
Yes. That’s what I’ll think. I need to get out of here and forget. I’ll forget better than I tried to with Paul.
I throw off the brown sweater and slip into my dress. I find pins on the dresser and soon the rip will only be noticeable if someone studies me.
My heart stops thudding, as if it’s telling my blood to pop out. I spend a few minutes peeking behind crevices and rows of shelving to see what else I find.
I recover my clutch, which is wedged between the covers of the bed and the layering in-between. I peer inside, wanting to be sure, but I already know I have a couple of pills from my bathroom cabinet tucked away in there. If I can remember how many were there to start with, it would change everything. Later, I see my heels peaking under someone else’s dirty pile of clothes. Finally, my undies.
I throw on my jacket—less for the chill in the air, and more to cover up the eyeful of markings along my forearms, and to hide the rip—and squeeze the rest of my belongings under one armpit.
Dashing down the stairs and to the front door, I manage a comfortable shoulder-width gap between the doorjamb and the glass-paned door. Then I dash outside like a dog off its leash.
It’s overcast. The air smells dirty, wet. Rain is coming.
I pull out my phone from inside my purse. The black screen should be the first hint and the second comes when I fiddle around with some buttons, first slowly and then angrily, realizing that the battery is long dead.
I look ahead to curse the heavy clouds but instead am drawn to the glint in my car’s paint. It’s sitting there along the side of the road.
That is when everything else, probably too messed up behind the urgent stuff like waking up God-knows-where, pours into my memory. I’m in my parents’ street. I know the tall, stringy needles from the trees because they litter the grass, sidewalk, and gutters and always fall into the most annoying crevices in my car.
Why have I parked my car outside this stranger’s house? What event was significant enough to ditch my mom’s party?
Finally, I take my first slow, calming breath. Ella is safe with my parents.
• • •
There hasn’t been a longer short drive than now.
When I arrive, I punch the horn to acknowledge I’m here, clamber out of the car, and dash for the front porch. Once it’s too late to put my heels on I feel the rough concrete grazing my feet.
Mom’s weary face meets me behind the frosted glass. “Katie—what on earth?” She has bags under her eyes, although her hair seems as perfect as it does on special occasions. She doesn’t look like she’s slept.
After a moment, she throws open the door. Mom and I have our problems, but at that moment she hugs me tight enough to make me want to cry out because of the throbbing in my arms and chest.
“I—how . . . What did you . . . ” She struggles with her words like a wound up child, too impatient to slow down.
“Can I come in?”
Mom ushers me to the kitchen. She looks me up and down as I pass in my last night’s dress and bare feet, although I pretend not to notice her staring.
She flicks on the kettle. “Katie, where were you?” She had to erupt soon enough. “I called. God, I called at least five times—your father just as much.” Her hand stops over the tea box. “And Liam. He must have called you ten times. He was just as worried as we were. I can’t understand why you would do this. I suggested a ‘break’, not a take-off-for-good.”
Mom pulls out a tea bag. She prods the bag then looks to me in disgust. “Is that last night’s dress? Where are your shoes? What happened?”
“Thanks, I’m craving some caffeine.”
She retires and stands back, which only makes me wary for any signs of an outbreak. She twirls the tea bag then drops it in a cup.
Ugh. How didn’t I notice the flavor before? “Don’t worry about it.”
Her chin drops as she starts to say something, but I hold up a finger before she can go on. “I don’t like Earl Grey. You know that.” I walk to the coffee container. “Is this caffeinated?”
“Tea after, Katherine.”
I groan when she says my name like that. And I realize what I’ve just done. Seriously, Earl Grey tea? Who the fuck cares about that? Receding into my mind, I could easily obsess over everything I hate about the tea and why coffee is better. Give me a ruler and a pen, and I’ll even create a chart.
Repeating that in my head, I know how crazy that seems. Get over the tea, get over the coffee, and fix this. Thing is, I haven’t been able to fix my issues for months, and I just can’t handle trying anymore.
“You didn’t crash after that drink, did you? Ella needed you.” Mom pauses as if waiting for me to accept the shame. As I replace the Earl Grey tea bag with a teaspoon of coffee, her eyes stop at my feet. “You took off on my party last night to get drunk.”
She slaps her head with a loosely constructed fist. “This is bad. You are out of control. Can’t you see that? We were worried sick. I was dreading a call saying—”
Dad steps into the kitchen at that moment, tying the loose ends of his robe. “Rochelle, won’t you keep . . . ” he notices me standing there as he draws his head up, “ . . . it down.” Just my physical self, being there, is enough to numb everything else in his expression.
“Sorry, Logan, she just appeared here. I was—shocked.”
Dad stands beside Mom and me. “Darling,” he leans over, rubbing my shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
There’s exhaustion in the creases at the corners of his eyes. It’s too hard to get angry with him. His words are too sincere—unlike Mother Rochelle. He reaches over to hug me, and the only characteristic that this is still my quiet, reserved father is that he doesn’t squeeze hard. He just stands there, letting sounds escape from his mouth that I’m sure he thinks I can’t hear.
I lie and say I’m fine. Between Dad’s overwhelming concern and Mom’s callous attempt at sympathy, I’m not ready for the hot and cold weather outlook.
“I need to know where Ella is, Mom.”
“She’s fine—still sleeping in her room. Apart from crying for you endlessly, she’s okay.”
The moment feels so perfect that I blurt, “Why? Because you told her you’d let her stay here full-time?”
When I stop, I want to hit rewind and pretend I never said anything.
“Ella knows she can stay whenever she likes.”
Right. What a diplomatic answer.
“Let her have her sleep, darling. She’d be exhausted from all that bopping on the dance floor last night.”
Mom’s shiny nails tap against the counter, bringing us back.
I give her a set of eyes that spell “spit it out”.
“You wouldn’t listen anyway, but—”
“How dare you,” I cut in. “If you’re trying to make your negative feedback work, it isn’t. Am I not meant to drink because He is . . . and you . . . argh! You just don’t get it.”
Dad steps in, though I don’t acknowledge him.
“You’re accusing me of something you don’t know.”
She mutters something under her breath, and it seems only I miss the comment, judging by Dad’s wide eyes. Mom has a habit of saying things under her breath, things that I suppose are meant to be deep but come out callous.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” she says, turning to check the kettle.
Dad gives her a stern look and tilts his head at her in disapproval. “Nothing to worry about.” He stands between us, intervening before we get any louder. He’s the only one up until now still aware that a six-year-old girl is asleep a few rooms away.
Mom steps back at this point and diverts all attention from Dad and me. The kettle seems to be the most of her worries.
I can imagine her whispering under her breath that she doesn’t want me making any regrets for Ella because I can’t erase those things.
“You think you know it all, that you have the grand answer. Well, I can tell you that you are far from that. You’re impossible to talk to, and to please. You say I’ve got family to turn to for help but you haven’t asked me—not once—if I’m okay. You have no idea what’s going on. When you’re like this, I won’t grovel at your feet for anything.” I puff out my cheeks in fury. “Stay out of my life if you’re just going to make things worse.”
The air is thick and sticky with heat, which sears through me. I’ll fight irrationally if she takes Ella.
“I’m not the one who made things worse.”
In the split second that follows, Dad flings both his palms in between our faces and directs me back to my seat at the table to wait.
He’s the only thing stopping me from making a physical reaction to her words. Suddenly, I feel horrible. Why would I even think of something so abusive? Stupid, stupid. I need to control my anger, but it’s always wound so tight that it escapes without intention.
Mom stands in the kitchen and strokes the cup, her mind seemingly worlds farther.
• • •
A little voice calls from the hallway door. “Mommy?” Ella stands there with her doll, Elly, lodged in a one-arm cuddle. She rubs her temple with her other hand. Her timing is impeccable. Our time is up.
“Aw, you’re awake,” I say, rushing to her side.
“But . . . but what happened?” Her eyes search us. Dad is consoling Mom. The tension is so thick even a young girl is choking on it.
“Oh, Nana, Pa and I were having a grown-up chat. But I was about to come and get you so we can go home.”
“Wait,” Dad says, coming over. “We’ll go chat on the steps, yes.”
“Uh . . . mm.”
Pulling Me Under Page 8
