PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “And I’m sure your personality doesn’t help.” She stood up, which meant the conversation was over, and there was nothing I was going to be able to say that would sway her.

  “Probably not. So clearly I don’t need it so I didn’t take it.” I was willing to agree with her if it meant I could keep my internet. I needed the internet like I needed air and chocolate.

  “Just because you don’t need something, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t take it. Just like your thieving mother.”

  I don’t know whose eyes were wider at that moment. Time stopped, and I’m not sure I remembered how to breathe. I felt dizzy and suddenly nauseous as I stood there, my hand lifting to my stomach as if to quell the heavy butterflies that bumped about inside it.

  “What did you say?” I barely managed in a squeak. I thought I should get to the bottom of the mystery before my heart exploded from the anxious tension.

  Mom straightened herself to her full height and said, “Well, your father was going to tell you eventually anyway. You and Karen are not sisters, and I am not your mother. Your father and I married when you were a year old, and Karen was two. He adopted Karen, and we became a family. Any other questions will just have to wait until your father gets home. He was supposed to tell you last weekend. I forgot he hadn’t.”

  Which was Mom’s way of apologizing for telling me something so important while remaining in full bitch mode. I don’t think I ever heard her tell me she was sorry even once in my life, not with any sincerity.

  “But—”

  “I mean it. Now go to your room.”

  I stood up and opened my mouth to speak, but she silenced me with a withering look and a pointed finger. I walked out and headed upstairs. Part of me felt vindicated and relieved: she was not my real mother. She was an incompetent fraud. But another part of me was devastated. I had a real mother who didn’t want me and abandoned me to be raised by a psychopath.

  My whole life was a lie.

  12: Just When I Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse

  Were I less tired, I would have thought of something less prosaic than a rating system, but as it was, I was exhausted. As such, I stared at the ceiling and reflected on the evening, and if I had to rate it on a scale of one to ten—one being achingly gruesome and ten being utter rapture—I would have rated it at about negative three hundred and twenty-six.

  For some reason, my melancholic brain latched onto that number as being the most appropriate, as it was—without a doubt—the worst evening of my short life. I had been having some pretty bad ones of late, that was true, but this had taken the cake—then tossed it onto the ground, stomped it, picked up the debris, and began slinging it at people.

  My world without television, internet, or telephone was full of sleep. I spent the evening flat on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I ignored Rigel to the point he actually gave up and went away. I didn’t see him the rest of the night. My thoughts swam in my head, a jumbled cyclone of faces and names and places and memories. I fell asleep before ten o’clock.

  I didn’t cry. I refused to on principle. How on earth had I gotten to this point, and what else could possibly go wrong? I wasn’t depressed or emotionally injured. I was pissed. I lay there and plotted my eventual escape to college, preferably one very far away.

  Few people are special. I hate the way that term gets tossed around. I was a chubby Goth chick with a shitty home life. Talk about a dime a dozen. I was smart enough to know that. Smart, but no brainiac. I loved to write, but so did thousands—if not millions—of people. The only special thing about me was my furry little stalker, and I would get rid of him if I could.

  Mom was special in her ability to disappoint people. In fact, I would go so far as to say she was gifted. The revelation she was not my mother provoked disappointment and relief to battle each other in my head. No victor emerged.

  In the morning, I didn’t hear her leave the house. It was kind of weird, but I didn’t care at all so I didn’t think on it too much. Dad hadn’t come home, but I expected him home by the time school was out. Although I was anxious for answers, I didn’t want to call him in Des Moines while he was at some meeting for work. Besides, I didn’t know if I was grounded from calling anyone on the planet or just my friends. Mom hadn’t been especially specific.

  Deprived of both food and entertainment, I trudged to school a hollow shell of what I once was. Okay, I actually hauled ass to school so I could snag some breakfast off Aka before using the computer in the newspaper office.

  “Rushed?” Aka said as he watched me cram a biscuit into my mouth.

  I nodded, chewing as fast as the soggy dough would allow. “Things to do,” I said clumsily through breaths. “Gotta run.”

  With twenty minutes before my first class, I needed to get to a computer to email Karen. I had to know if she knew about our parents—if she was in on it, if she was part of the great charade. Sure, it meant dropping a bomb on her via email if she didn’t know, but I suspected she already did.

  I darted down the hall, all my focus on an imaginary timer in my head. I didn’t see the foot jut out to trip me.

  My bag swung from my shoulder and caught most of my weight, but my knee made painful contact with the linoleum-covered concrete. Juvenile cackling from other students in the hall was expected, so I ignored it. I pushed myself up and spun around to face the prankster. I was not surprised to see Ryan. Josh was at his side.

  “Tripping the nerd?” I said, straightening my skirt. “What, are we trapped in an eighties movie?”

  “I didn’t trip you.” Ryan shrugged and attempted to look innocent in that way which was so over-the-top, it was actually a confession of guilt. “Maybe your ass wobbled so much, it knocked you over.”

  Josh put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “Come on. We’ll be late for first period.”

  Ryan tugged away from him. “No, we won’t.”

  I didn’t have the time for an argument with the resident asshole, so I turned to walk away. Ryan was a degenerate, small-minded, chauvinistic bully, and not worth the effort of trying to put him on the path towards enlightenment. Plus, it wasn’t my job, and I didn’t give a shit.

  “Stop shaking the floor, Elchubba,” Ryan called out in a mocking, sing-song voice.

  Normally, I would ignore him. Normally, I didn’t care about him, his opinions, or his stupid face. Normally, I had a dysfunctional family I could call my own and the world made sense—in a sort of quixotic way.

  Besides, I wasn’t that fat. I was chubby. Well-padded. Curvy, even.

  But since I was having a spectacularly bad week, my tempter got the best of me. I was fed up with Ryan, his friends, spectators who never intervened, my school, my family, Hollywood, the government, leprechauns, and God. I don’t know why the little Irish men popped into my head, but I do know I’d had it with them, too. Them and their stupid pots of gold.

  I turned back and marched over to Ryan. I tapped his chest with my finger and looked straight into his hazel eyes as I spoke in a slow, deliberate rhythm reserved for conversing with the mentally challenged. “I don’t give a fuck about you, your opinions, or your Oedipus hang-ups, Ryan Dixon. You are a mediocre boy who will live a mediocre life.”

  It wasn’t my best insult ever, but I was pressed for time and stressed out. I’m sure I could have come up with something better on a different day.

  He said nothing in return. Our eyes played chicken, but it was I that looked away first. I still had to get to the newspaper office, and time slipped away while I was stalled with Fucktard. It was my private name for him. I adjusted my bag and strode down the hall.

  “Who or what is Eddy Puss?” Ryan said behind me.

  I was impressed Josh knew enough to say, “It means you want to fuck your mom.”

  “Hey, fuck you!” I assumed Ryan said it to me. I didn’t bother to look back or reply.

  When I entered the newspaper office, I glanced at the clock. I had twelve minutes to boot the system and send my sister an emai
l. I dropped my bag beside the desk and hit the power button. While it booted, I turned to open the window behind the desk. I would be back in a few hours for my fourth period, and I hated the stifling atmosphere produced by the school’s central air system.

  Plus, it wasn’t my electric bill.

  The computer beeped and I turned back around. Ryan stood on the other side of the desk. My eyes darted to the door. How the hell did he get in so quietly? And why? Stealth practiced by one’s enemies was a bad sign. He’d also slid the window panel shut, which was a trick Josh never tried to do when he attempted to be sly.

  “Yeah?” I said. I saw no reason to let on how worried I was to be cornered and alone in a room with someone who hated me as much as I hated them. Someone who had proven over the years to be ten thousand percent more violent than me, I might add.

  “You’ve got a big mouth,” Ryan said. “It matches your big ass.”

  “Is that some sort of weird compliment? I’m anatomically coordinated?” I knew it wasn’t, but it was impossible for me to zip the lip.

  “You’d like me to, wouldn’t you?” Ryan stepped slowly around the desk in that super-creepy way the aggressive stalker character does in movies. “Compliment you? Tell you how awesome you are? How much better you are than other girls?”

  “Hardly.” Intimidated by Ryan’s chosen path around the only barrier between us, I tried to act casual as I stepped around the desk in the opposite direction. “I’d prefer we never saw or spoke to one another again until the day after the end of time.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Ryan’s voice dropped in a disturbing way, slightly louder than a whisper and as husky as a lifetime four-pack-a-day smoker. He pulled his hood over his light brown hair. “You’ve wanted me for years.”

  “A crush in second grade doesn’t mean I still want you, Fucktard.” I didn’t care I’d just verbalized my secret name for him, the one I used when complaining about him to my friends.

  I was tempted to run for the door, but my rational mind overrode my instincts with the assumption of safety at school. Not from guns or knives, granted, but surely from being murdered bare-handed by a boy I’d known for years. I’d succumbed to the sort of daft logic that was best portrayed in horror movies by lesser characters. You know, the ones who died in the first twenty minutes.

  I wished I could stop comparing it to cinematic drama in my mind. I was so stupid, and if anything could ever be said of me, at the very least I was consistent in my ability to fail at life.

  His steps halted. “You know what I’m sick of?” Ryan said.

  “Being an asshole?”

  “You thinking you’re better than everyone else when no one likes you.”

  Not like me? That was true for the most part. But who cared if I didn’t like them either?

  “Why should you care?” I stepped towards the door. The email to my sister was no longer a priority. “If you hate me so much, ignore me. Pretend I don’t exist. Easy solution, Dixon. That’s what I try to do with you. You’re about as much fun as driving dull spikes into one's eyes.”

  Ryan bolted around the desk to the door, blocking my way out. Not to be so easily defeated, I pushed at him to get past. His slender fingers wrapped around both my wrists as he pushed me backwards.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I kicked at his shins, but it didn’t seem to faze him. “You’re acting like a creepy rapist, Ryan. Let me go.”

  “Creepy rapist?” Ryan repeated with a scornful chuckle. “I thought you death-loving Goths need a bit of danger. All a bunch of S&M freaks, I bet. You know you want it. It ain’t rape if you just go with it.”

  “Get. The fuck. Away from me,” I said with all the ferocity I could muster. I tried to knee him in the boy bits, but could barely reach. I’d never paid attention to how the boy was ninety-five percent limbs—that were far longer than mine. My chance to escape had come and gone. I never wanted to be anywhere else in the world more than I did right at that moment: Guam, Iraq, Mom’s pedicure appointment—I wasn’t picky.

  My attempt on his tenders pissed him off enough to backhand my jaw. Shocked tears that hovered at the corners of my eyes were set free by the abrupt pain.

  I went for his face with my claws. It was ridiculously more pathetic than it sounds. My nails were chewed down to the quick due to my life of high anxiety. Mostly I just pushed at his face with my fingertips.

  A lot of what happened next is an adrenaline-fueled blur. He had me bent backwards over the desk at one point, but I never stopped squirming and struggling until his knee landed hard on my back when we hit the floor together. Facedown with the wind knocked out of me and my terror level somewhere around a bajillion, I did my best bunny impression.

  In other words, I just lay there wide-eyed and trembled. I couldn’t think. I forgot how. I think my brain overloaded from the spectacularly shitty week which culminated in the private assault perpetrated by my worst enemy in my inner sanctum.

  I remember a sense of self-pity. Would Ryan brag to his friends about taking me down a peg? Did guys actually think beating up a girl deserved bragging rights? I decided all guys were sick, twisted fucks if that sort of thing got them off.

  Right about then, I remembered I had a mouth. I used it to scream so loud, police sirens turned sickly green with envy. For about one-point-five seconds, anyway. That’s how long it took Ryan to smother my mouth with his hand.

  “God, I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” he said into my ear as he pressed his knee harder into my back. I didn’t know why he kept it up. We were at school, and he would be in deep shit any second. Someone was bound to find us soon.

  But life with my mother taught me there were no such things as heroes.

  I squirmed beneath him and tried to crawl away. He stayed close at my side, pulling at my legs and skirt as I tried to get off the floor. He lunged for the hair at the crown of my head and twisted it in his fist. I toppled down again, my descent halted by my nose when it invaded the wall’s territorial bubble.

  We collapsed together in our ungainly dance. My legs were splayed across his lap and my chest was pressed against the wall by his body. He had not released my hair.

  Blood took a shortcut to my mouth via my nose instead of my veins. I exhaled sharply from the pressure of Ryan’s body against mine and created a small crimson work of art against the dingy plaster.

  “Get off me!” It was so surreal. Ryan Dixon was kicking my ass. I never expected it would escalate to that. I thought we would continue our verbal sparring until we graduated high school and never saw each other again. I was certain there would never be groping of any kind, but now I wasn’t entirely sure the asshole wasn’t going to rape me in my sanctuary.

  Ryan released my hair, but there was not time to feel relief before his arm snaked around my neck and squeezed. My hands flew up to pull at the arm.

  “I think you’re all talk,” Ryan said, his mouth near my ear. “I think you’re just a bitter, hateful bitch who thinks too fucking much of herself.”

  His free hand grabbed at my skirt. I bucked and thrashed, but he was stronger than me. Fingertips found the bare flesh of my inner thigh. I tried to call out, but no sound came. Dizziness set in, and the fight was leaving me. He slipped his fingers beneath my underwear and I nearly vomited with revulsion. I tried to head-butt him, to squirm away, but his grip grew stronger as I grew weak.

  “I think,” Ryan whispered, “you’ve never had a bit of real fun in your life.”

  His fingers began to touch and rub me in a way no one else ever had before. I was repulsed by the violation, by the audacity of the boy I hated so much to think he could do this to me and get away with it. But I was sickened the most by my traitorous body that tingled and pulsed at the unwanted arousal. I felt him stiffen beneath me, and he pushed it against my center in a pathetic mockery of sex.

  The door to the office thumped. Muffled words accompanied the jiggled handle while a key breached the lock. Ryan released me and sto
od as the door opened while I fell onto my side.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Josh asked the question, but it was Aka who didn’t wait for an answer. He lunged at Ryan, toppling them both over the top of the desk. I could hear them scuffle, but I was more concerned about getting to my feet and straightening my skirt.

  Josh ran around the desk and pulled the two boys apart. Ryan swatted angrily at him and bolted out the door. Aka looked like he contemplated attacking Josh as a proxy.

  “You okay?” Josh said as he stepped towards me.

  I shrugged. Of course I wasn’t okay. I just had the crap beat out of me by his best friend, coupled with the enviable bonus of being violated and humiliated. It would take me more than thirty seconds to get my shit together.

  “Nurse,” Aka said, sliding an arm around my waist. He tugged gently at me to get me to walk, and I let myself be led like an obedient dog.

  My mind fogged with memories and sensations. I knew I needed to turn Ryan’s ass in. Somewhere in my mind I knew he would go to jail and it pleased me immensely. But all I could handle was putting one foot in front of the other as Aka helped me to the school nurse.

  13: Those Who Cared the Most

  An ambulance took me to the hospital. Aka said they couldn’t reach either of my parents, and I guess there were some school guidelines against faculty transporting kids without permission. The nurse wanted to make sure I wasn’t injured more than I let on, especially since I didn’t want to speak. My half of the conversation was primarily a nod or a shake of my head when needed.

  The nurse told Aka to go to class. Instead, he beat me to the hospital and waited near the ambulance entrance. They wheeled me out of the vehicle, and he joined the group that took me inside the building.

  Great. I was on display, as if I wanted people looking at me. I was sick of strangers asking me questions. I was fine. All I needed was a washcloth and my dignity. The doctors seemed to think I needed x-rays. It wasn’t long before there were cops who wanted a statement.