PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Light and sound melded in my mind to a blur of activity I couldn’t focus on. I turned inward and relived the terror again and again like a movie on repeat. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t reconcile what Ryan had done. It was like he was possessed. He was an asshole, sure, but he wouldn’t have been in my yearbook as Voted Most Likely to Rape and Murder.

  I knew because I was on the yearbook committee, and we’d already tagged him as Most Likely to Marry Into Wealth.

  The absence of my phone was a blessing. I imagined I had a message from half the kids at school. I wasn’t stupid enough to assume they would all be well wishes. Ryan was popular and I wasn’t. Justice was about status, not right and wrong.

  Aka turned his phone off after Erin called. He told her to go ahead and update any concerned friends. The emphasis he put on it made it clear he didn’t want my friends dropping idle gossip with the information he gave them. It confirmed he trusted our friends as much as I did.

  He didn’t speak to me, and I didn’t know what to say to him. We spoke to the adults who came and went from the curtained pseudo-room, but no more than necessary. When we were alone, silence echoed off the disinfected wall in reply to the beeps of machinery behind other cloth barriers.

  My hand was clenched tightly between his two, but he would not look at me. His chair faced my rollaway bed, but his deliberate gaze at the floor tiles looked like an attempt to count the little color flecks and glitter in the white. His bowed head did not obscure the sight of his swollen eye or split lip, no matter how he tilted it or willed his long, dark brown bangs across his face. Gravity and wishes did not make hair grow.

  I wanted to tell him how grateful I was to have him as my friend, but I didn’t know how to say it without sounding pathetic. Every word I formed in my mind was dismissed. No words held the weight of my sincerity.

  “You’re my favorite person.” I glanced at my IV with suspicion. Those were not the words I intended to use. Must’ve been a hell of a drug taking a tour through my veins.

  “Same.” He did not lift his dark green eyes up from the floor.

  “I left the newspaper office window open.” There was no reason in the world for that to be a concern.

  “It’s my fault,” Aka said.

  I frowned at the top of Aka’s head. He had no guilt in the condition of the window. It was a very strange thing to say. “I’m the one that opened it.”

  “No,” Aka said. He lifted his head, but fixed his eyes on my flimsy hospital sheet. “Ryan. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Oh! Pssh.” I dismissed his words with a less than lucid wave. “He’s an ass. It’s in no way your fault. You saved me. You’re my hero.”

  Technically, he and Josh saved me. To be fair, Aka had the key and he attacked Ryan, plus he helped me to the school nurse then skipped school to be with me in the hospital, so he was far more my savior than Josh the verbal spectator.

  Aka shook his head. Tears gathered at his jaw line before dropping to the floor. I had never seen him cry before. I had rarely seen him express anything other than artificial militant apathy. His attack on Ryan had been the first time I’d seen his anger. Two bouts of emoting in one day must have been a private torture for him. I hoped his personality didn’t suffer an irreversible crack.

  He opened and closed his mouth enough to be mistaken for a gasping fish. I waited for him to say whatever he was having difficulty with. His mouth closed a final time, then he shook his head. “I am nothing more than what I am," he said quietly.

  His hands released mine and he got up. The hand he ran through his shaggy hair did nothing to tame the mess. I didn’t understand what he mumbled before he marched out, slapping the curtain out of his path. Maybe he had to go to work, but didn’t want to leave me there.

  The drugs kicked in and I nodded off. It was a side-effect from being high and bored out of my mind. I awoke to see my father standing by my bed, talking to a doctor. It was so unexpected, I assumed I was still asleep.

  “You’re in so much trouble,” I said. My throat hurt and my voice sounded funny. “Mom’s not Mom and I’m not me anymore.”

  He and the doctor exchanged a glance. “Hey, kiddo. Reckon it’s time to get you home. You feeling better?”

  “I hurt now. Drugs are bad. Can I have some more?” I pawed at my throat and winced. It was tender to the touch. My mouth tasted like pennies and window cleaner. “Bruised?”

  “You’re still beautiful to me,” Dad said. He gave me a smile I interpreted as patronizing.

  “Oh, God. I’m horribly disfigured now, aren’t I?” It was the only explanation for his insincere proclamation of my beauty. Dads did that to make their little girls feel better, right?

  He chuckled at me. I didn’t find the situation the least bit amusing. Then again, Dad found a lot of things funny that I didn’t. Mom, for example. Clearly my sense of humor came from my egg donor. My hips probably did, too.

  “C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get you tucked into your own bed.” Dad reached out his hand and I obediently took it. I was in no condition to have a lengthy discussion with him about my origins, and I definitely didn’t want to talk to him about what happened at school.

  “Can I have ice cream?” I thought I deserved compensation for my super-shitty day.

  “Anything you want.”

  ***

  I awoke in darkness. The harmony of the cricket song was the rhythm of my small universe. The tick-tock of their rubbed legs mirrored the thrum of my heart against my ribs. A glance at my clock told me it was almost two in the morning.

  My body was stiff from the day I spent in bed. I was probably still grounded from everything, so I stared at the ceiling for hours on end. I replayed the morning over and over in my mind, determined to pinpoint at what moment it all went horribly awry.

  The day of my birth, I decided.

  Rigel was curious about what happened, but he took pity on me and didn’t question me much. He curled up like a cat at the foot of my mattress, until footsteps approaching my door drove him under my bed. It was always Dad. Mom never came, and I didn’t care why. She would probably just blame me for the whole thing anyway.

  My black roses had already begun to wilt, but it was hard to tell unless you got close. They still smelled good, and my room was awash in their scent. No one had yet come forward to claim them. Like half the things in my life, they were a damned mystery.

  I sat up against my headboard and debated fetching a snack. Dad took pity on me and bought me some ice cream sandwiches. I was sore, but the effort to go up and down the stairs would be worth it if the reward was mint chocolate ice cream.

  My bedside lamp sprang to life on its own, and I jumped. But as my eyes adjusted to the unexpected light, Aka came into focus. He looked tired. The skin beneath his eyes was purple and sunken, as if he’d not slept for days. It was a sharp contrast to the boy I’d seen only a few hours ago.

  He sat on my red beanbag chair between my bed and the window. I assumed he snuck in my window since I doubted my parents would let a teenage boy in my room overnight.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you again,” he said, mindful to keep his voice low to avoid waking my parents.

  I had to purse my lips tightly together to keep from grinning like an idiot. Aka was the best friend a person could ever have, if a bit unconventional in his ways. It was as if his presence brought fresh air itself to my room, created light where there was none. Or my painkillers were still working really good at altering my perception.

  “So you’re going to stand guard?” I whispered back. “My parents will freak if they find you in here. You need to get out of here before one of them pops in. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I didn’t know if that was true. My neck still ached and even whispering hurt my throat.

  “Check a mirror yet?” Aka said. His face was set in a frown and his jaw kept clenching. Everything about him told me he was angry, and part of me worried he was somehow pissed at me. I hadn’t done anything wrong that I w
as aware of, but boys were a mystery to me sometimes. They just decided things were true on occasion. At least that was how it felt.

  The bags beneath his eyes hinted at lack of sleep, but the way his skin clung to his high cheekbones suggested too many missed meals, and the boy really could not afford to miss a meal at all to begin with. But I knew he hadn’t. I’d seen him eating at school.

  “No. Why? Dad said I’m pretty, so that means I’m seriously fucked up, right?” I hadn’t thought to check. I was in bed on painkillers all day. My conscious thoughts had mostly consisted of dragging my mind through the trauma again and imagining what new traumas awaited me at school the next day. My unconscious thoughts had been about Batman, only his true identity was not Bruce Wayne, but Severus Snape. It actually made a strange sort of sense. Remembering a dream had been a not unwelcome surprise. Didn’t happen often.

  Aka stood and held out his hand. I tossed aside my covers and put my hand into his. There was no one I trusted more, and I knew no one with a more complex thought process. I was curious as to what point he wanted to make, but nervous to see what I looked like. Frankly, he was starting to creep me out more than a little.

  He led me into my bathroom and turned on the light. “Please do not have some sort of anxiety attack. Please.”

  I winced and blinked, then allowed my eyes to focus on my reflection. Aka stood behind me and pulled my long hair from my face and neck to rest at my back.

  “Oh, my God,” I said too loud, then glanced worriedly at my bedroom door. I hoped I didn’t wake my parents.

  My left eye had a ring of blue on black beneath it, and my cheek was swollen and red. Fingerprint bruises dotted my face in a trail that led down to a large bruise covering my neck like a tie-dyed turtleneck of purple and yellow.

  I was too shocked by the bruises that covered my arms to care I stood before Aka in nothing but the tight, black tank top and baggy Jack Skellington boxers I slept in. Scratches crisscrossed my chest, bruises cuffed my wrists, and what looked like a bite was on my shoulder near my neck. My makeup looked like it was applied by the Joker during his Impressionist Period.

  Aka watched me assess the damage. He still looked angry. I tried to hope he was irate on my behalf and not actually at me. Compassion had been a stranger to me my entire life, and it was hard to clinch the idea someone cared enough to be angered by a crime against me. I wished my dad would be as angry as Aka looked. Just once.

  “Death was possible.” Aka did not meet my eyes in the mirror. His gaze travelled over my wounds.

  “Aka, sweetie, death is possible walking to school or eating Chinese food too fast,” I said. “Although my take-out doesn’t usually attack me without warning. Save for indigestion.”

  He did not smile.

  “Look, I seriously doubt Ryan would have killed me,” I said. “I’m not defending him or anything, but I don’t think he had murder on his mind.” It was a lie, but the rational part of me had trouble truly believing Ryan would have murdered me at school with his bare hands. It just didn’t make any sense.

  The furious look he shot the mirror was surreal on his normally placid face.

  “Fate worse than death?” I said. “Probably. I’d have Ryan cooties for the rest of my life. I’d probably swallow a bullet or give a tailpipe a blowjob.”

  “Stop it,” Aka said. His eyes met mine at last. “Your humor? Inappropriate.”

  “Your limited word use isn’t exactly awesome right now, either,” I shot back. “Your consonant carving fetish brings the blood to my cheeks.” Sometimes I impressed myself when I was able to wax poetic as he did.

  I turned around and looked up at him. In the confined space of my bathroom, he seemed far taller than I remembered him. “I’d really prefer full sentences right now, Aka. I’m in no mood to mentally fill in the blanks for all the words you’re not using. I know you can do it; you’ve done it before.”

  He bent his head close enough to almost touch noses with me. His eyes searched mine for an uncomfortably long time. “The words I should say? Not tonight.”

  Aka gently cupped my jaw with his palm then walked out. He grabbed my window ledge like a caged animal set free and disappeared into the silent night as if a faded dream. I stood there like an idiot until I yelped at Rigel’s voice behind me on my bathroom counter.

  “I thought he would never leave.”

  “He’s more welcome here than you are.” I headed back to bed with the decision a late night snack would not make me feel any better. Rigel bounced along at my heels.

  “That could change.”

  “I doubt it. Go away, I’m tired.”

  Rigel hopped up on the window ledge and bowed dramatically. “As you wish.”

  “Stop doing that.” I rolled over and gazed at my alarm clock. At nine minutes past two o’clock, it would be a long time until morning since I doubted sleep would come again.

  I was wrong.

  14: The Day After

  The aftermath of the incident would be over faster if I bit the bullet and went to school. I knew the longer I put it off, the worse it would be. To minimize gossip as much as possible, I wore long sleeves and a striped scarf around my neck. One small mercy was the heavy makeup I usually wore would not be out of place. A glance in the mirror confirmed I looked almost perfectly normal. For me.

  I wobbled down the stairs, far more sore than I had been the day before. With a pound of dread and an ounce of wisdom, I headed for the door.

  “Hey, Kathleen, honey?” Dad said from the kitchen. “Could you come here a second?”

  I could. I didn’t want to. I feared a “talk” about “things” a girl doesn’t want to talk to her dad about. Or anyone. That’s what the internet is for. Without a reply, I walked to the kitchen.

  Dad sat at the table in a rumpled shirt with a cup of coffee in front of him. A glance at the coffee maker told me he was not on his first cup. His bedhead made him look a bit like a windblown Jesus with patches of gray in a receding hairline.

  “Where’s your mama?” he said.

  “Beats me. Never met her.” My voice scratched and was husky in a surprisingly sexy way.

  He gave me the disappointed dad face. “We’ll discuss that later. But your mama . . . she’s not answering her phone and she didn’t come home last night.”

  “Maybe she left us,” I said with far more enthusiasm than I should have shown in front of the man who actually seemed to like her. No accounting for taste.

  “That’s not amusing, little missy,” Dad said. He ran a hand through his hair, and I was surprised that was all it took to make it behave. “I’m worried. When did you see her last?”

  “The day before yesterday.” Which was a little weird, but a blessing. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  It was one of the stupidest idioms in the English language. What is a gift horse? Why look in its mouth? Is it a hygiene thing? Is it because the Trojans would not have been fooled by the Greeks if they had looked in the Trojan Horse’s mouth and seen soldiers? If so, wouldn’t it be wise to look a gift horse in the mouth? Yet it’s an implication of stupidity if you do. It’s illogical.

  And why is it the Trojan Horse and not the Greek Horse? The Trojans didn’t make it.

  “Did she mention a trip for work or anything like that?” Dad said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  That was a strange question. Mom never had to leave town for work before. I would sooner believe she ran away with some guy who was more interesting and willing to tolerate her, plus was more her equal in temperament and morality. I pictured a guy who looked a lot like Satan.

  “Trust me, I’d remember if she said she would be gone a few days.” That was an understatement. I would have marked big X’s on my calendar with a glittery gel pen, counting down the days to when she left and made a big sad face in permanent marker on the day she was due back.

  “I think I need to report her missing, honey.” He looked worried. Not the usual worried face he made when he
had to scold me on Mom’s behalf, or the one he wore when he occasionally wanted to help with my homework and found he knew nothing about the subject. Points for trying, though. It was a different kind of worried that bunched up his brows in an unattractive way and made his shoulders slouch noticeably.

  I failed to summon any concern. In fact, I had a brief flash of life without her and I got a little happy. I couldn’t tell Dad that, though. Not when he was making that face.

  “Maybe she just needed a break,” I said. “We’ve not been getting along.”

  The coffee in front of him seemed to mesmerize him for a long moment, then he said, “You can stay home today, you know. I’ll call you in.”

  It tempted me. I doubted he would call me in every day until I graduated, however, so one day’s reprieve was worthless. The sooner I got back to normal, the better. I envisioned a rumor of my death if I missed a day, and the sore disappointment in many of my classmates’ eyes when I showed up the next. The more rumors I could cut off at the pass, the sooner it would be a dead topic. At least Ryan probably wouldn’t be there.

  “No, I’d rather go in. Thanks, though,” I said with a false smile.

  “Well, if you change your mind, just leave,” he said. “I’ll excuse it. If you need me to get you, just call.”

  “Mom took my phone,” I said.

  “Why?” Dad looked sincerely confused.

  I paused in mid-thought as it occurred to me: this was all her fault. If she hadn’t made me so angry, I wouldn’t have antagonized Ryan to the point I did. Had Ryan decided to do that no matter my mood, I could have called for help before it got as bad as it did if I’d had my phone.

  The fact Mom hadn’t told Dad I was grounded was strange. She seemed to revel in outlining my faults in an attempt to make me look like the worst kid who ever lived. It surprised me he had no idea I’d been labeled a thief, a liar, and a sexual deviant who gets off on going through her parents’ sex accessories.

  “I’m grounded from technology,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”