by Ellie Danes
Brittany
All my fears realized, Dalton’s words came crashing against with me. After he had come clean about dating my sister and getting sent to jail for assaulting my sister’s killer, I didn’t see him for a week after that. I was still working through the information bomb he had dropped on me.
I felt an odd mix of fear, anger, comfort, and attraction. I was afraid of Dalton, and what other secrets he may still be keeping. He did tell me that he had one more thing to fix, which had sounded quite ominous.
I was angry that I hadn’t known about him and my sister and that Dalton hadn’t said anything when I had mentioned Talia’s name in front of him. I didn’t know if my parents also knew, but I would soon find out by confronting them about Dalton. Strangely, I was also very comforted knowing that Dalton had rearranged my sister’s killer’s face. I felt safer knowing he was down the hall, and I couldn’t help but love him even more knowing that he’d cared deeply for Talia and that Talia had seen something in him that I also saw.
Yet, I vowed to myself to never talk to him ever again. I brought out my painting of Dalton the Bulldog and began to add in paws and claws, coloring them red and dashing what looked to be blood by putting in splatter patterns down the chest.
A voice came from deep inside me. You’re still painting for Dalton. It was not my voice that said it, but it seemed to come from far off as if my sister were pointing out how I still loved him.
I rescinded my previous vow of never speaking to Dalton again, and modified it to only be platonic friends for the rest of our lives. I wanted to love him less, wanted to be free of my attraction to him so I could get on with my life and not be so distracted from the path I was already so far along in, but the voice bubbled up again. You love him more now, don’t you?
I ignored it, and continued my painting. I added a fence around the bulldog, and started to add another animal outside the fence. It was going to be another bulldog, and I thought I was going to paint it with cuts and bruises littering the fur as if Dalton the Bulldog had mauled the poor creature.
Instead, I found myself painting a hole in the fence, and blood dripping down the edges of the small opening. Inside the perimeter of the fence, Dalton the Bulldog sat as a captive. I added bits of chain-link sticking out of his paws to represent how Dalton the Bulldog had bloodied himself while freeing the other bulldog that now roamed free.
“My mad, crazy dog,” I whispered, petting the bulldog on my canvas. Fresh paint from the fence around him brushed off on my fingers, and I spent some extra time fixing the smear I had created. I washed my hands, and then went to bed while banishing all thoughts about Dalton and how he was only inches away next door. My friend, I forcefully told myself, and nothing more. A protector of the weak, but a monstrous animal nonetheless that I must avoid or risk endangering my future even further.
In my dreams, Dalton had me bent over my bed. My mad dog was on top of me, reaching over to remove a leash I had around my neck. In my dream, I didn’t know how it had been clasped to my neck, but I knew Dalton had released it and that it was a representation of my controlling family. As he slipped it off my neck, I could feel the pressure my father had put on me to obey his blueprint for my life get relinquished. With the leash gone, dream-Dalton started to disappear, but my dream-self grabbed his hand and placed it back on my neck, begging him to squeeze.
“You are free, I do not want to leash you.” Dream-Dalton said.
“I know,” I told him, “this is how you let me be free. I’m asking you to take me, not to capture me without permission.”
“I can’t let you be anything, you let yourself be.” Dream-Dalton’s words faded away as my dream continued. He pushed me into the bed and he took me from behind. “No wait, I want to see your eyes.”
Dream-Dalton flipped me over and let his weight fall on top of me, his chest pressed firmly against mine so that I could feel his heat over my entire body. His brown, wild eyes were riveted on my face. We drowned in each other, not coming up for air the rest of the dream.
When I woke up, I reached down into my pajama bottoms as I remembered the dream. Closing my eyes, I tried to recapture the look he had given me, full of fire and thorns, willing to lay his life down for what he cared about. He had cared about Talia, and now he cared about me. I was interrupted by my second alarm clock I always set for emergencies, just in case I overslept and missed class on a test day. Realizing in a panic that my first alarm hadn’t gone off, and that the existence of this alarm meant that I had a test today, I leapt from my bed and hurriedly got ready.
Even in my dreams, Dalton was a dangerous distraction. I had forgotten to study last night, spending all my time in the bulldog piece. Quickly, I ordered a car to drive me to campus from my phone, and then sent a text off to my father. I wanted to meet him and confront him about Dalton and find out how much my father already knew. Since my father was friends with August Jones, I’d be surprised if he didn’t already know everything about Dalton’s criminal record. August, Dalton’s father, would have been the only one to divulge this information to them since Talia hadn’t spoken much about her personal life with my parents the few years before leading up to her death. Perhaps they truly were ignorant, though, since Dalton was in jail when Talia was still with her murderer, and was still in there when the murder occurred. I hadn’t seen him in court when they tried my sister’s killer, and the incident was never brought up during the trial. He must have been forbidden from going to the funeral, too, and I concluded that because of that my parents must know about him and his past. They must have known in order to ban him from appearing to pay his respects and mourn her loss, unless there was another reason he hadn’t attended.
My father agreed to meet with me tomorrow, and my car brought me to campus with only a few minutes to spare. I scrambled to my chair, and took one of the worst tests I’d ever taken in my life. I failed the test and didn’t even attempt the essay question.
To clear my head and calm down, I walked down to the harbor. As I was gazing out at the ocean and contemplating what I would do if they kicked me out of school for the terrible score I would get from the test I had just turned in, a man called out my name.
“Ah, once again it is the beautiful lady with smart taste in art,” he said, approaching me where I leaned on the railing. It was the artist I had met with Dalton, the one who had sold him the painting now hanging in the apartment complex hallway.
“It’s you,” I pointed to him, not remembering is name.
“That it is.” He let loose a Cheshire grin and hugged me, making a pecking sound as he mimed kissing me on both cheeks without actually making contact. “Marty,” he introduced himself, deducing that I had forgotten his name.
“Hello again, Marty.”
“Where is your hunk?” he said, giving me a wink and looking around.
“I don’t have a hunk,” I told him, chuckling. “I have an apartment manager.”
“And a fine one at that.” Marty took my hand, dragging me toward the nearby Bizarre Bazaar. “Come, come, I have something I know you’ll just adore.”
He brought me into the back of the shop where five paintings hung in a row. Each one had items other than paint adorning them: one had faux fish scales that were peeling off to reveal a man with a liquor bottle stuck in his gills, a second had fishing line wrapped around the painting of a woman who looked akin to Aphrodite, and the others had different things along the same theme. The one in the center held my interest the most, depicting a swordfish wearing a muzzle. Actual, physical straps from the muzzle warped the fabric of the canvas and distorted the image.
“The center one I did.” Marty said, beaming proudly. “The rest are all locals, it’s all part of a weekly viewing of nearby artists who want to showcase their work.”
“It’s lovely.”
“What piece are you working on now? I’d love to see your work sometime.”
I took a step back. “How did you know?”
“How could I not? Your ma
n came in here when he bought my painting of Trapped Fire Yet Unclipped Wings. Pretentious title I know, no apologies.” He chuckled to himself, slightly derailing his train of thought, but then effortlessly switched back to talking about Dalton. “Your man would not shut his trap about you, about how talented you were and how you embodied fire. He said fire dripped off of you because you were so full of ferocious flame.”
“He told you all that?”
“Your bad boy is sort of a sappy romantic, did you not know? Like, in all serious, I did not paraphrase what he said. He literally told me you dripped fire. It was the cutest thing ever.”
“I don’t think he’s ever seen my work.”
“Honey, I don’t think it matters to him, he can see through to your fire.”
Chapter 19
Dalton
I was getting out of the gang today, the day after I confessed to Brittany about my criminal past. Today, I began the destruction of my darkness dwelling within, an extermination of my internal violence that I had fought ever since failing to defend and protect Talia’s life so many years ago. I would never be able to wash my slate clean, but I could live the amends for the violence I had perpetuated before, during, and even after I was locked away for six months.
I had never committed myself fully to a second chance, I told myself, and it was time to correct that mistake in my judgement. I would pay penance for every pain I had caused in the name of my perverse meting of justice. If they wanted to throw me in jail forever, then so be it, but I was going to put an end to Tribado, Tommy, and the gang I had been operating with to ‘protect’ others through violence.
As I walked myself to a police station, it occurred to me that my plan to escape this gang I had joined could forever bar me from gaining access to my money from my father. Could confessing my crimes disqualify me? Absolutely, but only if I was convicted for my involvement. If the cops agreed to my participation in bringing down the gang, then I could feasibly still gain access to the money by marrying before I was thirty. It made no sense to obsess over it, though—I didn’t give a damn about the money, anyway. I would be richer in different ways knowing I had put an end to the gang and put a straightjacket on the darkness I hid inside myself.
I signed several documents, and spoke to many authority figures until late into the evening. It was agreed that no charges would be pressed, and I was to be a witness against the leader of the gang and then put under protection. I declined the protection although they insisted, and I was given a handler who would help me in gathering intel the following week before I would assist them in capturing Tribado. I asked for police surveillance of my apartment building and Brittany, and although they couldn’t supply the latter they did park an unmarked car nearby. I asked Tommy to deliver me two envelopes that week, the first so I could join in on a job while wearing a recording device. The second envelope would be the job where the police would interject and put an end to Tribado’s gang once and for all.
I didn’t get a chance to participate in the second job.
At the first job, Tribado sat in the back of the car. With a sneer, he said, “Glad to have you along, asshole. We’re delivering a ‘permanent message.’”
I just stared at him. This was new. New was bad—if I wanted to take the gang down, I needed things to go like clockwork. The cops expected this to go just like I’d been telling them.
Tribado handed me a gun. I stared at it a long moment before taking it from him.
“What the hell is this for?” I said.
“You don’t ask questions. You do what I say.”
I hated this prick. So I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to tell me what to do as Tommy drove us to another part of town.
Tribado grinned, thinking he had me. “The rounds in there are for a punk who got away with the murder of a young girl. You go in. Apartment 3A. Shoot him. Come back out, get in the car.”
“We don’t kill people,” I said. “That was never what this was about.”
“It’s about what I say it’s about.” Tribado grabbed the gun from my hand and pointed it at me. “So, asshole, are you gonna do your job?”
It took everything I had not to punch the shit out of him. I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, I’ll do the job.”
Somehow, I’d have to not shoot the guy but make Tribado think I had.
Tommy parked the car in front of a shitty apartment building, the kind of place that made my complex look like a palace. I shoved the gun in my waistband, ignoring all common sense of gun safety. I had to look like I didn’t care, like this was routine. Tribado was watching.
Just as I knocked on the door to apartment 3A, the cops burst in. I recognized one of the officers who’d taken my statement. “You’re fine, Dalton,” she barked, her voice no-nonsense but still holding an element of compassion. “Hand me the gun—we’ve got everything under control. Tribado’s being read his rights downstairs.”
After passing over the gun, I sagged against the wall in relief. “What the hell happened?”
“Three other members of the gang reached out to testify. We have all we need.”
“So it’s over?” I asked.
“It’s over.” Then she grinned. “Well, we’ll need to get your statement and some more information from you on this recent development. But otherwise, yeah, it’s over. The gang is finished.”
It took a few hours before I was finally able to leave the chaos of the police department behind me for the day and return home. I hadn’t seen Brittany all week, and I was looking forward to seeing her for the first time since I’d told her about my involvement with Talia and her murderer.
A squad car dropped me off, and I shuffled into the complex, feeling weary. I knocked on Brittany’s door.
She opened it. “You look awful.”
At least she spoke to me, I thought to myself. That was more than I could have asked for.
She had a friendly demeanor toward me, and even though I expected her to hold me at arm’s length, she gave me a hug when she saw me respectably keeping my distance. “It’s good to see you again, friend,” she said, stepping back.
“It’s great to see you, too.” I peeked past her down the hall to see if there were any other tenants in the courtyard at the end of the hallway. “Can we talk?”
She hesitated at first, visibly weighing the decision. “I have a few minutes I guess,” she said, guardedly, and let her expression take on one of those smiles someone gives to when they recognize nostalgia and something that has been lost taking on a new form that only they can recognize.
I motioned for her to follow me to the courtyard, and we sat next to each other on a bench near the lavender I had planted when she had first moved in.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I knew it was my father calling for the fifth time today. I had missed a scheduled meeting with his assistant during my cooperation with the police and he was no doubt furious at me. He would be even more furious when I revealed to him how I had been spending my time with a gang and only today had been a tool in removing the gang from operation. I turned off my phone without answering, wanting to devote my full attention to Brittany.
“I’ve fixed what I had to fix, and if we’re still going to be friends, I must tell you this.”
“Dalton.” Brittany put a hand on my shoulder before I could continue. “I don’t care about your past. In fact, it makes me happy to know what you did. We’re still friends, no matter what. I don’t trust you...yet, but I do feel safe around you.” She looked down at her feet, contemplating her next words, but I interrupted her.
“That may change after I tell you this.”
She looked into my eyes, and I poured everything out to her. I told her about my first few months out of jail when my father had set me up with my second chance. I told her about all the anger I carried around about Talia’s death and the constant injustice I heard about in the world where bad people continued to get away with hurting good people, people they claimed to love. Then I confessed
a lie that I had even been telling myself since leaving jail.
“August and Mariah Jones are not my real parents.” The words were clunky in my mouth since I had spent every waking moment since they had taken me in forgetting about my true parents and assimilating to the family that now supported me. “Mariah Jones had been a dear friend of my mother’s, and my mom had entrusted her and August with my inheritance. This was while I was still in jail, and my mother was dying at the time. My father died when I was very young, and my mother became very ill also when I was young and couldn’t take care of me. August and Mariah raised me, and when my real mother heard about what I’d done and how I’d been sent to jail, she redacted the rules with my P.O. governing how I would receive my inheritance when I turned thirty years old, an age predetermined by my father when I was seven. My father was murdered—and they never caught the killer.”
Brittany’s eyes got wide, and she gave a soft gasp.
I had to stop and take a deep breath. I hadn’t thought about any of this in so long, the stale emotions were beginning to freshen. “Ever since he died, I’ve been obsessed with protecting the people I care about. Yet I failed Talia, and it was right when I was released from jail where I was kept for that failure when my mother died. I had no one left, so I decided to join a gang with the purpose of protecting those in need.”
“Oh, Dalton,” she said, her eyes welling with sympathy.
“It gets worse,” I said. “Slowly the gang became something else and I no longer wanted to be any part of the new monster it had grown into. I said I had no one left to protect, no one left that I cared about, but that all changed when I met you. I went to the police and everything is resolved now. And it’s because of you, Brittany.”
Her gaze was open and empathetic, and it spurred me on. I continued, “You give me purpose, you make me a better man, and I want to support you how and when you want me to, whenever you need me. I can see your father is forcing his support on you. I want to be here for you only if you want me, and if you want me I will give you everything. I know I can trust you, you’ve got this brightness in you that no one can quell, a brightness I know Talia is proud of, wherever she is. You’re exuding all this brightness, and it would kill me if your light was extinguished. If you’ll let me, I want to be a friend when you need one, and a man you can rely on.”
