Other Side of Beautiful (A Beautifully Disturbed #1)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  “Sorry.” She shakes her head at me. “The closest Western Union is at the Wal-Mart off route sixty four, and that’s several miles from here.”

  “Um…okay. Thanks.”

  “Are you in trouble?” The older woman—she’s wearing a red and black flannel shirt, cargo pants, and work boots—who had just gotten her change approaches me, placing her hand on my arm.

  “I’m stranded.”

  “Where are you headed?” She is being nice. The damn teardrops form in the corners of my eyes again. Then they fall, spurred on by rancid emotion and gravity, my eyes betray me too. “Oh, honey…it’s okay.” She pats me on the back.

  “G-grand Rapids…” Reaching into my pocket I pull out a used paper towel to blow my nose on. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

  “C’mon. It’s not that far. A few hours’ drive. If you were my granddaughter…I only hope that someone would help her in the same situation.”

  Not that far? Only a few hours’ drive? Seven hours. Seven hours later a very tired looking Shirley, as she told me to call her, pulls up to drop me off at Kelly’s apartment. She’s not home. All the lights are out. I know where the spare key is hidden. Shirley’s truck drives off before I get the front door open. That’s it. She’s gone out of my life too. How could he not defend me? I thought, well, he affectioned me. He told me. He told me. He told me. He told me.

  The tears still sting and burn my eyes. You’d think after seven hours they’d be all dried up, but no. Somehow there always seems to be more, running down my cheeks in rivulets of acid. How could I have been so foolish?

  My phone has been blowing up. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. And I don’t want it anymore, the sound. She was right. God, Cricket was right. I’m good for nothing. He saw me and rejected me. I take the ringing phone and shove it in the microwave, pressing the start for ten minutes. I slide down the cupboard to the floor with the two packs of Oreos Kelly kept on the counter, smoke filling the kitchen and the zapping electricity sparking and flaming above me.

  There’s nothing of me here. Not in this apartment. Not at Ben’s. My dad is dead and gone. Why didn’t he take me with him? There’s nothing of me here. Not in Michigan. I want the pictures of my mom and Dinah laughing without me. I want the unacknowledged birthdays. I want the little apartment above the garage where I could live in my head and no one bothered checking in on me for two whole days. That’s where I am. That’s where I left me. I need to get back to LAX and unlock that Elly, set her free.

  At least three fire alarms scream from the smoke as I shove Oreo after Oreo into my mouth. Barely chewing. Not tasting. Just shoveling, hoping one of them will be the one to make the pain finally stop.

  Sirens from the outside start to drown out the alarms on the inside, and I know I have to get out. I crawl through my old bedroom window right as I hear the front door being broken in. Kelly’s stuff is safe now.

  All I smell is burnt plastic. The smell coats my tongue too. I have no shoes and no money. No ID. There should be a way for me to get money tomorrow when the bank opens, but for tonight, I wander the streets. It’s so cold without shoes or a coat. A homeless man I’d passed wore bags on his feet. So if it was good enough for him. But eventually I stumble up on a Salvation Army bin. Me and my worn, ugly Christmas sweater and men’s shoes stumble inside an abandoned building. The kind of place druggies use. Tomorrow cannot come fast enough.

  As I lie shivering on a damp cement floor in a shadowed corner, I want nothing more than to hear the comfort of Cricket’s hurtful words or Dinah’s mocking. That is home. That is home. That is home.

  Ben couldn’t love me, could he?

  Ben couldn’t love me.

  Ben couldn’t love me.

  Ben couldn’t love me…

  Chapter 44

  Ben

  “She’s gone. Where the fuck is she?”

  “Just calm down. We’ll find her.”

  “She’s not answering her phone. Oh my god, I can’t breathe.”

  “Jesus, Ben!” Collin catches me as my legs buckle underneath me.

  The police were no help. She has to be gone twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours? She could be dead by then. “She’s gone, Col. I don’t know what happened.” And maybe it makes me a pussy, but the tears won’t stop. Collin helps me sit, hugging me the whole time. But not shushing me, crying too. He’s crying too, which means the situation is as fucked up as I think. It’s not in my head. She’s gone. Vanished. And I’m just able to push Collin off and pivot before the vomit and bile explode from my mouth, running down the curb.

  “We’re going to find her,” he whispers, holding me again. “We have to.”

  Up and down the street from the funeral home I take her picture, the one on my phone from a few days ago, and show it to anyone I come across. This time it’s a woman working the counter at a gas station up the road.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I recognize her, wearing black like she’d been at a funeral. Poor thing was really upset.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Uh, she left with a trucker. I think I heard her say something about Grand Rapids.”

  “Okay, good. She’s headed home,” Collin says.

  “Good?” I don’t mean to shout at him. “She got in some stranger’s truck. What if we never see her again?” We can all hear the panic rising in my voice. Collin leads me outside. “I…I never told her.”

  “Listen. You’ll get your chance. We will find her and you will get your chance. I can’t believe anything else.”

  I don’t bother saying goodbye to my parents. They’ve screwed with my life enough. Collin drives the rental. We’re both afraid I might kill us getting home. It’s still hard to breathe, like when some bit of food or drink goes down the wrong pipe and you cough and cough trying to dislodge it, but you aren’t choking. The whatever just sits heavy in your chest, making breathing stressful. This is where I’m at.

  He speeds and I don’t bother trying to get him to slow down. Fuck, if I thought we could get away with it, I’d slam his foot down on that pedal so damn hard. But we don’t talk. I think he might break, and I’m sure I will, my pieces held together by scotch tape, I’m unsticking fast. I’m unsticking so fast.

  It’s dark by the time we pull back in front of our apartment. The lights are still off. Collin gives me time in case she’s in there and we have to talk. Why couldn’t one thing go my way? She’s not here. She’s never been here. Back outside all our people have started to arrive. Sabrina and Errol are already piled into my Jeep, and Kip’s car is turning into the parking lot.

  He hugs me and then turns his attention to Collin, where it belongs. We’re just going to have to check places off the list one by one. Her old apartment with Kelly is next on that list.

  What we see—the door boarded up like someone had kicked the damn thing in. Kelly and Zena standing out front. What the hell happened? I’m out before Collin even stops completely.

  “Is everyone okay? What—”

  “That crazy bitch torched my home.” She half screams, half sobs with Zena’s arm protectively around her shoulder the way Elle used to do.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That crazy bitch was here. They found her phone in the microwave. I can’t believe this. I cannot fucking believe this.”

  Neither can I, Kelly.

  Chapter 45

  Elle

  Grace from the credit union has known me since I moved to Michigan freshman year. She didn’t ask for an ID when I withdrew my money. Chalk it up to perks or luck or whatever the hell anybody wants to chalk it up to.

  All I know is a half hour later I’m balled up in the corner of my pay-by-the-week motel room shoveling oatmeal cream pies in my mouth to the point of gagging. The motel is only a motel in the sense that living creatures pay money to stay here. Broken down siding, chipped, cracked, faded paint on the window sills. Not like it used to be, but more like it never was. Desired to be. Strived to be more th
an this, this place. I never was, only strived to be once upon a time. A fruitless effort. We’re a perfect fit. Unloved from conception.

  The fluidity of lust crusted in the corners, sleeping with the bed linens and roaches. I continue to gag. Gagging hurts. I deserve to hurt. Gorging hurts. I gorge until everything I’ve forcefully consumed explodes from my mouth into the dingy toilet.

  Perversely, Cricket would be so glad to see I’ve fallen so low, showing the world her disappointment. For most people the past is ephemeral, a haze of memories shaped by time and new experiences becoming hazier and hazier as they layer, almost sedimentary clouds of days they can no longer recall.

  I envy those people.

  I envy those people because I remember all of it. My memories are solid and obtrusive without as much as a fringe along the edges.

  I envy those people.

  They don’t have to change.

  I want to change.

  I want to be invisible.

  I want to be invisible.

  I want to be invisible.

  Superpower: Failure.

  Superpower: Invisibility.

  Someone once said there are mirrors we look at ourselves in. And there are mirrors in which we really see ourselves. What good comes from mirrors? I refuse to hang mirrors. Windows. I’ll only hang windows. Transparent. No reflection. How can others not see me if I still do?

  I use the thumbtacks from the bedside table drawer. Why someone would leave a box of thumbtacks in a motel room, I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t much like mirrors either. They sat next to the untouched bible. I use those thumbtacks to tack up a towel over the bathroom mirror and the one by the bed. Now I can disappear.

  Moving between the toilet and the bed with the television low in the background, the flickering light from the shows I’m not watching work as the only light source in the room. Mostly I lie staring at the ceiling, because anything else means I’m still living, and I don’t want to be reminded of that.

  It’s hard to tell how many days I keep holed up inside the room. The cream pies and Oreos haven’t run out yet. My mind has been foggy for a while now. Gorge on a cream pie and then peel back the wrapper on another brick of chocolate laxative. Is it my fifth? Sixth? Maybe ten more minutes of lying in the bed before the urgent burning and pain grips throughout my abdomen. I almost don’t make it, but my clothing hangs looser now.

  Dizzy, I stand to flush. More blood in the toilet today. It’s hard to steady myself as I wash my hands. And even harder trying to walk back to the bed, picking up another brick of laxative, passing by the television. I don’t get to lie down yet. Dizzy. A knock. Dizzy. A knock echoes toward me from the door, actually sounding so far away like it had bounced off the walls of a very large canyon. And I stagger, finally reaching the knob. My pores are sweaty, slicking my hands enough so I have trouble twisting the door handle. The door pops. Sabrina screams. And I collapse onto Errol.

  Chapter 46

  Elle

  The pounding in my head won’t ease up. The beeping, the dripping, I feel hyperaware of every sound. Through foggy eyes the picture begins to emerge. No longer in the ratty motel room, I think I’m in a hospital.

  “Hey.” Sabrina pushes my bangs to tuck behind my ear. “How are you feeling?”

  “Water…” I whisper, unable to raise my voice any higher. She brings the cup to my mouth. The cool water slides effortlessly down my parched throat. My eyes droop again. “What day…is it?”

  “Day? Honey, you should be asking month.” I spit out the water, a coughing jag erupting from the remnants I’d choked on. “It was March when we found you. It’s April now. Sweetie, what happened? You are so sick.”

  A steady flow of nurses in and out of the room distract me from having to answer any of her questions. Someone had called Cricket. She showed up, according to Errol who replaced Sabrina when she had to go to class. Cricket stayed a couple days to make sure I didn’t die and then went back home to perfection. I try to sit up, but my skull burns like it’d been struck with a pickaxe. “How did you find me?” I ask.

  “We were worried about you. Elle, you just disappeared off the face of the planet. Just checking places off the list one at a time. I think it was Kip who suggested we check with your bank to see if you’d withdrawn any money. When they said you’d taken it all, we knew we had to look at places that wouldn’t require a credit card. The trail led back to that motel. We planned to convince you to come stay with us, but clearly that all went to shit.”

  “I’m not such a great roommate, anyway. You two are better off without me. Besides, I-I might be transferring…out.” Errol fumbles and drops the book he’d been reading. He and Bri are good friends.

  “Where are you thinking of going?” he asks.

  To hell. Is that an answer? Isn’t that where the damned end up? I certainly am damned, damned fat. Damned ugly. Damned unlovable. His blue T-shirt hangs loosely along with the jeans that look like they’d been slept in. Lucky bastard. I had to bleed out my ass to get clothing to hang like that on me. But he keeps staring, presumably waiting for an answer. “I haven’t really decided. But it’s time to move on.”

  “Please tell me you’re kidding. What would we do without you? Benton and Collin would be crushed if you left.” I manage a small burst of laughter. His incredulous glare tells me to prepare for an argument. “Who do you think switches off with us when Bri or I can’t be here?”

  “No. They’d be relieved to have me gone. Trust me. They won’t be back now that I’m awake.” I don’t want to discuss Benton Hayes with Errol. They are friends. He’ll never understand the utterly crushed, empty shell of a person lying in the hospital bed. “I’m tired,” I say and roll over on my side, pretending to sleep so I don’t have to talk to him anymore.

  God help me, what am I going to do now? Cricket knows. That’s an inevitable phone call I just don’t want to deal with. I’ve tried for two years to keep a low profile and not embarrass the family. I’ve tried to keep away from her, away from home, away from all the unpleasantness. Why would someone call and remind her that she gave birth to such a disappointment? And Ben—Benton—who talked him into sitting with the hag? How could I have let him touch me like that?

  How?

  How?

  How? The question pounds against my skull.

  How much further could I go? To disappear? To fade into a distant memory? Elly Dinninger doesn’t exist. Elle Dinninger can’t exist any longer, if she ever really existed at all.

  Kelly never came in, not once. I guess I didn’t really expect her to. But we were roommates at one time. It would’ve been the decent thing to do. Neither Benton nor Collin show up again, just as I called. Only Errol or Sabrina. I pretend to sleep each time to avoid facing the awkward conversations. I pretend to sleep, because I can’t tell them who I really am…but I’m not Elle or Elly or Dinninger. I pretend to sleep until the doctor won’t let me anymore. Until he sheds me from his floor. Until he forces me from the hospital.

  My nurse, Kristin wheels me down to the front lobby doors. Such a sendoff for nobody. “Take care of yourself,” she says. I stand and thank her, then step outside. Errol leans against his 1972 powder blue Malibu, blue smoke billowing from the exhaust. Sabrina stands beside the open door, smiling at me. I hate knowing what they must think of me, seeing myself reflected in her glassed eyes. But I climb in the backseat anyway.

  “Do you know what happened to my stuff?” I ask.

  “Yah, yah,” she chirps. “It’s all at our place.”

  “Girl, what’d you think we’d just kick you to the curb? Pin a dollar bill to your collar and wish you the best?”

  “You’re staying with us, I told you,” Sabrina says.

  They both try engaging me in conversation. I just don’t have it in me. These people are so good, so happy, so…so beautiful inside, I know I’ll taint them somehow. It’s who I am. It’s what I do. Surprisingly, the trees are full with leaves, not the buds from my last memories. As I
lay my head against the little triangle window, the warmth of the spring sun caresses my cheeks.

  Errol rolls to a stop along a curb in front of a Tudor style mansion, one of many mansions in the city from the time of lumber barons, converted to apartments in the 1980’s. Sabrina takes my hand to help me out of the back.

  Before she lets go, I pull her into a brief hug. “Thanks,” I say. She doesn’t ask for what. We climb the stairs just inside the foyer, to the second floor. Theirs isn’t a large space, but the curtains have been drawn open, dousing the area in natural light. Dust particles, typical of these old homes and their archaic duct systems, dance for us in the light. The whole apartment smells of Pine Sol, a scent all my friends know I love.

  “C’mon,” says Errol, “your room is over here.” He walks a couple paces ahead of me to the room opposite the bathroom. The one that used to be rented out before the previous tenant left for grad school last fall. When he cracks the door, I’m shocked to see all my stuff in a couple of plastic garbage bags on the floor. The life I once led reduced to a couple of garbage bags. Then I notice the strong figure of a man sitting near the head of the bed. “I’ll just be in the—well, I’m going now.” He scratches at his hair and leaves.

  Chapter 47

  Ben

  “Ben,” she whispers.

  I search her face, her body, scrutinizing every inch of her. She’s lost so much weight. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” I tell her.

  “I’m leaving,” she responds abruptly.

  “It’s your room, I’ll go.”

  “No…I mean I’m leaving school…Michigan…they don’t know yet.” Elle motions her head out to where Errol and Sabrina sit. My eyes narrow, glaring at her, trying to read that mind.