Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  “Fine.” I stood up, slinging my purse back over my shoulder. “Thanks for the latte, Luce. I’ll call you later. You know. From my phone.”

  I was being a bitch, but I didn’t care. Luce was my best friend. I was sick of sharing her. Since Golden Boy’s suicide, I was jumpier than usual, more irritable, less able to take things in stride. I found myself sticking up for things I normally wouldn’t and spending more and more time with my stepbrother.

  Something about his built-in anger felt comforting.

  He already was the way I felt now. My friends’ and classmates’ drive for straight A’s and the perfect college seemed tainted. It’s like Cornell’s death, his blood, was spilled for a worthless pursuit, and suddenly I didn’t want to do homework. I didn’t want to look in the mailbox to see which college I was accepted to.

  I wanted to lie in the grass and get lost in the clouds.

  “Bye,” Luce said. She waved at me limply, looking from me back to Elena back to me.

  I sighed. I was trying to stick up for Luce, and now she was the one that was hurt.

  “Sorry, Elena,” I said. I couldn’t upset Luce. “That was rude of me. I’m just…worried about my test.”

  “I’m sure you are. A lot rides on this test.” Elena’s icy expression cracked and a tiny smile replaced her glare. “Not that your aim is even marginally as high as mine—I mean, anyone can get into a tiny liberal arts college if your parents have money and connections. Where did your mom go again? Brown? I’m sure that will be no problem, but still.”

  Mocking my college plans. Mocking my future. My face burned with anger. Again. I hated Elena. And she’d just picked the wrong time to fuck with me. “You know what the difference is between me and you?”

  “Our hair color?” she said with mock enthusiasm like a kindergartner at a spelling bee.

  “Haha. No. If I don’t get into Harvard, I won’t jump in front of a flipping train over it.”

  Elena’s face turned ashen.

  “I can’t believe you said that,” Lucy said. Her voice was small but sharp as it pinged through my chest.

  “Sorry,” I said. I couldn’t believe I did, either. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…”

  “Yeah. Whatever.”

  They looked at me like I was the devil incarnate.

  “I’m just saying there’s more to life than where you get into college.” I tried to scramble out of the crumbling hole I pushed myself into but there was no chance. Elena held the rope and Luce was standing beside her.

  “Maybe for you. Your brother gets it. Why don’t you ask him? Why don’t you ask Ty?”

  Got what? Avoiding their eyes, I pleaded, “Really, I’m sorry. Can you just forget I said it?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Now

  Someone is rattling around in the office.

  Anna stressing out over piles of bills she isn’t sure how to pay, probably. I can hear her muffled voice arguing with an insurance company on the phone. Anna, Dad’s employee, is doing this? Why? This should be my mother’s job. That’s what For Better or For Worse means, right?

  But who am I to talk? I was the queen of running away from my problems.

  If I’m going to survive here, I have to try and change that. I head out to the corral to look for Jake, to apologize for going off on him earlier. It’s the least I can do, only he isn’t in the barn and he isn’t in the corral. He isn’t in the house, either. I’m getting more disappointed at every turn. My slightly optimistic mood leaks slowly out of me, a pinprick to an already faltering balloon, and by the time I run down the road and see him getting into his Jeep, this version of pleasant Paige is nearly deflated.

  “Hey!” I yell after him, probably too loudly, too intense.

  Naturally, he looks up startled, and I immediately want to retry my approach.

  “Jake?” I try again, calmer.

  “Yep. Here I am,” he says stoically.

  “Where are you going?”

  He shrugs. “Out.”

  “Out?” My pulse speeds up. “You’re leaving me here alone?”

  “You run off all the time,” he says, flatly. Another shrug as he steps into the stable and smoothly tosses a saddle into the back of his Jeep with such grace and ease it’s like it’s a pillow’s weight instead of fifty pounds of hard leather. Then, just as naturally, but with a red-streak of defiance, he strides along the side, before hopping into the driver’s seat. The key dangles in the ignition, but he doesn’t start it up right away. I see my window and jump.

  “Where are you going?”

  “It’s Friday night,” he says as if that’s an answer.

  “That’s not a destination.”

  “You’re a quick one.”

  “I’m trying to apologize and you aren’t making this easy!” I blurt out.

  “Ah.” His eyes lighten and he leans back, enjoying this. “So this is you apologizing?”

  “Yes. I mean. I’m sorry. For earlier, okay? I was being…unreasonable.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. I accept your apology.”

  “Oh.”

  My face heats up. His hand doesn’t move any closer to that key. He’s still looking at me.

  “So,” I say, “do you mean, out-out. Like out on the town? But you’ll be back, right? Where are you going again?”

  Out on the town? Who says that?

  “You’re relentless,” he observes. But the corners of his mouth rise a bit and suddenly I’m dying to see that smile. To be forgiven. “If you must know, I’m off to rodeo.”

  I feel my eyes widen and the corners of my mouth rise sarcastically. “Seriously? To rodeo? Like it’s a verb?”

  He frowns, shaking his head like I’m the most exasperating thing he’s set eyes on. I blew it and I know it immediately. “I’ll see ya, Paige.”

  In a fluid, flawless motion, he turns on the engine and lays his right arm across the dirty cloth seat in the cab. Cranking his neck in the same direction as his arm, he watches the road behind him as he backs up. Fast. Rocks spewing all over the road.

  “When?” I call after him.

  When he doesn’t stop to answer me—because of course he can’t hear me—I chase his truck down the driveway, rocks and pebbles and dirt flying around me like I’m cruising through an asteroid shower. I’m completely over the top and I know it. I’m literally chasing him down the road. A virtual stranger. But I need to try again. Make him hear me. I really am sorry about before.

  Finally, it rolls to a stop. I run to his open window and see myself in his eyes: worse than the fallen-away cowgirl he thought I was—a hot mess who brought her problems onto a ranch filled with enough problems already. He sighs, barely looking up at me. “What?”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Tonight. Or tomorrow. Depends. Why the sudden curiosity?” He’s frowning now. Unamused.

  Jesus, Paige. Turn around and go back inside.

  But I can’t. I can’t spend another night inside that suffocating house filled with the ghosts of a happier time. Or at least a manageable time. When I’m alone, all I do is write in my journal, which brings up the horrors of home and gives me nightmares all night until I wake up screaming. I can’t face that tonight. My sanity is slipping away faster than I can grasp on to it. Maybe I’m projecting, but Jake and his steady, steadfast strength—or maybe just all he represents—is the only thing grounding me to reality. Either way, I have to try.

  “Can I come with you?”

  The next ten seconds last a lifetime. I stand my ground and wait.

  Finally he says in a voice neither mean nor kind, just sort of purposefully, excruciatingly vague, “That depends on you changing up your opinion of rodeo ‘tween now and the next time you ask.”

  He drives off. Not as fast this time. Not angry, but still, he drives away leaving me standing in the gravel, wondering why, if my plan was to spend the summer alone, this makes me so unhappy.

/>   After the last of his Jeep’s dust settles, I head back to the barn and crack open my journal. It’s either this, or gasping for air back in the house. I can’t handle that right now. I can’t face this either, but writing it down helps make sense of it. And I have to start trying or I’ll end up like them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Then

  Ty found me by my locker. I hadn’t even seen him approach. The Invisible Boy. “What’s up, Sis?”

  “Not much. School, school and more school. I’m starting to hate it.”

  “Aha!” He leans against the orange metal in his ironic T-shirt, jean jacket, and skinny jeans. Attire you don’t see much around our campus. We’re more of a sporty university sweatshirts and sweater sets crowd. “You’re starting to see the light then.”

  “What?”

  “School has always sucked dick. You were drinking the same Kool-aid as your friends until that kid died.”

  “What Kool-aid? I hate Kool-aid.” I wanted to change the subject. The mention of Cornell made me feel like I swallowed battery acid. Amanda wandered around the halls like a ghost. She looked so empty without Cornell by her side. Her hand, once held by his, fell limply to her side. The crowds around her started to fall away. Being around a depressed person was depressing. Amanda used to be Golden. Now she was ash.

  “The whole Once You Get Into The Perfect College Wasting Your Teen Years Studying Unnecessary Shit while Mastering Ten Extra-Curriculars You’ll Never Use Again Will All Be Worth It Kool-aid.”

  “I’m starting to see the light, then?” I suggested.

  “I suspect so.”

  He watched me intently. Scrutinizing. Ty played with the yarn around his wrist.

  “I think Elena hates me,” I confessed.

  “Of course she hates you. You represent everything she wishes she had.”

  “What I have? What do I have?”

  “Freedom. Choices. Need I go on?”

  “You’ve drank from the Fountain of Deep Thoughts today, I see.”

  Ty shrugged and picked at something on his plaid jacket sleeve. “Don’t listen to me. I’m a dark mutherfucker. Go back to your Yale shirt-ed pals and study for the SATs on your way to tennis team. I won’t stop you.” He held his hands up, smirking and walking backward in that wobbling way of his.

  “Have fun with your stoner friends.” And then I smiled. “Bro.”

  “Oh, you can bet I will.”

  Ty turned his baseball cap around and flashed me a backwards wave. I watched him disappear down the breezeway.

  The next day at lunch, I hear about it from Elena.

  “I saw you with your stepbrother yesterday,” she noted with the knowing glare of a hipster TV show detective. “At the lockers.”

  “Yeah. So?” I tense up, ready to deny-deny-deny.

  “So, you have something to tell us?” My reaction made her smirk. “A little Flowers in the Attic stuff going on?”

  Lucy’s jaw dropped. “Elena!”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Just saying, a hot boy and a desperate girl living under the same roof? Recipe for romance, that’s all.”

  “He’s her stepbrother, Elena!” Good old Luce. Always so decent and kind.

  “I’m just saying Paige should be careful, that’s all. You know what they say about dancing with the devil.” Elena did this part sneer, part eye roll thing that, if I wasn’t getting so upset, would’ve been impressive.

  “Uh. No?” I replied.

  Dramatic pause and then Elena skewered me onto a sharpened kabob. “Soon you become him.”

  “My stepbrother may be a well-documented asshole, but he certainly isn’t the devil. And last time I checked? I didn’t see any horns. Unless you see some?” I shook my head toward Elena, pointing to two points of my frontal lobe with a nervous psychotic laugh.

  Luce’s eyes widened with concern. Elena sat back, smug. Like she was right about me all along. Maybe I shouldn’t have done the horn thing. Was I acting like Ty? Was I dancing with the devil?

  “What do you know about Ty other than…from me?” I pressed.

  “Don’t you know? You’re his sister. You should know everything,” Elena pressed back.

  “Stepsister. And no. My parents didn’t tell me anything about him.”

  “Well, for one thing he was kicked out of private school on the East Coast for drugs and alcohol.” Elena leaned forward, conspiringly. “For another?” She paused for dramatic effect before lowering her voice to a whisper. “I heard he date raped a girl at a party.”

  My blood caught fire. The latte churned in my belly. “Are you serious?”

  “Dead.”

  I blinked. “Did the girl press charges?”

  “I heard his dad paid her off. Settled out of court.”

  “His dad. My stepdad?” I was horrified. This couldn’t be true. No way would my mom move an accused rapist into our house.

  “Your stepdad. Yes.” Elena looked so pleased with my upset reaction, I wanted to smack her.

  “You had no idea about this, Paige?” Lucy asked, nervously. “Dang, and I thought my parents kept me in the dark about their dirty little secrets.”

  If I stayed any longer, I’d have spewed my lukewarm latte all over the picnic table. “I…need to go. Don’t tell anyone about that stuff, okay?” I looked at Elena, sarcasm and bravado stricken from my affect. “I need to talk to my mom.”

  “Paige. Everyone knows it’s true. How do you think we know?”

  Rumors. Gossip. I scratched my cheek a little too hard. Rumors, that’s all.

  Like the swirl of lies that surrounded Golden Boy that ultimately led to his demise. The rumors that made him choose facing the tracks instead of the hallways of school. “Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to Cornell?” I raised my voice and the kids at the tables next to us glanced over. “This isn’t a game. Rumors at our school kill people. Don’t say anything else about my brother.” I glared at her and she winced. I lowered my voice and through blurry eyes, threatened her. “I mean it, Elena.”

  “Mom?” I called out when I got home from tennis practice. I had to find out ASAP about Ty, even if it was an uncomfortable thing to talk about.

  “Yeah, sweetie—in the kitchen, but I’m just heading out, what is it?”

  My mother was in her camel-colored Burberry jacket, pressed white slacks, and heels. Her briefcase rested on the granite counter, and she was typing frantically into her newest model iPhone. This wasn’t the best time, but I had to know.

  “I heard something today at school about Ty.”

  She arched an eyebrow but didn’t stop texting. “What was it?”

  “Something…bad. About his past.”

  She set the phone facedown on the counter with a clink. Then she slowly ran her tongue over her bottom red lip. She was thinking about how to answer. She did this when I was nine and asked if Santa was real. I knew she was about to lie.

  “He was accused of something none too…pleasant…but it wasn’t true.” She said the last part adamantly. She was the judge. The verdict was clear.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Phil told me it wasn’t.”

  “And you believe him?” I pressed.

  “I believe my husband, yes.”

  “But believing him means he believed Ty?”

  Mom sighed and wiggled her eyeballs around a little, searching for the classiest way to state the unclassy. It was also the wiggle move she did when we discussed condoms. And periods. Her mother never discussed this stuff with her, so she made herself be open with me about it, but still I could tell it made her extremely uncomfortable. Mom was prim and proper and a good girl to the core. The rotten apple of me fell very far from that tree.

  “This girl was…how should I put it? Not from the best family. She…made her self very available to boys, if you know what I mean by that? She was drinking. Heavily. She didn’t make the best choices.”

  “Mom! That’s victim blami
ng,” I said, completely disgusted with her.

  “There’s no victim. I just told you Ty did nothing wrong.”

  “Jesus, Mom. You think you’d have some female solidarity here.”

  “Watch your language! Listen, Paige, I know it’s a disturbing event…I’m not even sure how you heard about it,” she said, irritation filling her voice. “But if rumors about your brother are going around school, we will find out who started them and get a cease and desist.”

  “Stepbrother. And “event”? It’s called rape. It’s very serious and very real. Besides, I don’t think even you can cease and desist rumors.”

  CEO Mom thought she could cease and desist anything because her high powered team of copyright attorneys kept their tech products safe from imitators, hackers, and the like. Clearly, she had no idea how high school worked.

  Clucking, she told me we’d talk about it later…but she never brought it up again. I pressed; she pushed away. Rejected. Ignored. Eventually I just stopped bringing it up. Mom could put up firewalls that not even the most experienced hacker could break through.

  I was more careful around Ty, though.

  I studied him the way I studied Cornell’s family and friends after the funeral.

  I thought I was beginning to know him, and I felt this sort of kinship with him. I had to learn the truth. Had he raped a girl in Brooklyn? Was this possibly the reason he and his father moved out here so suddenly? If she knew about these accusations, how could my mother marry a man and bring his son, an accused rapist, into our home when she had a teenage daughter of her own?

  Things were crazy…and they were about to get crazier.

  After the regrettable closeness of that post-funeral moment, I kept my distance from Ty. But in the duration of those two months, something happened.

  Something we probably should’ve predicted, but that no one saw coming.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Now

  Dinner, for the third time that first week, is fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and dinner rolls that smell amazing, but per usual, I don’t feel like eating. I’m getting better at it, though, and am starting to fill out in places that were previously skin painted over bones. I have more energy. The ranch fundamentals: sleep, work, food, rinse, repeat is working. Even if I don’t mentally feel better, I’m physically stronger, which makes my mind clearer, the downside of which makes the past events even scarier to revisit. Studying the broken pieces of the puzzle for the first time—with clarity, and starting at the very beginning—makes me wonder if I was thinking at all.