by Kyla Stone
I don’t speak. I can’t.
“Tell me you need me.”
The words are stones in my throat. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
“Tell me you need me. Please.”
“Dad!” Frankie yells. “Look at me! I hit the inner ring!”
Frank removes his hand from my leg. He strides over to Frankie and claps his shoulder. “That’s my boy!”
Frankie nearly glows with satisfaction.
I watch them—father and son. The son happy, adoring. The father pleased, proud. How it should be. How it can never be for me again. My chest fills with a hard, heavy ache, with something like envy, but not quite. I turn my face away.
I don’t hit the target again. Hell, I don’t even hit the paper. My eyes are blurry, and I can’t stop the trembling in my hands. My insides are twisted in iron knots.
Afterward, Frank takes us to Chili’s for supper and Delia’s Ice Cream Shoppe for dessert. He tells wild stories of football games and stupid high school stunts. He talks about some grand camping trip in Yellowstone he’s planning for us next summer. I eat everything on my plate because I have to, I need to, but I don’t taste any of it. The weight, the heaviness I’ve padded onto my body like armor isn’t working. He doesn’t care what I look like. I belong to him. He owns me. Like Ma. I bite my tongue until the coppery taste of blood seeps into my mouth.
By the time we get home, my nerves are frayed and jittery. I escape to my room as fast as I can. I slump at my desk and open my homework. Escape. Escape is the only thought keeping me tethered to this earth. I need to be gone. I don’t care where, but college is the best option I seem to have. Room and board covered with student loans. Best of all, it’s a place that’s not here.
Arianna’s issues analysis outline on the electoral college stares at me accusingly. I crumple it up and hurl it into the trash can. What did she expect from me? I didn’t ask her to do what she did. I didn’t ask her to try to save me. Why did she do it? She put herself on the line in a huge way for me and I can’t figure out why. Nobody does anything without wanting something in return. And I don’t have anything worth giving.
I lean back in my desk chair and lift up my shirt. The letters scrawled in permanent marker are gone now, the skin scrubbed raw. But I can still see it. I can still feel it. They picked the right word. I am dirty through and through, right down to my core. My skin is filthy with secrets, with the bad things I’ve done, with the bad thing I am.
The urge hits me, the buzzing need to cut, to hurt, to damage. But instead of pulling out my stash, I stand in the center of my room and stare at the wall of drawings taped on my walls. The White Admiral with the white bands across his dark wings, his hindwings speckled with a row of blue dashes. The Giant Swallowtail with pastel yellow thorax and her six-inch wingspan taking up almost the whole page, with those beautiful half-moon ridges marching up the outer margin of both wings. The tiny, azure Karner Blue and the mud-colored Mitchel’s Satyr with yellow-ringed black spots that look like eyes staring out at me. They look so real, their colors so bright, like they could flap right off the paper and alight on my arms.
But they don’t. They can’t. They can only watch.
Why did she help me? Why? Why did she bring me to her house and make me feel warm and safe and tell me things friends tell each other? And Lucas, too, with his goofy smile and kind eyes. Why did they make me remember all over again what it could be like?
What did Arianna see in me that made her think I was worth saving?
What did Lucas see?
What is there?
Arianna said we have choices. God gives us a choice. Every single one of us. We make choices for good or choices for evil. Choices for self-protection and survival or choices for something bigger, better, greater than ourselves. Even when it doesn’t feel like a choice, it still is.
I have a choice.
I grab my dresser. I rock it from side to side and shove it in front of my closed bedroom door. My heart leaps into my throat. Every nerve and skin cell is raw, exposed. I’m unraveling. I stare at the scarred white dresser like it might leap out at me, but it doesn’t move. I stand there listening to the sound of my own harsh breathing. What now?
It stops.
I make it stop.
I choose for it to stop.
I curl my fingers into fists at my sides.
He comes at midnight.
The door opens, bumps into the dresser.
My eyes spring open.
Stay present. Stay here. The darkness presses down and my fingers are numb. I’m going numb, but I can’t. I won’t. Not this time. Terror grips me. My heart pumps cold blood into my arms and legs. Each thumping pulse forces blood through each tiny blood vessel, until my heart wants to explode like a blood-filled balloon.
There’s a grunt as the door shoves in. The dresser groans and gives ground.
He slips into the room like a shadow.
The mattress creaks as he climbs in next to me, his skin hot, his breath sickly sweet.
Stay here, stay here, stay here. I’m usually gone by now, floating up past the ceiling, soaring out the window on jeweled wings.
My heart jackhammers against my ribs.
He touches my skin beneath the blanket. Inside my skull, I’m screaming at myself to move, to stop him, to DO SOMETHING BITCH. I grab his arm. “No.”
He flinches. No words have ever been spoken in here, in this dark cocoon that envelopes us.
He shakes off my hand. Keeps going.
I shove him off me. “No!”
He encircles my wrist and slams it into the mattress. “Don’t play games.”
The words scrape against my throat. “No more.”
He jams his knee between my legs. “You want this. You’ve always wanted this.”
“Get off me, you bastard!”
He slaps me so hard, I taste blood. “Shut the hell up.”
Still, I fight him. This is my choice. I decide. I knee his groin. He grunts and spits in my face.
He pushes himself on top of me. I try to claw at him, but he grabs my hair and yanks until I hear the sound of my roots tearing out of my scalp. Pain skewers through my skull.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
He clamps his hand over my mouth. “Do you want them to hear you? Do you want them to know what a shitty whore their sister is?”
I twist and try to wrench free of his grasp, knock him off the bed somehow. But he’s strong. So strong. He grips my shoulders and wrestles me onto my side, flips me onto my stomach. Now I’m even weaker. I scream. He shoves my face into my pillow, and there’s barely a sound. My breath can’t escape and I suck in fabric, not oxygen. I gasp and choke, ears ringing, head spinning.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he slurs into my ear.
He releases my head just enough to allow me to turn my face to the side. He keeps his fist wrapped around my hair. My scalp burns. Hot tears of defeat sting my eyes.
He does what he does and he’s rough and it hurts and I can’t escape this time. I don’t go numb or fly away. I feel it all. I feel everything. My eyes are open and inside my skull I’m screaming, shrieking, my mouth open in a silent howl. There is no sound. No one would come even if I did, even if I could scream. I’m already the whore, the slut, the dirty girl who lets this happen, who didn’t say no all those years ago.
And the boys—my brothers can’t see this. I can’t let them see this. I won’t let them see this. The scream stays inside me, shattering my bones, liquefying my insides.
After he’s gone, I curl into a ball on my bed, clutching my stomach. Shame washes over me. My heart jerks, bucking against my rib cage. Bang bang bang. Like gunshots. Like thunder, smashing through my skull.
After what seems like hours, the jerks and shudders reduce to a barely perceptible quiver. My heart recedes from the rest of my body, returning to its cavity beneath my ribs. My mouth feels caked with dust and grime, like I haven’t had water in days.
&
nbsp; I stare up at the woolly darkness above me. The ceiling is sucked up into the black vortex spiraling over my bed. My eyelids burn. I can’t sleep. The pain barrels into me and pounds my heart into dust. I reach beneath my mattress and pull out the razor. I cut in the dark. Deep slashes. The warm blood wets my fingers. But the soothing nothingness doesn’t come. The still, the calm, it eludes me. A low, cold terror seeps into my brain.
I throw the razor across the room.
19
For almost two weeks, the whole school buzzes with the beach party drama. The police must have decided Arianna’s phone call was a prank. Still, they gave Xavier’s grandparents a noise ordinance violation citation, which got Xavier grounded for a week. Most of Margot’s crew send me triumphant glares. They think they’ve won. They didn’t finish it, but they beat me enough. And I let them think it. Revenge is a dish best served cold. I’ll figure out what I’m going to do when I can think straight again.
Every day is the same. Arianna doesn’t talk to me. Lucas doesn’t talk to me. I’m alone again. The way I want it, I tell myself every single minute of every single day.
In AP Chemistry, a girl named Lena McKenna comes up to me, the yearbook photographer with a spray of freckles across her face and a mass of wavy red hair. “It wasn’t right what they did. It made me sick.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I click into my default mode: sarcasm. “Well, if it made you sick, I guess it must have been truly horrific.”
She cocks her head and gives me a funny look. “What I mean to say is, we all don’t think and act like Margot Hunter. Some of us hate her, too.”
I don’t want her pity. It feels like spiders crawling over my skin. I feel guilt even as I say the words, but I can’t stop them. “Great. Maybe you should try doing something about it, then.”
Her face blooms red. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. I’m sorry.” She turns and flees out the classroom door. I watch her go, hating myself all over again for being such a jerkwad. Everything about me is ugly.
Things are tense in group counseling, and I know it’s my fault. In my private session with Dr. Yang on Friday, we spent most of the time talking about how classes are going and Dr. Yang admonishes me again about the importance of college applications. “Your SAT is scheduled for next Saturday. Try to study beforehand. Have you decided on a major?”
“I want to be a rodeo clown.”
He just looks at me.
“How about underwater basket weaving? Is that a thing?”
He shuffles some papers on his desk. “You have some time to decide while you finish your generals. But the main problem you have for your applications are a lack of extracurricular activities and your badminton grade. Or, lack of a grade. I’m not sure if there’s even time to bring it up. How do you fail badminton? I’d really like to know.”
I pick at the last remaining scrapes of turquoise nail polish. An image of Arianna in front of her mirror, lifting her shirt, flashes through my mind. I push it out. “Badminton sucks. Coach Taylor sucks.”
“It says here you’ve only made it to class twenty-one days out of the whole semester.”
I shrug.
Dr. Yang sighs and adjusts his glasses. “You need two more Phys Ed credits to graduate.”
“Is there a running class next semester? Preferably one not taught by Gremlin Taylor?”
“I’m sure we can work something out.” He folds his hands on his desk. “I want to know if you’re okay, Sidney. You have circles under your eyes. You don’t look good.”
I haven’t been sleeping much. I keep waking in the middle of the night, straining for sounds. I’ve had nightmares, dark dreams about the beach, and other things. I keep thinking about Arianna, trudging through the hallways, ostracized, enduring Margot’s taunts and insults because of me. Because of what she did for me. I hate it. I hate that I even care. I’m plagued with guilt. My mind keeps spinning in angry, confused circles. But I can’t say any of that. The words clog in my throat. “Thanks a lot, Doc. I could say the same for you.”
He ignores me, as usual. “Then there’s the matter of your hair.”
Instinctively, I reach up and touch the razored ends of my newly shorn hair. “You like?”
“It’s different, but it suits you.”
“Thanks. For real. I needed a change.”
“Do you want to talk about why you chopped it off?”
I shake my head. It’s strange feeling the air on my neck. I don’t think I could explain it even if I wanted to. That dark, twitchy feeling invaded me, took over my body as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror two nights ago. My scalp still burned from the strands of hair Frank ripped out. The thought of his hands on my hair—on any part of my body—sickened me.
I held the razor between my fingers. My emotions were a jumbling, jostling mess inside me. I had to get them out. I wanted to change myself. Transform. Be different. Be anything or anyone other than the disgusting girl staring back at me in the mirror. I took a hunk of my hair and sawed it off. Then I did it again and again, grabbing a handful and hacking through it. Long strands stuck to my T-shirt and drifted into the sink like dark, silky ribbons.
Now my hair falls in choppy layers around my ears, a fringe of bangs sweeping over my eyes. I don’t really know or care how it looks. That’s not why I did it.
Frank hates it, which gives me a dark, vicious sense of satisfaction. “You playing being queer?” he said when he first saw it. He came up behind me as I emptied the dishwasher. He grabbed at a chunk of hair, but it slipped between his fingers. The stale, smoky scent of cigarettes clung to his skin. He put his mouth right up against my ear. “We both know that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
Ma waddled into the kitchen, holding her belly. “It’s not that bad. It’ll grow out,” she said mildly.
For a moment, I couldn’t believe she was standing up for me. Then I realized. Frank hated it because it made me uglier, less feminine. And that’s exactly why Ma liked it. Maybe she thought it’d make him leave me alone. She was stupid through and through.
But so was I. There was nothing I could do that would make him leave me alone. He’d already made his claim. I belonged to him.
Frank’s phone buzzed, and he went out to the porch to make poker plans with one of his buddies. Ma leaned against the counter next to the sink. “Sidney? Is everything alright?” She peered at me from beneath her mop of freshly-washed hair. She looked almost normal.
My loneliness was like a savage ache in my chest. I didn’t say anything. Words were nails in my throat.
She reached out her hand, grazed my cheek. Her fingers were dry and cool against my skin. “Are you okay?”
The push and pull inside me was so strong it threatened to yank my bones right out of their sockets, tear apart muscle and tendon and flesh. Then instinct took over. My hard, armored shell slipped into place. I flinched away from her touch.
Her face flattened, her eyes going hard and shiny. “You should get more sleep. You look awful.”
The memory throbs painfully against the back of my skull. I’m done talking. I just want to get out of here. Dr. Yang tries to ask me more questions, but even he can tell he won’t get any more out of me today. He lets me out early.
I make it to Lit class with four minutes to spare before the bell rings. We’ve finished King Lear and just started The Scarlet Letter. Which amuses the hell out of certain people.
“How’s your scarlet letter today?” Margot whispers loudly as she bumps past my desk. A few people chortle. Several others shake their heads, turning away.
The memory jolts me, churning my stomach. Anger and shame spark through me. I have to get her back. Some way, somehow, I’ll make her pay for it. I clutch the edges of my desk with rigid fingers. Stay in control. I can’t lose it, not now. “Did it take you all week to come up with that nugget? Be careful. Too much thinking at one time might cause your brain to explode.”
Nyah stares at me, but she doesn’t
say anything. When I look back at her, she drops her gaze.
“What awful thing did you do to your hair?” Xavier asks.
“Lesbo,” Margot coughs. “Carpet muncher.”
I glare at her. “So what if I am? Who the hell cares?”
“So you’re admitting it?” Margot’s eyes widen.
I shake my head. “Did I say that? Sometimes I think you must have the IQ of a brick wall.”
She looks like she’s about to vomit more insults, but Miss Pierre walks in, shuffling a bunch of papers.
Lucas slides into the seat next to me. I feel his presence like static electricity. My mouth goes dry. I lick my lips. I haven’t spoken him in two weeks. And true to his word, he’s left me alone. But every day I feel him, sitting next to me, so close and so far away at the same time. It makes me guilty and sad and lonely. I don’t want to be this girl. I want something different. I’m flailing in deep water, and if I don’t do something soon, I’ll drown. I take a deep breath. “Hey.”
He looks at me and cocks his head. “Hey,” he says carefully.
I swallow hard. “I, um, kinda liked running on the beach that night.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool.”
“I like your hair.”
“I did it myself.”
“It’s very punk chic, or something. It makes your eyes look enormous.”
My face flushes. “Thanks.”
“I go running after school sometimes.” He hesitates. “Do you want to come with me? No pressure, no strings, no angle. I promise.”
I remember the rhythmic pounding of my feet, timing my breaths with my stride, the cleansing ache in my side. I need that cold relief. I’m desperate for it. “I work at Bill’s Bar every day after school.”
His face falls. “Oh. Okay.”
I pick up The Scarlet Letter and run my thumb over the pages. I want to choose. I can choose. I have to. I clear my throat. “I do have study hall last period.”
His face breaks into a grin so wide and goofy, my heart squeezes a little. “I have woodworking. I can totally skip it.”
