Where All Things Will Grow

by N. K. Smith

  I rolled and lit a small joint.

  “Where to tonight, Miss Daisy?”

  “Home, eventually.”

  “Where to now, though?”

  “Wherever we can go so I can smoke the shit out of this pinner.”

  I smoked and he drove. I had a very detailed fantasy about doing very naughty things with him.

  We stopped right next to a baseball field.

  Brody left the engine running, which left the music playing.

  I didn’t want to hear it so I clicked it off as he rolled a joint for himself and puffed it. When he snubbed it out and set it in the ashtray, I felt the need to break the silence and put it all out there. “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  He coughed like he was choking. “Um...”

  I rose up onto my knees and turned my whole body to him. “Why don’t you ever try to fuck me? You’re so hot, and as far as I know you’re single and I’m--”

  “Young,” he began, his voice deeper than usual, “as sexy as I find you, I’m too old for you.”

  I licked my lips, and then sucked the bottom one in and bit it gently. “Screw that. You’re not too old. I’m eighteen.”

  “Fine, I might not be too old for you, but you’re too young for me.”

  I straddled him. I wanted to feel something, and he was a man and just like every man, it didn’t matter what their mouth said, their bodies always told a different story. I kissed him. I sucked on his neck. I raked my teeth over his Adam’s apple.

  He gripped my hips, his hands tight on my flesh. They reminded me of Elliott’s hands.

  Shit.

  I pulled away just enough to pull up his work shirt. I worked his bottom lip. I sucked it into my mouth hard and then bit it gently. I put my hands in his hair as I rocked on top of him. I pulled the thick blond strands between my fingers.

  “Damn,” he said against my mouth, the whiskers of his beard scratching at the sensitive skin of my face.

  He took my wrists and pulled them from his hair, and then pushed me away.

  My back was pressed against the steering wheel.

  “What the hell?”

  “This isn’t going to happen,” he said in between breaths.

  I tried to move back to him. All I needed to do was get his brain to switch off for just a short second and I’d be able to...

  “You’re obviously going through something. I can’t have sex with you when you’re--”

  I pulled my wrists away because I hated that shit from anyone. I got off of him quickly, and settled back down. Why did no one want me anymore?

  “Why don’t you grow up, Brody?”

  “Me? I should grow up?”

  Anger and hate flooded me. “You’re never going to be a professional surfer. You’ll always be the loser who works at the Quickshop throwing stock for a living.”

  He shook his head and kept his eyes fixed out the front window. “I’ll take you home. I’m sure your dad’s worried about you.”

  “Screw my father and screw you, too.”

  I pushed open the door and started walking. He tried to say something, but I stopped listening.

  It took me forever and a day to walk home and it annoyed me to no end that Brody stayed with me the whole time, going two miles an hour behind me. Every so often, he’d get out and say something, only to hop back in when I didn’t respond.

  I said nothing to Tom when he entered the house the next morning. He asked how work was. I just started crying in response.

  The world, it seemed, was going to keep me sober and celibate, which I now recognized as a good thing since I could use all the help I could get.

  My head was clearer after some good sleep the next week. I hadn’t meant to start messing up again, but that song, that awful song had unlocked some insane memories. They were intense. So intense that I couldn’t tell Elliott and all I could do with Wallace to begin with was sob. I voluntarily saw her several times a week now because I couldn’t handle it.

  That song had been playing on my little clock radio. It had played while...

  I could barely even think the words.

  I was tired of screwing up. I was pissed that I was by myself again. It was painful to be without Elliott, but I didn’t want to keep doing the same things. I didn’t want to have meaningless sex now that I knew what sex with love was like and I didn’t want to get high anymore. It was about time I started replacing the faulty bricks in my foundation with new, sturdy ones.

  I kept to myself for the remainder of the school year. I still spoke to Andrea, but for the most part, I concentrated on my school work. I had grades to pull up if I wanted to avoid summer school and it helped me focus my attention on something other than Elliott.

  Part of me wanted to push him back into the “Rusty Dalton” box, but I knew it could never be. He would never be just Rusty Dalton again. He would always be the boy who made me feel. He would always be the boy I nearly broke. I understood why he broke up with me. I knew that it was my fault. I pushed him when he wasn’t ready and I forced something on him that made him push me away.

  The physical fight was horrible, but I thought we could get past it. Both of us knew what abuse was and I thought both of us understood each other’s reaction. I wanted to be with him, but I accepted his decision because I didn’t want to make him hurt again.

  It was torture sitting next to him in the greenhouse or sneaking looks at him in Study Hall. I avoided Jane as well. I didn’t want to know anyone anymore. I wanted to go back to being just some kid in the middle of an overpopulated high school. I wanted it to be more like it was in Tampa, just without the sex and drugs.

  Robin, who I trusted more than ever now, was right all along. I realized now why she was tough with me in the beginning. I was so broken. My emotions, my feelings, my very self had atrophied in a protective clench around my wounds. The numb, the nothing, protected me and it wasn’t until Elliott with his soft crowbar and Robin with her blunt pick-axe of questions busted me open did all of them finally release.

  Every day I wanted to run back to Elliott and ask him to take me back, but every day I looked at myself in the mirror until I was convinced once more that being solitary was the right thing for me. I missed him. I missed him so much I felt sick, but I couldn’t continue to go on like I had. I was dying and worse yet, I was killing him slowly.

  I yearned for sex in an unhealthy way. I wanted it all the time. As much as it sucked to admit it, I had wanted Elliott to give me sex not because it was a meaningful expression between us, but because it was an easy release for me. I used him and became upset when he wouldn’t give me what I craved.

  Slowly, I began to realize how right Tom and Robin were about me. I was an addict, not just of drugs, but of sex. Even that night with Jace, I banged him out of want of feeling something. I needed it. And when Brody wouldn’t give into me, I was awful to him. He’d been so nice to me and because he wouldn’t have sex with me I was ready to hurt him.

  What I did with Elliott was wrong. Not that I shouldn’t have had sex with him. That was his choice, but I tried to do something that I knew he might not be able to handle because that day I wanted it and it didn’t matter what he wanted.

  I saw him deteriorate during the final month of school and after he’d broken up with me, he was nothing more than the walking dead on Fridays. We no longer did the peer thing and I watched him as he just sat there with his family, never speaking, never looking up.

  And then one Friday, he just wasn’t there.

  Jane wouldn’t look at me anymore and I expected as much, but I’d hoped that David would at least let me know where he was. He didn’t. He gave me this look of pity, but the only thing he said was, “It’s not my information to share.” He seemed really sad though.

  It was Robin who told me Ellio
tt had asked to be taken some place to get more intensive help. It was like a knife because out of the two of us, I was the messed-up one and yet he was the one sent away to be cured.

  Robin had told me that calling myself names had to stop. She didn’t know the whole truth though, so one Friday night in early June, the second Friday Night Screw-Up Club meeting Elliott missed, I told her. She knew that something had happened, obviously, but according to her, he never told anyone.

  “I hit him and said horrible things to him.”

  She just looked at me, her expression neutral.

  I was compelled to continue by my own need to get it off my chest. “I mean, I tried to do something with him and he freaked out, you know? And he called me dirty and that’s what Helen’s boyfriend called me.”

  Tears stung in my eyes, but I wanted her to know why I’d done what I’d done. “Dirty girl. He would call me that all the time. When Elliott said it, I... I...”

  When I swallowed hard instead of finishing the sentence, Robin spoke softly, “You had an uncontrollable reaction.”

  I looked at my lap and shook my head. “I could’ve controlled it. I should’ve. I should’ve just left, but I hit him.”

  We were both silent for a long time. I scrubbed my face with the heels of my hands, brushing away the tears that fell.

  “Are you sure he called you dirty? I’ve known him for a long time and that doesn’t seem like something he’d do, especially knowing...”

  “But he didn’t know! I never told him any of that.”

  Silence took over again, until I changed topics. “You know how you’ve said that maybe I should get help? Like from peers?” She nodded. “What would that be like?”

  On Saturday Tom drove me to Frederick and took me to eat in a relatively nice restaurant. We looked in shops we had no intention of buying anything from and then when it was time, we walked to a church.

  “Think this is the place, Soph.”

  I nodded because there was nothing to say. Robin said it was what was called an Open Meeting, meaning other people besides addicts could attend. I was nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t think hearing other people go into gory details of their lives was going to help me, but I was now willing to give it a shot.

  If I could hurt someone as beautiful as Elliott, what else was I capable of doing? I went to the meeting in the hope of learning something about myself. I wanted to know if what I was could truly be an addict.

  As I sat in the dingy room, listening with my father by my side, I realized that the answer was yes.

  I was an addict.

  By the end of the meeting, having spoken to a few other people individually and listened to the speakers, I was depressed and demoralized, but I was willing to make a commitment of coming back for another meeting. It would be a closed meeting, so I would be going it alone, but I knew Tom would be waiting for me once it was over.

  My summer was filled with NA meetings, counseling sessions and reading. I had urges to get high, to get laid, but I resisted.

  If Elliott could get help for the right reasons, so could I.

  It wasn’t that I entertained the thought that somehow by the beginning of our senior year, we’d both be healed and get back together. I knew that fairy tales didn’t exist in my world, but I wanted to be healthy enough to apologize for what I’d done and have it actually mean something.

  I didn’t want to be the addict who just said the words, but everyone knew it’d happen again.

  My sessions with Robin grew intense. We started really talking about the past. I would go into detail about the things that happened to me. I had to start revealing the voice in my head and the ghost touches I felt. Everything I’d kept to myself until I met Elliott was out there, and for her part, Robin, who ceased to be just plain Wallace to me, kept it in confidence. I worried for a while that Tom would be clued into it all, but she didn’t say a word.

  Even my joint sessions with Tom were getting better. We no longer yelled.

  Things were improving, except that I was without Elliott. I wanted to visit him, but couldn’t force myself to actually do it. I didn’t think I could stand to be rejected. If he was getting better, he’d realize all of the things he should’ve realized earlier. He’d realize that I wasn’t worth his pain and effort.

  And I didn’t think I could get over that.

  I kept replaying my relationship with him over and over in my head. I needed to figure out where I had gone wrong. I used to think that it was the point when I let him in or when I first bumped into him, but that was the scared Sophie way of thinking. Now, I thought it was trying to balance who I thought I was with who he saw me as.

  I read Tolkien, focusing on the characters I most identified with and those who reminded me of people in my life. Tom was Boromir, steady, responsible, and strong. He didn’t always make the right choices, but his heart was full of good intentions. Robin was Sam, the person who never gave up when he believed in something. Robin stood by me the way Sam followed Frodo into Mordor. Elliott was Faramir. There was no question of that, but what I kept pondering was who I was. I’ve always thought myself as Gollum, the once decent being who was corrupted and could no longer control himself.

  But Elliott thought I was Éowyn, the strong warrior noblewoman who captures Faramir’s heart with her beauty and deep sadness. I had to smile with hope when I read about them in the House of Healing.

  Maybe I was Éowyn, but I couldn’t let Faramir, my Elliott, convince me to accept his love. I wish I had been smarter when I was with him. I wish I’d done a lot of things differently.

  At dinner, Tom asked, “What’s up, Bunny? Am I ever going to see you smile again?”

  I looked up from the meatloaf and shrugged. “I really hurt him, you know?”

  He was quiet for a moment and then he cocked his head to the side and said, “There are some hurts that you just don’t get over and then there are some that...”

  He didn’t understand because I hadn’t told him. Maybe it was time. “I hit him. I pulled his hair. I...” I couldn’t finish. “He was abused, like me, and I was horrible to him.”

  “Did he hurt you?” He’d asked me that before.

  “No. He said a word that, I don’t know, made me think of Helen’s boyfriend.”

  Tom was quiet. He didn’t know what to say, that much was obvious.

  “Why can’t anything be easy?”

  “You miss him.”

  I looked back at my father. “I don’t think I can breathe without him.”

  “You’re breathing right now, Soph.”

  I shook my head, wondering why I chose to talk to Tom of all people about this. “That’s not what I mean.”

  I was looking down at my plate and I heard his fork clang against the ceramic. When I looked back up, he was studying me, his hands folded and resting on the table. “While I think you’re a bit young to be feeling like you can’t breathe without another person around, I understand.” My father’s voice held something I’d never heard before, or maybe something I didn’t want to hear before. “From what I can tell, he was a severely abused child.” I nodded. “So were you.”

  I pushed potatoes around my plate, feeling the impulse to deny it. It was my mother’s training that caused me to instinctively deny it all in my head, but it was Robin’s that kept me from actually doing it.

  “I imagine the friendship you formed with him is pretty powerful stuff, and it probably feels wrong to experience the level of healing you’ve been doing without him, but ask yourself if you’d even be healing if he was around.”

  I began to protest, but he held up a hand. “Would he have ever left to find his own peace if you were still together?” He paused, but started again quickly. “I don’t like that you two seem to have a relationship that involved involuntary violence
, but you were both brought up in extreme violence, so it’s probably not easy to react differently than what you know.”

  What he was saying made sense to me and I wondered what other nuggets of wisdom I’d missed since my arrival because I simply didn’t want to hear it. “But I don’t want to continue that. I don’t know how to make it up to him. I don’t know how to change those things. When he said it, I couldn’t do anything to stop myself. I couldn’t take myself out of the moment.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Soph. I’m not a doctor, but there has to be a way for you to break your habits. Just look at all the things you’ve changed already.”

  “Do you think that perhaps the breakup has been a positive thing for the two of you?”

  As I looked up at her, I had an irrational thought of smacking Robin. I fought back the urge to yell, “Is this what you’ve wanted all along?” Had she been waiting for Elliott and I to self-destruct? Was this her “I told you so” moment?

  “How is it positive?”

  “The change in you has been dramatic. You’ve started to take control of your own mental health.”

  I looked away. It was true that I’d been working hard at becoming a person worthy of Elliott’s love, but I was glad she didn’t mention my physical health. While I was attempting to keep control over that as well, I felt run-down a lot and my blood sugar was spiking without cause. I kept this from Tom because I didn’t think I could handle any more concern or worry on his part and I didn’t want to see Dr. Dalton.

  “I want to be better for Elliott.”

  Robin folded her hands in her lap and smiled. I didn’t like it. “What about for Sophie? Do you want to be better for yourself?”

  “Sure.”

  She leaned back. “What if Elliott isn’t able to be your boyfriend again?”

  The pit inside of me opened up and I felt like crap. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I answered quietly.