Duplicity

by Kristina M Sanchez

  But sleep was no respite. Her dreams misplaced her in space and time, sending her back to relive the horrific night she’d had.

  “Lilith. Honey, wake up. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Blinking awake again, it took a full two minutes for Lilith to wrap her mind around reality. She was in a hospital bed struggling to breathe. It was hard to breathe because her lung had collapsed. Her lung had collapsed because she had three fractured ribs. She ached from head to toe because she was covered in bruises.

  Mal was holding her hand. Next to him, Dana was looking at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  Lilith sunk back against her pillow, wishing she could disappear. She hated the expressions on her friends’ faces. Pity. She knew she had to look so pathetic. No one had given her a mirror yet, but her face felt swollen and sore.

  Shame crept like bile up her throat, and she looked away.

  Frank’s accusations echoed in her head. She was in his territory, his world, and she had no business being there. He’d seen her out with Oswald.

  “I don’t know what you were trying to pull,” he’d snarled in her ear. “Going out with Oswald like you’re not just some slut he’s fucking.”

  He’d stuffed a fat roll of hundred dollar bills in her jeans right before he’d tried to yank them off her, all the while snarling at her. He was done playing her games. If she’d forgotten who she was, what she was, he was going to remind her.

  Right then, with her friends looking down at her battered body, Lilith thought maybe he’d been right. Wasn’t this what she deserved? It had been what Mal had been expecting for years. Wasn’t it just a matter of time before she ended up just like this? Did she have any right to be surprised?

  The indignant voice in her head was far away and waning. That voice was the one part of her that knew this wasn’t her fault. There was no excuse. There was nothing that justified what Frank had done to her, what he’d tried to do. She’d made her unwillingness very clear, and he’d tried to take what he wanted anyway.

  “Is he dead?” Her voice was a toneless rasp, and she kept her head turned away from them.

  “Who?” Mal asked.

  Lilith closed her eyes, flinching when she remembered what it had been like. She had self-defense training, but he’d gotten the upper hand. He had her on her back, pinned by his massive body.

  Part of her self-defense training was knowing when not to fight, when it was better to play the game and bide her time, looking for an opening.

  When it was clear she had no leverage, that he was hurting her worse for all her struggling, she went limp beneath him, aching from the beating he’d delivered while she was trying to get away. He yanked her shirt open—the terrible rip of the fabric had to have been the worst sound she’d ever heard in her life—and she bit the inside of her cheek so hard, she tasted blood. It took every ounce of her self-control not to writhe and wiggle and otherwise do everything she could to get away.

  She waited.

  “You better be a damn good lay, girl.”He grunted into her ear.

  When his weight shifted, she struck. She twisted beneath him, grabbing at the knife in her boot. She buried it deep in his gut, and when he recoiled, screaming, she scrambled away. He was right behind her.

  They’d struggled and tumbled down a set of stairs. That was how her ribs had been fractured, and before unconsciousness took her, she’d noted that Frank wasn’t moving.

  Swallowing thickly—the inside of her mouth tasted like blood—she tried again. “I stabbed him,” she whispered. Lilith had no idea how much trouble she was in. She had a vision of herself in prison orange in a courtroom. Would it be a murder trial or just assault? Attempted murder?

  She didn’t have the energy to care. It was a vague curiosity that made her ask at all. She was resigned to her fate.

  “No one tells us anything,” Dana said, sounding bitter. “They won’t tell us what happened. Who did this, Lilith? Was his name Trey? And did he . . . did he . . .”

  “Dana,” Mal admonished.

  Lilith turned her head. “Trey?” Hearing his name made her want to retreat, but it also made her want to wake up. She fought, trying to find words. Most of her vocabulary seemed to be cowering in the corner somewhere.

  Mal’s lips tugged down at the corner. “You had a lot of nightmares. You said his name when you were sleeping. Many times.”

  They weren’t nightmares because she hadn’t been asleep. She’d been awake, but her thoughts weren’t quite concrete. More than once, she only figured out she was talking out loud because someone, a nurse more often than not, talked back or tried to comfort her.

  It was possible she’d called for Trey when she wasn’t quite conscious. When Frank was on top of her, her mind had tried to retreat for a few seconds before she’d called it back. But for those brief seconds, she was in Trey’s bedroom again, in his arms.

  He was her safe and happy place.

  And that was destroyed, too, wasn’t it.

  Mal paused. “Is this the same Trey you were talking about at the club that day?”

  There was a fire in his eyes, and it took a moment for Lilith to understand why.

  “Oh.” She winced. Breathing was not fun. Breathing sharply was agonizing. “Trey didn’t . . . he isn’t . . .” She gave her head a little shake. “It wasn’t him.”

  Mal and Dana exchanged a surprised look.

  “Is he . . . do you want me to call him?” Mal asked.

  Lilith’s heart ached with a longing she couldn’t understand. She was so tired. So, so tired. She had just enough energy to shake her head. “You can’t call him,” she whispered, letting her eyelids droop.

  She couldn’t see him now, not when she couldn’t pretend anymore.

  “How about your dad, honey?”

  Again, Lilith’s heart panged, and she remembered her father’s comforting arms around her when she’d been a little, little girl waking from nightmares.

  “I don’t need him,” she murmured, turning her head away. “I don’t need anyone.”

  What she meant was she didn’t have anyone.

  Shivering—she was cold right to the center of her bones—Lilith hunkered down under the blankets and closed her eyes again.

  ~0~

  The space in her head typically occupied by thoughts and stories was blank.

  Lilith was aware time was passing. She would answer the nurses and doctors. When they gave her an instruction, she obeyed. She would acknowledge Mal or Dana’s presence, but she hardly interacted with them.

  She existed in an anoetic state. Some unknown conglomerate of emotions was resting like a rock in her gut, but her thoughts weren’t concrete enough to dissect.

  The evening of the second day of her hospital stay, she woke knowing she wasn’t alone. Some part of her felt bad. Mal and Dana had gotten nothing but one-sided conversation from her for days, and yet they still kept coming back.

  “Lily-bean?”

  At that, her eyelids shot open, and she turned so quickly, her body was racked with pain. She gave a small cry, breathless.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She was aware her father was on his feet now, his hands hovering over her shoulders as though he was too scared to even pat her for fear he would hurt her further. “What happened? Should I get the nurse?”

  “No. It’s okay. I’m . . .”

  She tried to say she was fine, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t. She really wasn’t.

  “What are you doing here?” she said when she found her voice again.

  Her father winced, sitting back down in the chair beside her. “Malcolm called me.” He paused. “I would have been here in a heartbeat. I don’t . . .” He swallowed hard, and it occurred to Lilith he seemed close to tears.

  “He shouldn’t have. I’m sorry he bothered you.” There was no inflection in her voice at all. If she had the energy to feel anything, she would have been annoyed. She’d told Mal over and over again she didn’t want him to call her father.

 
Her father shrank back, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him bow his head. “Are things really that bad between us that you wouldn’t call me when you’re hurt?” His tone was hardly more than a whisper—heavy with sadness and tinged with defeat.

  Lilith stared at the ceiling. “You don’t want to hear this.”

  For long seconds, the only noise in the room was the dull roar of a busy hospital in the background. Her father seemed to be struggling to steady his breath.

  “I . . . several weeks ago I ran into Mrs. Cooper.”

  Lilith twitched in reaction to her name. What could Mal and Dana’s mother have to do with anything?

  “We got to talking. I knew she’d been having a tough time since her kids came to see her some months back.” His breath stuttered, and Lilith’s stomach twisted with anxiety. “She said she had to see a therapist after . . .” He swallowed hard. “Her kids have such problems, you know?”

  Lilith scoffed but said nothing.

  “And . . .” He was looking down, wringing the edge of her blanket in his hand. “She told me she’d failed as a parent.” A beat. “She said there was nothing worse than realizing your kid had been hurt, and you didn’t even notice.”

  Lilith’s heart skipped, and she gasped. Her mind seized, a finger of stark white fear sending a jolt of electricity down her spine.

  Had they told? Had Dana and Mal told?

  “You tried to tell me, didn’t you?” His voice cracked. “You tried to tell me, and I didn’t believe you.”

  In her head, Dana’s seventeen-year-old voice was pleading with her. “You can’t tell him, Lilith. You can’t. You can’t.” Her throat was closed off, her heart thudding painfully against her broken ribs.

  “The things you said about Mr. Harper all those years ago . . . they were true.”

  He wasn’t asking.

  Tears welled and spilled over, tracking from the corners of her eyes into her hairline, but Lilith was frozen. She couldn’t move to wipe them away; she couldn’t turn her head to see what her father’s expression was. She stared up at the ceiling, but she saw nothing. Her head was spinning.

  She was seventeen, and things had been bad at home. She was lying. A lot. She couldn’t seem to stop. She would get caught up in other people’s lives—books, movies, television. She couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t stop watching, and sometimes—a lot of times—when anyone asked her a question, she answered as though she was some character and not herself.

  Her father didn’t understand. He used to look at her like she was the brightest star in his universe, but that was so long ago. Now, almost every time she spoke, he just looked sad and disappointed.

  Lilith was frustrated. She was panicked. She needed to get him to listen because Aiden was about to go into junior high, and if he took Honors History, like their father wanted him to, he would have Mr. Harper as a teacher. She couldn’t let it happen. She just couldn’t.

  To that point, she’d tried everything. She’d told her father stories about the things they studied. She told him she didn’t think Aiden could handle the course load—what if he had a breakdown? She spun every story she could think of, every reason she could grasp at to get her father to make sure Aiden didn’t have Mr. Harper as a teacher.

  Her father sighed, slumping in his chair a little, but he took a deep breath and looked her right in the eyes. “I know you’re lying, Lilith Elaine. What I don’t understand is why.” He leaned across the table, his hands out, open, imploring. “What is the matter with you? I don’t understand what gets in your head. You’re not on drugs, so what is it? Tell me.”

  Lilith bit her lip, fear making her queasy. She felt light-headed. What she wanted was to clamp her hands over her ears and just sing something, anything, until the memories and emotions that were threatening to overwhelm her were drowned out.

  But . . . Aiden. Aiden was more important.

  She heard Dana’s voice pleading in her head. Malcolm hadn’t told. Not even when they found out about the cutting. He hadn’t told.

  They couldn’t tell.

  But what if Mr. Harper did to Aiden what he’d done to the three of them?

  She couldn’t let it happen. She had to stop it.

  She took a deep breath and told her father everything.

  ~0~

  She’d been smug when Mr. Harper had selected her, Mal, and Dana to be in his special club. They were good at history, the best, and fascinated where most of their peers were bored.

  It had been fun at first, and they enjoyed making Mr. Harper proud. He seemed so pleased with her, with them. He hugged them. A lot. He was always touching them: a pat on the head that maybe lingered a beat longer than normal, his hand brushing down their sides to get their attention, things like that. Innocent really.

  He would invite one or all of them to his house on weekends. He had such a collection of awesome historical items, and he would lean in so close, his arms around her as he let her hold a Civil War saber or an ages-old piece of jewelry.

  His hands would start out on her shoulder, but then they started to roam.

  At first, Lilith was sure she was mistaken. He made her uncomfortable, but . . .

  But she’d always been taught teachers were trustworthy. She’d been taught to listen and respect her teachers. And her father liked Mr. Harper. He often went on about what a great teacher, a great guy he was.

  Mr. Harper was her friend.

  Then the little touches went further.

  She remembered the first time. She was alone in the classroom with him after school. She’d answered a really hard worksheet perfectly, and he’d patted her cheek, brushed his hands through her hair.

  “You’re so smart. Such a smart, beautiful girl.” He’d captured her face between his hands.

  And he’d kissed her.

  And pulled her down onto his lap as he sat in his chair.

  And he’d touched her, shushing her mewls of protest. “You’re just so pretty and good. Such a good girl.”

  ~0~

  It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Lilith stared at the table the whole time, but it all came out. Everything.

  It had been like that all year long. It had been like that for Mal and Dana too. But when they went on to eighth grade, Mr. Harper hadn’t invited them back to his special club.

  Lilith stared down at the table and told her father all these things. She’d kept them locked up inside her for so long, once she started, she couldn’t stop. She was shaking and so uncertain, but she couldn’t stop. She wanted it all out of her. All the ugliness and confusion.

  Daddy would help. He would understand.

  When she was done, there was only silence between them. She could hear the ticking of the clock in the hall and music from Aiden’s room toward the back of the house.

  Her father sighed.

  He didn’t believe her, she realized. “I’m telling the truth. That’s the truth,” she whispered to the tabletop.

  The noise of his chair scraping along the tile was horribly loud in the quiet room. Her father didn’t say another word. He just walked away.

  Now, her father wound his fingers around hers. Lilith closed her eyes. She couldn’t react, not even enough to yank back her hand.

  Her hand was still dwarfed in his even now. She used to like that when she’d been a little girl. She used to be fascinated by how her hand disappeared in his.

  “I’m sorry, Lily-bean.” His voice was gruff with emotion. “I should have listened. I’m so sorry.”

  Lilith swallowed several times, trying to beat back the tightness in her throat. That cold stone of mixed emotions at the center of her gut was getting bigger. It was about to consume her. Fear. Shame. Anger. Regret.

  She reached for something else, some other reality, but none would come. She couldn’t think around the pain anymore.

  “I’m here now, Lilith. I swear I’m here, and I’m listening.”

  The last vestiges of control she had snapped, and Lilith began
to sob. Her ribs protested, but she didn’t care. The pain in her chest was nothing compared to the agony that hit her at soul level, long ignored and covered up. She sat up, wrapping her arms around her father and burying her head at his neck.

  She didn’t know if she believed him, but just then, it didn’t matter. She was falling apart, and she needed something. Anything.

  She couldn’t pretend she was fine anymore. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t need someone to hold her up.

  Chapter 14

  After her breakdown, Lilith slept for ten hours straight. She slept like the dead without a single dream, and when she woke, it felt as though something essential about her, the very blood in her veins, had changed. The blank space she’d existed in the last couple of days was gone. The ability she had to distract herself, to replace her reality with someone else’s had disappeared. She was locked her head with the ghosts of her past, everything laid bare, and she couldn’t escape, even when her eyes were closed.

  She felt raw around the edges and empty in the middle, so why was the weight on her shoulders so crushing? If she had nothing left on the inside, why did it feel like she was made of lead?

  Thoughts flew at her like cars at a cross-section of highways—east, west, north, south, in and out of roundabouts and off ramps. And she was just a human stuck in the middle without a way out.

  Why did it feel like this? It had been almost ten years since the man had put his hands on her. So what? He hadn’t hurt her. He’d been very tender. Why was this bothering her now? Was it really that big a deal?

  It was a big enough deal that Mal had maimed his own body trying to grapple with it. It was a big enough deal that Dana had almost lost her mind and her body to drugs.

  Lilith didn’t know that she thought she’d dealt with it better. She preferred not to deal with it at all. She’d done her best never to think of the reason why her friends were hurting. She was fine. She paid for her home, her food, her incidentals. She paid for Dana’s school. She got by.

  A knock on the door drew her attention, and she looked up to find Mal in the doorway, his expression contrite. “Hey.”