by C L Walker
Contents
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Author’s Note
Copyright
Dedication
To my cousin, this one is for you:
Though you are no longer of this world
I know in my heart that new life
has been breathed into your lungs and that you are
finally being loved as you deserve.
You are free.
One
Skylar
I threw another rock into the glistening dark waters of the creek as I gazed through the overhang of the tree’s branches at the bright white moon.
I let the cold cover me like a blanket that if I could, I would pull tightly around my body if only to feel something akin to an embrace.
I could hear crickets in the distance, their song eased my soul, they had become the only comfort on my loneliest night.
I set my chin on my knees and watched the white puffs that left my mouth as they disappeared into the freezing air and I shivered.
I had run out of the house without a care beyond my immediate physical safety, so I hadn’t grabbed a jacket. I had on overall shorts that were riddled with holes and sandals from last summer that I had long since outgrown.
I was cold, but I didn’t mind it because it was better than the alternative. A warm house was nothing when faced with the chaos within.
I’d rather be suffocated by frigid air than let her hurt me again.
But beyond that, what I truly desired was to be anywhere else in the world, in a place without pain where I might feel wanted. Where I might feel loved.
I thought about how angry my mother was again and I began to breathe heavy as fear creeped back into my mind and made my skin prickle.
At ten years old I knew well enough to know that when my mother was that angry, I needed to leave and wait until she was drunk enough for me to sneak back into the house unnoticed. To do otherwise was to carry out a death wish because as I had slipped out of her grasp, she had promised there would be more waiting for me.
I dipped my big toe into the water and fought the urge to pull it back out because I wanted to keep it there despite the pain. I wanted to decide for myself how long I would endure its frozen grasp.
“I finally found you,” someone said from behind me, and it came as a surprise, so I leapt to my feet to defend myself if needed.
I shrieked when my foot slid into the muddy creek, my arms flailed around my head wildly and I felt the fear roll through my body as I lost my balance. I may have welcomed the cold, but I wasn’t ready to be fully submerged into the winter waters.
Thankfully, the boy reached out his hands to steady me before I went under and I was able to pull my foot out and avoid plunging my leg further into the water.
He rubbed the sides of my arms as if that would be enough to warm me. “It’s okay, I got you.”
I watched him closely as I was still unsure if he meant me no harm.
When he said, “It’s okay,” again, it frustrated me because nothing is, was or would ever be okay. So, he was greatly mistaken in suggesting such a thing to me when he had no idea about anything that had happened in my life.
I had worse problems than slipping into creeks.
I yanked my arms out of his grasp and folded them across my chest stubbornly.
“Who are you?” I demanded, when what I should have said was thank you because he had caught my fall.
“Micah,” he said as if it should have been obvious.
I gave him a blank stare.
“I live in the neighborhood across the street from yours and we are in the same grade.” He pointed through the trees, but we were so deep in the forest we could no longer see the lights of the trailer park where I lived with my mother, so I couldn’t see where he was pointing to. But I gathered where he meant nonetheless, there was only one neighborhood near mine and although physically close, it felt as if we lived in different worlds.
“My mother said everyone from your neighborhood is stuck up and pretentious,” I said hesitantly, as I wasn’t sure how to pronounce such big words correctly.
I remembered the day they announced the new development across the street and my mom had said we would probably have to leave. The whole neighborhood thought they would tear down the trailer park next but since it was well hidden by a thick row of trees, our eye sore we called ‘home’ was left untouched.
He scratched his head and looked thoughtful as I took in his appearance. His skin was tan, and his hair hung in a neat braid down his back and appeared as dark as night itself against the moon that shined behind him.
He kicked a rock into the creek, and I admired the crisp white color of his shoes until they reminded me of my own, and I began to feel self-conscious about my toes that were popping over my sandals.
“Pretentious,” he said. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like a good thing,” I replied saucily as if the accusation were true, and he was someone to be regarded with distaste because of it. As if my mom was someone whose opinions should be regarded as facts.
I glanced at his hair again and I couldn’t hide my curiosity. “Are you an Indian?”
“Native American is actually what you would call me.” He looked down and seemed to think his next words over carefully. “Are you going to make fun of my hair like everyone else does?”
The thought had never crossed my mind, I simply wondered how I never noticed him before at school, because a boy with longer hair than most of the girls was sure to stand out.
He looked perfect, unmarred by life and I envied him for it.
I touched my shorn off locks and wished that I could trade with him, I wanted pretty hair that hadn’t been butchered by my mother’s unskilled hands.
“Why did you follow me?” I asked when the silence that had stretched between us was too much for me to bear.
“What happened to your arm?” I wasn’t sure why he avoided answering my question.
“It was an accident.”
He pointed to my arm and I covered it with my hand. “But those are finger marks,” he insisted in an accusatory tone, and it made me feel weary of him.
“So!” I stood my ground. “It doesn’t change the fact that it was an accident.”
I had learned my lesson about telling already, and I knew no one would ever understand my mother anyways. So, why bother with the truth when people were so much more comfortable with lies?
The truth was that she had hurt me again after she had promised she wouldn’t ever do it again, but she was a liar.
“I heard your mom yelling when I was walking past your place on my way home from the park, and then I saw you burst out of the door and take off into the woods, so I followed you.” He kept looking down at my arm. “You didn’t seem like you were okay.”
His words made me feel like I was losing a hold on what little control I had left
in that moment. Because if he told anyone, I didn’t know what would happen to my mother.
Last time I had told someone about what she had done to me, she had convinced them that I was a liar, and she told me that she’d kill herself if I opened my mouth again. So of course, I hadn’t dared to speak another word of it, and I let myself believe that I had almost made a huge mistake in exposing her.
She didn’t hurt me often, I reasoned, and she didn’t mean to. She was too sad to know any better, she was always crying because her heart had never healed. So, I made excuses for her for as long as I could. It hadn’t mattered for a time that she had hurt me, because I couldn’t let her kill herself. She was all I had left.
I clenched my fists at my sides and stomped my mud-soaked foot. “You shouldn’t have been listening! She didn’t mean to hurt my arm; it was an accident, like I said!” Except that it wasn’t.
My composure slipped, I was positive that he had all the control, and I didn’t like it. It made me feel like everything was crashing down around me and I didn’t know what to do to fix it.
Everything was a mess, and I didn’t need for him to add to the disorder.
He took a step closer to me with his hands out as if he meant to touch me and offer comfort that I didn’t want from him.
“I never said she did it on purpose. I only wanted to see if you were okay, but if she didn’t do it on purpose then why did you run?” he asked softly.
I didn’t have an answer for him, so I shrugged my shoulders once more and kept my lips sealed. I gritted my teeth as fear that I might say something that would give it all away set in.
He sighed as he seemed to be just as frustrated with me.
“Okay… whatever.” His words were weighed down by disbelief. “Why are you down here crying then if everything is fine and dandy at home?”
He was obviously going to keep asking me questions I didn’t want to answer so I finally snapped. Panic took the reins and without a second thought I pushed him away, and he landed in the creek with a plop that sent water splashing everywhere including on to my face.
“Mind your own damn business!” I shouted as I wiped the liquid from my eyes, and then I took off running through the woods.
“Fine!” I heard him yell behind me. “You can suffer all by yourself!”
I laughed as his voice faded into the sounds of the night, I had already been suffering alone so being without his comfort wasn’t going to break me.
Stupid boy.
I woke suddenly, and I was confused about where I was, I had been expecting to wake up alone in the woods next to the creek with a nosey native boy peering down at me. But I wasn’t a little girl any longer and that boy only existed in my dreams. In the real world he would resemble that of a man who was hopefully living a happy life somewhere far away from me.
Once I was fully coherent, I turned towards my alarm clock that sat on my chipped vintage nightstand next to my bed that was a springy bit of mattress on the floor.
The clock read six a.m. It was a half hour before it was time for me to get up and get ready for my last semester of my senior year.
You’re almost there, freedom awaits!
There was no point in going back to sleep, so I wiped the sweat from my brow and threw my blankets off my body.
It was an unusually warm spring morning; the heat had been going on for weeks so most days I found myself waiting impatiently for the rain that April normally promised to deliver.
I preferred it when it rained and when it was cold, because I always felt like I wasn’t missing out as much when it wasn’t bright and glorious outside. The sun seemed more suited for happy people who felt free to frolic in its warm rays seemingly without a care in the world.
I slipped into the shower and when I got out, I threw on dark ripped up designer jeans I had scored from the thrift shop and a band t-shirt. Then I quickly put on mascara and left my long pale blonde hair down without drying it because I wanted to hurry and get out of the house before my mother woke up.
I made my way quietly through the kitchen and grabbed a granola bar out of a mostly empty cupboard before I tipped toed across the living room to the front door. Our ancient trailer creaked with every step that I took, which made me cringe as I tried to make it to the door unseen and unheard.
“Skylar!”
I jumped before I turned around and noticed that she was on the worn couch right behind me.
I usually did better recon, but my dream was still preoccupying my mind and as such I wasn’t operating at full capacity. I needed to clear my head because I couldn’t afford any distractions.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Where are you off to so early?” She sat up on shaky arms and brushed her curly bleach blonde locks away from her withered face.
She used to be beautiful, youthful, and vibrant before the accident. She had this glow about her, she was one of those people you couldn’t help but smile at simply because they were smiling. She was infectious in every sense of the word, when she was happy you could bask in the light of her joy and feel it as if it were your very own. But when she was miserable, the world around you felt as if it were cast in a dark sheen and emotions such as joy could only be felt in your most sacred of dreams.
I discovered the cruel truth at a young age, that monsters don’t live under the bed; they live in plain sight and they hide their cruelty so well many never see them for who they truly are.
She was one of those monsters, and she was my mother.
I looked down into her eyes and considered them, they were eyes of the dead, violet in color like my own but they had clouded over the years and I couldn’t imagine any longer what it might be like to see life in them. I didn’t think they were beautiful like I had as a child, they were hard, cynical, and they were always judging me.
“I'm going to school, but first I’m going to get breakfast with Sai at the diner.” It was a lie, but it was already out of my mouth before I could think of something else to say.
She would never believe the truth which was that I was going to sit down at the docks by myself, because she always thought I was up to no good. But I wasn’t that kind of teenager, I was too scared of what she would do to me if she ever had proof of my mischief.
Being unwilling to take some risks had labeled me as a ‘goody two shoes,’ but I couldn’t be bothered by it because I had other things to worry about. Such as getting away from her.
I had been counting down the days to my escape for years and it couldn’t have felt like it went by any slower, especially as my time with her was nearing its end.
She snickered loudly and brought me back from my thoughts. I knew to brace myself for the biting words that were sure to follow.
“Sure, you are,” she said, and there was the distrust like clockwork.
“I am.”
“Oh please, you’re letting him screw you, aren’t you?” she asked, and I shook my head. “You think I don’t know you go to school and put on makeup to lure the boys in?”
I would have rolled my eyes if I didn’t think she would hit me for it.
She had been a natural beauty and chose not to wear makeup, so she was judgmental of current makeup trends and liked to dog on other women for not being as ‘naturally’ pretty as she once was.
Lucky for me, I was no exception to that judgement.
I had worn an ugly metallic shade of baby pink lipstick on my thirteenth birthday, that I had picked up from the drug store with change I had been saving for months. I had been so excited because I thought it was the shiniest thing I had ever seen, and I was sure that when I put it on, I was going to feel like a new person. I thought that like the lipstick, I too would glitter like crushed diamonds.
But when I approached her in the kitchen to show her how pretty I looked, I got slapped in the face so hard she knocked me to the floor and busted my lip open, then she told me never to bring that ‘shit’ into the house again.
So, I hadn’t, for a few years
anyway.
“I do it for myself, not for them,” I said. It was just lipstick; it was a small thing, but it was mine and it was the only color I had in my life.
It was the truth, but she would never believe it because she didn’t know me, and she didn’t know how hard I tried to hide from others because I was scared of letting them in.
I didn’t want attention, I wanted to be unseen.
“Oh, for yourself huh?” She started coughing violently until she cleared her throat. Then she took a drink from an old soda can that had been sitting on the coffee table for days that probably had cigarette ashes in it. “It’s so nice to hear that you are doing well for yourself while I’ve been stuck dedicating my life to you for the last seventeen fucking years.”
That was comical considering she had never done a single good thing for me in my entire life beyond putting a roof over my head and meager meals in my belly.
I would have rather been given up for adoption.
Had she been any other woman, I would have believed that there was true sacrifice on her part, and I would have been eternally grateful for it. Because if I had someone else for a mother, she might have dedicated her life to me by choice, just because she wanted me to have a good childhood as most mothers wanted for their children.
“I don’t have time to argue with you. I’m leaving.” I tried my best to shut it down without letting my irritation show. I couldn’t antagonize her before school because I’d end up late and sporting bruises. “Goodbye.”
“Slut,” she murmured, so she could get the last word in.
I stopped with the door open, and I finally felt refreshed with the morning air in my lungs.
Every day once that door was open, I took a deep breath and I stepped out of the trailer with a sliver of hope. There was nothing quite like opening the door to a world that felt apart from her and what took place in her trailer.
It was small moments like that where I dared to dream that there was something outside of what I was experiencing each day.
But I was almost there, as the day when I would never have to go back inside was drawing near.
I took another deep breath before I turned to look back at her, but she was already making her way to the kitchen with a cigarette hanging from her lips. She knew I wouldn’t fight back so she no longer waited for a reaction and I was always left staring at her retreating form.
