The Tragedy of Power

by Ian Withrow

  Lauren couldn't help but feel a tinge of jealousy at the gentle, sloping curves before her.

  Erin was twisting her shirt into knots as she wrung her hands. She eyed Lauren nervously, staring intently for what her reaction might be.

  “How,” Lauren began, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “It was four years ago,” Erin cut her off. “It was late, my mother was asleep in the back seat, my dad was driving. We were on the way home from St. Louis.”

  As she spoke, Erin's voice took on a distant tone, as though she was detached from the memory.

  “The guy that hit us, the cops said he had been drinking. I didn't find out until a month later when I woke up. He hit us head on, I went through the windshield of our jeep and they had to cut me out of the back seat of the other vehicle.”

  Lauren's jaw dropped. She was amazed that her friend and her family had survived, and her reaction in the truck was suddenly made clear.

  As they spoke, Erin sheepishly put her shirt back on.

  “I'm sorry,” Lauren said lamely, wishing she knew what else to say. “How did...are your parents...that is, do they also have…?”

  Lauren couldn't think of a way to phrase her question, so she simply nodded at the scars.

  “No, they don't have scars,” Erin replied simply.

  Slowly it dawned on Lauren.

  “My mother died instantly, dad lasted a few days...”

  Erin's voice trailed off, and Lauren felt an incredible desire to give her a hug, some kind of embrace to let her know she wasn't alone.

  But she couldn't.

  The pair spent the morning talking intensely. It was as though the floodgates had been opened and Erin poured her heart out. For nearly four years, Erin had been living here virtually alone. She was supposedly in the custody of her aunt, Veronica, but she had rarely seen the woman since the accident. Apparently, she would swing through a few times every month, borrow money from Erin's life insurance check for drugs, spend a night, and usually be gone by morning. Erin had little love for the woman, and it seemed it was mutual.

  Well, that explained the self-help books: Erin had to be an adult, to pay bills, to balance a budget all on her own, starting at the tender age of 12.

  Lauren couldn't imagine the pain Erin must have felt, must continue to feel every day. She tried to imagine losing her mother or her father, even just one of them, but the thought brought chills to her heart.

  As noon rolled around, the mood had continued to improve, and the bond between them had deepened. They were discussing the finer points of online bill paying when Erin interrupted abruptly.

  “Do you want to see the rest of the house?” asked Erin, suddenly standing. “I wouldn't mind changing, and you must be baking all bundled up like that.”

  Erin motioned at Lauren's thick winter turtleneck and jeans. Not waiting for a response she continued.

  “You're a little thinner than I am, obviously, but some of my stuff should fit you.”

  Lauren opened her mouth to say she was fine, but Erin was already on the move.

  Erin set off down a different hallway, shorter this time. At the end was a large wooden door, which she opened. Upon entering, it was clear that this was the master bedroom.

  Again Lauren was surprised by the furnishings of the room. A huge four poster bed dominated the center of the room, several framed pictures hung on the walls, though most of them were covered with black cloth. A door to the side seemed to lead to a bathroom, and a large walk-in closet dominated the other side of the room. More books were piled in the corners, and the furniture all seemed to be the same warm, brown wooden variety of the rest of the house.

  “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable, sorry again for the clutter,” said Erin, as she walked into the closet, stripping her shirt off again as she did so and tossing it into a small pile of laundry in the corner of the room. As she disappeared around the corner, Lauren looked around for a place to sit. There weren't really any options besides the bed, so that's where she sat.

  A few minutes later Erin returned wearing a black pair of shorts and t-shirt. Her pale, shapely legs were covered in the same deep scars as well, a harsh tapestry of the past. She was putting her unruly curls up in a ponytail as she walked, something Lauren had never seen her do.

  In fact, Lauren thought to herself, it may have been the girliest thing she had ever done. The way she expertly bundled and restrained her hair made her look as though she would be at home on any volleyball court in the country.

  A grin must have broken out across Lauren's face, because Erin froze.

  “What?”

  Lauren tried to stifle a laugh but couldn't.

  “You try dealing with this mess.” Erin's voice was laced with frustration. “It's a nightmare! I dream of having hair as straight as yours!”

  Erin nodded her head back to the closet.

  “Go ahead and change if you want, you can wear anything you like. I have a bunch of pajamas on the left.”

  Lauren was reluctant, but the house was warm and her clothes were stifling. Furthermore, she didn't want to seem ungrateful, she knew her friend was in a delicate state.

  The closet was full, but Lauren could probably count the number of items that weren't black, red, or dark gray on a single hand. She slipped out of her heavy garments, holding various items up to guess their fit.

  She must have been taking a while to decide, because Erin poked her head around the corner and gave out a low, teasing whistle.

  Lauren jumped in surprise and covered herself up, blushing in her underwear.

  “Hey!” she laughed, “No peeking!”

  Erin had a huge grin on her face.

  “Serves you right for making fun of my hair! I just wanted to make sure you didn't get lost back here.”

  “Well I am doing fine thank you!”

  Lauren pulled a pair of sweatpants off a shelf and threw them at her friend, who ducked back around the corner with a chuckle.

  Alone again, Lauren couldn't stop blushing at the thought of her friend's gaze. Her senses oddly heightened, she rushed to find an outfit while ignoring the sudden heat she felt.

  Finally, Lauren settled on a pair of plaid pajama pants and a black shirt.

  The pants were loose, and the shirt had plenty of room left in it, too. Lauren looked at herself in the floor-length mirror she found in the closet and picked her appearance apart.

  Walking back into the room, Lauren found Erin curled up on the bed, watching a small television set and absentmindedly toying with the remote.

  “...been nearly eight years since her disappearance, but people across America, and in fact across the world, have not yet given up hope...”

  Lauren stepped into the room and the hair on the back of her neck rose. The voice coming from the television belonged to a man who still featured prominently in her nightmares: Kent Dailey.

  “...Today we're going to be speaking with Cardinal Giordano Bruno. I hope I'm saying that correctly.” Kent spoke with boundless enthusiasm and as Lauren approached the bed, his beaming face came into view on the screen. “Now, Mr. Bruno, you're from the Vatican. Can you remind us where the Pope weighs in on all of this?”

  He hadn't changed much, except that his perfectly positioned hair now had a touch of gray to it. He still looked young, a camera-friendly sort of charming. Except the eyes. The eyes still spoke malice to Lauren's heart.

  “This guy is such a tool,” Erin said with obvious disdain, surprising Lauren. “He totally abused the story of that girl to get where he is, and he just can't let that shit go.”

  In that moment, Lauren loved Erin. She beamed at her friend, speechless with joy that someone else saw Dailey for the jackal he was.

  Erin looked over, having expected a response to her comment. What she saw instead was Lauren's big, goofy grin looking back at her.

  “What?” she said, confused but grinning as well. Lauren's smile was infectious.

  “Nothing,” said Lauren
, who quickly tried to hide her expression. Discussing Dailey wasn't something she wanted to do.

  Suddenly suspicious, Erin pressed for information.

  “What do you mean it's nothing? You've got a huge dumb grin on your face for something.”

  Scrambling for a distraction, Lauren picked up a pillow and whacked Erin with it.

  Erin lay there, eyes wide in shock at the unexpected attack. For a brief moment Lauren thought perhaps she had crossed a line. Erin really wasn't much of a physical contact sort of person, and Lauren had definitely gone to great lengths to avoid it their entire relationship. But, swiftly enough, Erin's surprise turned to an impish grin and she retaliated with a pillow of her own.

  The fight only lasted a few minutes before both girls were tuckered out, their hair mussed and their cheeks red.

  Lauren was sitting on a stack of books beside the bed, brushing her hair out of her eyes while Erin sat on the floor, leaning her back against the mattress.

  As she tucked a stray lock behind her ear, Lauren noticed a small streak of red on her pillow.

  “Oh my god,” she said a little too loudly, “Is that blood?”

  As she snapped her eyes up to look at Erin their gaze met. One of the freshest cuts on Erin's arm seemed to have split in their excitement, and a tiny stream of blood was working its way quickly towards her elbow.

  “Shit,” Erin said, standing quickly and walking to the bathroom, hand pressed against the wound.

  Lauren followed her, her unclad feet making no noise as she padded across the hardwood and onto the slate gray tile of the bathroom. Erin was examining her arm in a mirror, applying pressure with a cotton swab from a jar next to a deep sink set into a gorgeous green marble counter. A huge tub set into the floor dominated the master bathroom. It seemed extravagant in the otherwise fairly normal home, an impression that was further magnified by a separate, mid-sized walk-in shower.

  Tiny red droplets led a trail to Erin, who was swearing softly under her breath.

  Lauren was far, far outside her comfort zone. Obviously this injury wasn't from a years-old car accident, but how does one broach the topic of...whatever this was?

  Erin met eyes with Lauren's reflection in the mirror.

  “It's, um, less crazy than it looks.”

  It was a statement, a question, more. It was the beginning or the end of a conversation, and Lauren wasn't sure which.

  Lauren opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and closed it again, prompting a response from Erin nonetheless.

  “I know what people say about me in the hallways,” she began. “I know people notice the cuts, I know you notice them. I don't want people to notice them. It's not for them, it's for me.”

  Lauren nodded, trying to understand, as Erin turned around to face her.

  “This is going to sound crazy, and I don't really want to talk about it--”

  “You don't have to,” Lauren interrupted, frightened by the direction she thought the conversation might take, frightened it would somehow hurt their friendship.

  “I do. I do, Lauren, I can't talk to anyone else, I don't have anyone else. Somebody has to know, maybe that's part of it.”

  Erin had a desperate look in her eyes as she spoke those last words. So Lauren again became quiet, and let her friend speak her mind.

  “It's, um, it's like this right? I don't really know how to start. The scars from the accident, they let me know it was real, I mean I know it was real because here they are, all over me.”

  Erin traced a finger across a particularly deep scar on her left arm.

  “When I got into that car, I had my parents, I had a life, and hopes, and dreams. When I woke up they were all gone, replaced by these scars. I didn't understand, I still don't understand. There are times I wonder if I am still in that bed, and that this is all some twisted fucking dream, and I look at these scars and I think, 'No, this is real, look at these scars, feel this ugly roadmap of your history carved into your body.' I know it was real because I can feel that it was real. Most of the time it helps. It grounds me. Sometimes it doesn't.”

  Erin's finger crossed from the old to the new, dragging a line of fresh, cherry-red blood as she traced the open cut. Ice wrapped around Lauren's heart as she did so.

  “I do this, um, to myself. I do it when I have a really bad day, when I have trouble telling what’s real or what isn't. I can, um, cut myself and see the blood, feel the pain, and I know that it has to be real. What's more, I can look back the next day, or the next week, and say yes, this is fresh, the others are old, they must be different, it can't be from the accident. Sometimes I can go without it a while, when the pain is low and the memories stay distant. Sometimes the pain's inside, though, sometimes the doubt and the anger in my heart is...more.”

  By now both girls were crying again.

  Lauren wished again that she could embrace her friend, that she could give her that simple comfort. But it was impossible. She thought about their conversation earlier in the morning, about Erin's bravery.

  Maybe someday she'd be brave enough to share her secret too.

  Chapter Five:

  Gabriel was sleeping. His jet black hair was a mess and his ruddy face was scrunched up in reaction to whatever he was dreaming about, but he was finally sleeping.

  Lauren had been trying anything and everything she could think of for the last two hours trying to comfort him.

  The lithe seventeen-year-old was sprawled across the couch in the living room, with Gabriel in a net-walled crib beside her. Her shoulders ached from holding the fussy toddler, and the time-worn cushions felt fantastic. Lauren sighed deeply, relishing the silence,

  Aside from her little brother, she had the house to herself. Her parents were out on a date trying to, how had her dad put it? 'Recapture the spark.' Lauren tried to remain hopeful, but things had been getting worse lately, a lot worse.

  Gabriel had been delivered almost two months early, and mom had been so drunk at the time that they couldn't even give her pain medication for fear her heart would stop. The memory of that night still gave her nightmares; waiting outside the hospital room, the yelling of doctors, nurses. Police running in and out of the room.

  Yes, Gabriel had been born with a host of problems, in a broken home. It must seem such a dark and scary world to him.

  Every day Lauren woke up staring at the ceiling and wondering how two people could fall desperately in love with each other, get married, and then suddenly stop.

  The only conclusion was that something had changed. Lauren tried every morning to convince herself she hadn't been that change. Every day she put on the unfailing, smiling facade she knew her father needed to see, and tried to run from the question that haunted her.

  Pestered by her subconscious, Lauren stood and paced softly around the room. Her tan legs drawing the same tight circles as her thoughts.

  Lauren wasn't sure how she would have gotten through it without Erin, since that day in the truck their friendship had been unshakable. They spent time together most every day; walking through the woods around Lauren's home; babysitting Gabriel, who seemed to bring a special, joyous light to Erin's eyes; or simply doing homework and taking turns bitching about their treatment at school. In all honesty, the bullying was preferable some days to the stormy atmosphere at home. Better the enemy you can hate, instead of the painful knowledge that the ones you love will hurt you.

  The time she spent at Erin's house was by far the most enjoyable though, often times they would simply read, both absorbed in a book, music blaring over the radio, sharing chocolates or popcorn and ignoring the world outside the door.

  What Lauren felt in the woods while running, Erin felt within the sanctuary of her house wrapped in a blanket and lost in the written word. To share that time with her was a valued treasure. Despite her own love for the freedom of the outdoors, she was surprised at how familiar Erin's home felt too.

  Like she was where she needed to be.

  Lauren smiled to
herself at the thought, and her pace slowed as the tension left her mind. Their conversations together ranged far and wide during those quiet, lazy afternoons; from school to politics and beyond. They were the types of talks that stretched the mind and bonded the heart.

  Eventually the low rumble of an engine pulled Lauren back to the present. It was definitely the truck. She glanced nervously at Gabriel, she didn't know how long she had been in her own little world but with his condition she felt guilty for her lapse.

  He was fine though, his little feet kicking at his blanket as he slowly rolled over in his sleep.

  Lauren strained to listen to the tone of her parent's voices as they approached the house, but they were speaking quietly so it was hard to tell their mood. Then again, if they weren't yelling at each other, maybe things had gone smoothly.

  The lock turned and the front door opened, Lauren's smile was firmly painted onto her face as her mother and father entered the room.

  “Hi guys,” she said cheerily. “How was the date?”

  She winked playfully at the pair, hoping she sounded sincere.

  Allison looked at her daughter, managed a weak smile, and then walked off towards her bedroom. John stayed behind, a troubled look on his face.

  “Sweetie,” he began, his tone sad and defeated. “I think your mom and I might need you to take Gabriel to his doctor's appointment tomorrow. We uh, are gonna go to a meeting.”

  Meeting? He couldn't be talking about a divorce, surely things weren't that bad? She had considered it of course, but still clung to the hope that somehow it would all work itself out.

  John sensed Lauren's worry.

  “These past couple years have been… We're gonna go and talk to someone, a professional, about what's going wrong so maybe we can fix it.”

  There was a determination in his voice, and she knew he had not yet given up on his marriage.

  Lauren breathed a small, barely audible sigh of relief.

  “Like a counselor or something.”

  “Yes. Lauren, I know you've noticed this but things aren't really uh, going... well. Between your mother and I. Gabriel was kind of a wake-up call for her. He has to be. I can't do this without her, I don't want to. But... something has to give.”