He was screaming like a little girl, even more than I did when I was younger. I lowered my face near his so he could hear me.
“Listen good, if you ever, and I do mean ever, come anywhere near me ever again . . . I will kill you. Don’t make the mistake in thinking that I won’t because what the fuck else do I have to live for?”
His eyes widened at my words, and thankfully, his screaming died down. He didn’t say anything as I stood back up and sat back down to finally eat my food. After a minute or so, he ran out of the diner quickly.
I must say . . . in that moment, I felt amazing. Finally, I was the one in control of myself and my body.
That amazing feeling didn’t last long though, and I got kicked out of the diner without my food. It was sad. I had finally gotten a chance to have an actual meal, and I blew it. I just wanted to eat!
The crisp fall air hit my body as I walked out of the diner. It sent a chill up my spine as I slipped my hoodie on. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when the weather got colder. I was just going to improvise, I suppose. I was already nervous about it. I wasn’t sure if I’d actually survive the winter.
I sighed as I walked briskly down the sidewalk. I was uncertain what I was going to do that night, and it was still kind of early. Usually, we would have been training at that time.
Honestly, I had to say that I was sort of glad that we were getting a short reprieve from our normal training regimen. I was so sore. It was at least partially due to that kid slamming me into the ground, but training was also taking a toll. I needed some rest, except I didn’t have time to rest.
I was so hungry. Leaving that beautiful plate of food back at the diner was so difficult. Although, the few bites that I had gotten to eat were more than I had on most nights, it was still depressing to think about the full belly that I could have had.
That depression was turning into anger quickly. Anger at myself, anger at the stupid junkie for ruining my night, and anger at my idiotic father and his dumbass best friend for gloating about my status with Demetri. I was pissed. He had already kicked me out. Was that not enough?!
“Aubry!” I thought I had heard something, but I was sure I was just delirious, so I just ignored it.
“Aubry! Aubry, wait!”
That time I was sure that I heard something. I turned around quickly to see who was following me. My lips broke into a genuine smile when I saw Aiden was running towards me with two to-go boxes in his hands. I couldn’t wipe the giant smile off my face when he finally made it to me.
“Here, I thought you’d want this,” he told me. “By the way, the waitress said that you were awesome back there and her boss is a douche.”
I accepted the box from him and beamed at his gesture.
“Oh my God! You are seriously the best!” I said, jabbing my fist into the air and almost hugging my box. I excused myself for my ridiculousness because of how scarce food had been as of late. I was just happy to be able to eat the food I thought I had left behind.
He chuckled at my behavior. “What you did back there was amazing. I was honestly a little scared about introducing you this soon, even if it is the perfect time since it’s the off-season, but you just made a grown man cry with one motion of your arm. I think you’ll be great.”
Wait, he was complimenting me? I smiled widely again in pride of his hard-to-come-by compliments.
Aiden shifted awkwardly.
“Thank you. It’s because I had a great teacher though,” I replied.
I could feel my cheeks burning at my cliché reply and looked down swiftly. I felt so uncomfortable in that situation. Social interaction with humans was not my expertise.
Aiden shook his head at me. “No, I didn’t teach you that move,” he said firmly. “You have good instincts, so always trust your gut, okay?” I could’ve sworn his cheeks reddened so slightly, but then again, I couldn’t tell for sure.
“Anyways, I have to go. My mother will kill me if I make us late to our flight. I’ll see you Friday, okay? Good luck with dumb and dumber. Aubry, take care of yourself.”
“Aye, aye captain,” I said with a laugh. “Thank you for bringing me my food. That was incredibly sweet of you.”
We went our separate ways, and I couldn’t take the smile off my face. Maybe Aiden wasn’t really as much of a jerk as I thought. Maybe it was all just some sort of act that he put up to keep people out.
Chapter Thirteen
My Life is a Joke
The few days without Aiden at the gym went by slowly, and painfully so. Don’t get me wrong, the boys were funny and crazy, and I really liked them . . . but they were soft. They don’t treat me like a fighter, they treat me like a little girl who got the shit knocked out of her.
I didn’t blame them. That’s what I was and what I looked like at least. Aiden didn’t treat me like that though, he pushed me to be better and trained me as if I was a warrior. I needed that.
I hadn’t really learned anything after the day Aiden left. They were trying to take credit for teaching me how to get pissed off, but I was pretty much always pissed off. I pretty much always felt like I could take someone’s head off. I had so many things in my life to be angry about; it was easy to let that take over.
It was Thursday afternoon, the actual day of Thanksgiving, I was pretty surprised that they had even agreed to train me on the day of the holiday. We just had to end it a bit early that day for them to go be with their families, although, Tommy seemed to really hate his step-mom and didn’t want to go be with her and her family.
I agreed that we needed to call it quits and made up some lie about needing to get home to my family as well. Truthfully, all I would be doing was to walk around aimlessly while waiting for Aiden to get home and really continue training me the next day.
My life was a complete joke. I was excited for a boy, who wasn’t even my friend to get home from celebrating with his family. I was making up a fake family with a fake home to fake celebrate a holiday that I had never even celebrated before in my life.
In reality, all I was going to be doing that night was trying to find a warm enough spot to rest for a few hours. I didn’t even know if I was going to be eating that night, much less have a traditional Thanksgiving meal surrounded by loved ones.
My whole life was a joke, it always has been.
I needed to accept that. I needed to accept that I was simply a messed-up joke that someone cruel liked to keep alive purely for amusement. I needed to lose the stupid hope that I always kept burning in my chest somehow, no matter what awful things happened to me.
I kept my hope alive through Kelsey, and she let me down. I kept my hope alive through Demetri, and I messed that up terribly. And then . . . I kept my hope alive through Aiden. I needed to realize that Aiden didn’t give a shit about me either, just like everyone else in the world. I was a joke to everyone, and no matter what I did, I apparently didn’t deserve anything more than that.
As I walked around town, letting my tired feet guide me to wherever they wanted to take me, I wondered about death. I wondered how much worse hell could be compared to the life that I was living. I wondered what the point of living even was.
I just have a few more months, that used to bring me so much comfort before. I had always heard my sister chanting it to herself as well when she was raising me. However, at that point, it just gave me anxiety and fear. Because right then, I wasn’t sure what those few months had in store for me, or if I’d survive by the end of it.
***
I knew that I had to have been walking around for hours, judging by the sun setting and my feet killing me. I stopped abruptly when I realized where my subconscious mind had led me.
I wanted to laugh, curse, and cry when I looked at the cute little part that I had ended up in. It was a nice place on the decent side of town which was usually bustling with people. Though there was no one there right then, everyone else was probably preoccupied with spending time with their loved ones.
My body
had decided to sit down before my mind had, and I found myself resting on a green bench near the swings. From there, I could practically see the whole park. The place brought back too many memories for me.
It was where my sister and I would play when we were young. We stumbled upon it when we were too young to be out by ourselves, but yet we were. It was also where she left me sometimes when she got older, and I was still young enough to be considered a kid.
On the days that I was especially annoying, she’d leave me there for hours upon hours while she went off and did whatever it was that she did. I never knew where she went during those times, but I always had my fun, then we’d leave right at dusk. She never once forgot about me, or made me walk home alone. She always came back to get me.
The park was pretty far from our house. It was far away from all of our problems which was part of its charm.
I could still remember the last time that my sister and I had visited it, it had been the first time that I really understood all the stress that my sister was under.
I was about to turn eleven and the air was very cold, it had been Christmas break. I was cooped up in the house all break long by the rain and sleet, but that day the moisture had finally relented, and I convinced my sister to take me out. She was fifteen and was way too cool for me, but she reluctantly agreed. She wanted to get out of the house just as much as I had because my dad was in one of his moods. Of course, he was constantly in one of his moods.
My sister walked with me to the playground, and I ran off with my childhood innocence. It had been an hour of pure joy on that playground for me. I really wanted Kelsey to come join in; I wanted her to be happy too since she seemed to be sad all the time, so, with that in mind, I ran up to where Kelsey had been sitting, but that was when I saw Sunny talking to her. He had run his hands up and down her body so greedily that even at ten, I was able to detect that it was bad. My sister was so upset, but she didn’t dare move from his grip. She just stood there and held her tears back.
I observed the scene, I was unsure of what to make from it being so young. However, when Sunny let her go, roughly making her fall to the ground and kicking her in the stomach before walking away, I knew that I had to start helping her.
That was the moment that I stopped being a kid. I mean, I already had a pretty crappy life with so much trauma built up, but I was still able to have fun and be free. Before that moment, I had been so naïve and blind. I knew that we had both been getting hit, been forced to take roles that children shouldn’t have to, and been robbed of our childhood, but in that moment as I comforted my broken-down sister, I knew that I needed to grow up. My sister needed someone to protect her. She didn’t need someone to take care of; she needed someone to take the hits and be the buffer. That was the moment that I knew I had to be strong for the two of us. I needed to be her protector.
I felt tears begin to fall down my cheeks as I sat on the bench in the unoccupied park. Thinking of Kelsey always did that to me. I didn’t understand. I had done everything that I could to make it up to her for ruining her childhood, but apparently, that still wasn’t enough. I always made sure to be extra good for her, I made my own dinner as soon as I was able to, and I kept real quiet and learned to be silent to be sure that I didn’t wake up Dad or anyone else. Plus, when we got older, I took a lot of the hits for her. I constantly covered for her when she was out, even to my own detriment.
After that day in the park, I never let her deal with Sunny on her own ever again if I could have helped it. Sometimes, even when I was much too young to do it, I went and got the drugs for Dad when he tried to force her to go get them instead of going for himself. Everything that I did was apparently all in vain though.
I tried to be the best that I could be. I did as much as I could, but it was never enough. Nothing that I ever did was ever going to be enough—not for Kelsey, not for my dad, not for Demetri, and especially not for Aiden.
I was a joke. My whole life was a joke, and I had turned into a broken little girl because of it.
***
Aiden
When the plane started its descent, I felt like throwing up. I honestly thought that the two-hour flight would have been enough to calm me down, but instead, my hands stayed damp the whole time, the giant lump in my throat only got bigger, and my nausea increased as we got closer to the ground.
It was a bit of an extreme reaction. After all, we were just going to be there from very early morning Wednesday to Thursday evening because my mom had to be back at work on that Friday. It wasn’t like we were spending the entire break with them or anything.
Still, I was not ready to face them. The last time I had seen them, my grandma was breaking down, crying about her only child’s death. Her cries still at times echoed throughout my nightmares.
I hadn’t seen them it what seemed like forever. It had only been a year and a half or so, but it still seemed like it wasn’t long time, especially considering everything that had happened after my dad’s death. It had been the catalyst of all the fucked-up stuff that had begun.
I had hoped that Grams and Gramps were the same as they always were. I wasn’t sure if that was possible though, they had lost their only child. Parents weren’t supposed to bury their babies. They weren’t supposed to outlive their kids.
Before my dad passed, we had never missed a Thanksgiving with them. However, the year before was hard. No one wanted to celebrate. We all needed time to grieve, and we all just needed a break. We had all taken my dad’s unexpected death quite hard. We needed a break to get used to the fact that everything was going to be different. I didn’t think that it was ever something that we could get used to.
I had missed them so much—my grandma’s homeyness and my grandpa’s storytelling and bad jokes. I was nervous though. What if they couldn’t even look at me? The resemblance between my father and me was uncanny. In fact, most of the time my own mother couldn’t bear to look at me. How did I expect my sweet grandma to look at me, the ghost of her deceased only child? I couldn’t get the thought of her broken sobs from the funeral out of my mind.
I knew that it was going to be a disastrous holiday. For some reason right then, Aubry popped into my mind. It had barely been four hours since I had seen her. Yet I couldn’t shake the thoughts of her. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way her eyes had darkened when Owen had slammed her. Those had been the same eyes that had been so bright when I brought her unfinished food to her that she had to leave behind. It was comical how happy that the small gesture made her. It was her first genuine smile and one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
I immediately admonished myself for thinking like that. However, it was true. I didn’t even mean “beautiful” in the traditional sense that would normally have been said about a woman. I meant it more in a sense of the beauty that a wondrous sight in the world would be described as. Her very rare smile was like a rare sight that one could marvel at.
Soon enough, we were out of the plane and on our way to meet my grandparents. It was sweet, they insisted on picking us up even though it was one in the morning. They wouldn’t even entertain the idea of us taking a cab to their house like my mom had tried to insist on.
As soon as we got down the escalators, my grandparents were there waiting on us. They were so cute with their hands interlocked and a giant sign that read, “Our wonderful grandchildren and daughter” in glitter pens.
I smiled slightly and relaxed a little at their bright smiles towards us. I just hoped that it was going to be a good short little visit.
***
Hope had proven once again to be pointless. I wanted to say that I was surprised about how awkward and emotional seeing my grandparents after so long was, but I already knew that it was going to be a train wreck. I had just somehow deluded myself into thinking otherwise.
It all started when we got to their house from the airport. They immediately started apologizing and saying how bad they felt about not coming and helping out after Br
i’s “accident,” though my mom had told them not to. Bri didn’t want anyone around after the attack, she still didn’t. There was no way that I could have missed Briana’s sad eyes and hurt look.
My breathing hitched and my throat felt like it was closing up after that look from her. I had stalked off to bed right after that. I didn’t want to hear about the sore subject any longer.
It was Wednesday when I woke up the next morning, and I walked into the kitchen, only to find my mom and grandma blubbering together. Once they saw me, the crying only intensified, and my hurt and anger only got worse from that.
I couldn’t see them like that, not again. It reminded me too much of the funeral. I couldn’t relive those awful days. Due to my anger and hurt, I couldn’t get myself to go downstairs with everyone that day. I only climbed down and stayed once our early Thanksgiving dinner was ready.
Even during that, they kept looking at me and bringing up my father. They were only good stories, but still, it was very draining to talk about a man who should have been alive. Once bedtime rolled around, I was mentally exhausted.
When I woke up the next morning, I could hear everyone downstairs. They were chatting and joking, the extreme contrast from the day before took me off guard. It was just all too happy. They went from extreme sadness one morning to extreme happiness the next.
Was everyone bipolar or something?
I dragged myself out of bed forcefully and made small talk with my grandparents all morning long. I found myself talking a lot about a girl I was training. My grandma seemed intrigued by that. I told them about how easy it was to train her because she was so smart and a natural fighter. I wanted to put a tape over my mouth to get me to be quiet, but she kept being one of my main topics of conversation. It was embarrassing, to say the least.
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