A Single Glance

by W Winters

  So the majority of the people here, I’ve met only once or twice… usually at funerals.

  “They did,” Aunt Margaret answers and I’m quick to add, “I’m glad everyone could come.”

  I hate lies, but tonight they slip through my lips so easily. Even as the emotions make my throat swell up when I see the same group of girls doing another round of shots.

  Maybe it makes me a hypocrite, seeing as how I just came from drowning myself in vodka and Red Bull at the bar down the street, Barcode. I tend to swing by after a lot of hard shifts, but that particular group doesn’t need any more drugs added in the mix.

  “The funeral was beautiful.” My aunt’s words bring a numbness that travels down my throat and the false expression I’m wearing slips, but I force the smile back on my face when she looks up at me.

  I take a sip of cheap Cabernet and let the anger simmer.

  Beautiful.

  What a dreadful word for a funeral.

  For the funeral of a woman not yet thirty. A woman who none of these people spoke to. A woman I tried so desperately to save, because at one point in my life, she was my hero.

  The glass hits the buffet a little harder than I wanted.

  “Sorry I didn’t make it. I’m glad it went well.” My voice is tight.

  “It was really kind of you to pay for everything… I know there’s nothing in the estate or…” she says, but her voice drifts off, and I nearly scream at her. I nearly scream at all of them.

  Why are they doing this? Why put on a front as if they cared? They didn’t come to visit any of the times she was in the hospital. They didn’t pay a cent for anything but their gas to attend the funeral and come here. And whatever those fucking casseroles cost. All the while I know they were gossiping, wondering about everything Jenny had done to land herself in an early grave.

  They’re from uptown New York and all they do is brag on social media about all their charity events. All their expensive dresses and glasses of champagne, put on full display every weekend for the charity that they so generously donated to.

  I’m sure that would have been so much better.

  Or maybe this alternative is their charity for the weekend. Coming to this fucking wake for a woman they didn’t care about.

  I could scream at myself as well; why open my door to these people? Why tell my aunt the reception could be held here? Was I still in shock when I agreed? Or was I just that fucking stupid?

  They didn’t see what happened to her. How she morphed into a person I didn’t recognize. How my sister got sucked down a black hole that led to her destruction, and not a single one of them cared to take notice.

  Yet they can comment on how beautiful her funeral was.

  How lovely of them.

  “Oh dear,” my aunt says as she hugs me with both arms this time and I let her. The anger isn’t waning, but it’s not for them. I know it’s not.

  I’m sorry they didn’t get to see those moments of her that shined through. The bits of Jenny that I’ll have forever and they’ll never know. I feel sorry for them. But her? My sister? I’m so fucking angry she left me here alone.

  Everyone mourns differently.

  The thought sends a peaceful note to ring through my blood as I hear footsteps approach. My aunt doesn’t pull away, and I find myself slightly pushing her to one side and picking up a cocktail napkin to dry under my eyes.

  “Hey, Beth.” Miranda, a twentysomething string bean of a girl with big blue eyes and thick, dark brown hair, approaches. Even as she stands in front of me, she sways. The liquor is getting to her.

  “Do you guys have a ride home?” I ask her, wanting to get that answer before she says anything else.

  She blinks slowly, and the apprehension turns into hurt. She shifts her tiny weight from one foot to the other. Her nervousness shows as she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, swallowing thickly and nodding. “Yeah,” she croaks and her gaze drops to the floor as she bites the inside of her cheek. “Sorry about last time,” she barely whispers before looking me in the eyes. “We’ve got a ride this time.”

  It’s when she sniffles that I notice how pink her cheeks are – tearstained pink – not from drinking. Fuck, regret is a spiked ball that threatens to choke me as I swallow.

  “I just don’t want you guys getting into another accident, you know?” I get out the words quickly in a single breath, and pick up that glass of wine, downing it as Aunt Margaret turns her back on this conversation, leaving us for more… proper things maybe.

  Miranda’s quiet, looking particularly remorseful.

  I don’t mention how the accident was in front of my house, five fucking feet from where they were parked. Miranda passed out after getting drunk with Jenny and some other people nearby. Her foot stayed on the gas and revved her car into mine, pushing both cars into my neighbor’s car until mine hit a tree. She could have killed them all. All four of them in the car, high and drunk and not caring about the consequences. Consequences for more than just them.

  Her voice is small. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad night.”

  A bad night? It was a bad month, and the start of me losing my sister. That night, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to it any longer.

  “I just wanted to say,” she begins, but raises her voice a little too loud and then has to clear her throat, tears rimming her eyes. “I wanted to tell you I’m really sorry.” Her sincerity brings my own emotions flooding back, and I hate it. “I loved your sister, and I’m…” This time I’m the one doing the hugging, the holding.

  “Sorry,” she rasps in a whisper as she pulls away. I look beyond her, at the groups of people in the dining room and past that to the kitchen. There are maybe twenty or thirty people in my house. And not a single one looks our way. They’re too busy eating the food I paid for and drinking my alcohol. I wonder if they even feel this pain.

  “She had this for you.” Miranda pushes a book into my chest before running the sleeve of the thin sweater she’s wearing under her eyes. Black mascara seeps into the light gray fabric instantly. “Right before she went missing, while she crashed at my place, she couldn’t stop reading it.”

  It takes me a moment to actually take the book from her. It’s thick, maybe a few hundred pages… with no cover. The spine’s been torn off and my name replaces it. Bethy. That’s what Jenny used to call me. The black Sharpie marker bled into the torn ridges of what the spine would have protected.

  “What is it?” I ask Miranda, not taking my eyes from the book as I turn it over and look for any indication as to what story it is. I can feel creases in my forehead as my brow furrows.

  Miranda only shrugs, the sweater falling off her shoulder and showing more of her pale skin and protruding collarbone. “She just kept saying she was going to give it to you. That you needed it more than her.”

  My gaze focuses on the first lines of the book, skimming them but finding no recollection of this tale in my memory. I have no idea what the book is, but as I flip through the pages, I notice some of the sentences are underlined in pen.

  He loves like there’s no reason not to. That’s the first line I see, and it makes me pause until the conversation pulls me away.

  “Before she died, she told me things.” Miranda’s large eyes stare deep into mine.

  Jenny told me things too. Things I’ll never forget. Warnings I thought were only paranoia.

  As Miranda’s thin lips part, my boss, Aiden, walks up to us in a tailored suit and Miranda shies back. My lips pull into a tight smile as he hugs me.

  “You’re dressed to the nines,” I compliment him with a sad smile, not bothering to hide the pain in my voice. Miranda leaves me before I can say another word to her. She ducks her head, getting distance from me as quickly as she can. My eyes follow her as Aiden speaks.

  “You okay?”

  My head tilts and my eyes water as I reply, “Okay is such a vague word, don’t you think?”

  He’s older than me, and not quite a friend, but
not just a boss either. The second my arms reach around his jacket, accepting his embrace, he holds me a little tighter and I hate how much comfort I get from it.

  From something so simple. So genuine. My circle is small, but I like to keep it that way. And Aiden is one of the few people in it. He’s one of the few people I can be myself with.

  “I heard you didn’t go… that it was today?” he asks me, although it’s more of a statement, my face still pressed against his chest.

  I won’t cry. I won’t do it.

  Not until I’m alone anyway. I can’t hide behind anger then. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re lying in bed by yourself.

  “I couldn’t bring myself,” I tell him, intending on saying more, but my bottom lip wobbles and I have to pull away.

  He’s reluctant, but he lets me and I find my own arms wrapping around myself. Looking back to where Jenny’s friends were, I notice they’re gone, along with a lot of the crowd.

  Maybe they heard my unspoken wishes.

  “You need to take time off.” Aiden’s words shock me. Full-blown shock me.

  My head shakes on its own and I struggle to come up with something to refute him. Money seems like the most logical reason, but Aiden beats me to it.

  “There was a pool at work, and the other nurses are giving you some of their days for PTO. You have your own banked, plus the bereavement leave. And I know you have vacation time too.”

  “They don’t have to do that…” My voice is low, full of disbelief. At Rockford, the local youth mental hospital, I know everyone more than I should, especially the night shift. But I wouldn’t ever expect any of them to give me their time off. I don’t expect anything from anyone.

  “They can’t do that. They’ll need those days for themselves.” They don’t even know me really. I’m taken aback that they would do such a thing.

  “It’s a day here and a day there, it adds up and you need it.”

  “I’m fine-”

  “My ass you are.” Aiden’s profanity draws my gaze to his, and the wrinkles around his eyes seem more pronounced. His age shows in this moment. “You need time off.”

  Time off.

  More time alone.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “You’re going to take it. You need to get your head on right, Fawn.” His voice is stern as my body chills from a gust of air blowing into the dining room when my front door opens once again. More guests leaving.

  “How many days?” I ask him, feeling defeat, so much of it, already laying its weight against me.

  “You have six weeks,” he informs me and it feels like a death sentence. My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach as my front door closes with a resounding click.

  With his hands on my shoulders he tells me, “You need to get better.”

  Holding back the pain is a challenge, but I manage to breathe out with only a single tear shed. Six weeks.

  The next breath comes easier.

  I tell myself I’ll take some time off, but not to get better.

  My breathing is almost back to normal at my next thought.

  But to find the men responsible for what happened to my sister.

  My eyes are burning and heavy, but I can’t sleep.

  I’m exhausted and want to lie down, but my legs are restless and my heart is wide awake, banging inside of me. I need to do something to take this agony away. Staring back at The Coverless Book beside me on the side table, I lean to the left, flicking on the lamp while still seated on my sofa.

  The Coverless Book

  Prologue

  I’m invincible. I tell myself as I pull the blanket up tighter.

  My heart races, so fast in my chest. It’s scared like I am.

  Jake is coming.

  He’s going to see me here in my house, and then where could I possibly hide from him? Where could I hide my blush?

  Maybe behind this blanket?

  “Miss?” Miss Caroline calls into the room, and I perk up.

  “Yes?”

  “Your guest is here,” she announces and I give her a nod, feeling that heat rise to my cheeks and my heart fluttering as she gives me a knowing smile and I hide my brief laugh. Caroline knows all my secrets.

  Before I can stand up on shaky legs, he’s standing in the doorway, tall and lanky as most eleventh-graders are. But Jake is taller. His eyes softer. His hands hold a shock in them that gets me every time he reaches for my calculator in class.

  “Jake.” His name comes from me in surprise as I struggle to lift myself.

  “Emmy.” The way he says my name sounds so sad. “I heard you were sick.”

  I read the prologue and the first chapter too before falling asleep on the old sofa that used to belong to my mother. I’m cocooned in the blanket I once wrapped my sister in when the drugs she’d taken made her shake uncontrollably.

  The only sentence Jenny underlined was the one that read, “I’m invincible.”

  Jenny, I wish you had been. I wish I were too.

  Bethany

  My eyes feel so heavy. So dry and itchy.

  Rubbing them only makes it hurt worse.

  I would have slept better had I worked. I know I would have.

  My gaze drifts back to the book. I’m only a few chapters in, but I keep walking away from the pages, not remembering where I left off and starting over each time.

  Knowing I can’t focus on work, knowing it’s been taken away, has brought out a different side of me.

  The side that remembers my sister.

  Not the way she was in the last few years, but the way she was when we were younger.

  When we were thick as thieves, and my older sister was my hero. Those memories keep coming back every time I read the chapters written from Emmy’s perspective. She’s young, and sweet, but so damn strong. My sister was strong once. Held down by no one.

  Once upon a time.

  Letting out a deep breath, I stretch my back, pushing the torn-up book onto my coffee table. I sit there, looking out the front bay window of my house. The curtains are closed, but not tightly and I catch a glimpse of a car pull up.

  A nice car. An expensive one.

  All black with tinted windows. Jenny came home in a car like that once, shaken and crying. Back when all of her troubles started. My blood runs cold as the car stops in front of my house.

  If it’s someone she was associated with, I don’t want them here.

  Anger simmers, but it’s futile. You can only be angry for so long.

  Once it’s gone, fear has a way of creeping into its place.

  My pace is slow, quiet and deliberate as I head to my coat closet and reach up to a backpack I haven’t used in years. I figured it would be the perfect place to hide the gun. The one Jenny brought home for me, the one she said I needed when she wouldn’t listen to me and refused to stay. I was screaming at her as she shoved it into my chest and told me I needed to take it.

  It was only weeks ago that my sister stood right here and gave me a gun to protect myself, when she was the one who needed help. She needed protecting.

  Jase

  I can’t handle one more thing going wrong.

  My keys jingle as the ignition turns off and the soft rumble of the engine is silenced.

  Wiping a hand over my face, I get out of the car, not caring that the door slams as my shoes hit the pavement. The neighborhood is quiet and each row of streets is littered with picture-perfect homes, nothing like the home I grew up in. Little townhouses of raised ranches, complete with paved driveways and perfectly trimmed bushes. A few houses have fences, white picket of course, but not 34 Holley, the home of Bethany Fawn.

  Other than the missing fence, the two-story home could be plucked straight from an issue of Better Homes & Gardens.

  Knock, knock, knock. She’s in there; I can hear her. Time passes without anything save the sound of scuttling behind the door, but just as I’m about to knock again, the door opens a few inches. Only enough to reveal a glimpse of her.
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br />   Her chestnut hair falls in wavy locks around her face. She brushes the fallen strands back to peek up at me.

  “Yes?” she questions, and my lips threaten to twitch into a smirk.

  “Bethany?”

  Her weight shifts behind the door as her gaze travels down the length of my body and then back up before she answers me.

  The amber in her hazel eyes swirls with distrust as she tells me, “My friends call me Beth.”

  “Sorry, I’m Jase. Jase Cross. We haven’t met before... but I’ll happily call you Beth.” The flirtatious words slip from me easily, and slowly her guard falls although what’s left behind is a mix of worry and agony. She doesn’t answer or respond in any way other than to tighten her grip on the door.

  “Mind if I have a minute?”

  She purses her full lips slightly as the cracked door opens just an inch more, enough for her to cautiously reply, “Depends on what you’re here for.”

  My pulse quickens. I’m here to give her a single warning. Just one chance to stay the hell away from The Red Room and to get over whatever ill wishes she has for my brothers and me.

  It’s a shame, really; she’s fucking gorgeous. There’s an innocence, yet a fight in her that’s just as evident and even more alluring. Had I met her on other terms, I would do just about anything to get her under me and screaming my name.

  But after this past week with Carter and all that bullshit, I made my decision. No distractions.

  The swirling colors in her eyes darken as her gaze dances over mine. As if she can read my thoughts, and knows the wicked things I’d do to her that no one else ever could. But that’s not why I’m here, and my perversions will have to wait for someone else.

  I lean my shoulder against her front door and slip my shoe through the gap in the doorway, making sure she can’t slam it shut. Instead of the slight fear I thought would flash in her eyes as my expression hardens, her eyes narrow with hate and I see the gorgeous hue of pink in her pale skin brighten to red, but not with a blush, with animosity.