“Carson, what’s wrong?”
I looked over and Kellen was right beside me on his bike.
“Just leave me alone,” I said. I kept walking, waiting for the shots to be fired.
“Oh Kellen!” I heard Roxi Ray call. “You might want to make sure you’ve got all your shots before you get with that one!”
I heard laughter and started walking faster.
“Who knows what kind of diseases she’s got!” someone else shrieked.
I started running. I wasn’t even sure if I was going in the direction of my house, but I didn’t care. I kept running. I was pretty sure Kellen stopped following me, but I didn’t look back to check. I kept running.
I faintly heard somebody scream, “Dude, she’s not worth it. She’ll do anything with a pulse!” before I rounded the corner at the end of the street.
I kept running.
Chapter 14
Never Healed
I tell myself it doesn’t bother me
But that’s a lie
Because it does
It makes me feel worthless
Not pretty enough
Not interesting enough
Not special enough
Not enough
Which makes me feel pathetic
I thought I was tougher than this
I thought I had gotten past this
Needing to be loved
But apparently not
I never healed, never mended
I just stitched myself up half-heartedly
And now the stitches are coming undone
And I’m starting to bleed again
And I don’t know that I can save myself
From bleeding out
I don’t know if I want to
I was lost.
I was also mad.
I was also ashamed and that just made me even angrier because I thought I had gotten over this – this getting upset over what people said about me. I’d figured I was stronger than this. And what did I have to be ashamed of? So I had sex a lot, so what? So Roxi Ray screamed for Kellen and the entire population of kids waiting for the buses that I had sex a lot, so what? It wasn’t like it was some big secret. Everyone had already known.
Except for Kellen.
Kellen hadn’t known. He was probably the one person on the planet that hadn’t known and I liked that. For some reason, I didn’t want him to know that I did stupid things like have sex with guys in the back of their cars. It didn’t matter though because now he knew and for the first time since I was a sophomore I was feeling ashamed of this and it sucked and I hated it and I had no idea what to do.
So I started throwing rocks across the road.
I was sitting on a sidewalk on a street that I didn’t know, surrounded by houses that I’d never seen before. I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up there, and I had no idea how I was going to get from there to home, so throwing rocks across the road just seemed like the most logical thing to do in that moment.
Surprisingly, I started to feel a little better. Not a lot better, but a little. With each throw I could feel a release of some of the pressure in my body and I started to calm down.
It wasn’t a big deal, what Roxi Ray did.
I threw a rock.
Honestly, based on my first encounter with Kellen he’d probably already had me pegged as a whore. I mean, I offered him a quickie in the bathroom before I even knew his name.
I threw a rock.
And even if he hadn’t figured it out before, maybe now that he knew about my reputation he’d stop trying to be nice to me.
I threw a rock.
That is what I wanted, wasn’t it? For Kellen to just leave me alone?
I threw a rock.
I threw another rock.
I didn’t know.
I grabbed a rock and, without looking up, threw it as hard as I could.
“Hey now, watch where you’re aiming that thing!” I heard as the rock clanged against something metal. I looked up and saw Kellen sitting there on his bike, a shy smile on his face.
“You know, I’m starting to think you have some personal vendetta against this bike,” he said.
“It’s just a stupid bike,” I mumbled, quickly looking away. “Why don’t you just drive a car like everyone else?”
“Come on,” Kellen said as he leaned his bike against the sidewalk, “Being like everyone else is so four years ago.”
I snorted. He sounded ridiculous.
“There’s that reluctant smile I’ve grown to love,” he said.
“I’m not smiling,” I said, though I knew I was. I finally looked up into Kellen’s face. He didn’t look disgusted or disappointed at all. “But really, why the bike?”
Kellen shrugged. “It’s better for the environment.”
“Ugh, you’re one of those people,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Yes, I’m one of those people,” Kellen responded, pretending to be offended. “But I’m one of those people with a mode of transportation which, based on the fact that you’re sitting on a sidewalk throwing rocks across the street, is more than we can say about you, Planet Hater.”
“Touché, Tree Hugger.”
I wondered if maybe I should consider getting a bike. Then I wouldn't have to take the bus to school or beg my mom to let me use the car.
Kellen laughed.
I exhaled loudly. “Well,” I said, looking out into the road. “Now you know my dirty little secret. I’m a Super Skank. My powers include seducing innocent men and spreading venereal diseases.”
At first, Kellen didn’t say anything. I looked up at his tanned face, his eyes half hidden in the shadow of his baseball cap. He turned his hat around so that it was on his head backwards and smiled at me, but it was a sad smile, a sad smile that matched the sadness that I could now see in his eyes.
I didn’t want Kellen’s pity. That was the last thing I wanted.
“Can I tell you a story?” he asked.
For a second I thought he was joking, but as I looked into those sad eyes, I saw that Kellen was dead serious. As I looked harder I saw that those weren’t eyes of pity looking back at me at all. It was almost like Kellen was searching for something, something he can only find in my eyes. Reassurance, maybe?
“Sure,” I said.
Kellen cleared his throat and turned his gaze down, towards the pavement. “So, there was this kid. He was really just your average boy growing up. He played video games and watched sports and had taco eating contests with his friends which, by the way, he won quite a few times,” Kellen said, looking up at me. I smiled.
“This kid also idolized his dad, who was a cop. He thought his dad was the coolest person on the planet,” Kellen said, staring across the street. “Then one day when the boy was fourteen his dad got injured on the job. It wasn’t a fatal injury, but his back got messed up pretty bad. He ended up having to retire early. And his doctor put him on painkillers.”
Kellen stopped for a minute and just stared across the street. I looked over even though I knew that what Kellen was seeing wasn’t something I’d find in the cluster of trees in front of us.
“The painkillers were strong,” he said. “They ended up being stronger than the kid’s father. He became addicted. When the doctor stopped providing them, the boy’s father got in touch with some of his old street informants from when he was a cop and he scored more pills that way. He did that for two years and turned into a completely different person. He was violent and angry. Paranoid too. When his wife said she wanted to get him help he accused her of being out to get him. He said she was trying to lock him up like some kind of animal.”
“It got really bad,” Kellen said. He picked up a rock by his shoe and lobbed it across the road. “And then one day when the kid was sixteen he went to wake his father up and realized he wasn’t breathing. By the time the paramedics got there it was too late. He had overdosed.”
“The kid became extremely depressed,” Kellen continued, swallowing har
d. “So depressed that when he found his father’s secret stash of pills a week later, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t want to feel anymore, so he popped a few of the pills, telling himself it was just a one-time deal, just enough to numb the pain. He did the same thing the next day though. And the day after that. And the day after that. And when the stash of pills ran out he started buying them off the streets, just like his father. He sold his car to pay for his addiction. He was out of control and he didn’t even know it. Either that or he didn’t care.”
“And then he had a seizure. His mom brought him to the hospital where the doctors said he was lucky. He could have died. He was seventeen, and his life could have been over, just like that. His mom never left the hospital for the two nights that he was there. It was during one of those nights that he looked over at her and realized what he had done. The kid hated his father for what he had done, and there he was doing the same thing. The next morning he said he was checking himself into rehab.”
“Rehab was brutal. The withdrawals were worse, but the kid got clean,” Kellen smiled. “When he got out he turned his whole life around. He bought a bike and got a job at a bookstore. He started volunteering at his mom’s preschool. He began therapy and got his grades up. He was determined to be a better role model for his little brother and a better support system for his mom. He was determined not to be the man his father became.”
Kellen put his hands on the cement behind him and leaned back. “And that is the end of the story.”
I exhaled. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath the whole time Kellen had been talking.
“That was a sad story,” I said after a few minutes.
“It depends on how you look at it,” Kellen said.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
Kellen smiled. “Now how do you know the story was about me?”
I shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“You’re a good guesser.”
“Well the bike kind of gave it away,” I said. “Before that I was totally stumped, but I could only think of one person weird enough to make the bike store his first stop after getting out of rehab.”
Kellen laughed.
For a few minutes we just sat and stared at each other, neither of us saying a word. I was the one to break the silence this time.
“Why did you tell me that story?” I asked.
Kellen looked back out at the road. “We all have a past, Carson. Our past doesn’t have to be our future, though.”
“My past is more like my present,” I said, looking away.
Kellen didn’t say anything and all I could think was that this was it. This was when he would decide that he wanted nothing to do with me. This was when he would decide that I was the worthless piece of trash that everyone said I was.
The air felt almost electric as I sat there and waited for Kellen to pick up his bike and leave. My stomach felt like it was lodged in my throat and I stopped breathing again. I started to feel dizzy and I knew I needed to breathe but no matter how many times my brain told my lungs to pull their shit together, I couldn’t seem to do it. I was sure I was going to pass out when I felt Kellen’s hand on mine. I was so shocked I almost jumped up. I flinched a little out of habit and Kellen lifted his hand slightly, but when I didn’t punch him in the face he seemed to feel reassured. He put his hand back and I looked up into his eyes.
“Your past is anything that happened before this moment right here. Anyone can change their life whenever they want to, if they want to. You just decide to do it, and then you do.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that simple,” I whispered.
“Sure it is,” he said. “Once you get past that first step. It’s just the first step that’s hard, but after you get that out of the way you realize it was a lot easier to move on than you thought.”
I looked into Kellen’s eyes. His face was so close to mine that I could see that tiny chip in his front tooth. His face was so close to mine that I could reach over and touch it if I wanted to.
I wanted to. But I didn’t. Instead, I took a deep breath. It felt like centuries went by before I exhaled, but when I did something inside of me shifted, and I found myself opening my mouth, saying words that I’d kept buried in a deep and dark place for the longest time.
“I had my first boyfriend when I was a freshman. He was a football player,” I said. “Thinking back I don’t know that I ever really liked him. He was popular though and when you’re a freshman, and a popular guy asks you out, you sort of just go with it. Especially if your best friend is also becoming popular and you think it’s the only way to keep up with her.”
I could feel Kellen’s eyes on me, but I stared at a dead beetle on the sidewalk. Ants were starting to surround the dead beetle. I found myself talking to the deceased bug. It made it easier to tell this story.
“He was always pressuring me to have sex, but I didn’t want to,” I said. “It started to feel like it was all he ever talked about, but I just wasn’t ready.”
The ants were crowding around the dead beetle, covering it on all sides.
“My football boyfriend got bored and ended up cheating on me after a few months. Big surprise, right? I’m not sure how long it was before he decided to stop waiting for me. Maybe he never waited for me at all. Maybe he was cheating on me all along.”
“I broke up with him. I was devastated – not because I was in love with this guy or anything. Honestly, I was relieved not to have to hang around him anymore, but I just felt so disposable, you know? My father… My best friend… Everyone in my life was just abandoning me, and it was so easy for them to do it. I was already feeling worthless and finding out that loser was cheating on me was just… I don’t know. It was like I was sitting on the edge of a cliff and one more thing would just put me right over.”
“That’s when I heard the rumor. See, I didn’t know the rules of the popular world. I didn’t know that a girl like me wasn’t supposed to breakup with a football player, even a second-string football player. He got really mad. He told everyone that he broke up with me. He told everyone that I gave him an STD.”
I swallowed. I could feel my throat getting insanely dry. I’d made it that far though, so I kept going.
“I never even had sex with him. I was a virgin, but people were calling me a dirty skank, a whore, a slut. They’d throw condoms at me as I walked down the hall. I felt disgusting. I would come home from school and spend the night crying. I hated those kids, but I hated myself more.”
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, so I stared hard at the dead beetle on the ground, forcing the tears down. I would not cry over this again.
“That’s when I broke. I snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. I just decided that if everyone was going to say I was a whore then I was just going to be a whore. I became the girl that guys secretly cheated on their girlfriends with. I became the girl that had sex with guys without knowing their name or anything about them.”
The ants had carried the dead beetle a few inches across the sidewalk. It was kind of amazing when you thought about it. One ant by itself couldn’t hold much weight, but when they all came together to form a sort of army, they got shit done.
I didn’t say anything else. I just watched as the ants carried the beetle across the cement, centimeter by centimeter. I knew I’d blown it with Kellen. I was just waiting for him to walk away, to leave me like everyone else.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What?” I looked up. That was the last thing I was expecting.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his eyes soft. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
I was stunned. He didn’t look disgusted. He actually looked sorry. He shouldn’t have looked sorry.
“Those things didn’t happen to me, Kellen. I did those things. That’s who I am,” I said, shaking my head and looking down. “It doesn’t matter though.”
“It does matter,” he said. “How you feel always matters.” Kellen shook his head.
“But that’s not who you are. You’re not defined by the labels other people give you, none of us are.”
“I’ve done some bad stuff, Kellen.”
“So have I,” he said. “But we’re not defined by the mistakes we’ve made either.”
“So what defines us?” I asked, half amused and half genuinely curious to know what he was going to say.
Kellen smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “We’re people and people change constantly. We’re too complex to be defined by a single word.”
“We’re undefinable?” I asked, but I was smiling now. I didn’t know what it was about this boy, but I kind of liked him.
“Exactly. We’re all undefinable stars floating around the galaxy of life,” he said, grinning.
I snorted. “Has anyone ever told you that you sound like a greeting card?”
“It might have come up once or twice,” he said, laughing. Then his face got serious. “If you don’t mind me asking – ”
“Here we go.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Whenever someone starts with ‘if you don’t mind me asking,’ it’s usually followed by a question that you’ll definitely mind them asking.”
Kellen smiled. “Well I promise that if you do mind then you don’t have to answer. Just punch me in the face and I’ll drop it. We’ll forget I ever asked.”
“You’re risking a punch in the face to ask a question?”
“Yep.”
“Okay then, ask away.”
“What happened to your dad? You said he abandoned you.”
“Oh,” I cleared my throat. “He left when I was fifteen. He’s, um, dead now.”
I felt kind of terrible saying this, especially after what Kellen told me about his dad, but it was all I could say.
“Wow, I feel like a jerk. I’m sorry about your dad, Carson. And I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said. “I can relate though, to the situation.”
Now I felt even more terrible.
“Yeah, it’s okay. My father was an asshole my whole life anyways.”
I looked up and down the street. I was uncomfortable and I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I stared at a school bus that had just pulled up down the road. Kids from the elementary school were hopping out, running into the arms of their parents, their little lunchboxes swinging in their hands.
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