I keep my head low to keep the rain from going down my shirt, my chin to my chest, and I walk to my small apartment.
I pass dark men in even darker corners. Sad, lonely people walking toward sad, lonely futures. Gotta love my neighborhood. Dealers on every corner. Pimps sitting in cars while their women duck into back alleys. There’s always crying coming from someone’s window. A child. A housewife. A dog. A baby. Crying and crying and crying. It never fucking stops.
My apartment is smack in the middle of misery. But I like it here; at least it’s fucking alive.
I pull my keys from my pocket and look back over my shoulder as someone walks past. He could be black or white or anything in between. I don’t see anything but his eyes as they connect with mine. I hold his stare until he passes and then I put my key in the lock and go inside.
The door shuts behind me, and the crying continues.
Upstairs.
Downstairs.
It surrounds me. Suffocates me. Just like the rain.
I climb the stairs, passing closed doors, the soft squeak of my sneakers sounding out with every step.
My door is red. Like the color of blood.
Dripping from the ceiling. I swim in the blood. I can smell it. I can taste it. She laughs because it means she’s free. I cower because it will destroy us.
Red, red everywhere…
I hate the door. It’s chipped and dirty, and someone sprayed graffiti on it many years ago. I can’t even read what it says anymore, and that annoys me. Irritates me to my core. I’ve stared at it for hours, trying to work out what it says. It was either that or burn it down. Because it’s red like blood. So red it burns my eyes. I know it’s not important, not to anyone but me. But to me it consumes. It takes over.
I could paint the door. A nice brown. Maybe yellow.
But I don’t.
Because red is the color of memory.
“Are you all right?” No. I’m not. I never will be again…
I stare at the faded black words of the graffiti, tracing a finger over the letters that make sense. Something and then an r and then something else and an e. Rainwater drips from my hair and into my eyes, and I blink it away.
A door opens on the floor above me, and I look up the stairs, wondering who it is. I live on the third floor of a five-story building. There are twenty apartments with no vacancies. The people in my building aren’t all bad. They’re not all drug dealers and pimps, hoes and crackheads. There are some families, mothers and fathers trying to make a decent life for their children. Bad mistakes in their youths led them down this dark path, and I can sympathize with that.
But it’s not enough, I want to tell them.
Because it’s not enough, and it never will be.
Your kids will all cry behind locked doors too one day, I think.
One of the prostitutes from upstairs comes down. I know she’s a prostitute because she fucks all night long. One man after another. One fuck fades into the next. I hear her bed slamming against the wall and scraping against the floorboards at all times of the night. I hear their grunts of shame and I hear her moans. Her cries of pleasure and sometimes pain.
I sometimes jack off to the sounds when I can’t sleep. It feels dirty. And wrong. And then I’m grunting in shame too.
Her eyes meet mine and I attempt a smile. But she doesn’t smile back. So I open my door and go inside, shutting her out of my world.
You don’t belong in here with me anyway, I want to say.
None of them do.
This world is only for me.
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More from Eli Constant
Have you read:
Bully by Ellie Meadows
The Castletons own River Valley. Everywhere you go, you’ll see their name.
Castleton Motor Sports.
Castleton’s Steakhouse.
Castleton Golf Resort and Spa.
Castleton…High School.
The Castletons think money buys everything, including people. And Drake Castleton is the worst of the bunch—self-proclaimed King of the School. Too cool for the football team. Too sexy for academics. Too dangerous to fall in love with.
Read on for a sneak peak!
(Books 1 – 3 available now! Book 4 coming soon!)
1.
T A R R Y N
“My hair is fine.” I pushed my mom’s hands away. She’d spent the entire drive over to Castleton High twisting my curls into better shape.
“Your hair is so pretty, Tarryn. Are you using that curling stuff I grabbed from Aunt Dee?” Mom persisted, twiddling with a particularly-perfect length of coiling strands. She leaned forward, and sniffed my hair deeply. It was loud and ridiculous and, though I was annoyed with her, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yep, you’re using it. Orange blossoms!” She trilled in triumph.
“Yes, yes. I’m using it.” This time, I didn’t push her away. Instead, I grabbed her hand and gave it a fast kiss. “Now stop being so annoying! You’re driving me nuts.”
“I’m just worried about your first day at a new school. I hate we’ve had to move. You should be enjoying senior year with your best friends, not starting all over half-way across the country with a bunch of strangers.” Mom looked over at Dad, who was his typical quiet self as he steered the station wagon down the streets of our new town. “We could have at least gone shopping, picked up some new clothes and maybe had your hair done. I could so see you as a strawberry blonde.” Once again, she picked up some of my hair and played with it between her fingers; it slipped over her skin smoothly, falling into waves of mousey-brown silk.
“She’s not dyeing her hair, Tish,” my dad spoke up firmly.
“Oh, hon. All the kids do it.” My mom pouted, finally abandoning my hair and crossing her arms in the front seat of our outdated station wagon.
“Just because all the kids are doing it…” Dad’s voice trailed off as he sighed. “You want her to do drugs too? How about smoke and drink?”
“Well… no… I mean, of course not.” Mom only stuttered when she knew she wasn’t going to win an argument. Point of fact, she’d never won an argument with my stoic, rational father.
“Then stop pushing her to dye her hair. Her hair is perfectly-fine the way it is. My mother had that exact color and she’s still not gone gray.” Dad smiled, maybe thinking about Nan. Dad smiling wasn’t a frequent occurrence and I liked the way it made his face softer.
“You always bring up your mother.” Mom sighed and looked out her window at the passing buildings. “Twenty-two years of marriage and everything is still all about your mother. It gets tiresome, Greg.”
Dad’s face went blank again, like someone wiping away colored words from a dry erase board. If I were any other kid, in any other family, I might worry that Mom and Dad were heading towards divorce. But, honestly? They’d been this way ever since I could remember. Mom whined and picked fights. Dad shut them down with a few words. Somehow… they worked. The biggest thing my parents have taught me was what I did and didn’t want out of a marriage. If I ever did get married. Seventeen years old, eighteen in March, and I’d been on exactly three unsuccessful dates.
Simon Wei, who’d been more interested in explaining binary code to me than he’d been in holding my hand or watching the rom-com movie. Dennis Hogan, who’d started ‘supplements’ early on in his athletic career… so flexing his oversized muscles was more important than flexing his underdeveloped brain. There were only so many times a girl could be asked to ‘check out these guns’ before she gave up the ghost and asked to go home.
And then there’d been Mitch Henderson. Absolutely gorgeous. Ridiculously smart. Utterly perfect. And had a secret girlfriend in Canada his mom—who’d set up the date—didn’t know about because the Canadian hottie was five years older than him and in a rock band. I wasn’t going to be any guy’s cover story.
&nb
sp; Three crappy dates in the two years since Dad and Mom had finally let me start dating. I mean, Mom would have let me date at thirteen if she’d had her way, but Dad took years of convincing. I was just glad he wasn’t the ‘never date my daughter; I’ve got a shotgun’ kind of overbearing parent.
And I’d never—never—been kissed. Like, full-on, can’t breathe underwater kissed. A playground peck on the cheek in fourth grade didn’t count. And the way Dennis Hogan had tried to stuff his tongue into my mouth like I was the inside of an ice cream cone with chocolate at the very bottom did not count.
This year, that was going to change. I was going to like a guy, a good… no great…guy, and he was going to like me. He’d ask about my interests, and he’d actually listen. He’d like art and music and be in touch with his feminine side, but he’d also be tough and stand up for things he believed in. Also… he had to be incredibly kissable (like…Momoa and Hemsworth with a little bit of Cumberpatch) and an incredible kisser. Those points were non-negotiable, because, dammit, I was ready for my first real, foot-popping kiss.
A loud honk brought me back to reality. “Watch it!” Dad yelled, lifting his hand off the steering wheel in a ‘what the hell are you doing?’ gesture. It was his version of the middle finger. Full hand up, palm towards his own face and then slapped out in a spike of anger to hit the dash with the back of his hand. It always made my mom jump, and me laugh, because my father just didn’t show that kind of barely-controlled emotion often. Again, a rare smiler, an even rarer hugger, not quick to anger.
A neon green car had zoomed out of a driveway. Convertible, top down, a classic that was all chrome and steel. All I could see was the back of the driver’s head—light blonde fading into dark blonde. He was making a gesture too… and it wasn’t Dad’s version of the middle finger. It was the middle finger. I frowned at the license plate. CASTLE10.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out the driver had to be part of the almighty Castleton clan. We’d moved over the summer—with mom and dad taking two months off from work to cross-country sightsee and get settled—and the first … or maybe second thing… my new neighbor girl talked about was the richest family in the county AKA my parents’ new employers.
Byron, Geneva, and Drake Castleton. And the Castleton matriarch, Birdie, of course. Birdie was ancient, never going to die, and still owned controlling interests in the Castleton Empire.
“Idiot’s going to cause an accident,” my mom huffed out, patting my dad on the shoulder to calm him down. “Who the heck does he think he is?”
I unbuckled as I saw the high school sprouting up in the distance like a big modern eyesore in the middle of the otherwise quaint town. Leaning forward, sitting on the middle edge of the back bench seat, I smiled wryly. “I think, guys, that might be your new boss’s son. And word has it that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. So,” I slid over to the passenger side, grabbing my worn backpack covered with old band patches, “have lots of fun with that today.”
Before they could respond, I opened the door and hopped out. Dad protested, because he hadn’t come to a complete stop. Mom yelled something about my hair. I ignored them both and walked as fast as possible until they were in the distance and I was stood in the middle of the huge green lawn looking up at my new school.
It literally matched nothing else in the town. It was…monstrous. All glass and steel beams and outdoor dining areas better suited for a big corporate building rather than a school. Actually, it reminded me of a hospital. Totally sterile.
So. This is it. I know no one, except for my neighbor Meg who’s a huge gossip and didn’t offer to show me around town or anything. I want to go back home, but I can’t tell Mom and Dad that. They’d be sad if I told them how unhappy I am about the move. And they’re making more money than they ever have before. Marketing for an entire town really… thanks to the Castletons.
I am happy about that, happy for them. They’ve worked hard. I mean, I’m not mad about the house. It’s double the size of our old one and my bedroom is in the attic and absolutely gigantic. Dad said he’d put in a freaking swing if I wanted. And there’s a window seat that’s perfect for reading.
Everything else though? Really makes me miserable. I miss Becky most of all. Our whole lives we’ve been together. Even though she was popular and amazing, she never left me for the cool crowd. She never made me feel lesser.
I just have to focus on school. Keep my grades up. Get the scholarships I need to go to the college I want next year. And…
Find a guy who lasts more than one crappy date so I can at least round first base and get my kiss on.
“Ugh!” I yelled, pitching forward as someone knocked into me from behind. Slammed into me, rather. It was like being football tackled to the ground and it took every ounce of my balance and leg strength to keep from face planting. And my attacker didn’t even have the decency to apologize. The pressure was simply there one second, then gone, and I was standing straight again trying to catch my breath. I turned around quickly. “Hey, you could at least say you were sorry, jer—” My voice died before I could finish the word ‘jerk’.
“I was going to say sorry, but then you didn’t fall. Most girls fall when they meet me.” The guy in front of me was roughly six foot with ice blue eyes and a single curl of golden hair falling between his expertly-tweezed brows. His voice was sultry and self-aware. He knew what he looked like; he knew how to use it. And I was just someone standing in his way.
“I’m not most girls,” I finally blurted out, after staring a little too long and making it painfully-obvious that I was like most girls—all googly-eyed over a decent-looking guy.
“Sure you’re not.” He looked me up and down and I instantly wished I’d chosen to wear something other than ripped jeans and a baggy, faded sweater. “Actually, you aren’t like the girls around here.” He leaned in and picked a piece of lint off my clothes. “They all have some sense of fashion.”
“I prefer comfort.” I crossed my arms and my backpack nearly slid off the one shoulder I’d haphazardly slung it onto.
“That’s… obvious.” He smiled, cockeyed and boyish. A few girls standing behind him giggled. “So, your name is?” he asked, as if he couldn’t care less who I was.
I didn’t answer him. I glared at them all—Prince Not-So-Charming and the gaggle of grinning idiot girls that apparently worshiped the ground he walked on—and then I turned and walked away from him, before he could make that move. Let him watch me leave, whatever the hell his name was. The girls laughed again, and I could feel my cheeks burning. This was not how I wanted to start the year at a new school. My last first day of high school. Freaking ridiculous!
It took forever to find the main office. That’s how big the school was. Two floors, and the administration was on the second level. The only thing on the first level was the security guard station and classrooms. My last school wasn’t much more than an ancient one-room get-up with a cast iron tardy bell swinging near the front door. I mean, that was an exaggeration, but compared to Castleton High, Dover Mill High might as well have been something straight off the ye-olde prairie.
A severe woman in heavy-rimmed glasses was sat behind a too-tall desk behind an even-taller pile of file work. A gold and black name plate that had seen better days was riding the edge of the tabletop, threatening to fall as soon as a light breeze blew through the office space. It seemed strange—that aged name plate—next to all the fancy sleekness of furniture and fixings. I walked forward, nudged the scratched thing back to safety, and cleared my throat. It was then that I realized I hadn’t retained the name on the signage. I’d looked at it, pushed it from the suicidal edge, but I hadn’t focused enough to remember the woman’s name. “Um, hi. I,” hesitating, I looked down, but didn’t discover the name before I was promptly distracted.
“Be with you in a minute,” the woman said without looking up. Her voice matched her looks—high-pitched and serious business.
“Sure, thank you.�
�� I turned and retreated to a nearby double-row of seating that was too nice for a school. Like everything else, it belonged in a corporate setting or mid-level hotel lobby. I looped my hair around a finger as I waited an interminably-long time. I closed my eyes, sighed, and then moved a little as I felt someone enter the office, walk past my legs, and sit near me. I didn’t want ‘to people’ right now, so I kept my eyes closed and wished I had a pair of headphones to escape with. Though, looking busy didn’t always deter people from trying to engage.
“Miss?” The secretary’s voice brought me back. I started smiling before my eyes were fully open. I still didn’t know her name.
“Yes, ma’am?” I poised to stand up, but she shook her head.
“No need to get up.” She waved her hand downward impatiently. “I just need your name so I can pull your file. You’re new, I’m guessing. Only reason to be in the office on day one.”
“Oh,” I could feel my smile straining now. “Tarryn Norma-Jeane Monroe,” I said softly.
“What?” The secretary quirked an eyebrow. “I can’t hear you, young lady. Speak up, please.”
Sighing, I raised my voice. “Tarryn Norma-Jeane Monroe.”
“Oh, that’s a mouthful,” the woman tsked, riffling through the folders in front of her. “Here we go.” She was silent for a while as she studied the contents of the file. A bright red note tag was stuck to one of the pages. “Yes, Tarryn. It looks like your transcripts are still incomplete. We don’t have the results of your junior Advanced Placement exams yet and that’s delayed your placement. They’re supposed to be here by end of the week. Until then, you’ll be temporarily placed in mainstream classes. Later, once we know you successfully received advanced credit last year, we’ll transfer you over to AP.”
The woman closed the file, glanced at me, and then shifted direction to my right. “Ah, Mr. Castleton. You’re rarely on time for anything.” She was admonishing with her words, but her tone had shifted to something akin to… loveable. But that wasn’t what stopped me in my tracks. Mister. Castleton. As in Mom and Dad’s new boss? Or as in…green convertible…jerk driver…
Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 2 Page 8