by Blair Burden
Chapter 4
August 9
I tried squeezing my hips into a size two when I knew I really was a size five. Mama knocked on the bathroom door for the fifth time as I tried to ignore her.
“Are you okay in there? Did you find all the outfits for school that you needed?” she yelled through the door as if she were speaking through five thick walls.
“Yes, Mama,” I screamed.
“Why do you have the door locked?”
I slammed open the door, catching her toe on the edge. “For privacy. Do you mind?”
“Yes, I mind. I don’t think you should be locking my doors,” she said.
“I paid last month’s rent, so this house is just as much mine.”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t work that way,” she snapped and snatched me up.
I tried holding my body back as she pulled me toward the living room. “Mama, I’m not starting this with you. Leave me alone!”
“Cassidy, stop it.” With her firm right hand, she shoved me to the floor and began to kick me for no apparent reason.
“Why are you doing this?” I cried as I tried to push her away.
“Because I love you,” she snapped.
As she began to kick harder, I grabbed her left foot and pushed her back onto her behind. That probably did not hurt her much, since her butt was humungous. She faked as if she were in pain and kicked the air.
“I will call the police on you for child abuse!” I said. “Don't think I won't do it!”
She began to laugh as she dusted off her blouse. “Oh, Cassie you’re not a child anymore. This is why I’m doing this to you—to set boundaries.”
“Mama you’re crazy!” I screamed as I ran back into my room. I slammed it shut and locked it while listening to Mama hum her favorite tune.
Something was wrong with that woman. Things had gotten worse with Mama the more time went on. After daddy’s death, everything just went downhill and she became so psychotic. If she was not beating or yelling at me, she was trying her best to what it seemed like—kill me.
“Cassie, open this door!” Mama shouted. “I told you about locking these doors!”
I told you Cassie, daddy said. You’ve got to leave her. You’ve got to get away from her.
“Daddy, just leave me alone!” I cried.
“Are you talking to yourself again?” Mama said as she banged on the door. “Stop talking to yourself!”
“No Mama. I’m not.”
“Yes you are! Don’t lie to me Cassidy Anne White!”
I bit my lip as I listened to Mama walk away from my door. Without a second thought, I went over to my window and locked it shut. Knowing Mama, she would try to squeeze her wide frame into it and attack me again.
It’s a shame you know, Mandy said. To have to hide from your own mother.
“If I don’t talk back to the voices they won’t talk back to me,” I mumbled to myself. “Just ignore them.”
As I tried to block the chattering out my head, I went to my usual seat—the toilet and unwrapped my shiny best friend. My eyes narrowed as I flickered off old stained blood from the last time, except I couldn’t even remember the last time I had used this blade.
I remembered when Mandy introduced me to the blade. She found it in the wheel of her bike. She blamed me for putting it in her bike because for some reason her boyfriend planted the idea in her head that I wanted her bike. I mean, it was a cool bike but I would never sabotage her like that—she was my best friend.
“You did this to my bike,” Mandy had shouted over me. She was about three inches taller than I was and she always wore heels so she looked like she could be my mother. I just remembered staring into her evil brown eyes and wanting her to stop yelling at me. “You’re an evil bitch!” she yelled again. “I missed the final exam! Greg said you were evil. He said you would do this to me because you are jealous of everything I do. You’re just my shadow.”
Then, I remembered trying to hold her hand, to make her turn back to the old Mandy. The old Mandy, when we would hold hands when we would fight or when one of us were about to cry. However, she would not grab my hand. Instead, she snatched the blade out her bike’s wheel and slashed my wrist with it. I did not cry; I just stood there in shock with my mouth wide open. Without saying anything, she grabbed her scarf from around her neck and tied it tightly around my wrist so the blood wouldn’t seek through.
“You deserved that, Cassie,” she snapped, swung her wavy golden hair in my face, and walked away.
I sighed coming back to reality as I realized I had already dug into my forearm too deep. I searched under my sink for my favorite black towel that hid the blood, but it was gone. So, I ran to my bedroom and grabbed a thick scarf that was on my dresser and I tied it tight around my arm—just like Mandy taught me to.
I dived down onto my bed and shut my eyes as I felt the pain in my forearm build in pleasure. I tried to think about something other than my life, I thought about what it would be like to be famous—but then I just thought about my dad again.
Before he was diagnosed with cancer, we were all planning to move to California. He wanted to become a celebrity lawyer and he already was in because he had a best friend who would offer him a job.
“We’d struggle for the first year but it will be all worth it,” he had said. “You can enroll into a private school and then I will have enough by then for college.”
“I’m barely going into high school. I’m not thinking about college. And I can’t just leave Mandy here,” I had said.
“Miranda can stay with us during breaks. Time away from her will be good.”
“I don’t want to move.”
I rather wished I would have gone with daddy’s gut feeling and moved with him. However, we were too late and who knew he was already dying. My dad was the worst when it came to going to the doctor. I blame Mama, because she never wanted him to go, but if he would have gone that time when I went to get a flu shot, doctors may have discovered that he was already ill based on his nasty cough. In addition, if we would have moved, I could have stayed away from Mandy and her lies. However, everything happened for a reason—or so the saying.
I opened my eyes from my nap and began to sniff like a puppy—I knew the smell right away. I jumped up and ran out my room. Mama was lying across the living room floor, smiling as if she just won the lottery. Next, I immediately ran into the kitchen and turned the gas off.
“Mama, are you crazy?” I coughed, ran, and opened the front door for air. I pulled out my cell phone and tried to dial 911 with my rickety hands.
“Cassie, is everything okay?” said our town’s cop, Michael, who ironically happened to be across the street.
“No, Mama had the gas on,” I cried. “Can you call the ambulance and get her out of there?”
“Okay, you stay here. They’ll be on their way!” he said.
See, I wasn’t the only one who wants you dead, Mandy said.