by E. K. Blair
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“No?”
I open my mouth to lie some more, but I can’t do it. I know he can tell that I want him to worry, and I do, because it feels good to know someone cares. That someone on this planet understands. As wonderful as Kroy is, he doesn’t truly understand what it is I’m going through or the pain I feel on a second by second basis. But this man . . . I see it in his eyes—he’s hurting too. A shared pain that somehow links us, and he’s not giving up on me. Though this revelation should soothe, the fear of allowing too much transparency with him whispers at me to disengage.
“I should get going,” I say when I reach down and pick up my bag.
“Will you stop by the pool after school? There’s some stuff I need to give you.”
“I’m not swimming.”
“I didn’t expect you to,” he says.
I give him a nod. “I’ll see you later.”
When I leave his classroom, I avoid looking for Linze or Kroy and head to the library. I pull the book I’ve been reading from my bag and get lost in fantasy. For the rest of the hour, I pretend I’m somewhere else entirely—that I’m someone else entirely. With each page I read, I fall deeper and deeper into words that build an illusory world around me.
But illusions are only temporary, vanishing in an instant when the bell rings.
The day moves on in patterns of whispers and stares. I know what they’re thinking, and I know what they’re looking at. For the most part, I keep my head down as I get myself from point A to point B to the point where the final bell rings. I walk through the halls, which are finally emptying out, and wonder how I’m supposed to do this day after day.
“Cam!” When I turn, Kroy is jogging toward me. “Hey, I forgot to tell you when I drove you this morning, but I’ve got practice. You can take my car and pick me up later or wait for me. Whatever you want to do.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just wait. I have to go see Coach Andrews anyway.”
“Okay. Well, I gotta run before I’m late,” he says before kissing my forehead and rushing off.
Mindlessly, I wander through the halls as I make my way to the pool, and soon find myself heading in the direction of my father’s classroom. Curiosity gets the better of me, and when I stop in the doorway and look in, my gut churns. The new hire has littered my dad’s desk with his own belongings, trashing the once organized piece of furniture. This was his space, and now this intruder has taken over, and I have no say so about it. I feel a sense of ownership over everything that had anything to do with him, and to see something of my dad’s taken away pricks me harshly in irritation. I don’t know this new teacher, but I already hate him.
My chest begins to vibrate as emotions come to life. I resist the urge to yell at the unknown man to clean his shit up and to get out of that room because it doesn’t belong to him.
“Hey.” His voice is gentle and comes from just behind my shoulder. Then, from one breath to the next, everything I’ve been suppressing today, every memory, every reminder, swells inside me. I should move away from Coach Andrews, but I can’t. I’m stuck, trying to suffocate the once dormant emotions that are slowly coming to life.
I should be good at keeping myself in control by now, but day after day, I’m weakening.
His hand rests on my shoulder, a single touch that chips away more of my guard.
I’m growing so tired.
“Why couldn’t they have left his room empty?” I say of the hijacked space.
Two girls walk by and, in hushed voices that they assume I can’t hear, make snide remarks about my face.
“Come on,” he says.
He heard it too.
Without words, I walk with him to the pool, too embarrassed to say anything more. When he pushes the door open for me, there are clumps of students scattered about on the pool deck and on the bleachers.
“Coach, can I talk to you really quick?” a new kid, I assume is an entering freshman, asks.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells me. “Don’t go anywhere. I need to get you all your waivers for your mom to sign.”
I look up to the office and find it filled with more freshman. They are laughing and roughhousing, and just like with the classroom, my blood begins to boil. Those kids are contaminating everything that used to be my dad’s. The control I’ve been hanging on to slips out of my grip, and the roiling in my gut returns. I drop my backpack to the ground and make my way up the stairs. Their hands are all over his desk, his computer, and his books. The sight of it causes something deep inside me to snap.
“Stop,” I tell them, but they’re too loud; they don’t even notice me. I walk deeper into the room. “Get out,” I bite loudly, and they all turn to look at me. “Get out!”
“Who are you?” a boy questions, arrogance heavy in his words, and I lose it.
“Stop touching his things!” I yell, putting my hands on them and pushing them out.
“What the fuck is your problem?” a random boy spews my way.
My head fogs as anger, loneliness, abandonment, sadness, and so many indescribable emotions come crashing down in a tidal wave. My walls begin to crumble, and I can’t hear anything aside from the high-pitched ringing in my head.
“Get your hands off his stuff!”
“Jesus, chill out,” another one says, and I grab him by the shirt, forcing him toward the door.
“Out! Just get the hell out of here!”
When I push the last kid from the room, I slam the door shut and then turn to see a picture frame lying face down on the floor with glass shattered around it. Kneeling, I turn the frame over and come eye to eye with my dad. It’s a picture of the two of us from last year after I won state. I had just gotten out of the pool and he has his arm slung around my shoulders, a smile filled with pride on his face. A picture he framed and kept on his desk only for some asshole to put his filthy hands on and break.
I stare at the photo and feel myself giving up. Holding on to strength is a feat I can no longer endure. My eyes burn in heated agony, and a tear slips out, clawing its way slowly down my cheek, but I don’t cry as everything tunnels. I clutch the photo against my chest, and all I can see are flashes of him in my head. Visions consume every single ounce of my focus as blood rushes through my ears, blocking out everything around me.
He’s gone.
And I’m in pieces—too weak to mend this wound on my own.
Life is cruel. It won’t budge for me no matter what I do.
I want my world to go back to what it was. It’s not fair that I have to suffer, that I have to go on without a parent, that I have to manage this pain.
“Cam!”
I coil away from his voice, but he’s too close. Down on his knees in front of me, Coach Andrews lays his hand on my back, and I flinch away.
“Don’t touch me!” I beg, terrified to be this close to my emotions. “Go away, please. Just go!”
He does, closing the door behind him and yelling at everyone in the building that practice is cancelled and to go home. As they go on with their simple lives, mine falls apart.
Razors start sawing away at heartstrings and arteries, flooding me in misery and depleting my heart of the blood it craves.
And right here, with no more strength, the last tether is cut, and I break.
I completely shatter.
My cries are ugly, their sounds unrecognizable as they bleed out of me. I hunch over with my eyes clenched shut, and I beg for my dad to come back to me. I’m desperate, so I release an agonizing wail, hoping if I cry hard enough, God will take pity and return him to where he belongs—here with me.
Tears coat my cheeks, the pain they carry with them seeping back into my pores, refusing to leave my body just so it can torment me some more. My throat flames, igniting when I drop my hand down to the ground and cry out—broken and alone. I’m nothing but a lost lamenting girl, wanting nothing more than to have her daddy back as sobs wrack my body, sending tremors up my spine as I grasp
on to each breath.
I don’t know how long I’ve been crying, but when my sobs drift into weeping hiccups, I realize I’m not alone.
Arms cocoon me, and my face is pressed against damp cotton. I’m surrounded by warmth, and as much as I want to fight him off, a bigger part of me wants to cling to him. I want to take the comfort he’s offering, a comfort I’ve been deprived of, a comfort my mother won’t give me. With my hand, I fist the fabric of his shirt and bury my head against his chest as he rocks us back and forth.
“You’re okay,” Coach Andrews whispers above me, but I don’t believe him and shake my head, denying his claim. His fingers push through my hair as he cradles the back of my head in his hand, asserting, “You’re going to get through this.”
“How?” My voice scratches through my knotted throat.
He leans back, and when I raise my head and look up at him through blurry eyes, flint strikes steel, sparking an ember to life somewhere inside my desolate heart.
“You just will.” He sweeps his thumb across my cheek, collecting my sadness and allowing it to absorb into his skin.
“I don’t believe you.”
Brushing a few loose strands of my hair away from my face, he takes a hard swallow and his neck flexes from the effort. “I know you don’t, but I promise you, you will.”
I drop my head and take in a deep breath, inhaling the spice of his cologne. The smell feeds a neediness inside me—a neediness I was unaware existed. Suddenly, the longing to be nurtured and coddled takes over. Maybe it’s because he understands this pain when none of my friends do. He’s the one who isn’t rushing me to be normal again.
There’s an urge for him to never let me go that creeps beneath my skin. I know he’s my teacher, I know these feelings aren’t appropriate, but I feel them anyway. The fact that I’m tucked in his arms right now should be enough, but it isn’t. I’d rather be clinging to him. It’s the desire to feel safe and protected when I haven’t felt it in so long. Maybe it took me finally crying to be able to recognize that I need someone to lean on, that I can’t do this on my own, that I’m not as strong as I once thought.
“Have you talked to anyone about this? About what happened?”
“No one would understand.”
“Your mom?”
I shake my head, unwilling to share the truth about her.
“Come here,” he says before standing. He takes my hands and helps me to my feet. “Will you talk to me?”
His sincerity makes me want to cry some more, but for a totally different reason, so I do. And without any hesitation, I walk straight to him and rest my head against his chest. It takes him a moment to close his arms around me, but when he does, I’m able to breathe easier. When my whole world has been shaken to its core, somehow this man makes it a little bit steadier.
WITH MY FATHER’S BROKEN FRAME in my backpack, I hide in the girl’s locker room while I pull myself together.
I cried. Finally, for the first time since leaving the hospital, I really cried.
And now that I have, I feel lighter. It’s not as if a boulder was lifted off me—more like a tiny atom, but it’s enough for me to notice. It’s also enough to deplete me. This day, everything about it, has stripped me layer by layer to the point I now feel as if I’m nothing but brittle bones.
When I walk out to the football field, I take a seat on the bleachers to wait for Kroy, pull out my cell, and dial my mother. This time, instead of it going straight to voice mail, it rings. She doesn’t answer though, so I hang up, relieved she’s alive enough to charge her battery but furious that she had to add more stress to this already nightmarish day.
I sit back and watch the guys hike the ball and barrel into each other like animals. The sun blazes brightly above, and sweat begins to bead and trickle down my spine while the team runs play after play.
I used to sit out here before Kroy and I started dating, and I would daydream about what it would be like to be his girlfriend. It’s a little strange to now sit here as the ex-girlfriend, and I shift and fidget, trying to avoid being dragged deeper into sadness. So much has changed so quickly, it’s hard for me to figure out where I fit in anymore—if I fit in at all.
“Hey, babe,” Kroy says as he jogs over to me. “You good?”
I nod, not bothering to mention the monumentally embarrassing breakdown I had earlier.
“I’m gonna hit the showers. Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
I walk around the school to the parking lot and wait for him next to his car. When he finally emerges, I couldn’t be more ready to go home and wish this day away into extinction.
“I knew you’d survive,” Kroy says out of nowhere as he drives to my house.
“What?”
“Today,” he states. “Was it as bad as what you were anticipating?”
“Ehh.” I brush off his question with a shrug. Even if I told him, I doubt he’d truly understand. “How was practice?” I ask to avoid talking about myself.
It works, and I spend the remainder of the drive listening to him talk about football, but he goes silent when he pulls up to my house. My mother’s car is parked haphazardly, two wheels on the driveway and two wheels in the grass with the driver’s side door still open.
Both of us step out of the car, not knowing what to say as we walk up the driveway. When I see the car is empty, I close the door.
“You want me to come in with you?”
“No,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Mom,” I call out when I step inside the silent house, but I get no response. I walk to the kitchen and then the living room before heading upstairs. Quickly, I toss my bag onto my bed and then go to her room. I don’t bother knocking, I just barge in to find her lying in bed and still dressed in the same clothes she left the house in last night. “Mom!” I call loudly, rousing her awake.
“What is it?” she mumbles with her face buried in her pillow.
Reaching down, I shake her, forcing her to acknowledge I’m here. “Wake up!”
She rolls over and props herself up on her elbows, looking like an absolute mess. “What’s the emergency?”
“Where have you been?”
“When?”
“Last night. This morning. God, Mom, I woke and freaked when you weren’t here.”
She sits up and scoots herself back against the headboard. “I told you I was going out.” Her voice is dismissive and laced with booze.
“To dinner. You said you were grabbing dinner, not that you’d be out all night. And I can’t believe you drove home drunk. How could you do that?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me with such disrespect. I’m your mother.”
“Are you?” I’m fuming. The agitation roiling through me is unreal, and I can’t think of a single other time I had ever been so angry with her.
She glares at me. “Excuse me, young lady? I suggest you change your tone.”
“You have no right to demand respect from me when I’ve done nothing but cater to your every need for months.”
“You don’t have a clue, do you? You’re just a child; you couldn’t possibly understand.”
Her accusations fan the flame.
“I lost everything!” she screams.
And for the second time today, I lose all control. “And what about me, Mother? Huh?”
“He was my husband. I had twenty-three years with him, you couldn’t possibly understand how it feels to lose a husband. I can barely breathe without him, and here you are,” she accuses, throwing her arm in my direction, “off at school, playing with your friends all day while I’m drowning in pain.”
“You don’t think that I feel pain? That I don’t hurt? That I don’t wish that it had been me that died that day?”
“Get out of my room.”
I stare into her eyes and wonder if the alcohol would fo
rce her to speak the truth. Do I even want the truth? Or do I already know it deep down?
“Is that what you wish?” I ask, willing myself not to cower away from her response. “Do you wish that it had been me that died that day and not Dad?”
She delivers no reaction. She’s nothing more than carved marble, sitting here looking like a total train wreck.
“Forget it,” I fume under my breath before storming out and slamming the door behind me.
How dare she dismiss everything I’ve been through. Mourning my father, taking care of all the responsibilities of this house, being forced to watch over her and worry about her every damn day while she drinks herself into a hole. I might as well have lost her too. There’s no more safety for me. I have no parent to grasp on to for help or guidance. No parent to comfort me or protect me. The world has thrown me the worst curveball ever, annihilating the life I once knew and forcing me to go at it alone.
I’m so pissed off at everything and everyone that I want to punch my fists through the walls. With so much trapped inside me, my flesh tingles for release. My teeth grit as I pace my room. I claw my fingers through my hair and walk into my bathroom. Turning on the water, I cup my hands together and splash my face in an attempt to extinguish the burn that’s itching beneath my skin. Dousing my face again, my elbow hits my makeup bag, sending it falling to the floor.
“Dammit.”
Everything spills out around my feet, and when I kneel down to clean up the mess, my hands stop when they land on my nail clippers. I fall onto my bottom and lean my back against the wall as I hold cool metal in my hand. With a body housed inside skin too tight, I swivel out the metal file, holding it firmly between my finger and thumb. All four of my limbs sizzle with pent-up tension, and when I aim the tip of the file against the inside of my forearm, I bite my jaw shut, pinch my eyes closed, and press down. I hold my breath as I try to puncture the skin, but the file is too blunt to penetrate, which only amplifies my irritation.
The pressure building inside reaches the point of testing the boundaries of my body. My skin flares, begging for relief, so I take the clippers to the same spot on my arm, press my lips together, and squeeze the lever, snipping through delicate flesh.