by Kent, Julia
A new voice cuts through my thoughts and I bolt upright in my chair.
“Stop that! Stop hitting her!” cries Samantha. She sounds terrified, and I can see her wide-eyed, fearful look in my mind. I imagine her jaw quivering in fear, but even if it is, she’s still braver than I am. I’m hiding in my room, trying to pretend that I’m not here.
I promised I’d protect her.
I get up from the chair and start toward the door.
As I reach the door, though, I stop. No, she’s not in trouble yet. Dad won’t hurt her. As I turn around and head back toward my desk, I hear the loud clap of my father’s palm against her face, and she starts to cry.
A door slams down the hall. Mom has abandoned Samantha.
I spin around and hurry back to the door, but again my hand hovers at the knob and refuses to budge.
“He’ll kill me!”
“If you don’t go, he’ll kill Samantha!”
My hand trembles and my teeth grind as I try to force myself to open the door. I need to protect my sister, but my mind screams at me to step away from the door. In the end, my cowardice wins the battle and I turn away.
My entire room shakes as Dad slams her against the door, and I nearly leap into the air in shock. A framed photograph falls off the wall and its glass shatters as it strikes the ground. It’s our family photo from ten years ago; we were all smiling back then.
I can hear Samantha’s terrified whimper just outside my door, and my legs begin to shake. I’m such a fucking coward.
I have to protect her.
I open the door just in time to see my father’s outstretched arm and my little sister tumbling down the stairs.
Samantha crashes into the wall at the middle landing with a terrifying thud, her neck contorted in an impossible way and her gray eyes staring blankly up at me.
The world freezes around me as I stare back into her empty eyes, and everything is strangely silent.
I’ve failed her. I’ve failed her in the worst way I possibly could have.
My father’s face is as white as a sheet as he looks down at what he’s done, and I shove past him and race down the stairs.
“She fell, Owen,” he calls after me. “It ain’t what it looks like.”
I don’t care what his excuse is this time; my sister isn’t breathing. I can’t tell if my heart is sinking into my stomach or if my stomach is rising into my chest. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
“Owen Maxwell, you come back up here and...”
I ignore him and race for the telephone in the kitchen. I have to call 9-1-1.
The phone is nowhere to be found, and I hear the thud of his boots coming slowly down the stairs after me. I shove papers off the kitchen table, knock over a vase by the sink as I push aside all the clutter and broken dishes, and then I finally see it lying on the floor next to an overturned chair.
I pick it up and just as I start to dial, Dad’s fist connects with the side of my head.
I hit my head on a chair as I collapse to the ground. I’m dizzy and my vision goes almost entirely black except for a few strange, floating blue spots. He grabs the phone out of my hand, and as I try to get back up, he kicks me hard in the chest and knocks the wind out of me. I can’t breathe and I feel like I’m going to pass out.
I hear him dialing a number above me as the toe of his boot catches me squarely in the ribs again. Somehow, I barely notice the blow this time. Maybe I’m too far gone already.
“Hi Betty. Sheriff please,” he says in a shaky voice. He steps over me and starts to straighten up the kitchen. He sets the chair upright as on-hold music blares through the receiver, and even from down here I can smell the alcohol oozing from his pores.
“Hi, Bill? Yeah, it’s Todd. I need you to send someone over here with an ambulance. Samantha fell down the stairs. Please hurry.”
He’s so good at putting on an act when anyone else is around; it’s only his family that sees the other side of him.
“Thanks Bill. I really appreciate it,” he says with a tone of terrified concern, and I almost believe him for a second. My belief shatters instantly as he hangs up and shoots me an ice-cold glare.
“Don’t you ever tell the town about our dirty laundry like you were gonna, you hear me boy?” he snarls, and he kicks me again for good measure. “Now get the fuck up and help me clean up this mess.”
I continue to lay motionless on the floor. A strange chill is spreading down my body, and I can’t be bothered to listen to him anymore.
“God, please take me away from here.”
His boot connects with my stomach, and I gasp as he knocks the wind out of me again. I close my eyes and brace myself for the next blow.
“You heard me, you stupid shit! Get up!”
He kicks me again and again, and I don’t care about the pain anymore. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.
The only thing that mattered to me is lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.
Seven Years Later...
Friday, February 15 – 9:48 AM
Maria
My breath forms a thick white cloud in front of my face, and I shift my weight from leg to leg awkwardly as I wait at the top of the stairs. The bus is ten minutes late, and my feet are starting to go numb.
“Jesus Christ, it’s so cold today!” complains Tina, her teeth chattering. Even after four years here at Cornell, she still can’t handle the cold. Sometimes I wonder why she chose a school known as much for its bleak winters as for its education. It’s upstate New York—what exactly did she expect?
I’m happy she picked this college. I’d be completely alone if she hadn’t.
“Who the heck even gets up for class this early, anyway?” whines Tina. “Maria, why am I even out of bed? Seriously.”
“It’s almost ten o’clock, Tina.”
“Hey, that’s early for a Friday!”
I roll my eyes at her, but I can’t help but smile anyway as her blond ponytail bounces up and down as she tries to keep warm. Tina has only one class on Fridays—one of the benefits of being a second-semester senior, she claims—but she decided to ride up to campus with me today anyway.
My feet are freezing. The only thing stopping me from just giving up and walking to class is that our apartment is two miles away from campus... and it’s all uphill, too. It’s a fantastic apartment and so much cheaper than living in the dorms, but I sometimes feel as if I’m commuting from the moon.
The dirty blue bus caked in salt and muddy road spray pulls up to our stop, and we race up the stairs and into the warmth. The bus is as humid as a rainforest from the melted snow from countless students’ winter boots, and I watch condensation drip down the window as we pull away from the curb.
I sit in the middle of a gap of three empty seats and Tina sits down next to me. Two stops later, a swarm of students crowd into the bus, and I feel like I’m a sardine in a tiny can.
A boy in a green jacket and blue jeans sits down next to me and my stomach turns over. He’s too close to me. My chest tightens up and I suddenly feel like I’m short of breath.
His leg touches mine as he sits back and relaxes, and my heart starts pounding. I close my eyes and try not to shake, but I can feel my jaw trembling. My neck muscles tense up and start to cramp as I sit rigidly in my seat, nearly paralyzed with fear.
I can’t breathe. I’m going to suffocate.
I open my eyes as Tina nudges me with her elbow. She gets up from her seat and grabs onto the handrail as she looks down at me in concern.
“Hey, wake up, Maria,” she says, winking at me. “You’re gonna miss your stop.”
She waves to the driver and drags me out of my seat as the bus pulls over to the side of the road. I follow clumsily behind her as she takes me away from the boy sitting next to me and outside to safety.
I feel completely helpless and devastated by my embarrassment, but I'm also grateful beyond words for her saving me yet again. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled me back from t
he brink of a panic attack.
She links her arm around mine and we walk the last half mile to campus together.
“Thank you, Tina,” I whisper after several blocks of silence. My heart is still racing, but I’m finally starting to calm down a little.
“Don’t worry about it. I know how you get around crowds,” she answers with a warm smile and understanding eyes.
I smile back at her. She’s too good to me; she’s even pretending that the crowd is what upset me.
“You didn’t have to do it, though,” I whisper back to her, feeling guilty. “You didn’t have to take care of me. Now you have a long walk to class and it's all my fault.”
“Big fucking deal,” she says. “My fat ass could use the exercise, so let’s walk.”
I grin at her. Tina has the dirtiest mouth of any girl I’ve ever met, and it only gets dirtier from here. At first glance, she seems like a dainty little blonde with a penchant for pink, but that’s as far as her party-girl façade goes. Her mouth is downright legendary after a few drinks.
I’d expected her to be a typical sorority girl when I first met her. Instead I met someone almost as broken as I am—someone who I could trust—and I’ve never been happier that my first impression was wrong.
She turns to me with a grin after another long silence.
“If you ever see that guy again, please offer him some deodorant, okay?”
I burst out laughing and the cloud of fear and depression dissipates around me.
Tina is great because I can talk to her about anything. I’ve known her since freshman year, and when she broke down crying and came to me—when the stress of her own terrible secret was too much to bear—I knew I’d finally found someone I could trust.
“So what’s on the schedule for today, Miss Ayala?” she asks with good-natured snark. We have very different ideas of what ‘organized’ means: it's showing up within ten minutes of when she promised to arrive for Tina, and for me it involves a daily planner and my week plotted out in in meticulous detail. I like things to be predictable.
“First exam of the semester,” I say. “Stats 440, remember? I was studying for it all last night.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that,” she says, quickly holding out an arm and stopping me from walking straight into traffic. “We missed you for spades last night, me especially. Dinah’s a shitty partner, and Lacey and Mike are dirty fucking cheaters.”
I laugh happily as I imagine my roommates trying to play spades together. Lacey and her boyfriend Mike—who I don’t much care for, to be honest—have been dating for so long that they might as well have their own secret language by now. I’ve played cards against those two and there’s no way they aren’t telling each other what’s in their hands somehow.
The light changes, and I step out into the street. The clock tower starts to chime at the top of the steep, icy hill, and I know that in about two minutes I’m going to have the alma mater stuck in my head. I can’t stand Cornell’s school song.
“Yeah, I’m really not looking forward to the exam,” I say. “It’ll be easy, but all tests suck. It’s kind of a rule.”
“Pretty shitty deal to have a test on a Friday. Bad karma for your professor, you know?”
“Hey, better than on a Monday,” I say, and she nods back.
“True, but aren’t we supposed to be past that by now? Second-semester seniors should have it easy so we can go on interviews.”
“I kind of like keeping busy,” I say quietly. I don’t know if Tina heard me, and she doesn’t say anything for almost three blocks. I can feel myself working up a sweat underneath my coat as I struggle up the snowy hill.
“What do you have going on today?” I ask, gasping from exertion as we scale the miniature Everest of the west campus hill.
“Just one class, and then a lab session for Alcoholic Studies,” she says, winking at me. How is she not sweating? She isn’t even breathing hard from the climb! This is so unfair.
“Hey Maria, you should totally come out with me tonight!” she gushes excitedly. “Let’s go to The Nines! Wait... no... Pixel. Fuck it, how about Stella’s? Yeah, let’s go to Stella’s!”
I smile at how excited she’s getting and then shake my head.
“Tina, you know how I get around... crowds.”
She elbows me affectionately as we reach the top of the hill.
“Come on, Maria! You’re going to ace that stupid test, and then we’re set for the weekend! You’ve gotta let yourself live a little.”
“I like living a little when it’s just with you,” I protest. “It’s when everyone else is there that I have problems.”
“You have to start going outside and doing things. I know I sound like your mother, but it’s true.”
I shake my head. If I can barely stand being next to someone on the bus, how am I supposed to handle a crowded Friday-night bar?
“I can’t do it, Tina,” I say quietly.
She sighs, stops dead in her tracks, and shoots me a glare that I’ve learned, over the years, means that it’s time for ‘serious-talk.’
“Maria... where are you going to be at this time next year?”
I stare back at her silently. I don’t have the slightest clue where I’m going to be; I haven’t found a job yet. I had a panic attack during the single on-campus interview I’ve been offered.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “Grad school, probably.”
“I have no idea where I’m going to be either,” she says in a flat, serious tone.
“Then why...”
“Maria, we might never see each other again after this semester.”
I start to protest, but she cuts me off and pretends to zip my mouth shut.
“I want to see you get better, just in case I’m not with you next year,” she says quietly.
I silently look down at my snow-caked sneakers. I know what she means, but it’s not as easy as she’s making it sound. She knows that, though. She knows all about what happened.
Tina suddenly closes the gap between us and wraps her arms tightly around me.
“I care a lot about you, Maria,” she whispers. “I mean it. I want to see you be happy for once.”
I hug her back and smile weakly. She’s so short that she could almost pass for my little sister. In a way, I really am her sister. I'm the only family she has left.
“You okay?” she asks, finally letting go of me. I nod back.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“You mean at Stella’s, right?” she asks, still not willing to let me retreat inside my shell.
I sigh and nod dejectedly, and her face lights up at my answer.
“Good. Seriously, you’ll do fine, Maria. I’ll see you tonight!”
She waves to me as our paths diverge at the base of the clock tower, and I wave back to her as she continues the long walk to her chemistry class. As I walk the last block to my stats class, I am so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even notice the tower bells as they play the school song.
––––––––
“Easiest test ever,” I think, grinning with satisfaction as I check to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid like skip a question or accidentally forget a page. I expected far worse than this, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy the test was.
It’s only 11:45 AM. I didn’t even take a full hour to finish it, and the professor gave us two and half.
I feel my face flush as I realize nobody else is done yet. I’m the first one finished, and I hate standing up in front of people. It feels as if every eye in the room is watching me as I rise from my desk. My pulse quickens and it’s all I can do not to retreat to my chair and hide inside my coat.
The TA looks up at me as I approach his desk. He’s a blond-haired guy, slim, about my height and maybe a little bit older than I am. I'm suddenly incredibly uncomfortable as his gray eyes focus on me, and I feel like I’m moving in slow motion as I walk toward him.
“You can do t
his, Maria,” I think, urging myself to keep moving forward. “Just hand him the paper and get out of the room. Be normal!”
“Hmm... pretty quick,” he says quietly, holding out his hand to take my paper. “How do you think you did?”
My hand trembles as I place my test in his hand. The paper rustles and rattles against his palm from how much I’m shaking.
“I... I think I did oka... okay... I think,” I stammer awkwardly. The only way I can even get the words out is by avoiding his gaze and instead focusing on the long white scar running along his jaw.
“You sure? You’re done really early,” he says, staring at me curiously.
I hate the way he’s staring at me. He’s looking at me the same way Darren used to. I have to get out of here... I need air!
My voice catches in my throat as I try to answer him, and instead I make a horribly awkward and embarrassing gurgle. I need to escape. I can’t be around him while he looks at me like that.
I don’t want his attention—I don’t want any attention!
Panic takes control of me. I slap the paper into his hand as my face turns bright red, and I race for the side door.
Friday, February 15 – 11:45 AM
Owen
God, tests are so damned boring. Nobody mentioned this part to me when I signed up to be a teaching assistant. Ooh, free credits, organized homework time, and a pretty pathetic paycheck! Sure, they tell you about those parts, but nobody ever mentions the part where you get to stare in silence at a bunch of students for two and a half hours.
To make it even worse, I reviewed Professor Meador’s exam before I handed it out to everyone. It’s stupidly hard, and at least one student is going to burn me in effigy tonight. Whatever. I can deal.
Oh man, I’m so bored. This is the worst.
The clock ticks deafeningly above my head, and I crane my neck and look up at it. Only forty minutes have passed. I am in Hell.
“Bullshit. No I’m not,” I think, and I shake my head in shame. I’ve been to Hell before. I grew up there.
I grind my teeth and force myself to think about happier things, like the obnoxiously large beer I’m going to order tonight.