by Kent, Julia
“You okay, Maria?” she whispers, and I nod awkwardly and get up to silence the alarm.
“Tina... did you stay up all night?”
“You needed the company,” she answers.
I feel even worse now.
“How are you going to stay awake through class?” I ask in horror and humiliation. “You shouldn’t have done that!”
She smiles at me before answering.
“Hmm... do I settle for one miserable day of classes, or do I let you suffer all night? Not a tough decision.”
I hang my head in shame. I can’t believe she still stands by me after all these years.
“I don’t deserve you, Tina. You’re an angel.”
“You did it for me,” she answers weakly, her voice cracking. “You were there for me when Mom went away.”
My eyes start to tear up and my throat tightens. She’s talking about the day her mother’s Alzheimer’s finally got so bad that she stopped recognizing her.
“And I’d do it again if you needed me,” I croak, and then I turn and run to the bathroom.
I need to shower before class, and more urgently, I need to get away before I start crying. If I start, she’ll start, and then we’ll both be miserable in class all day.
––––––––
I worried earlier in the day that I would fall asleep in class after such a miserable night—and admittedly, my eyes did drift shut during lunch—but now that I’m in my statistics class, I have a very different worry.
I’m worried about Owen.
“So, um... we’re going to be taking the positive hypothesis in this one as the null. Wait... um... yeah, that’s it,” he stammers, scribbling illegibly on the board. “No... that’s wrong. Ignore that. We’re going to...”
This is the worst lecture I’ve ever seen him give. I can’t read his writing, he’s stumbling over nearly every word, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Not a single thing he’s saying makes sense, and I can tell from the bewildered faces of the other students that it’s not just me.
“Why is he writing with his left hand?”
Just as the thought registers in my mind, he turns away from the board and looks right at me. He cradles his right hand—crudely wrapped in bandages—against his chest with an ice pack balanced precariously on top of it. His eyes are dark with pain, and he grits his teeth as he adjusts the ice pack. It hurts me to see him like this.
I’m not even pretending to pay attention to the lecture anymore. My eyes lock onto Owen, watching as he stammers awkwardly and tries to write with his left hand. He gets so flustered that he has to stop and go look at his notes, and I feel terrible for him. I can’t pay attention to my notes, to the board, to anything at all except for the terrible misery radiating from him.
What on earth happened to him?
Our eyes keep finding each other every time he turns to face the class, and I feel my neck tense up each time. Strange, awkward feelings bubble up inside my chest, and I don’t know what to make of them.
“Okay... I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” he sputters to the class, tossing down his marker in frustration. “How about I just take questions about the homework, and I’ll schedule an extra section and more office hours for anyone who wants the lecture material later this week?”
An irritating, blond-haired girl chewing loudly on a wad of gum raises her hand on the far side of the room, and Owen points to her.
“Like... umm, what happened to your hand?”
Owen turns and looks directly at me without answering the girl, and I’m blown away by the look in his eyes.
It’s as if I’m fifteen again, looking in the mirror at myself the next morning after Darren finished with me, trying to tell myself that I’ll be okay. I feel cold as I gaze back into the black pit of misery in his eyes.
Something is horribly wrong with Owen, and I’m scared now.
“I think we’re done for the day,” he says quietly, and he grabs his notebook and bolts out of the room.
“Wait, what about the homework?” calls out a boy on the other side of the room. The rest of the class bursts into a confused uproar, blabbing back and forth with each other while I leap to my feet, grab my backpack, and chase after Owen.
By the time I push past the crowd of students and get out into the hallway, he’s long gone.
“Okay... now what?” I mutter to myself as I try to collect my thoughts.
Do I just let him go? It’s none of my business what’s going on with him; maybe he wants to be left alone.
“No way. Something’s really wrong with him!” my mind screams back at me. I’m really worried about him.
Maybe Tina’s right... maybe I do have a crush on him.
No. It has nothing to do with crushes and everything to do with that look in his eyes. I’ve seen it in the mirror almost every day since I was fifteen.
Owen is lost just like I am, and he needs my help.
I pull out my cell phone, and this time it’s easy for me to call him. No fear or awkwardness is going to hold me back today, not when he needs help.
The call goes straight to his voicemail, and I hang up without leaving a message. He turned off his phone.
Tina is next. I pace nervously up and down the hall, dodging students as they wander out of the classroom, and she finally answers five rings later.
“Hi Maria! I’m just about to go to class. Can I call you back?”
“You have Craig’s phone number, right?” I ask, ignoring her question.
“Umm... what?”
“Tina, it’s important.”
“Yeah, I have it,” she finally answers. "I have class, though. Can it..."
“Call him. I need you to get Owen’s address and text it to me.”
“But...”
“Please! This is really important,” I beg, cutting her off again.
“Maria, what’s going on?”
Tina sounds nervous, and I wish I knew what was wrong so that I could ease her mind.
“Everything’s okay,” I lie. “I’ll explain it tonight, okay? I promise.”
Friday, March 1 – 4:30 PM
Maria
I hurry down the long, icy staircase toward my apartment, but this time, instead of going all the way to the bottom and turning left, I only go down two flights and then turn right.
Owen and Craig live in apartment twenty at the far end of the row. How did I never once see him in the two years I’ve lived here?
My knuckles ache from the cold as I rap on the door, and I stick my hands inside my coat pockets as I wait. Nobody answers.
“Owen?”
I bang on the door again and shift my weight back and forth between my cold feet. I’ll wait out here all night if I have to, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s only four-thirty but it’s already getting dark.
Just as I’m about to knock again, I hear footsteps inside. The lock clicks, and then Owen opens the door. He has an ice pack wrapped around his right hand and he looks like he’s been crying.
“Can I come in?” I ask as he stares at me in silence.
He shakes his head indecisively. For a moment, I think he’s going to close the door in my face, but then he finally breaks down and invites me in.
“Thanks,” I tell him, and I take off my boots and coat as he closes the door and silently walks past me.
The downstairs of his apartment is exactly like mine, except it’s cleaner and better organized. With four girls living in my apartment, it’s hard to keep things tidy. Tiny potted plants line the kitchen window sill, and the living room walls are covered so densely with framed photographs that there's hardly a bare spot left.
“Um... do you want a drink?” he finally asks, heading into the kitchen.
“No, but thank you,” I answer. “I want to know what happened to your hand, and I want to see it.”
“I just hurt it a little,” he protests. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Bullshit it’s not a
big deal,” I fire back at him.
I don’t know where all this energy and confidence came from, but I feel like I could stare down even Tina right now. Maybe Tina’s a little bit of a stretch, but I’m doing really well by my standards, at least.
“I’m fine, Maria,” he tries to tell me, but the pained look on his face gives him away.
“Oh come on already. Show me your hand!” I snap, glaring angrily at him.
He finally gives in and removes the ice pack. I feel sick to my stomach as I see the bulging bandages around his thumb. The swelling is horrible even with ice and bandages, and I almost throw up as I carefully unwrap it and see that his skin is turning black.
“Can you move your thumb at all?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
“That settles it, then,” I say. “Come on—I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“It’s just bruised.”
“It’s fucking broken, Owen!” I shout at him, and he winces and shrinks back from me as if I’ve just struck him across the face.
I back away from him and go silent, uncertain about what just happened. Did I just do something wrong? Nobody likes to be yelled at, but something about how he reacted doesn’t feel right.
“It’s not the first time I’ve broken a bone. I’ll be okay,” he says quietly, trying not to look at me.
“Owen... I’m not leaving until you come with me,” I tell him as gently as I can. There’s no way I’m letting him try to wait out a broken bone.
He tries to argue, but I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer tonight.
“You have to go to a doctor. I’ll even drive you. We can take Tina’s car,” I push, hoping he’ll give in to pressure.
“Is this really why you came over?” he asks after a long silence.
“It’s a start,” I answer. “We can talk more later.”
“Alright, I’ll go,” he finally gives in, and he sighs dejectedly as he fetches his coat.
––––––––
The sun has long since gone down when I finally get Owen back to our apartment complex. It took the doctors less than an hour to set his thumb and get him into a cast, but we still had to wait in the emergency room for three hours before that.
“How are you holding up back there?” I call back to him as I pull into the parking spot.
“I... wow, really dizzy,” slurs Owen from the back seat. The doctor gave him some Vicodin to stop the pain, and it’s hitting him like a truck.
“Don’t worry; it’s just the painkillers,” I tell him as I help him out of the car. He wraps his arm around mine and wobbles across the parking lot as I support him
“This way. Careful, don’t trip,” I gently tell Owen, and I guide him slowly, step by difficult step, down the staircase toward his apartment. I imagine that if I let go of him, he’d flop head over heels all the way to the bottom like a human slinky.
It takes me almost half an hour to get him down to the door of his apartment and another five minutes until he figures out where his keys are. He’s so loopy from the painkillers that he’s practically helpless.
Finally, he finds his keys. After the third time he drops them in the snow, I snatch them away from him, unlock the door, and then sigh happily as the welcoming warmth of the apartment washes over me.
“You want anything to drink?” I ask him after getting him comfortable on the couch.
“Um... any beer in the fridge?”
“You’re on Vicodin. You can’t have any.”
“I like tea... can I have tea?”
“Where is it?”
“Top cabinet above the stove.”
I hunt through four cabinets before finally finding the one with all his mugs, and then repeat the process with drawers and spoons while the water heats up in the microwave. In goes the teabag, and then I head to the fridge to get something for myself while his tea steeps.
My attention immediately latches onto the lumpy red fruit sitting on top of a Tupperware full of leftovers. He has a pomegranate!
“And it’s all mine,” I think excitedly.
I take it and the tea back to the couch and sit down next to him.
“Do you mind if I have this?” I ask, holding up the pomegranate.
“Planning on being here for a while? They take forever to eat.”
“I’ll be here as long as you want me to be.”
“Go ahead, then. I... I really want the company,” he answers awkwardly.
I watch him closely as he sips his tea. He looks much better now that the doctor put it in a cast. The bone is set correctly and the swelling in his hand has mostly gone away.
“Owen... what happened to your hand?”
“I got angry,” he answers succinctly.
I silently glare at him. That’s not going to cut it tonight.
“I... well, I got really angry, and I hit the table,” he confesses, pointing to the dining room table.
“You hit the table so hard that you broke your hand?” I ask in shock, gaping at him.
He nods sheepishly.
“Why?” I gasp, shaking my head. “What on earth could possibly get you that angry?”
Owen struggles to his feet without a word and wobbles across the living room away from me. I leap to my feet and hurry after him, worried that he’ll fall and hurt himself.
“I’m okay. Let go of me,” he protests, his voice slurring as he tries to extract his arm from my grip. I shake my head and hold tightly to him, and he quickly gives up. Instead, he leads me up to the wall of photographs and points to one near the sliding glass door to the balcony.
I immediately recognize him in the picture. He was handsome even as a teenager. A young, brown-haired girl stands next to him in the picture and waves to the camera.
“This is my family,” he tells me, his voice calm and quiet.
His father is a gruff, bearded man built like a lumberjack and with about as much fashion sense. Owen clearly inherited most of his genes from his mother; she is slender and beautiful with long, straight blond hair and a narrow nose. His father has brown hair like the little girl.
“You all look very happy,” I say, not sure what else is appropriate.
“Every last one of us is faking that smile,” he tells me, and the sadness in his voice nearly breaks my heart.
“If I didn’t smile in that picture—if I didn’t act like we were a perfectly normal family—I’d have been in deep, deep shit when we got home,” he continues.
I squeeze his arm softly and lean in closer to him as he stares at the picture. I can’t bring myself to say anything, but I hope he knows that I’m listening. I want to hear his story.
He takes a deep breath and turns to face me.
“Those broken bones I told you I’d had before...”
He cuts himself off and starts to turn away from me, but I reach up and gently put my hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“Please tell me,” I whisper.
“They’re all from Dad,” he says, his voice cracking. “He’s why I never go home. He’s still back there, and it’ll be just like it always has been if I ever go back there.”
Without a second thought, I wrap my arms around him and hug him. I’ve never seen someone need to be held so badly in my life.
“I’m scared, Maria. This is my last semester and I still don’t have a job.”
He chokes up as he talks, and I don’t know what else to do but hold him and listen.
“I don’t want to go back home,” he whispers. “I don’t want to be a kid again because going back there means going back into Hell.”
“What about your sister?” I whisper, rocking slowly back and forth as I hold him close. “Is she still back there?”
He lays his head on my shoulder and bursts into tears.
“God, I miss her more than anyone on earth, Maria,” he sobs. “I’d do anything to bring her back. Anything!”
“Bring her back?” I repeat as a terrible chill runs down my spine.
Owen looks
up at me, his cheeks wet with tears and his eyes wide with fear and distrust. I immediately understand the look on his face. He’s feeling exactly what I felt when I first told Tina about Darren: the fear of rejection, the terror that comes with trusting someone with your darkest secret.
Owen just told me his secret, and now he’s afraid that I’ll hurt him with it.
I’d rather die than hurt him.
“Her name is Samantha, and she died when I was seventeen,” he whispers. “She tried to stand up for Mom during a fight, and Dad threw her down the stairs.”
He starts to cry again and I wrap my arms even more tightly around him.
“I promised I’d protect her,” he sobs inconsolably. “I promised I’d protect her from him, and instead I got scared and hid upstairs.”
All I can do is hold him as I stare at the tiny girl in the photograph. Now that he’s told me his secret, I can see the fake smiles and forced happiness. The only person with a genuine smile is his father.
“She’s gone, and it’s my fault.”
His voice is cold and dead as he finishes, and he pulls away from me and returns to the couch.
“When was your last pain pill?” I ask, hoping to pull his attention away from the miserable memories.
“Four hours ago,” he answers, glancing up at the kitchen clock.
“Okay, let’s get you another.”
He slurps it down with his tea, which has long since gone cold, and he lies back on the couch as I sit beside him.
“I’m sorry, Owen,” I say, picking awkwardly at my fingernails. “I didn’t mean to hurt you by bringing it up.”
“It’s okay,” he answers. “You needed to know what a wreck I am.”
“You’re not a wreck!” I protest, but he only shakes his head and changes the subject.
“You didn’t eat your pomegranate,” he whispers, pointing at the dull red fruit sitting on the coffee table.
“You were more important,” I answer, running a hand through his soft hair as he stares down at the fruit.
“You know why I like pomegranates?” he asks, closing his eyes and leaning his head on the arm of the couch. His voice is dull and slow, as if he’s teetering on the edge of sleep.