by Nessa Morgan
“Early,” he snaps.
Then it dawns on me that Zephyr is in my room, in my house. How the hell…? I remember locking the door after Hilary left for work, I know that she isn’t home now otherwise it’d be her on my bedside, and I walked through the lower floor—per my usual paranoid nightly routine—to make sure all openings to the outside world were closed and locked. Three times.
I’m a bit paranoid.
“How did you get in here?” I rest my hands on his arms, feeling the muscles tense as he moves to better look at me. His expression is angry but his eyes are kind, soft.
“Hilary gave my mom a spare key a while back,” he replies. That I remember; I know that Molly, Zephyr’s mother, keeps all the spare keys in the same place: on the inside of a cupboard in the kitchen. I discovered that when I went scrounging through their kitchen for food a few years ago. Everything is labeled like you would see in Bree Van De Kamp’s kitchen on Desperate Housewives. You know, before the show ended. “In case of emergencies,” he continues, adding, “I thought this was an emergency, I could hear you screaming bloody murder in my room.” If only he knew. “You woke me up, Jo.” My eyes wander to my window—it’s closed, I made sure of that before I crawled into bed. Across the alley, his bedroom is illuminated with a bright yellow light. “You scared the crap out of me, Joey, what’s up?”
Looking into his eyes as he leans over me, feeling his skin beneath my fingertips, I could tell him. I feel close to him at this moment. He would understand. He would hear all the horrors bottled in my head and he would understand completely. He knows me better than anyone, he would know.
I open my mouth, fully prepared to tell him everything, fully prepared to unleash my inner demons…
But I can’t.
“Nothing but a nightmare,” I answer meekly and ashamed, my voice nearly a whisper. I avoid his eyes; mine still stuck on my window, knowing that he can spot a lie in my eyes.
“That,” he starts loudly. There’s anger I’ve never heard him use with me filling his voice, “wasn’t a nightmare.” My eyes travel to the clock on the opposite of the room, anything to prevent myself from looking at him as he scolds me—it’s after one in the morning. “That was something so much worse. You were thrashing around like someone was trying to kill you.”
Maybe he does know.
He has to know.
He’s not stupid.
Damn! I don’t want him to know.
“Zephyr, just go back home,” I quietly beg, feeling exhaustion take my body over. I sag into the mattress, my stiff body losing its strength. “Go back to bed, I’m fine.” I lie, still clutching on to his arms. I don’t want him to go, not really. I want him to stay, I want him to keep me safe.
Zephyr lets out a long, deep breath. “You’re not fine, there’s—” he begins, but I’m quick to cut him off.
“I’m fine,” I bark out loudly. My voice begs him to believe me, if not, then he should just let it go and leave before I start to cry, which could be soon despite my best efforts to hold back. I feel my throat begin to close; I can feel my eyes start to water. I don’t cry, I hate the thought of me crying. It shows weakness. “There is nothing wrong, Zephyr,” I continue to lie.
“Fine,” he quietly agrees, knowing me well enough to just leave me be, to let me wallow in my own self-pity, before he states, more for himself, “You’re fine.” Reluctantly, Zephyr releases my shoulders and stands up, my hands gliding along his arms as he pulls away from me, backing away from the bed. He stops at the door and runs his hands through his hair with noticeable frustration, as he asks, “You would tell me, right? I mean, if something really was wrong. You’d tell me?”
It’s at this moment that I realize that Zephyr likes to see the best in people, namely me. He’d like to think that, with our years of friendship, I would trust him with my darkest fears, my deepest secrets, and my strongest worries. It’s important to him.
One day—in the distant future—I hope that I am brave enough to share these, all of these, with him.
Unfortunately, that day hasn’t yet arrived.
And I’m scared that, because of this, I might lose him.
“Of course,” I lie, forcing a small smile onto my face. I’d say, and do, anything to end this conversation. I’d do anything to send him home.
Maybe he believes me.
“Okay.” He nods, his eyes boring into mine, trying to figure me out. He’s trying to read me, read my thoughts. I want to be sure that he believes the lie, that I’m a believable liar, but I can tell from the look in his eyes, the set of his arms, the sadness on his face, the he knows I’m lying. Zephyr has been my best friend long enough to read me, long enough to understand me, or most of me, like a book.
He shrugs, turning to leave, pulling the door shut behind him.
Once I’m sure he’s at least walking down the stairs, I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I was holding, my body sagging further into the mattress. My head falls to the pillow with a soft thud muffled by the fabric. I hear the front door close and lock behind Zephyr as he leaves through the front door; the house is quiet enough for that sound to flow through the air, through the walls, to my waiting ears. I can picture him walking back to his house through the dewy grass, tendrils sticking to the soles of his bare feet. Maybe he stops to take one last look at the house, a fleeting glance at my front door as he tries to decide if he made the right decision in leaving me to deal with whatever this is on my own, but he keeps walking. I want him to keep walking back to his house.
I count to twenty-seven—my favorite number—slowly, watching his room through my window, waiting for him to enter the door. The light clicks off and I know he’s home, where he should be. All is dark in the neighborhood, as it should be.
And once again, all is as it should be.
My room is dark and the shadows dance along my walls thanks to the streetlamps in the neighborhood. This is when the boogeyman comes out to play, my mind disturbingly tells me, this is when he likes to take his prisoners, delving them into a dark world they can never get themselves away from. This is the time when the things that scare you the most become reality and play your mind like a drum.
I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the world and the shadows, hoping to silence my mind and all its worries, all its crazy ramblings, but all I can see is him, the man with the knife, standing in front of me, blood drip, drip, dripping onto the once-spotless carpet beneath his muddied boots.
What did he call me? Josie.
Who is Josie?
The man… that couldn’t be my father, could it?
What if it was?
What can I do if it was my father?
Sitting up in my bed, I pull my phone from its usual nightly place beneath my pillow and, and without hesitation, dial the phone number I’ve never dialed before. Hilary programmed the number into my contacts when I wasn’t paying attention one afternoon. A just in case number, like the number for her wing at the hospital, and this was a case just for the right person.
I reach her voicemail.
“You have reached the voicemail of Doctor Caroline Jett,” the recorded voice tells me. “Please leave your name and number and I will get back to you as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1 for the local police.”
Beep.
“Hi, Dr. Jett, it’s Joey Archembault.” I begin hesitantly, nerves causing my heart to beat faster, my breathing to quicken, and my pals to sweat. I hate talking on the phone. “I know it’s late, like, really late. Or really early depending. But I just had a nightmare and I—” I cut off, not entirely sure what to say. Should I just blurt that I think my father was in my nightmare holding a knife? Should I just say that I think he wanted to kill me? “I think a month is too long, can we schedule something sooner, please?” That should do it. I give my number and hang up, shoving my phone back beneath my pillow.
Now what?
I click on the television, the tiny set on my dresser,
with the remote on my nightstand, illuminating my room in a pale blue light, ready to watch Golden Girls on the Hallmark Channel for the rest of the night. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be able to fall back to sleep tonight.
***
Dr. Jett calls early the next morning—maybe she returned my call before she even listened to my message—to schedule an appointment for the upcoming Thursday afternoon. That should calm my nerves, it really should ease the tension in my shoulders, but it only scares me more.
Zephyr looked utterly drained when he stomped into my kitchen, like he was drained mentally, physically, and emotionally. He was quiet, which I thought was weird; he’s a normal social butterfly. As we rode to school, he just leaned his head back and feigned sleep but I could tell that he was awaked because his breathing didn’t even out. Not that I would know anything about that. Was he trying to avoid me?
Jamie was oblivious to the unusual situation, her mind only on her beloved Marcus. Zephyr barely looked at me as we walked into the school, he barely spoke to me in the halls, and completely ignored me in class.
Are you serious?
I sit right next to the kid!
I was tempted to ask him what his issue was, his freaking deal. I almost asked him if he was mad at me for last night, for waking him up and making him feel the need to come to my rescue, to rescue me. Honestly, it wasn’t my fault. I would tell him this if he gave me the chance. I’d continue to explain that it was just a bad dream; something that I had no control over, but he bolted from the room before the bell even rang.
What the hell, dude?
I roll my eyes as I watch him flee into the growing crowd, his backpack disappearing as he ducks unsuccessfully behind a fellow athlete.
I stand in the middle of the hallway for a moment, watching where he disappeared. If he wants to be an immature brat, that’s fine with me, but he shouldn’t expect me to just suck it up and take him back when he comes crawling to me to apologize just because he’s over his foul mood. In my mind, the word manstruating flashes in bright red letters and I mentally conclude that he is having his time of the month. I should mark this on a calendar for future reference.
It’s still pissing me off that he’d treat me like this.
The lunchroom is abuzz with loud voices when I walk down the stairs—conversations about school and gossip about the people in it—these voices used to halt when I walked through, in that figurative back in the day. These days, I’m just another invisible fixture and completely ignorable. I’m another portrait hanging on the wall, another pillar in the cafeteria. I really want to make a Pink Floyd reference but feel that would be overkill. Well, that and the school really doesn’t have that many visible bricks. Every wall is thick concrete, dry wall, or those random walls that you can fold and bend to make two classrooms into one giant classroom.
Taking my usual table, I sit on the opposite side with my back to the rest of the lunchroom. It’s easier to ignore Zephyr if I can’t look at him as he sits near the front of the room at the popular table. Out of sight, out of mind. To drive the point home, I lift up the hood of my black sweatshirt and try to become unnoticeable. I just love the thought of being invisible.
“Still in a mood?” asks Harley, whose head I bit off in gym this morning when she asked me how I was doing—I admit that I overreacted. She slides into the seat across from me, Kennie sliding in next to her. Harley tosses me an apple, Kennie slides me a banana, and these small gestures make me smile for the first time today. At least I have them.
“The banana should help,” Kennie explains, a wide smile split her glossed lips, revealing her perfect teeth. From pictures around her house, I know that she had braces before we met. They worked wonders because all the guys stutter at her smile.
“What do you mean?” I ask with a raised eyebrow, now confused with the fruit in my hands. I don’t know very much about bananas. The topic doesn’t come up very much in my classes. I know that they’re great for potassium intake and they’re berries by technical definition because it’s a fleshy fruit produced from a single seed, while a strawberry is covered in seeds, so it’s not a berry. Weird, right?
It’s obvious here that I read way too much.
“I read somewhere that they help with depression.” I cock my head to the side. The look on my face forces her to continue. “Bananas increase serotonin levels.” As she speaks, she nods, continuing with, “but like I said, I read it somewhere on the internet and who knows what you can believe with help from Google.”
“I didn’t know that,” I tell her, flipping the fruit in my hands. I like bananas. “It’s still an interesting tidbit, thanks, Kennie.” I like to learn random trivia. That’s no one likes to play me in a game of Trivial Pursuit. If a question about bananas comes up, I think I’ve got it down.
“Are we actually having a conversation about bananas?” Harley blurts loudly, making a very good point. We all exchange looks with each other before we start laughing, giggling loudly together.
Thanks, Harley.
Harley, being the nice girl that she is, asks Kennie about her date with Duke Bishop, Kennie’s boyfriend for the past year and a half, last night. It was their final date before he leaves for college on the other side of the state. I don’t really want to listen to Kennie gush about it endlessly but it’s easy to put my brain on autopilot and ignore my present world with petty problems while continuing to comment and nod whenever appropriate. Kennie blathers on and on about his genuine kindness, how he opened the door for her and pulled her chair out for her. She even states, in far too much detail, how he gently kissed her at the end of the night.
Apparently, chivalry hasn’t totally died out.
Duke Bishop is the perfect guy for her. Harley and I have always known that. It’ll suck with him on the other side of the state because Kennie will be sullen and depressed but he promised to make frequent trips before the passes clog up with snow, even then, he still vows to brave the snow.
She squealed—literal pig-like squeal—when he told her that.
Kennie stops talking, in midsentence, her eyes shifting to a point over my right shoulder and focusing intently. She looks shocked. Harley, noticing the shift in our friends stature and the unusual silence floating around our table that never lasts long, starts staring at me, a scowl fixed on her face. She spots whatever Kennie is staring at.
What now?
I almost ask them what they are staring at and why they are acting so weird. The words form on my tongue. Then I start to wonder what it could be. Maybe it’s Zephyr here to start talking to me; maybe apologizing for being such an ass—I promised myself not to let him off the hook so easily. Instead of all the speculation, I decide to turn and face it myself. Turning, my eyes connect with dark jeans, a blue polo shirt, a letterman’s jacket, and perfectly tousled blonde locks. Ice blue eyes stare at me and I fight the urge to roll mine.
“Is this seat empty?” Ryder Harrison asks, pointing to the open spot next to me. He can’t be serious. His voice is light and smooth but deep, very different than I have ever heard spoken before. If I could judge a person based on a voice, I would say this person has a superiority complex.
I let out a sigh and tuck my hair behind my ear. “Yes. And this one will be, too, if you sit down.”
He doesn’t listen to me. His leg bumps into my right shoulder as he throws his leg over the bench to take the spot next to me.
“Hello, ladies,” Ryder coos next to me, sucking up to my friends. His voice is too smooth, like chocolate pouring over velvet. You can hear the cockiness and the agenda in his tone; that he’s here for me, only me, and my friends are just bystanders here to witness what he thinks is inevitable because he’s Ryder effing Harrison and he gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it.
Right now, he wants me.
That makes me want to punch him.
I don’t look at him, I don’t want to. In fact, the thought of sharing this small space with Ryder is enough to make me want
to wander into oncoming traffic at the height of rush hour in downtown Seattle. I don’t want to play into the disturbing fairytale Kennie dreamed up nor do I wish to toy with the outrageous idea that maybe, just maybe, she was right. She cannot be right.
But with the way Ryder is stealing glances at me, the way the side of his mouth tugs up in a smirk when he takes these glances, these brief looks at me, has me thinking that I may be wrong.
Crap, I am wrong. Very, very wrong.
Damn it, I hate being wrong.
“Hey, Ryder,” replies Kennie in the high I am cheerleader voice she uses during pep rallies when they hand her the blow horn. Her smile wide and toothy, like she is in on the joke I have yet to hear. Did she plan this? No, she knows that I would hate—hate—that and give her the childish silent treatment every day by spending lunch in the library surrounded by books.
My guilty pleasure.
“Kennie.” He nods his blonde head, and worn Seahawks cap, in her direction, as if to acknowledge her in the High School Acceptable way—without emotion. “How’re you doing?” he asks her, taking a real interest in her.
Hmm, surprising.
Maybe she’s wrong and he is here for her? Really, what if he’s only sitting next to me because it’s the only open seat at the table, this way he can stare at her, ogle her flawless beauty, and creep the only way he knows how.
As much as I’d love that, as much as some little piece of me wishes to believe that, it can’t be true. Duke is one of his good friends, from what I remember. I’d like to think that Ryder is the scum of the Earth, but I heard somewhere in this hell that is high school that Ryder would never, and I quote, ‘mess with a friend’s girl.’
I take a bite, a bit too aggressively, from the apple as Kennie replies politely, “I’m good, Ryder.” I swear that the girl is beaming. I really want to peel the banana but there is no way I’m eating that in front of him. I’ve seen teen movies and I’m already joked about enough around here.