by Nessa Morgan
“JOEY!”
I'm screaming. I’m screaming so loud, there’s pain as my voice rips from my throat.
The door bounces against the wall before arms circle around my body, tugging me to a hard chest that's warm and comforting. But it’s not what I want. The thought of his touch sickens me and I push against him.
“DON'T TOUCH ME!” I scream, shoving him away. I crawl back as far as I can, hitting my head against the wall. I wrap my arms around my legs and sob into my knees.
“Okay,” he concedes, backing away. Shock covers his face as he watches me freak out against the wall. “I won't touch you.” He holds up my shirt to me. “You should probably put this on.”
I don't take the shirt. I let his hand fall into his lap as he stares at me, sighing. His eyes train on the t-shirt, staring at what I was wearing, and my mind trails back to twenty minutes ago, when everything was okay.
“I'm sorry, Joey,” Zephyr begins, his voice pleading. “What did I do? I'm sorry for whatever I did.” His hands reach out for me but I recoil. He sees, defeat covering his face. Never have I recoiled from his touch, I’ve always welcomed it; I’ve always wanted him when everything else seemed to fail.
How can I tell him that he didn’t do anything? How can I tell him that it was the voice inside my head? The voice of him.
“You need to go,” I blubber out.
“Joey—”
It takes everything in me, but I say it. “Zephyr, you need to leave, now.”
I can't describe what happened to me, I can't begin to understand what just went through my mind, but what I do know is that there is something wrong with me, something that I can't begin to tell him. No matter how much I love him, I can never tell him this.
He leans back, drags his hand through his hair, and stands up. He buttons his jeans before he leaves the bathroom, taking one look at me before walking into my room to grab his shoes and shirt. It isn't long before he is gone and I'm lying across the floor, listening to the fireworks exploding outside the house.
Happy New Year to me.
***
I spent the rest of break hiding in my room with the blinds drawn, thinking about what my brain is trying to decipher, what secrets it’s trying to decode. Hilary spent most of her days off, because she was on a vacation, with Patrick, but she stopped by my room a few times to check in on me.
“You okay?” she asked me one day. She walked into my room, without knocking, and flicked on the overhead light, blinding me as I lay in my bed. My blinds were drawn, I hadn’t turned on the lamp even, I just wanted to be alone and wallow.
I even avoided Zephyr.
I drag the blanket over my eyes, ignoring her question.
“Are you talking to me?” she asks angrily. I can hear the harrumph in her voice. I still don’t acknowledge her. “Joey!” she tries again.
I fling the blanket away from my head, staring at my aunt as she stands over my bed. “What do you want?” I snap.
“Don’t take that town with me, missy.” I swear, she snaps. “I haven’t seen you for the better part of a week. I’m making sure you’re alive.”
“I’m alive.” The anger surges my veins. Can’t she see that I just want to be alone.
“What’s going on, Joey,” Hilary asks, concern and worry thick in her voice.
“Nothing is going on,” I snap. “Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?” I roll over to my side, tugging my iPod from beneath my pillow and shoving the buds into my ears. I just want to drown within the words of Otep.
I’m not sure how long she stayed, I’m not sure when she left, I just know that when I turned back around, she was gone and I was alone. The only time I left my bed was to turn off my light.
The nightmares were getting worse, supremely, and now things made more sense.
I’m six years old and lying in bed when they start, they always start like that.
Mommy just put me to bed, singing me a lullaby like she does every night, then she leaves and I’m alone in the dark. I don’t like the dark, scary things that happen in the dark, but Daddy won’t let me get a nightlight. I for a Disney Princess one.
My eyes slowly close, shutting out the minimal light streaming through the venetian blinds, and I fall asleep.
The bed shifting wakes me with a start.
But it’s only Daddy.
“There’s my beautiful baby girl,” he whispers in the night. His hand reaches up to smooth my hair down, moving it away from my face. He’s blurry without my glasses. “Want to make Daddy happy again?” he asks.
I know that means and I don’t like it, I never did, but he tells me that it makes him happy, that it makes him love me more. All I want is for him to love me.
I try to wake up then, I want to end it there, but I’m never lucky. It all plays out in my head; every sickening touch, every painful move, and I wake up in tears.
***
Zephyr continues to call me, text me, he even emails me, but I don’t respond. I don’t know what to tell him. Oh, yeah, sorry about New Year’s Eve but, as it turns out, my dad molested me as a kid. That’s why I freaked the fuck out when you touched me, because I had a memory. It’s not you, it’s me and my psycho issues. As much as that makes sense, I can’t tell him that.
I should just break up with him. It’d be easier to cut the ties sooner rather than later.
When classes start up, I do my best just to tune Jamie out in the morning, pretending there’s something I need to do in my room before we head out for school. I even ignore Zephyr as he tries to talk to me, but it’s useless, he’s in my first class of the day—sitting right next to me.
“I sit right next to you, Joey,” he starts when Mr. Cheney has his back to the class. “I live right next door to you; you’ll have to talk to me eventually.”
I shake my head, trying to drown out the sweet, soothing sound of his voice as he inches closer to me. The end of class is near; I continue looking at the clock above the door, praying time moves faster, but like they say, a watched pot never boils, so I continue my note taking while Zephyr tries to get me to look at him.
I want to tell him to stop wasting his time. I want to gain the nerve to break up with him, just tell him to find someone better than me. There has to be someone out there better for him than me. I’m crazy—I see that now. There’s something deep within me, disgusting and twisted that has just revealed itself. I’m not normal, I’m tainted and impure, I’m just… wrong for him.
But I really don’t want to do that. The one thing I fear, even if we were no longer together romantically, is that I would lose his friendship.
I can’t lose that. Not now.
The bell rings and I bolt from the room, carrying my notebook and textbook in my arms to save time, but Zephyr catches up with me.
“Joey, you need to—” he starts, the sound of hardback books and paper scattering cutting him off as my hands drop and my things fall around us.
“Balls!” I say, dropping down to grab everything.
None of this stops him, though. “Are you going to talk to me?” he asks, grabbing my notes before someone steps on them.
I don’t reply.
“Joey, please,” he begs, his eyes looking to me. I can feel them.
“I can’t,” I whisper, dropping down until I’m seated in the middle of the hallway. “I just can’t.” Tears swell in my eyes, blurring my vision, and it’s taking all my strength not to lose it. I need to remain in control if I’m going to do this.
“What do you mean?” Zephyr asks. “You can’t what? You can’t do this anymore?”
I foolishly look up to him. “Zephyr.” I see the pain on his face, the hurt in his eyes, and it’s like the beginning all over again.
“Are you breaking up with me?” he asks, his voice an almost inaudible whisper. I shouldn’t have been able to hear him, not with the students talking loudly as they passed, but his voice was able to float through the air and stab me in the heart.
I
t would be easy—breaking up with him, and it would be for the best. He can do better than me, I know that. I’m just finally able to admit it. Zephyr and I were never meant for happily ever after, we would not get married, we would not grow old together. We would not buy that perfect little house with a wooden porch where we could sit out in the summer days watching our grandchildren play in the yard. Those dreams are too farfetched for someone like me.
Zephyr Kalivas, he can do so much better than me. One day, he’ll see this was for the best. This is for the best.
“Yes,” I tell the floor. Tears well in the corners of my eyes and I try not to blink. I can’t blink—he can’t see me cry. That would only mean that I’m wrong about this entire thing. I can’t be wrong about this. This is for him, this is for him, doing this is for him. I’ll keep saying that until its burned into my brain, until I can fall asleep and say it in my dreams, until I can look at him and know that he’ll have a better life than he can ever have with me.
I’ll say it until it feels like the truth.
I don’t see the look fall from his face, but I know it does. I don’t see his breath halt in his lungs, but I know it does. I don’t see a lot of things, but I know they happen, just like I know that Zephyr waited for me to look up at him. I do but I pray my eyes don’t deceive me, that they don’t reveal the biggest secret hidden within me: I’m not sure I can move on without Zephyr in my life.
His hand thrusts out, my notebook clutched between his gripping fingers. “Here.” It’s fast and hollow, the word that leaves his lips. No emotion on his face as he turns away from me. I watch him walk down the hall, weaving through the crowd until he disappears.
My body slumps, sags in on itself like I’ve been deflated. My heart has. It’s for the best. It’s for the best. I stare at random tiles on the floor as the hallway empties around me. I’m supposed to be in class, I’m supposed to be in Calculus, but I can’t force myself to move. I can’t force myself…
The last place that I want to be is school. What I did—I know it’s for Zephyr’s best interests, it’s for his own good that I push him away now rather than later and watch us both get hurt. So I stand up, grab everything scattered around me and go home.
I fling open the front door, spotting Hilary sitting at the dining room table with a cup of steaming coffee and the newspaper.
“Joey?” she asks, her eyes popping up from the words in front of her. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in school?”
I drop my backpack on the floor and rush over to her to do something I’ve never willingly done before. I fall into her arms and wait for them to encircle me. I cry into her robe as she rubs her hands up and down my back.
“What happened, honey?” she coos quietly when my blubbering calms. “Do you want to tell me?”
“I broke up with Zephyr,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“Because it’s inevitable.”
I can’t tell her the real reason. That when he touches me, I see flashbacks; I hear voices of the past. That since we started dating, my brain has been drowning in memories, forcing me to suffocate beneath the waves.
“You couldn’t know that, honey,” she whispers by my ear as my body shakes with sobs.
But I do because I am ruined; I am beyond flawed to the point where I can’t even recognize myself. I was chewed up and spit out, thrown away by my own mind. How can my own body betray me like this?
Epilogue
The dark seemingly hollow place sucks me back in just when I thought I’d escaped. Dragging me by my hair until I fall away, pulling me lower and lower until the sensation is too much. The feeling of suffocation and drowning, is all I can feel.
I try to fight. I try to claw my way to freedom, but the struggle is too great, too overwhelming for my weak body. I can’t pull myself to safety, I can’t free myself from this hell I’ve dropped within.
Hell… Such a simple yet complicated word to describe this place.
This hell is too deep for me to climb from and too large for me to wander. What I want, what I crave, taunts and teases me as I wish for escape, pray for solace, but none come. And as I walk through this valley, the desolate place of heat and hell, I can’t help but wonder whom, if anyone can save me.
My steps throb the longer I walk, the longer my feet hit the worn path, my pace slowing as the fake stars blink and twinkle above. The night sky taunts me, showing glimpses of a freedom I can’t find.
But one false step, one trip on the muddied earth, sends my body spiraling forward, aiming for the ground—only it disappears. It disappears and I’m just falling through the air, falling into nothing, my hands searching for holds but finding none. So I just fall. I fall until my back slams into something hard but soft, the force knocking the wind from my lungs. I sink beneath the surface. The cold, dark water covers me: my mouth, my nose, my eyes. My vision goes blurry and I can’t release a sound.
I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe.
But I want to.
I wish for the air to inflate my thinning lungs and give me life, but it’s only water. It’s weighing me down, sinking me deeper until my will to live, my urge to fight through this, ebbs—and finally, I just give up.
The darkness above me, it’s too powerful and I just drift.
END OF BOOK ONE
###
About the Author
Nessa Morgan is a twenty-something nerd with too many books to read and too many tales to tell. She discovered her love of writing after an assignment in sixth grade where she wrote a legend about a hill in her neighborhood. Soon after that, her teacher submitted one of her poems to an anthology and it was selected. Nessa spends most of her time reading, writing, catching an occasional hockey game, and annoying her family and best friend with random trivia and bursts of song.
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