by James, Ella
And suddenly there’s Dove, and Blue, and more.
I look at their faces only.
I don’t want to see the guns.
I shut my eyes and summon Gwenna’s face. She’ll never understand. I love her. It was all an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her…I didn’t mean to love her.
“Couldn’t help it.”
My eyes shut, on their own.
“Bear?” Dove’s voice; maybe Blue’s hands on my shoulders.
I blink up at him and then…the sting.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gwenna
January 4, 2016
In darkness, light looks brighter. We keep passing all these little towns in—where? Where are we? Kansas? Oklahoma? Somewhere prairie-ish. It’ll be pitch black except our headlights. I’ll be half asleep, my mind wiped blank for half a second. Then that light. It looks like the beam of a spaceship from behind my eyelids. I’ll open them up and it’s like, two farmhouses and a barn. Blinding in the darkness. There’ll be this lone horse hanging by the fence line, mane all blowing in the wind, maybe a piece of tumbleweed darting across the road, and it’s just so depressing. So depressing.
It’s my fault, though. This is what I told Jamie I wanted. Get back home to my bears. See Papa. I can tell she doesn’t think I’m strong enough. She keeps mentioning my mom’s, or Rett’s house. How they want to see me. Yeah.
“Are you awake?” she murmurs.
“Of course.” I sigh, then make a mental note to stop the sighing. Nothing says I’m a bottomless pit of black angst like a noisy sigh.
“You should really take an Ativan.”
And be transported back to January 2012 in yet another way?
“No thanks.”
“Stubborn.”
“Pushy,” I snip.
“You’re allowed to be stubborn,” she says with her own sigh. “Right now, I’d say you’re allowed to be whatever you want.”
I don’t have a reply for that. I don’t have a reply for most things, so I just look at my cuticles, then at the road, lit up some ways ahead by the rear lights of what I think are several eighteen-wheelers in a row.
The truth is, I wish I could take Ativan. Or Xanax. I wish I could take anything, but these last couple of days, I’ve been haunted by those first few months after the accident. I don’t even want to see an Ativan, much less swallow one and enter zombie mode. I might not have much right now, but I have my own thoughts and feelings—awful though they are.
I take a sip of my McDonald’s latte, lift my gaze up to the car clock. It’s 12:39 a.m. Soon, I think Jamie will want to stop.
It doesn’t matter where we stop, or when, really. Even without the Ativan, I’ll go to sleep at some point. I’ll wake up. We’ll have to find breakfast, gas the car back up, and get back on the road.
And in another day or two, we’ll be back to Gatlinburg. Home. And I will see my bears. I’ll keep on sleeping, eating, showering, because what else is there to do? Dig a pit and fall inside and die? I’ve thought of it—believe me. But giving up is pointless. Not to mention, difficult. I’m not wired that way. I never really have been. Even in 2012. I never really gave up. I got sad, but I didn’t quit holding on.
That’s the worst thing about life, I think. The way it doesn’t stop when your heart does. It feels illogical, the way time marches on, and you walk too, slowly, surreally, feeling like a fish on land. Even when you can’t make sense of it, eventually, you kind of have to. There’s no other way. You do—because you have to. End of story.
I wish they wrote books and made movies about this: this helpless, numb continuum. I wish I could go off the deep end. Shave my hair off. Bash someone else’s car windshield in. Refuse to leave the bed. But that’s not real life.
What is?
I don’t know.
What will I do when I get back there?
Will he be there?
Jamie told me “no.” She said Nic’s been keeping up with him through his friends. Breck’s buddies. Of which he—Nic—was apparently one.
Nic says Bear isn’t even in the South. I heard Jamie on the phone with him last night from where I stood outside her door, crying silently, about to go inside and cry in her bed. She was saying, “So he disappeared? Back to that cabin?”
Then her super ears picked up my sniffling and she got off the phone. But I know what she meant, I think. Bear had a cabin over the summer. He spent some of this past summer up here in Breckenridge. Before deciding to find me, I guess.
I look at the dashboard and I see us walking down that road. I know what I know about his real feelings for me because of how he disappeared. Jamie found me in some PTSD fugue, lying in the snow, but there was blood under my fingernails. My knuckles are still bruised and cut. My right elbow is sore and looks a little greenish. When I tried to talk to her that night—two nights ago, I think—I barely even had a voice.
I think I screamed at him.
I know I hit him.
I don’t really remember…but I have this feeling. I remember feeling…rage. I can almost kind of see his face. Wide eyes. Red eyes. I can feel the difference in our sizes. He was solid underneath my fists. He was mine.
Tears pool in my eyes and start to streak down my cheeks.
I loved him!
I wanted nothing more than him.
Barrett.
My Barrett.
Made up. Fiction. Gone.
The man I loved doesn’t exist.
He didn’t love me. He felt sorry for me.
How pathetic did he think I was? The way his guilt mixed in with empathy and sorrow. Not to mention loneliness.
I was his atonement, I think. Or rather, I wonder. I heard people talking the day after: New Year’s Day. Something about how he didn’t mean to. Didn’t mean to lose his dick inside of my vagina, I guess. Didn’t mean to lie, to go to Christmas with me, didn’t mean to tell me all about his life.
What happened between us was an accident. The second tragic accident featuring the us as co-stars.
Oh, how much I hate him.
Want to hate him.
I don’t even know I nodded off until I wake under a hotel awning dreaming something strange, in which I’m saying, “Can’t.”
* * *
Barrett
January 5, 2016
“Hold on now.” The woman holds one finger up. “Say that again?” She’s almost smiling. It’s this weird half smile that’s not a smile. Her head is tilted sideways. I keep waiting for my heart to pound, but I’m steady as a stone as I say it again.
“I’m guilty of a hit and run. On New Year’s Eve, 2012.”
Her lips roll themselves together. I watch her grayish eyebrows tighten and her brown eyes sharpen. I can see her thinking.
“Twelve…” Her cheek indents from where her molars bite down on it, but her gaze is shrewd on mine. “I think I might remember something. Tell me more, mister…?”
“Sergeant Drake.” I blink. “Sorry. My name is Barrett Drake. Retired Army.”
I tell the woman everything I can, omitting every detail that involves my friends. Two hours later, I’m booked into the Breckenridge County Jail.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gwenna
January 10, 2016
Gatlinburg
I look funny in the bathroom mirror. Not sexy. Not pretty. Strange. I half-expect to see him standing just behind me. But Barrett is a ghost. He might have been made-up, for how real he turned out to be.
He isn’t here.
He hasn’t called.
He doesn’t care.
Because he never really loved me.
He used me.
He was hurt, and I was here. My heart stings to even think it. I can feel my blood thrum with the want of him. It’s like a drug. An awful drug. The kind of thing that you can never free yourself from once you’ve tasted it.
I know how fake it all was, really. How he came here just to tell me what he’d done. He saw me at the meeting tha
t night, heard my story, so of course he bought the house.
Funny how I almost can’t assign blame to him. It was me who kicked him in the head. It was me who threw myself at him.
I laugh, and hate my fucking smile. Snarile. I snarile wider. My eyes pulse with pressure and the mirror blurs. I snatch my phone off the counter and hurl it at the mirror. The thing doesn’t even break.
“FUCK!”
I double over and can’t stop the sob that bursts out of my throat.
I don’t want to care, don’t want to love him still. His love for me was fake and tainted. Barrett pitied me. No way he didn’t.
There is no way Barrett could have loved me.
I was wrong to think he could. Too perfect… I laugh through my crying. That I could even think that kind of thing could happen to me. I’m what’s tainted.
Bitterness hangs off me like a too-large coat, and feels like someone else’s. But it’s mine. This life is mine—and I don’t want it.
* * *
Barrett
January 19, 2016
Gatlinburg
This town has a fucking wine delivery service. Who the hell would think? Since I got here on the 12th, I’ve watched that fucking fuchsia-colored van climb up her driveway, watched them stop and get out. Some guy in a fucking apron, with that little rectangular brown bag. Gwenna cracks the door open and reaches out her skinny arm and I can see her pale hand stretch out in a half-assed wave, and then the door is shut. The guy drives off.
I know she’s drinking all day. I still have the cams inside her house, and I have no more shame. I watch them all the fucking time. Obsessed.
If I wasn’t before I met her, I know I am now—and I don’t give one single, solitary fuck.
She drinks and cries, and I watch.
Tell me why I shouldn’t.
I did this to Gwenna: start to finish. Hit her. Left. And then I pushed my way into her life. I let myself get drawn to her. I knew I shouldn’t—from square one. Before the meeting, even, when I heard her speak up at that podium, I was obsessed with her. Obsessed with my own guilt. That I had hurt something so precious. She was beautiful and kind. I saw her with the bears, the way she held the big one up against her like some living patron saint of wounded animals.
It was fucked up—how much I loved watching her. How bad it made me feel about myself. I wanted it. Craved it. She was everything I wanted—kind and gentle, loving, bright, soft, gorgeous. But she was guilt, too. Penance. That’s what I thought I was doing when I first watched her. I watched her limp. I watched her smile. I felt my heart light up with pain and it felt right: a reason not to die yet.
Then I saw her that night, talking. Saw the way she walked down off the dais with her head held high. I could see how much she loved her business. How pissed off she was, and how tenacious. And somehow, I started thinking about her more than myself.
What I could do to make things up to her. As if I ever could.
I bought the house. To give it to her. When I told her.
I was supposed to tell her. Dove and Bluebell knew I needed it, so they covered for me—Dove especially; he was stateside, and at that time, Bluebell wasn’t. We agreed that it would be okay and I would tell her. If she did press charges, I had come up with a story that wouldn’t incriminate anyone but me. A cover story. Not that hard.
The General’s people would find out afterward. And Blue could try to fight for me. At that point, everyone watching the situation would see for themselves that I hadn’t taken anybody down with me, so why the need to kill me? And if they did, well…
Dove and Blue both knew I didn’t really care.
Absolution. That was all I ever wanted. Just to get that huge weight off my shoulders and feel clean again, if that could even happen.
Then things changed. I couldn’t stay away from her. I got too close. She kicked me.
Sometimes I wonder why she had the key. Why did she have a copy of my house key that day? Why did God let her get in? I still pray the things I learned at her church, but I’m not sure if there’s a God at all.
He let her in. He let her touch me. I was gone. I should have known right then, I should have fucking left town, but I was weak.
I needed her. Not wanted. Needed, like the need to breathe or swallow.
Free will? I’m not so sure about that. I eviscerate myself for not leaving, but if I could have, I would have—right?
My real belief: I couldn’t go. As soon as I spoke to her, as soon as she touched me, I was lost to Gwenna White.
I don’t understand it. Something…fit. That thing I needed fixed inside me, it was quieter when she was around. The more I got of her, the smaller the wound became. It healed.
Magic. Who could walk away from magic?
Maybe it wasn’t possible for me to get away from her. Or maybe it was, and I’m a greedy asshole.
I don’t know.
What was the purpose of this?
I don’t fucking know. I wish I did.
It gets dark, the house gets quiet, and I get scared. I feel it, feel the darkness. There’s the purpose. I can feel it like an undertow, pulling me down where I can’t breathe, where I can never re-surface.
Good, it whispers.
Over there, it used to speak. You would feel it in the air that day when something happened. Die. You’re going to die.
But I don’t want to die, because she’s still alive. She’s right next door. I can’t leave Gwen. I know I ought to. But I can’t. When she cries, I cry with her. I’ve already sold all the guns, but then there are the knives. There’s a bungee cord down in the basement closet. There’s a thousand ways. I know them all.
So torn…
That truck goes up and down her driveway, and I watch while my mind races.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gwenna
January 22, 2016
“Gwenna Isabella White. This has got to stop. Lift your head up and look at me, you little drunk!”
When I don’t, she walks over and grabs me by my temples and she makes me.
“Owwww. That…doesn’t feel good.”
“Good. It’s not supposed to.”
Jamie drops my head, and through my closed eyes, I see bright light.
“Don’t…”
“Oh yes. Curtains open. Veni vidi vici!”
I can hear her coming over to me, so I try to draw my shoulders in and push my face into the pillow like some kind of drunk, sick turtle.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She grabs my shirt collar, tugging. I bat at her hands.
“This is Stella McCartney, slutface. And it’s cute.” My words are croaks.
“Well that’s a shame, because there’s wine all over it.”
A half-assed shriek escapes my lips. I lurch up.
“Huhh?”
I turn…slowly—my head throbs—to find Jamie smirking with her arms crossed.
“That’s what it took. I’m not surprised.”
“What?” I draw my elbows in against my ribcage, cradling my sore head in my hands. “It’s bright.”
“You’re still as vain as you have been since college.”
“I’m not vain.”
“Materialistic.”
“Materialistic?” My pulse pounds above my eyebrows.
Jamie smirks again. “I’m teasing, Gwen babe, but at least it got you moving. I can tell that you’re alive now.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because your brother came by earlier today. He couldn’t get you to the door, so we were worried. He called, and you answered. You said you were sick. He asked what was the matter, you told him swine flu. I don’t even think that that’s a thing right now, but that was a red flag to him, I guess. Which is another way of saying you sounded drunker than Cooter Brown.”
“Who the fuck is Cooter Brown?”
Through my shaking fingers, I see Jamie shrug in her crisp, light blue blouse. “I’m not sure, now that you ask. It’s something that my grandma says. We
probably don’t want to know. You know how those old, Southern stories are.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Why the hell is she still talking?
I hear something. Crack an eyelid open.
I find Jamie by me… Sniffing. “Woman, how long since you had a bath?”
I stick my middle finger up. “Today,” I lie.
I’m not sure when it was, but there’s no way I smell. I wear deodorant and have a Glade Plug-In right there in the bathroom. I put it in for—
My throat seizes, and I’m darting toward the bathroom faster than I would have thought was possible. For whatever reason, my still-slightly-drunk self sees the sink as an easier target than the toilet, so that’s where I throw up, a bunch of awful, streaky, slightly reddish stuff.
“I’m not sure if that’s gross or impressive. It’s like The Exorcist.”
I want to hit her.
“What?” she asks, one eyebrow arched, as I wipe my face with a wet washcloth. “Would you like me to enable you and lie?”
“Enable.” I roll my eyes. Ouch. “Get out.” I wave at her. “I’ll take a shower.”
“Good. When you finish, we’re going out to dinner.”
I feel queasy at the thought.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be your very own bodyguard and life coach. Nic is coming, and he’ll drive us.”
* * *
Gwenna
January 24, 2016
“So what was the drinking about?” Helga’s smooth voice unfurls through the cool, clean air inside her office.
I shrug. “I don’t know.” I’m looking at my feet, not even bothering to front. Because I’m lazy, I guess. “Self-pity. Or bitterness.”