Reclaiming the Sand

by A. Meredith Walters

  formatted by E.M. Tippetts Book Designs

  Other Books by A. Meredith Walters

  Lead Me Not

  Find You in the Dark Series

  Find You in the Dark

  Light in the Shadows

  Cloud Walking (A Find You in the Dark novella)

  Warmth in Ice (A Find You in the Dark novella)

  Bad Rep Series

  Bad Rep

  Perfect Regret

  For Gwyn

  Because I promised this one was for you.

  “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

  -Mother Teresa-

  -Ellie-

  I am an ugly person.

  I do ugly things.

  I think ugly thoughts.

  You will hate me.

  You will detest the choices that I have made.

  You won’t understand me at all.

  You may feel some sympathy. A shred of sadness for the woman I’ve become. It’s hard not to feel bad for the person who has fallen so far.

  But you will love him.

  It’s hard not to.

  He is everything that I’m not.

  He is good. He is kind. He cares for others deeply and absolutely.

  He is talented. He is shy. He is smart in ways I can only dream of.

  He loves with all of his heart.

  He believes when I refute. He succeeds when I fail. He blooms when I shrivel up and die.

  Why does a man like this want a woman like me?

  It’s blasphemous. Improbable. Completely wrong.

  But he does.

  He sees the beauty where others don’t. He hears love when others only hear pain. He gives me the strength to become the person I’ve been terrified to be.

  You will hate me.

  You will love him.

  I love him.

  He has changed my world.

  -Ellie-

  I handed the yellow slip of paper to the bored looking girl behind the counter. “Box number 113,” I said impatiently. The girl didn’t bother to make eye contact as she took the slip from me and turned her back after closing her mouth on a yawn.

  She came back a minute later with a small brown box and handed it to me. I took it without a thank you. Manners weren’t my thing. Squeezing my package in my hands I hurried out of the post office. I felt a thrill of excitement as I crossed the street and let myself into my tiny ground floor apartment.

  The sad state of neglect I lived in didn’t register. It never did. The stale air smelled sour but it didn’t bother me. The giant hole in the ceiling where the plaster was missing didn’t matter. I quickly went into my bedroom and shut the door. I made my way to my dresser and laid the box down.

  With eager fingers I ripped it open, pulling out tissue paper and dropping it on the floor. My hands practically shook as I reached inside and pulled the small, perfectly detailed replica of the Taj Mahal. I held it in my palm and gently touched it, amazed and totally in awe of the craftsmanship that went into creating such a perfect piece of art.

  Carefully I placed the figurine in its place amongst the others of similar size and quality. I admired my new edition, sat there beside the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben. There was the Sphinx and the Sydney Opera House. The Kremlin and Christ the Redeemer. They were beautiful and my one allowed sentimental indulgence.

  Now that I had added the new purchase to my collection, I swiftly left my room and shut the door. Closing my excitement and momentary feelings of joy inside. Locked away where they belonged.

  Not bothering to change, I went to work, walking three blocks to the run down convenience store where I spent forty hours a week. Jeb, the owner, had new metal bars installed over the windows just last week and already it looked as though someone had taken a hacksaw to them.

  People in this town had no shame. They had no respect for other’s property. Little care and attention had been given to the blocks of buildings housing storefronts and apartments.

  The town of Wellsburg, West Virginia was dying a slow and painful death. And I was trapped inside. This ship would be taking me down with it.

  I walked through the door of JAC’s Quick Stop, the bell sounding out like a tortured cow above me. It was empty. It was always empty. I wasn’t sure why Jeb bothered to hire anyone to begin with. Customers were like good taste in this godforsaken part of the world, non-existent.

  JAC’s Quick Stop was a mouthful, so the locals had shortened it to JAC’s. Jeb had originally named the store for his floozy ex-wife, Jemma Anne Crawford, who had left him over two years ago for the pimply faced pizza delivery guy twenty years her junior. It had been quite the scandal, but the gossip had eventually fizzled out under the weight of real life, which wasn’t as exciting but a lot more depressing.

  Wellsburg sat in a tiny pocket of land in the Appalachian Mountains. We weren’t a bunch of mountain folk that slept with our cousins and kept chickens in the house, but it was a place where hope disappeared.

  It had been founded for the coal miners and their families and had at one time been alive and thriving. But that was before the Black River coalmines had collapsed in a horrific accident twenty-five years ago. Over fifty men had been killed and the company operating the mine had sunk under the heaviness of public disapproval and official investigations into the safety of their operation.

  People began to move away from Wellsburg and those that had stayed behind were the ones with nowhere else to go.

  It made sense that the small town was still my home. It was the perfect place for a girl with no plan. No future. No one that really gave a damn.

  But I wasn’t lonely or bitter. I had stopped feeling sorry for myself by the time I had entered my third foster home at the age of seven. The tears had dried up. Emotions packed away. The need to survive at all costs taking their place.

  So here I was, twenty-two years old, working shitty hours at a dead end job, and living with a grim acceptance of my fate.

  I hung up my jacket and purse on the hook behind the cash register. I didn’t greet the young boy who sat on the stool behind the counter. He gave me a nervous smile before vacating his seat, leaving it for me to occupy.

  “Hi, Ellie,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Hi Steve,” I answered back. He blinked at me in surprise, perhaps because I said hi, or maybe because I remembered his name. It wasn’t something I typically bothered to do. But I was feeling a little nicer than normal after receiving my package.

  “I’m clocking out now that you’re here. See you later?” Steve posed the statement as a question. Was he expecting an answer? Why would he see me later? It was a stupid thing to ask. But sixteen-year-olds weren’t known for their brilliance.

  I didn’t say anything. I hopped up on the stool; pulled out the magazine I had left under the counter yesterday and popped a stick of Juicy Fruit into my mouth.

  “Okay…see ya,” Steve said, a last ditch effort for my attention. I ignored him.

  He finally left and I was alone in the empty store.

  After a few minutes, boredom started to kick in and I began to wander the aisles, alphabetizing soup cans and making crazy designs with the boxes of pasta. That occupied about twenty minutes of my time.

  Six more hours to go.

  I grabbed a soda and a bag of pretzels and returned to my station behind the counter. I watched the security monitor from the camera trained on the alleyway behind the building.

  It amused me how many dumb asses didn’t realize a camera was there. It was better than reality television. I filled my mouth with pretzels and watched as a guy and a girl started getting it on by the dumpsters.

  I could think
of better places to have sex than beside rotting garbage, but to each their own. It was a good thing there wasn’t sound, because it would have gotten down right pornographic.

  I turned away from the screen and started flipping through my magazine again. I pulled out a leaflet I had stashed in the back and smoothed out the creases.

  Black River Community College was emblazoned on the front in a fancy, swirly font. The brochure was shiny, with bright colors, and pretty photographs meant to catch the eye. Smiling students on manicured lawns under a sunny sky.

  It was all a bunch of bullshit. I had been over to the BRCC campus several times, mostly out of curiosity, and it looked nothing like the glossy pictures in front of me. It was pretty, don’t get me wrong, but it was a far cry from the perfection they were trying to peddle.

  I had picked up the pamphlet from where it had been displayed at the free clinic. I had given my friend, Dania, a ride for her monthly prenatal checkup. It had been sitting there, lost in the pile of information about healthy eating and STDs.

  But I found it anyway. And then my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about the pages full of minute details. The website address. The phone number. Just a mouse click away from a whole new life.

  The thought of college was appealing. I had never let myself think about it before. I hadn’t even been able to graduate from high school. I had earned my GED while wasting away in Juvenile Detention until I was eighteen.

  A girl with a rap sheet and no prospects was not exactly bright, shiny future material.

  But I had allowed myself to pick up the brochure and slip it into my purse. And there it had stayed, burning a hole in my subconscious.

  Until a few days later I had caved to my delusional thinking and made a phone call that could very well change the trajectory of my world. I had set up an appointment to go down to the college and talk about my options. After I had hung up I had felt sick, convinced that I had made a horrific mistake.

  Because now my mind was occupied with possibilities.

  If I wasn’t careful, I just might make myself start thinking that I had a chance. And that was a scary sort of insanity for a girl like me.

  The bell droned miserably as the door swung open. I heard a tittering laugh and a guy’s unintelligible whispers.

  “I knew you’d be here.” I looked up to see the two people who had been fucking like rabbits in the alleyway only moments before. My best friend Dania Blevins, wearing a tight belly shirt that exposed her growing baby bump, was wrapped around a random guy I only vaguely recognized as a regular at our regular hangout, The Woolly Mammoth Bar and Grill, a few streets over.

  Dania picked up a few bags of chips and shoved them into her bag. “Take whatever,” she said to the guy, who swiped a chocolate bar and a pack of gum, which he looked like he desperately needed.

  “You gonna pay for that?” I asked, knowing it was useless to ask.

  “Ells, you are the funniest chick I know,” she chortled, opening the freezer and pulling out a Creamsicle.

  I took the ice cream wrapper from her outstretched hand and threw it in the waste bin behind me. I would have to remember to put some money in the register to cover her sticky fingers before closing up tonight.

  “Craig and I are heading down to Woolly’s. You wanna meet us there when you’re done?” Dania asked, slurping on her ice cream and giving Craig a lascivious look.

  I shrugged, not wanting to admit that I couldn’t stomach another night watching her knock back shots of Jaeger, while she rested her hand on her swollen stomach. She was four months pregnant. She knew she was having a little boy. But it didn’t change her lifestyle one bit.

  Sure the pregnancy had been an accident, caused by Dania’s promiscuity and lack of family planning, but that didn’t excuse her selfishness. She joked that she had been raised Catholic and subscribed to the pull out method as a form of birth control.

  Obviously that had worked out really well for her.

  So now she was twenty-two years old, set to give birth in five months, and still smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish. And if I tried to say anything, she’d chew me a new asshole. And she did it in a way that was vicious and cruel and usually very, very public.

  But Dania was my oldest friend. We had been in the same foster home for two year before I had gone to juvie.

  We had hated each other on sight. But that had ended when we realized that protecting each other from our pervy foster dad was more important than any dislike we had shared.

  It was a friendship born out of survival. One that had been necessary rather than a natural bond formed by people who genuinely liked each other. Our friendship became like a bad case of herpes. It was uncomfortable, sometimes it made you sick, but it never went away.

  Dania was a loud mouthed, overly dramatic bitch with serious psychotic tendencies. She had been in the system almost as long as I had. Her mother had given her up when she was ten after her dad had died, finding the out of control behavior of a grieving child too much to handle.

  As a result, there was a direct correlation between the frequency she spread her legs and her desire to be loved. It was textbook. And it landed her with an unwanted pregnancy and no idea who the father was.

  Whatever her faults, Dania was the only person to stay in contact with me during the two years I was in juvie. She would take a bus over to Mt. Hope almost every weekend, without fail. And when I got out, with nowhere to go, she offered me her couch.

  So even if I didn’t like her choices, even if she made me want to pull my hair out most of the time, I would never turn my back on her. That’s how I rolled. Loyal to the point of stupidity.

  “I don’t think so. I’m beat,” I said indifferently. Dania giggled while Craig grabbed her ass. And while he did so, he leered at me suggestively, his cold dark eyes lingering on my bigger than average chest.

  My friend sure knew how to pick ‘em.

  “Are you sure? The whole gang will be there,” Dania gasped as Craig did something I didn’t want to think about. He was still leering at me so I flipped him off. His smile grew. Bastard seemed to like that.

  “Definitely think I’ll pass then,” I muttered, looking away from the amateur porn show.

  “What is your problem?” Dania hissed under her breath. I had pissed her off. She didn’t take my disagreeing with her very well. She couldn’t understand why I’d be less than thrilled to hang out with the same sorry ass jokers we had partied with in high school.

  And I sure as hell couldn’t tell her that I planned to get up early and head over to the community college. That I had made an appointment to talk to a woman in the financial aid office to see whether I could afford to take a class. That I was thinking about actually doing something with my life. And continuing to hang around with my so-called friends would only bring me down.

  Because that would go over like a lead freaking balloon and would most likely involve lots of screaming, clawing and hair pulling. Dania was a scrappy fighter and it didn’t take much to set her off. I had been on the receiving end of those evil nails more times than I could count.

  “I’m just tired,” I began but started to cave under the strength of Dania’s derision. Dania narrowed her eyes, her hand on her hip as she leveled me with her best don’t fuck with me bitch stare.

  “Fine. I’ll head over after my shift. There had better be a shot waiting for me,” I said, giving in. I was just glad to see that both of Craig’s hands were now in plain sight and no longer underneath Dania’s skirt.

  The bell chirped above the door and I barely glanced up as someone came into the store.

  “We’ll see ya later, snatch,” Dania sing-songed. She grabbed a pack of Jolly Ranchers and another soda. I mentally added the items to the running total.

  I eyeballed Craig, daring him to eye-fuck me again, but he looked away. Good thing too. Because I wasn’t above gouging the smarmy blues out of their sockets.

  I propped my elbows up on the counter and cradled my
chin, swinging my legs as I sat on the stool. Looking around the tiny convenience store, it was hard not to get depressed.

  I hadn’t exactly progressed in my life. After I got out of juvie I was focused on living. That was it. That’s all I had been capable of.

  Finding a place to live. Food in my stomach. Money in my pocket. Those were my only goals. I hadn’t allowed myself to think of anything else.

  Being locked up for two years, waiting to turn eighteen, hoping you won’t get shanked for your hair gel, sucks your soul dry. Dreams were definitely not allowed. Not that I ever had them to begin with. My life had beaten all of the good out of me until there was nothing left but the shell of a person I was now.

  And heading to juvenile detention was the icing on the crappy cake. Every horrible thing they tell you about incarceration to scare the shit out of you was 100% true.

  It’s a terrible place. It makes you angry. It makes you mean. It ensures you will do just about anything to survive. I knew a thing or two about survival before doing my time, so I had naively thought that I was better prepared than most for what lay ahead.

  I had been completely and totally wrong.

  The acidic taste of my own bitterness burned the back of my tongue. It was always there. It never left me.

  The squeaking of sneakers on the worn linoleum made me jerk my head up. The store was silent except for the ear-splitting screech of rubber on the floor. I caught sight of a brown mop of hair disappearing behind a shelf.

  I really hoped it wasn’t some asshole high schooler trying to shop lift something. I wasn’t in the mood to chase them down. Hell, I’d probably let them take the entire store. That’s how disinterested I was.

  I pulled the college flyer out of my pocket again and looked at it long and hard. Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to bite the bullet and see what else was out there for me in the big, scary world?

  I felt a tingling on the back of my neck and rubbed at it furiously. What the heck? I looked up and saw the dark head again, ducking behind a display of magazines. Something about the convenience store creeper made me uncomfortable.