by Amy Matayo
“Sounds like a plan. People don’t need more bad news today anyway.”
I get rewarded with a shove on the stomach. She walks forward, and I walk backward until we reach the door.
“Nice try. And Micah? You might want to hit the bathroom before you head back downstairs. You have lipstick all over your neck.” With that, she pushes me out, then closes the door behind me.
I smile all the way to the men’s room.
Lipstick or not, coming up here was worth it.
Of course, I’d heard rumors.
Of course people talked, we lived in a small town after all. Other than driving through McDonald’s on Friday night, attending church on Sunday afternoons, and visiting the local bars during the hours in-between, there wasn’t much else to do but gossip about everyone else’s problems. I suppose it made people feel less awful about their own issues.
Of course I’d seen the scorch marks on her bedroom curtains.
But this was the first time I’d had firsthand proof. She stood in front of me in my bedroom, having climbed inside my window after my father left for work. We had perfected the art of sneaking around by then, had warn a path no one knew about from my house to hers—one so well-imprinted we could navigate it even in darkness.
One arm hung limp at her side while I examined the other.
“Presley, you need to let me take you to the doctor.”
She jerked out of my gasp and winced when my thumb slid over the two-inch strip of angry red flesh. “It doesn’t even hurt, and I don’t have insurance. What’s a doctor going to do for it that I can’t do?”
The it doesn’t even hurt thing was a lie; she didn’t need to flinch for me to know it. The mark bore resemblance to a curling iron being held in place for more than a few seconds. A cigarette if the entire stick were on fire, flaming on all sides, and rolled back and forth. Layers of flesh were gone, and the skin around the burn was beginning to peel away. Someone had hurt Presley on purpose, choosing punishment over love and revenge over understanding. I had never met her mother—had only seen her a handful of times from my bedroom window when she left the house on her way to God only knew where—but I hated the woman just the same.
“When did she do it?”
She tried to feign ignorance. “Who?”
I refused to play along. “Your mother. Unless you want me to believe you did this to yourself. Between you and me, I think we’re both past the point of playing that game.”
Presley worried her lip in hesitation, a telltale sign of the abused. Do I tell and risk retaliation, or do I stay quiet and hope this was the last time? I should know. I had gnawed a permanent knot into my own lip over the years.
“Come on, Presley. I’m not stupid. When did it happen?”
“Two days ago.”
This almost made me angrier than the burn itself.
“And you’re just now telling me about it?”
She didn’t defend her decision, but a tear worked its way out of her left eye. It was in that one droplet that I found my greatest heartbreak. Seeing the brokenness of someone you love is much harder than witnessing your own.
“It wasn’t exactly something I felt like talking about.”
My hand found hers and tugged until she was on my lap. My arms came together around her waist. One thing I discovered this time last year: assault on your self-worth breeds a need for human contact. Maybe it was our shared way of confirming that we were not, in fact, worthless. Presley gave it to me once, and now it was my turn to return the gesture. I rested my chin on her shoulder.
“You know you can talk to me, right? If anyone understands what’s happening, it’s me.”
Her head hung low, her chin almost touching her chest. At first I thought she was dejected, defenseless. But I quickly realized she was simply studying the mark.
“It hurts.” Her voice cracked on the second word, any attempt to be brave thwarted by raw pain.
I linked her fingers through mine and brought her arm around to the side in order to get a better look at her skin. If it hurt me just to look, I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to wear. If you added up the times my father hit me and stacked them side by side with all the times other kids complain about the unfairness of life, I guaranteed I would win. But even then, he never left a scar aside from the ones inside…the ones no one could see. Which begs the question: Which is worse? The scars that surround a person’s heart and leave it marred with the belief that being unloved is their lot in life, or the scars that mar the skin and make a person ugly to look at? The answer is both; while of course scars can be a badge of honor and a proof of unrelenting strength in adversity, all scars are ugly when they’re inflicted by others.
Except for Presley’s. Nothing about her is ugly. She is beautiful from head to toe, and would be even if every inch of her body were covered in marks.
“I know it does.” Something came over me then. The need to protect? The need to reassure? Whichever it was, the next thing I knew I had brought her arm to my lips. My mouth trailed the edges of the burn and worked its way in a circle. I had never kissed her before and didn’t know what possessed me to start now, but someone who was supposed to love her had hurt her and she needed to know that someone who did love her would never do such a vile thing. That someone was me, and whether she approved of the kiss or not…I didn’t really care. I kept going until I completed the circle, and then I went around once more.
By the time I pulled my lips away and looked up, Presley stared at me with wide eyes. Not fearful, but hopeful? Maybe hope was too strong a word. Maybe I was reading into a situation and inserting my own wishful thinking into the blank spaces.
“What was that for?”
I didn’t have a clear answer for this, but my mind worked overtime and not at all trying to think of something. The truth? Because I loved her. But there wasn’t a chance in the world I was going to admit it. I went with the next best thing that a seventeen-year-old guy can think of when his brain is temporarily defunct.
“Because that’s what moms do, right? They kiss a wound to make it better? Think of me as your mom.”
As soon as the words came out, I wanted to stab myself for saying them. So incredibly stupid. She jerked her arm away and stood up, a river of tears sharp and immediate and washing down her face in sheets.
“My mom caused this, Micah. If you really want to align yourself with her then we probably shouldn’t hang out.”
She’d taken three steps toward the window when I caught up to her. Just as she reached for the ledge, I tugged her back to me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Just please don’t run away.”
“I’m not running away. I’m leaving.”
“Please don’t.” Even though she twisted and turned, I wrapped my arms around her waist and locked my hands together. It was her right to leave, but I wouldn’t let her go without a fight. “Presley, talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to say. Let go of me.”
“Not until you tell me why she did it.”
She squirmed in my arms. My hands didn’t break apart. “Why does anyone hurt another person? Because they don’t like them.”
“That can’t be the reason. There’s nothing not to like about you.”
She laughed then, bitter and resentful. “There’s everything not to like. You just don’t see it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. So tell me. Tell me all the things not to like about you, and I’ll get started on trying to make it happen. Go ahead. Hit me with them.”
She growled at me, but she settled a bit. In the span of three deep breaths, she had stopped moving completely. It took her a full minute to speak.
“I was a mistake.”
Somehow I knew this one would on the list. “No you weren’t.”
“My mom didn’t want kids. I was a mistake. She tells me all the time.”
“Her mistake was getting pregnant. Her mistake was keeping a baby she didn’t want.
Her mistake was blaming you for her bad decisions. But you were not a mistake. God doesn’t make them, and He made you. And if He hadn’t made you, you wouldn’t be my best friend. And if you weren’t my best friend I would be the most miserable guy in existence. So please no more talk about being a mistake, because you aren’t.” My voice had grown passionate to the point of emotional, but I couldn’t help it. Nor was I ashamed. “Anything else?”
“I’m messy.”
“You’re the most organized person I know.”
“I’m ungrateful.”
“You say thank you to everything. It’s like you have gratefulness Tourette’s. So don’t even try to pretend that’s true.”
“I talk back.”
My chin rested on her head, and I shrugged. “I can’t defend this one, because it’s true. You talk back more than you agree to anything.”
She pinched my side and I squealed like a girl. “Stop, Micah.”
“I will if you will.” I pulled back then to look at her. Really look at her. “You weren’t a mistake. You aren’t ungrateful. You aren’t any of the bad things she says about you.” I broke eye contact for a moment to scan the room. “You might be a little messy but nobody can be organized all the time, and you definitely are a back talker.” She moved to pinch me again but I stopped her hand by covering it with mine. “But you’re perfect. And no one…” I pull her arm up in front of us and trace the mark with my finger. “…Deserves this. Ever. Understand?”
She nodded. “Are you going to tell anyone?”
I wanted to. I wanted to beat the crap out of that woman and tell everyone within a ninety-mile radius just how awful a human being she was. But I shook my head. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
She swallowed. “I’m seventeen. When I’m eighteen, I’m moving out.”
“So am I.
She let go of me and wandered over to my bedside table, then picked up a lighter. This one is yellow with a red strip around the middle. I’ve have them scattered all over the room. You never know how fast you’ll need to grab one, or where you’ll be standing when it’s needed. The only thing worse than getting burned is being encased in darkness with nothing to see. There was a flashlight hidden on my closet shelf, pack of new batteries sitting right beside it. It had been there since I was eight. A flashlight never calmed me down the way a flame managed to. Flames are dancing, alive. A comforting thing to see after a father screams he wants you dead.
“It’s kinda funny that the guy lecturing me about burns has a fire addiction of his own.”
“I’m not lecturing you, and I don’t have a fire addiction. I carry a lighter because the flame helps me focus, that’s all. I would never hurt anyone with it.” I pulled it from her fingers and set it back down. As much as I found comfort in the flames, I didn’t like seeing her holding onto something that created them. We were alike in a thousand ways; we were complete opposites in this one.
She sighed. “I know.”
I turned her around and brought her to me again until we were thigh to thigh, chest to chest. We had never been this physically close before, but I couldn’t get the sound of her words out of my mind. I was a mistake. If she was a mistake, then every other element in God’s creation was a freaking unnatural disaster.
The pulse that started pounding when I kissed her wound ratcheted up a few notches. I was certain she could feel it somewhere. “Then I’ll keep your secret. Just do me a favor and stay away from her. Please.”
“I will,” she whispered.
It was her eyes that did it. The way she blinked up at me, almost like the word “hope” was embedded somewhere in her eyelashes. They fluttered, and I lost them.
My heart.
My soul.
My mind.
Everything all at once.
I doubted right then that I would ever get myself back.
I should have stayed upstairs in the safety of Mara’s overly decorated office. It was safer. Even if her uncle had walked in and caught us in a compromising position, I was safer.
“Micah.”
Normally the slow way she says my name leaves my pulse tripping all over itself. Her voice is a bit on the husky side—think Emma Stone or Angelina Jolie in the moments right after she’s been going to battle with the bad guys. So normally the sound of my name rolling off her lips sounds like sex, weird considering we’ve never had sex with each other. Usually when I hear her name, it’s laced with a promise of something to come one day—at least in my mind.
She says my name again, eyes trained on me like she’s contemplating where to aim the bullet.
The only promise this time is that I will, in fact, die.
“Presley.” I don’t mean to sigh, but there it is.
She’s sitting in my chair behind my desk, and if I didn’t know better I’d think she somehow managed to sabotage my whole career—sent out a scandalous email filled with terrible pictures of me from two decades ago, reproduced all my files onto a flash drive now tucked away in her bag? I’m not aware that anything career-ending exists on my computer, but if anyone could make it seem so, it’s Presley. The possibility makes me skittish, but not nearly as much as the look on her face.
“How long were you planning to ignore me?” she says without changing her death by dagger expression.
Something in my mind snaps, and it feels a lot like indignation. “You called two days ago. After a week of the silent treatment. I don’t think you get to be the one affronted here.” I close my office door just in time, because Presley is up so fast that my desk chair slams into the wall with the movement.
“I’m absolutely the one who gets to be affronted here. You can’t just kiss a girl and then tell her you’ve got to get back to your date.” I’m not sure how she managed to get close enough to jab me on the chest, but she’s doing it. I step back to avoid another hit and walk around my desk to my computer. There’s no way she could have found anything to get me fired, but I have to check. I’ve never been accused of being the most rational person in the neighborhood. Presley hasn’t either.
“I didn’t mean to kiss you.” After a quick check of my history, I close my laptop and look up, realizing only then what I’ve said. My nervousness wanes at the delayed sound of my own carelessness.
“Of course you didn’t.” Her back is against the wall and she studies me. “It isn’t like you stepped on my toes or ordered me the wrong soda. You kissed me. That doesn’t happen by accident.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s exactly what you meant. But that isn’t why I’m here, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Did you get my message?”
I lean back in my chair and study her. “I haven’t listened to it yet. I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours trying to get up the nerve.”
She stares out the window. “So you forgot? We set it up two weeks ago.”
My eyebrows push together. What have I done wrong now?
“The interview. I’m here to interview you for the newspaper.”
My whole body feels weighted, and the squeeze in my throat makes it almost impossible to respond. The newspaper. Presley’s baby that she’s worked so hard to keep going, even as the industry dies a little more each day. Local newspapers are about as relevant to today’s society as corded landline phones, but she believes in them. Calls them a lost art that we will one day regret letting go—like vinyl records and typewriters—which are, in fact, making a comeback. Still, I blocked out all memories of the interview because I just don’t see the point. An hour set aside for an interview that three people might read, and that’s an optimistic number. Especially in our hometown.
I swallow my negative responses and lie my butt off.
“I didn’t forget. Are you ready with your questions?”
She holds up a spiral notebook, another flashback to a time quickly disappearing. “Right here.”
I look up at her. “I’m all yours for the next hour. Hit me with them.”
&nbs
p; The look she gives is disturbing, so I pick up my pen and click it open. The sharp point could be used as a weapon if I need it to. I remember learning that as a kid, and since my car keys are in a messenger bag across the room, the pen will have to do.
Turns out I don’t need either. For the next forty-five minutes, I field Presley’s questions about my job—some of which I actually enjoy. The article is set to come out next Sunday, the biggest print edition of the week. I’m honored that she is giving me such a prominent space. That’s the thing about Presley—she ultimately sees the best in me, even when I treat her so poorly.
The subject of the kiss doesn’t come up again.
SEVEN
We’re halfway through a goodbye hug when my door opens. How do I know halfway? Because for the past twenty seconds I’ve been reluctant to let go and had no plans to. I should have made plans. A smarter man would have.
Actually, a smarter man would have locked the door.
“Oh…sorry to interrupt.” Mara is back. She speaks from right behind us. And from the sound of her voice, the gig is up on pretending Presley is my sister. I let go like someone placed hot lava rocks in my palm and expected me to squeeze them.
“You’re not interrupting. Presley was just interviewing me for the Gainesville newspaper. Weren’t you Presley? For an article running in next Sunday’s paper. Front page, I think I remember her saying. Isn’t that what you said?” I’ve walked toward Mara and I’m leading her into the office, aware that I’m rambling but can’t seem to stop. “Yes, front page. I just hope you use a good picture of me.” I laugh, all nervous and forced. I’m the only one who’s cracked a smile. “Do you have a good picture?” Why am I still talking? Someone make me stop.
“I do have a good picture,” Presley quips, “as long as you’re okay with me using the one from your eighteenth birthday when we skinny dipped in Garret’s pond. That one work for you?”
I’m going to kill her.
“You skinny dipped with your sister?” Mara asks, her voice tight as a jock strap that hasn’t been broken in yet.
No I didn’t.
“Well, we are from the south.” Presley practically sings as she stuffs loose papers into her briefcase. Normally I love her sarcasm. Today I could kick a hole through it with my foot. “When you’re bored on a Thursday, there’s not much else to do. And if family’s all you got…”