by Jeyn Roberts
Defeated by my brain.
I decide to start dinner but the stove isn’t working. A new leak has sprung above the stove and the water has soaked all the burners and the flames have gone out. I get a new bucket from under the sink and place it on the back burner to try to catch the dripping. Water begins to collect in the bottom, making a hollow thudding noise that sounds like a heart beating. It takes me a while to find matches but that turns out to be a useless chore because I can’t relight the burners to save my life.
I kick the stove in frustration, leaving a nice dent and a black scuff mark the size of my foot.
“What did the stove ever do to you?”
I spin around and Gazer is standing in the door.
“Burner light is out,” I say. “Everything’s soaking wet. You’ll have to patch the leak or I’m not going to be cooking for a long time.”
“Sandwiches it is.”
The fridge is rattling but at least it’s still working. I pull out some meat and cheese and Gazer and I get to work with dinner. It’s not the first time we’ve had to fix sandwiches for dinner.
“How was your day?” Gazer finds the chopping board in the sink and rinses it off.
“Fine,” I say. I’m not about to tell him about the deal I’ve made with Paige and Jesse. I don’t think he’d be very happy to hear about it. Although I’m not one for keeping secrets from Gazer, this is something he’s better off not knowing about for now. When I slip out the door tomorrow night, I’ll let him think I’m just making my usual rounds.
“Did you practice?”
“A bit.”
“Good.”
This small talk might sound mundane, but to me it states that Gazer is no longer angry with me. My little outburst from earlier has been forgotten for now. He doesn’t hold grudges and neither do I, aside from grudges toward a few certain men who deserve it. This is why we get along so well.
Gazer used to have a good life. He had a wife and a daughter. He had a job that he loved. He was a cop and from what I’ve heard, he was excellent. In his room, in the bottom drawer of his desk, he’s got pictures from his former life. Hidden away, there are snapshots of him wearing the uniform, smiling at the camera, his arms around his family. He was young, only in his midtwenties, but he had his entire life planned out. He’d married his high school sweetheart and they’d had a beautiful daughter together. They were the perfect couple.
There is one picture I like in particular. A black-and-white photo. Gazer has his arms around his wife, and he’s looking down at her in admiration. She’s smiling with her eyes half-closed and you can tell there aren’t two people in the world who enjoy each other’s company as much as these two.
He was in love.
And then he angered the wrong people and she was gone. They came in the night when he was at work and killed her. They killed his daughter too.
Although Gazer knew who murdered them, there wasn’t enough proof to prosecute. The killers walked. Gazer lasted with the force for about six more months before finally quitting. The job was no longer inside of him. The will to right evil was gone. He hasn’t held a job since. He lives off a small pension and that’s why we live here. We can’t afford anything else.
This is why I find it frustrating when Gazer tells me I shouldn’t spend my life focused on revenge. If anyone should know exactly how I feel, it should be him. I wonder if he lies awake at night, picturing the faces of the people who did this to him. Doesn’t he dream of seeing their bodies lying at his feet the way I do?
Gazer doesn’t want me to know he still goes into his drawer and looks at his pictures. But the walls between our bedrooms are thin and I can hear the squeak of the wood at least once a week when he thinks I’m sleeping. He will spend an hour or two on the floor, looking at the ghosts of his past, reliving the pain that will never leave him.
Does it make him stronger? I don’t know. I don’t have any pictures of Christian or my parents to look at. Even if I did, I’d probably burn them. The thought of having to look at those smiling faces places a hollow space in my stomach that expands and can never be filled.
Gazer is stronger than me. But he’s stupid too. Those men still walk the streets. When I am done, my tormenters will be in their graves, unable to ever hurt anyone again.
After dinner, I wash the leftover dishes in the sink with cold water while Gazer retreats to his living-room corner to read his books. We deal with our pain in separate ways. He immerses himself in the written word and I wander the streets. At least he gets to stay dry.
I grab my jacket and head downstairs.
“Don’t be out late,” Gazer says without looking up from his book. It’s The Iliad tonight, a favorite of his. The pages are worn and the cover is dog-eared from years of touching. He’s pretty much got the entire story memorized by now, not an easy feat.
“I won’t.”
“And get up an extra hour early tomorrow,” he says, and I can see the hint of a smile forming at his lips. “We have to make up for all that lost time this morning.”
I will not groan. I will not give him the satisfaction. “Sounds brilliant,” I say through clenched teeth.
I may be forgiven but he still wins. Tomorrow he’s going to make sure my body aches. Revenge, Gazer-style.
When I step outside, I notice that the rain has finally stopped. It’s still cloudy and cold and the air has a fine mist about it that could be mistaken for rain, but it’s not. I smile. Such a nice change. I wonder how long it will last.
So there’s a spring to my step as I walk down the street. It feels good to not have my hair plastered against my cheeks. I even undo my jacket a bit and let the cool air press against my turtleneck shirt.
I tell myself I’m not heading anywhere in particular but I find myself pointed toward the bar. But I’m not going for Rufus; he’s not there. I know this because I overheard him a few nights ago on his phone. There’s a shipment of illegal immigrants on their way in tonight he’s got to deal with. I will go down to the docks and check it out later before I head home.
There’s no real need for me to be there but I still find myself stopping at my usual spot underneath the streetlight. I wait.
But Chael doesn’t show.
This is stupid. I’m not waiting for him. I don’t even want to see him. He’s weird. He never gives me a straight answer and he threatened me the other night. So why is it when I try to think about him, all I can do is picture the way his hair is the perfect length or that his green eyes are always looking at me so intently.
No, stop it. He’s trouble.
I don’t need trouble.
And I’m not going to let him take my revenge.
Rufus and the others are mine.
“Excuse me?”
It’s the little girl with the missing posters in her arm. She doesn’t have her red umbrella tonight and she almost looks naked without it. I smile down at her but she’s not smiling back. Instead, she’s biting her lower lip and clutching her flyers so tightly the paper is wrinkling in her grasp.
“What’s up?” I ask her.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks. “You took a poster. You said you’d tell me if you saw him.” She waves the flyers at me; the boy with the glasses stares up at me from xeroxed paper.
Her sudden anger at me is surprising; I’m at a loss for words. “I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do!” She grabs a flyer and shoves it in my face. The boy’s forlorn expression stares right into my eyes. “You were with him last night. I saw you!”
I reach out and grab the paper, yanking it from her fingers. I look around wildly but her mother is nowhere in sight. “Okay, you need to calm down and tell me what you thought you saw. I guarantee you I wasn’t with your brother. I hold the flyer up and read beyond the missing part. Arnold Bozek. Eighteen years
old. Been missing for a week. There’s a phone number to contact. I look at the boy with the short blond hair and glasses. No, there’s no mistake on my part. I’ve never seen this boy before in my life.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I haven’t seen him.”
“But you talked to him last night,” she says. I can tell by the look on her face she believes what she’s saying. “You talked to him right here. Under this lamp. I saw you two together. I called out but you turned and ran. Why? Why are you keeping him from us?”
She’s talking about Chael but how she could mistake him for Arnold is beyond me. Chael’s hair is almost black. He doesn’t wear glasses. Only a blind person would be unable to tell them apart.
But it was dark outside and he did have his jacket hood up if I recall. It is possible that this girl might have thought it was him. She’s been spending so much time looking; maybe what she saw was a type of mirage. She wants to see Arnold so badly that other people begin to look like him.
“You’ve made a mistake.”
“No, I haven’t,” she says, and throws the flyers on the ground. “Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not lying and I haven’t seen your stupid brother,” I snap back. I’ve lost patience with her. I’ve tried being nice and that’s getting me nowhere. Time to bring out the bitch. “And stop following me or I’ll have a talk with your mother.”
I turn and stomp off into the night. I half expect the girl to follow me but she doesn’t. When I reach the end of the block, I turn and look. She’s still by the streetlight, on her knees, picking the flyers up off the street. They’ll be wet by now. Useless. Frowning, I head off toward anywhere but here. It’s not my fault.
Seven
Friday night and I am stupid enough to tell Gazer part of my plan. I should have known better. He always takes the practical side.
“You can’t go to a party,” he says. “Not with the kids from school. You know the rules. All it takes is one person to make a comment Monday morning and you’ll be kicked out the doors.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” I say. I haven’t told him about the bodyguard part. Paige stopped at my locker this morning and gave me a discreet envelope. It’s now hidden between my mattresses. Paid in full. If I don’t show up tonight, I’ll have to give the money back.
“That’s irrelevant,” Gazer says. “If you get caught, you won’t graduate.”
“Who cares,” I say. “It’s not like I’ll be able to get a job or anything.”
Gazer reaches out and touches my arm. “Don’t talk like that, Faye. You never know what the future holds. Graduating has always been important to you. Don’t give up on that hope now. Not when you’re so close.”
He’s right, of course. Graduating is the one lousy thing I want to do before I leave this earth. At least then I can say that I did something. So when I arrive at the gates of hell, I can look the demons in the eye and when they ask me what I did besides kill four men, I can say at least I survived high school. That’s gotta count for something.
But it seems stupid, now that I think about it.
“Maybe I don’t think it’s important anymore,” I say.
“That’s not true, Faye,” Gazer says. He sits down in his chair and lights the closest candle. “I know you think you’re going to die because of what happened to you as a child. I know you think you’re doomed and that the gates of heaven are unavailable to you.”
Because it’s true, I want to argue. But I keep my mouth shut.
Gazer lights a second candle. “The reality of the situation is that none of us know what’s going to happen when we die. That’s why we live. The illusions you had under the influence of Heam were just that. Hallucinations. Fake.”
“No one knows that for sure,” I say. “Even the experts can’t tell if it’s an illusion or an out-of-body experience.”
“A lot of this is propaganda, put together by the churches to make people afraid,” Gazer says. “It could simply be the brain’s way of dealing with the body shutting down.”
“It felt real enough to me. You don’t understand.”
Gazer closes his eyes tightly and it hurts me more than I’ll admit to see him like this. I don’t like knowing that I’m causing him pain. I want to protect him, lie and tell him the words he wants to hear. He is my family. He’s the one person on this earth that cares about me. Loves me. But he’ll never understand me.
“I’ll finish school,” I say. “But I need to go to this party. I’ve never been invited to anything before. It’s important.”
I speak the words as a lie, but there is a half-truth there. If it weren’t for the money, I might actually believe that they want me. I try to picture myself at the shops with Paige, looking around for the perfect prom dress. Maybe Chael could be my date. He’d show up with a rose corsage. Gazer could break out the camera and take pictures to frame on the mantel. I’d be given a curfew and we’d head off into the night in a beautiful white limousine. At the party, we’d sit at the table with Paige and Jesse and giggle and chat like old friends. Powdering our noses in the bathroom. Dancing to some crappy band. Soft kisses under the moonlight.
The thought is so absurd I have to chomp down on my tongue to keep from laughing out loud.
Gazer sighs as if reading my mind. “I’m sorry, Faye, but I can’t allow it. I think it’s best if you stay in tonight.”
“You’re grounding me?”
“Yes, I guess I am.”
In the six years we’ve lived together, Gazer has never once pulled rank. Not once. He’s never refused me anything. I open my mouth to protest, but Gazer picks up his copy of The Iliad and opens it to the bookmarked page. It’s his way of saying the argument is over. Finished. Kaput.
I go upstairs to my bedroom and flop down on the bed. Looking at the clock, I notice that it’s just a bit past eight. No problem. I’ll let Gazer think he’s won. Technically, I don’t have to be at Paige’s until eleven. I’ll just wait till Gazer goes to bed and do what every other normal teenager would do. I’ll sneak out.
Gazer taps on my door around ten-thirty. I’m lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. A textbook rests on my chest but it’s mostly for show. I haven’t been studying. Not with all the plotting going around in my brain.
“It’s open,” I say.
He opens the door and steps inside. “I wanted to apologize for what I said earlier,” he says. “I shouldn’t have trivialized your feelings the way I did.”
“Thanks.” I shift on the bed and the textbook slides off my chest and onto the floor. It hits the ground with a good hard thunk.
“And I’m sorry that you feel the way you do and I wish I could fix it,” Gazer says. “I love you like my own daughter. I’d do anything to try and make your pain go away.”
“I know.”
And I do know. I remember the nights following my overdose. Waking up from dreams, screaming, tears falling, and Gazer always being right by my side. He’d pull the covers up tighter and tell me stories from all the books he’s read. And he never left my side until I’d slipped back into sleep.
Gazer’s been there to fight for me since the moment he took me in. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express to him how truly important he’s been to me.
Gazer takes a deep breath. “What’s happened to us, Faye?” he asks. He leans against the wall and stares down at his hands. “I feel like we’re pulling apart. Fighting all the time. It worries me to watch you drifting away. I’m afraid you’re going to wander too far and I won’t be able to bring you back.”
I get up off the bed and go over to him, putting my arms around him and hugging him tightly. The tears threaten my eyes, burning me, and I blink several times to try to keep them back. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s my fault.”
Gazer shakes his head. “No, it’s mine.” He pushes me back and looks into my eyes. “I h
aven’t done my job. I’ve tried to bring you peace but you won’t accept it. You’re going to do what you’re going to do. I won’t stand in your way anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re ready. Well, ready as you’re going to be. But promise me you’ll at least wait until you graduate. Give yourself that at least.”
I want to be happy. Gazer has finally said the words I want to hear. But I’m not happy. Mostly because I can tell he doesn’t believe them. He’s telling me to get my revenge only because he failed at teaching me otherwise.
It’s not a victorious moment.
Especially when I know in ten minutes or so I’ll be sneaking out my bedroom window.
There are so many things I want to say but I can’t stand to say them to Gazer’s face when he looks this weak.
“I’m really tired,” I finally say.
“You should get some sleep, then.” He kisses me on the forehead. “Maybe we’ll both feel better tomorrow morning.”
I smile and he closes the door behind him on the way out. I listen at the door to hear his footsteps going down the hall and back downstairs to his books. Within seconds, I yank my jacket from off the floor and grab my gloves from the top of my dresser. I head over to the window.
I wasn’t feeling guilty earlier and now I try to push the shame away by concentrating on the task ahead of me. I’ve never snuck out the window before. I cringe when the wood squeaks as I push up the frame. Cold air hits my face. Squeezing through the small space, I step down onto the ledge, trying not to look down. It’s a good twenty feet below. I probably wouldn’t hurt myself badly if I fell but I don’t want to take the chance and find out. I lower myself by my arms, feeling the muscles straining against my shirt, and drop down to the next ledge. From there I lower myself again and drop down the last ten feet. I hit the ground with a thud and freeze, hoping that Gazer doesn’t hear it and come to investigate.