I should’ve gotten it for her.
“I’m sssssorry, SSSoph-phie.”
Her brow creased and her movements stopped.
“What?” she asked in a way that made me know exactly what she was thinking.
I took a deep breath and felt my eyes slip closed for just a moment. My lips pressed together as I mentally charged myself up.
“Sophie.”
When my eyes opened, she was smiling, happy as always when I could produce her name using only two syllables.
She tugged her shirt back on and stood up, moving toward me. My body was tight and tense as always after testing both my physical and mental boundaries, so I hoped that she wouldn’t try to push either one too much further.
She gently came into my arms, pressing her face into my chest as her arms wrapped around my waist. When she pulled away, she said, “Don’t be sorry, Elliott. That shit’s good.”
She removed herself from my embrace and licked her lips as she moved to my bookcase. “Anticipation’s like … um, exciting or whatever.”
As intelligent as I knew her to be, and how verbal she always was, Sophie was not very good at giving voice to her emotional thoughts or feelings. She was awkward and used the term “whatever” a lot.
But her words and their meaning were not lost. As much as I could’ve let myself focus on my failures, her words gave me hope that she was able to live with the small pieces I could give her.
I wanted to touch her face, to have my thumb brush the thin skin underneath her eye, but she never reacted well to that. I went to her and took one of her hands in mine.
Instead of touching her cheek, my other hand moved to her neck and I satisfied myself with brushing my thumb over the top of her scar.
“W-what’s left to do?”
Sophie blinked. “What?”
“With the ffffood.”
Her lips formed a tight line as her brow furrowed, and then her eyes shimmered with tears as she shook her head. Sophie cried much more now than she used to. I didn’t know if it was the stress of the holidays or something else, since she usually wouldn’t share it with me.
“What’s w-wrong?” I felt anxious about her emotions. “Sophie?” I asked again when she didn’t respond.
She shook her head again. “I should’ve just let Linda do it all. What the hell do I know about making Thanksgiving dinner?”
“She said she was o-only hhhhelping,” I tried to remind her.
“Whatever.”
“Y-you don’t have to c-cook at all,” I offered, not knowing what she was thinking or what she wanted. Mrs. Collins could’ve orchestrated the whole dinner herself.
But that wasn’t at all what Sophie wanted to hear because she sighed, ran a hand down her face, and shook her head like she was upset.
“You don’t llllliiike her?”
She shrugged and then moved away from me and toward the door. “Whatever.”
I knew that her father had invited the Collinses over to Sophie’s house for dinner last week, but Sophie never said how it turned out.
“I’m going to check the stupid turkey,” she said as she opened the door and moved through it.
Like always, I followed her and sat at the island watching her move through our kitchen with purpose. Mrs. Collins was there, too. Again, it was odd watching Sophie interact with such a maternal woman. Sophie was like she was with most emotional interactions: awkward.
Mrs. Collins would move and Sophie would answer with a corresponding movement in the other direction. She didn’t speak unless Mrs. Collins asked her something directly and even then it was usually a monosyllabic reply.
When Mrs. Collins pulled the sweet potatoes out of the oven, Sophie watched her every move with a frown on her face, but she never said anything.
Halfway through this awkward dance, Mr. Young came into the kitchen. He sat down at the bar and watched with me, a comfortable distance between us. All his presence did was put Sophie even more on edge.
Had I been a good boyfriend, I would have distracted her father for a while so she could cook in peace, or relative peace, but my verbal ineptitude kept me from even attempting it.
The whole day was just strange. Before the food was ready, everything had to sit for a while. I didn’t understand it, but Sophie and Linda seemed to know what they were doing, so while everyone waited for the food to be ready to eat, we all did various activities. David, Jamie, and Sophie’s father threw a football around the front yard. No one wore coats, even though it was fairly cold out.
Trent, who was able to come over after his own family meal, played a loud card came with Becca and Jane, while Olivia sat by herself staring at her cell phone as she rapidly pushed buttons. Stephen and Robin drank coffee and watched the card game. Linda was at the window watching the tossing of the football.
I stood by Sophie, who watched the football game through the open front door. Mr. Young and David seemed to be having a great time and when Jamie got upset because he didn’t catch a ball David threw at him, Sophie’s father was quick to buoy him up.
She turned away and I followed her to the kitchen.
When she finally stopped moving and leaned against the countertop, I touched her scar again. “Y-y-you’re sad.”
She ducked her head and took a deep breath before releasing it slowly. “I can’t help it.”
“Wwwwhat’s making you sad?” If I knew, I could help fix it for her.
Sophie shrugged.
“Are you sad b-because of y-your d-d-d-d, ffffather and J-J-JJJJJamie?”
“Holidays are stupid.”
I nodded at the simple truth of her words. “I kn-know.”
“Why don’t you like Christmas?”
I took in a deep breath, but before I could actively keep my mind from thinking about it, Mrs. Collins stepped in and saved me from it all.
It was time to eat.
Dinner was delicious, as Sophie’s meals always were. I didn’t follow the conversation, but I did watch my girlfriend. Sophie barely ate. She hardly put any food on her plate and when all was said and done, she’d eaten less than half of it.
Upon observation, I knew that both her father and Robin noticed how little she ate, although they didn’t comment on it. I saw Stephen glance at her and then at the two of them at least once. I hoped that one of them would ask her about why she wasn’t eating much these days. She was off drugs, so it had to be something else.
She didn’t even pretend to be interested in dessert.
We left the table and I was certain that at least two sets of eyes were on us. I hoped her father wouldn’t get upset that she’d be in my room behind a locked door. The thought of him getting upset and knocking, or trying to open the door, made my chest tighten a little.
Sophie curled up on the couch when we entered my room. I locked the door and wondered what I was supposed to do. She was obviously not feeling well, but she chose the couch and not the bed. Had she been on the bed, I could have joined her; I could have wrapped myself around her and given her my energy.
But she was on the couch, facing the back so I couldn’t see her face. The couch was small and the only thing I would have been able to do was sit near her feet.
I didn’t want her to be sad. I wanted to see her smile and be happy.
I wondered if I should put on music, but then I worried that I’d choose the wrong song and she would sink further into whatever she was feeling.
After a few moments of standing awkwardly by my desk watching her, I glanced at the instruments on the wall. I’d been practicing something for her.
She’d said she wanted to hear me play violin, so I learned how to play something I knew she would like.
“Sophie?”
She rolled over while her hands wiped her eyes.
She’d been crying and immediately my heart ached for her, even more than it normally did.
She looked at me for a moment and then pressed her fingertips to her eyes, covering them from me. “I’m sorry.”
I wondered why she was sorry, but I knew that if I asked her she would either say she didn’t know or just not tell me, so I pulled my violin off the wall.
I didn’t bother asking her if she wanted to hear me play, I just said, “This t-takes t-two violins and a c-c-cello, sssso you jjjust have to imagine the other p-parts.” Then I started to play.
I watched her carefully, hoping she’d liked it. I couldn’t help but smile as she sat up and then rose to her knees as she listened to the familiar beginnings of the song.
“Elliott!”
It took everything I had to continue playing and not react to her excitement. I was so incredibly happy that something I did made her mood shift completely.
“That’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers!”
I nodded while continuing to play.
“That’s so badass that you can play that song on the violin!”
I blushed and had to look away from her so I could keep time with the song.
Just like that, she was happy again and I’d never been more grateful for my innate musical talent as I was in that moment.
Sophie fell asleep after I’d hung up my violin and we’d moved to the bed. From a distance, someone might have said she looked peaceful but since I was so very close to her, I could see that she was not. It was typical.
Her legs twitched and her hands were curled into balls so tight her knuckles turned white and would release only after long minutes. While her lips were slightly parted, her brow was deeply creased. She mumbled scared or angry words in her sleep. It was only occasionally when she would look peaceful and say my name. I liked those times, but today wasn’t one of them.
Today she muttered and bit her lip. She gasped and would say things like “no” and “don’t.” There would be these long, drawn out sounds that would escape her. They could have been innocent from another person, but coming from Sophie, I knew that they weren’t. At one point, both of her hands moved to clutch the neck of her shirt as she sucked in a stunted breath. She sounded like she was dying and I wanted to wake her.
But she was always so tired and I knew that after whatever horrible thing was happening inside of her head finished, her body and mind would quiet and she would rest. She had to rest.
I left the room only to go to the bathroom and hated that I had no key to lock the door from the outside. She would have been safer that way, but I would only be gone for a moment.
Voices from down the hall kept me from being quick. I heard her father and Robin. and despite never having been nosey before in my life, I moved quietly toward the door near the stairs that was barely cracked open.
“Wait a minute. Listen to what you’re asking. You want Stephen to prescribe her drugs so she can mellow out her emotions? She’s been doing that on her own for too long already. How exactly do you want her to ‘mellow out’?”
“Well, something has to be done. Neither of us can keep going like this. You saw her. The girl barely eats and when she does she typically throws it back up within an hour. She cries all the time. That’s not an exaggeration, Robin. Two days ago she cried at breakfast, she was crying when she got home and I heard her crying in her room before going to sleep. That can’t be healthy.”
Robin was quiet for a moment and I almost walked away, but then I heard, “Sophie was raped, Tom, multiple times.” There was another pause. My teeth grit tightly, just as my hands balled into fists at my sides. “I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear, but she was. Her mother did nothing about it. Mothers traditionally nurture, but your daughter received nothing like that growing up. She’s pushed back all of her emotions to the point of not being able to feel anything.”
“I understand that.” His voice was tight and I could tell he was upset. “But I don’t think I can …”
“You’ll have to. Sophie’s an incredibly strong young woman, but she needs this time to be weak. She needs to be able to be weak and still be okay.”
I heard Robin’s sigh. “She’s not even to the point where she can use the proper words for what happened. Medication is not warranted for your daughter at this time. If I feel it becomes necessary, then I will suggest Stephen give her something; however, what Sophie needs is to actually deal with something for once in her life. She’s been the walking dead for years and I will not take away her ability to feel again simply because it’s messy and you can’t handle it.”
“I’m not asking you to take away her ability to feel, for Christ’s sake, but she’s not going to be able to last for much longer. Physically, she’s falling apart and emotionally …”
“She needs to break down. That’s the whole point of her being in therapy. Just like the body, the mind can only grow stronger after having been at its weakest point.”
Sophie’s father said something else, but I couldn’t focus on it. I practically jumped out of my skin when something warm encompassed my hand and began to uncurl it. I looked over and saw Sophie next to me and I intentionally took a deep, calming breath.
I hoped she hadn’t heard all that, but I could see in her tired eyes that she’d heard enough.
She tugged me away from the door and back into my room, and then waited until I sat down with my back against the headboard before joining me on my bed. Her eyes were closed before she settled in, her body on mine, her head pressed against my chest.
I’d forgotten to use the bathroom, but I ignored everything else beyond the wonderful feel of her in my arms.
The Monday after Thanksgiving I was woken as usual by David’s loud knocking that accompanied his equally loud voice. I also woke up to an erection caused by the sexual dream I’d been having about Sophie in my bed.
She had been on top of me. My hands were on her hips and her mouth …
“Tick tock, Elliott! Let’s go or you’ll be late picking up Sophie.”
“I-I-I-I’m up! G-g-g-go aw-way.”
It was a stretch of long, painful moments until he complied. It was only after I was sure he was gone that I undertook the slightly frightening and definitely nerve-wracking task of getting my body under control. It was strange and awkward and wrong, but I couldn’t go anywhere in this state. I especially couldn’t go pick up my girlfriend like this.
I concentrated on breathing, rather than the action that had to happen if I was going to bring myself relief. I did my best to ignore my more-than-passing thoughts of the Bible because while I remembered what my father said about the act of masturbation and how, according to Leviticus, it marked you as unclean, I’d re-read it for myself and interpreted it differently.
I kept telling myself that it was okay to be doing this. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t unclean; that this was natural and normal and that I was natural and normal.
I failed at my attempt to keep Sophie out of my thoughts. I didn’t want to use her in that way since she already had issues with people using her as a sexual object.
I wasn’t good at this, but I needed it to go away. It was getting late and if it took much longer, I would be late picking up Sophie. She would wait for me out on her porch in the cold.
We would have to walk into the school after everyone else. They would all look at us.
After what seemed like hours, but was honestly just long minutes, it was over and I caught my breath.
Despite having a different interpretation than my father, I felt soiled and unclean.
It was just one more reason for God to hate me.
In school, I kept a careful eye on Sophie and spent most of my shared hours with Chris staring at him. I wasn’t to go near him and I didn’t, but I made sure he didn’t even look at Sophie. It was incredibly difficu
lt finding compassion for him, even though I had been the one to break his jaw. Especially because I’d been the one who broke his jaw.
He couldn’t talk much since his jaw was wired shut. He drank his lunch through a straw and I often found him looking at me. It was strange how I no longer feared him, but it was unsettling how much I wanted him to hurt more. Visuals slid and slithered in my head and I found myself wanting to make him bleed again.
I played out whole scenarios in my mind.
For her part, she acted like he had never raped her. I often wondered if she even thought he had. Her view of things was skewed and perhaps she thought that she’d simply made a mistake and had sex with him, as if she’d had a choice in the matter.
Sophie didn’t talk about it.
She didn’t look at Chris or even in his general direction.
It was as if he wasn’t even there.
But I was fully aware that he was.
In the weeks that passed since Lauren’s party, I had come to accept that I wished violence on Chris. I fully realized that this was wrong and that, just like my sexual thoughts about Sophie, God would hate me for it.
“So, Elliott, are there certain emotions that are easier to express through music than through …?”
I cut Dr. Emmanuel off because I had grown tired of talking music with him. It wasn’t as if he wanted to discuss musical theory with me; he was using it as a way to poke my mind. It was a way for him to figure me out and while I had no problem with it as it was his job, I was annoyed that he wouldn’t just ask me a question like Robin would have.
He always sat in the same chair and he never moved beyond crossing his legs or cocking his head to the side in thought. I was thankful for that. It made me less nervous. The consistency was soothing.
“Ar-are you a-aw-ware that your llllllast n-name is B-B-B-biblical?”
“Is it?”
“I-i-it’s a n-name for J-J-Jesus. It mmm-mm-means ‘G-God is w-with us’.”
I glanced at him quickly. He looked thoughtful, his bottom lip jutting out a little. I thought perhaps he would go back to talking about music or maybe art, like he had the week before Thanksgiving, but he didn’t.
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