Shattered Soul

by Jennifer Snyder

  In the time it took for her to cross the room and stop in front of me, my sudden onset of anger had evaporated.

  “So…can we talk?” she asked, shoving her hands into her back pockets, concern flashing across her face.

  I licked my lips. “Yeah.”

  Ali followed me to my room. I closed the door behind us and turned to face her. An awkward silence surrounded us while we stood staring at one another.

  “What happened? Did Calvin do this?” she asked, shattering the silence between us. Ali stepped forward, her eyes wide, her fingers extended toward my face.

  On impulse I swatted her hand away before she could touch me. “Yeah, yeah he did,” I answered flatly, and she looked like I'd slapped her.

  “Why?” she wondered.

  The way the word slipped from her lips, it was like she didn’t believe Calvin would ever do such a thing, even though she knew he would; after all, it wasn’t the first time she’d seen my face pulverized by him. I stared at her, sickened that she was falling for the good guy routine Calvin had been trying to pull with her since he’d first laid eyes on her. Heat prickled across my skin as anger burned its way through my insides.

  “Because of you, Ali! Because of what he gave you, you know, your precious little baggie you didn’t tell me about!” I spat the words out at her, hating how angry I sounded, but unable to hide how pissed with her I was.

  Ali's lips drew into a thin line. “Don’t you dare say this was my fault!” She gestured to my face. “And, I didn’t tell you, because you said you didn’t want any, Seth.”

  “So, that makes it ok to hide it from me?” I countered.

  She sighed deeply. “I didn’t come here to fight with you and I really don’t see why you’re so mad at me.”

  “Because, this isn’t you!” I exclaimed.

  “Isn’t me? What are you talking about?”

  “This!” I gestured to her. “It’s not you!” I paused and took in a deep breath. “You’re letting it get the best of you. I don’t think you should do it anymore, Ali, I don’t think either of us should.” I stopped talking. I wanted to continue, I wanted to tell her how worried I was about her and that I loved her, but the look on her face forced me to stop.

  Ali was glaring at me like if she could shoot daggers from her eyes, I’d be dead by now.

  “This,” she gestured to herself the way I had, “is me.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s not. You’ve changed, Ali.”

  “I’ve changed…right,” she scoffed, stomping past me and towards the door. “You know what, Seth? I already have a dad and I damn sure don’t need another one!” She slung the door open so hard, it banged against my wall and bounced halfway closed again.

  I closed my eyes, listening to her heavy footsteps stomp down the hallway and cursed myself for the way that conversation had gone. I took in a deep breath and started after her.

  I didn’t have to go far, because Ali hadn’t left my house. She’d taken her seat back beside Calvin on the couch. I glanced around the room, noticing for the first time Jade wasn’t there. For a split second, I was ticked at her for not being here, because her absence had left that spot beside Calvin available for Ali.

  “Got anything good?” Ali asked Calvin. Her eyes darted to mine and I knew she was just being spiteful.

  I’d asked her not to do anymore and now she was going to do one right in front of me. My jaw tightened. I shifted my eyes from her vindictive gaze to Calvin’s glorified one. He was enjoying the fact she’d just asked him for some more right in front of me so much, he was practically getting off on it.

  “I might have a line,” he teased her. “But, you’ll have to do something for me to get it.” He knew she'd say yes to almost anything to get back at me right now.

  My stomach twisted and a sinking feeling overtook me. I wanted to cuss him, I wanted to cuss her, but that would only instigate the situation more.

  “And what would that be?” Ali asked in a flirty tone, her eyes leaving mine in search of his.

  My heart pounded so forcefully my chest ached. I didn’t know where this was going, but I knew it couldn’t be good. “Ali, come on, don’t,” I pleaded, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer.

  “No, Seth, you don’t. Don’t tell me what to do,” she shouted.

  “Yeah, Seth, leave her alone.” Calvin had a smirk on his face.

  I watched as his eyes shifted to Ali, gleaming with all the skill of a smooth predator. The way he looked at her, as though she were a tasty morsel for him to devour, made an uncontrollable rage sizzle through me.

  I dropped my gaze to the floor. I had to tear my eyes away from him, from her, from this. Because me watching was only fueling the situation for each of them even more.

  “If you kiss her,” Calvin said in a soft, hypnotic tone and I knew he meant Kerri, “I’ll let you have one.”

  My heart felt like it stopped beating for a drawn out moment. I closed my eyes, my rage turning into absolute horror, and silently prayed Ali would say no.

  “All right,” she answered him far too quickly.

  My breath flew from my lungs. No! I screamed in my head while biting my tongue to keep myself from shouting out loud. I opened my eyes. Kerri and Ali were smiling at each other and everything seemed to shift into slow motion, including my heart pounding in my chest.

  Ali licked her lips in preparation as she leaned forward across Calvin’s lap to meet Kerri’s lips and I felt paralyzed, like I was alive, but trapped inside a dead body, unable to move and stop what was about to happen in front of me.

  Calvin had gotten to her. Calvin had won. With this one situation falling so effortlessly into his lap because of me, Calvin would know he’d won her soul. Now he knew that if she’d say yes to something like this, then in a matter of time, she’d do anything he asked for another line. My eyes met his and I swore I heard him whisper thank you in my head.

  I turned away the second before Ali’s lips met Kerri’s.

  “Yeah,” Calvin uttered in a pleasure-filled tone as the soft smacking of lips filled my ears, followed by whistles of approval from Brent.

  My hands trembled and my body shook. I started towards the door; I had to get out of here, I had to get away. The weight of guilt I felt was crushing me.

  Ali had been so innocent, so good, and so pure. Being with me had sucked her into my world of destruction and torment that surrounded me. I hated myself for having given her that first taste. I hated myself for refusing to see the signs, refusing to believe what Ali was transforming into before my eyes.

  With my head down, I gripped the doorknob and turned it. I stepped out into the sunlight and fresh air, closing the door behind me, to block myself off from the dark nightmare which had become my reality.

  The girl I loved was becoming a stranger, and I knew this moment, the moment her soul first began to shatter, would haunt me for forever.

  I walked the streets to nowhere in particular, my hands in my pockets, rage burning through me and guilt circling my heart. Hours must have passed without me realizing, because when I finally found myself back in front of my house, Ali’s car was gone and so was Kerri’s.

  I was relieved.

  I stepped inside, ready to escape everything through a cloud of smoke. I made it two steps away from my bedroom door before Calvin poked his head out of his room to gloat.

  “Why did you leave, Seth? I was just trying to do you a favor…a brunette and a blonde…every guy’s dream,” he grinned.

  “Not mine,” I spat.

  Calvin’s grin grew. “Why are you so angry? It was just a kiss.”

  I snorted in disgust. “To her maybe, but to you it meant much more,” I said, without breaking eye contact.

  He licked his lips and his grin took on a more devilish twist. “Maybe.”

  I took the two remaining steps towards my bedroom door and slammed it shut behind me. Calvin’s laugh echoed through my room a second later. I despised him. I literally despised h
im. There was not one single thing I liked about him.

  I grabbed my old tin box from my top drawer and sank into my bed to smoke away all of my thoughts, my worries, my anger, and most of all, my heartbreak.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A month passed. Summer was coming to an end and a new school year lurked around the corner. The only good that had ever walked into my life was slipping through my fingers like sand, faster and faster with each passing day.

  There were good days with Ali, days that reminded me of what she’d been like before temptation. And then there were bad days, days when she made it perfectly clear that all that was on her mind was getting high off something, anything.

  There were more of those days than not.

  So many in fact, I questioned if Ali was with me because she still cared for me, or simply because of the drugs which always surrounded me and my straight connection to Calvin, the supplier. I found myself torn inside by the probability of both questions more than I liked.

  I fell asleep many nights staring at the picture Ali had given me of us, wishing I could get that Ali back somehow. I didn’t like who she was becoming, but I was too afraid for her to turn my back and let her go. I still loved her and hoped that would be enough to fix everything.

  I spent more time at Trip’s house than my own. He didn’t seem to mind and neither did his parents. It was kind of a win-win situation. Trip wasn’t home alone while his parents worked and kept up their social status, and it gave me time away from Calvin and my mom, who didn’t even seem to care about herself at this point.

  A week and a half before school started, I’d practically moved into the guest bedroom at Trip's house unintentionally.

  I reached in the top drawer of the nightstand for the pack of Newports I’d stashed the other day, Trip’s parents didn’t know we smoked, and pulled one out. I tucked it behind my ear and left the room, headed towards the sliding glass doors off the dining room to hide in the backyard and smoke.

  It was Saturday, and I hadn’t seen Ali in two days because of a fight involving me telling her what to do and what not to do. I missed her, but more than anything I was concerned for her and I found myself hoping I wouldn’t find her somewhere high as a kite off the one thing I’d fought with her so many times about. I took another pull off my cigarette and decided I’d walk to her house long after my feet had already begun to move in that direction.

  I walked the twenty-five minute stretch in the afternoon heat from Trip’s house to hers, only to see her car wasn’t in the driveway. My heart dropped and an awful gut feeling of where she might be rippled through me. With sweat pouring down the middle of my back and beading across my brow, I turned swiftly and started towards my house.

  Images of the last three times this month I’d found Ali tweaking at my house flashed through my mind. Calvin had begun spinning a web around her, making her into another of his self-inflicted prisoners, and she was too blinded by her own fiendish want to notice.

  I thought of what I would say to her this time, maybe now was the time to threaten telling her parents. I'd never thought I'd resort to being a snitch, especially not when there was a real potential of me going down too, but for Ali…I’d contemplated it several times.

  I was both saddened and amazed Ali's parents hadn’t noticed any changes in her so far. In fact, they didn’t seem to even have a clue of what their daughter was doing. You’d think her dad, being a cop and all, would have noticed the textbook signs in his own kid, but he hadn’t. Neither of them had.

  Either they clearly didn't pay enough attention to the only living child they still had, or maybe they simply thought their daughter was being a normal teenager, living out a normal summer, a summer where she was hardly ever home.

  Whatever the reason for being so blind, it didn't matter. Ali was slipping through their fingers just as quickly as she was slipping through mine and one of us had to grab hold of her.

  Guess it was going to be me.

  When I got to my house, Ali's car sat parked in my driveway behind Kerri’s. Disappointment crushed me, again. I walked straight to the front door without pausing, deciding this was the moment I would tell her exactly how pissed I was about everything. I slung the door open and stepped inside.

  “Seth, hey!” Jade said in a strangely off tone.

  My eyes darted around the room, noticing Ali wasn’t there and neither was Calvin. Jade and Kerri looked as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t, and Brent continued picking at his fingernails with a pocket knife, a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.

  “Well…this should be interesting,” Brent muttered under his breath. “Maybe you should snag one of your brother’s Oxycontins and pop it before the shit hits the fan.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what the hell he’d meant by that, but closed it the second I heard Ali’s giggles coming from the back of the house.

  “What the fuck?” was all I said.

  I left the door wide open behind me and followed her giggles down the hall, pushing my way past Jade as she stood to try and stop me. I stopped only when I realized the giggles were coming from behind Calvin’s closed bedroom door.

  I stared at it fixedly and bitterness swelled inside of me, I could taste it in the back of my throat. My stomach rolled as more giggles and chuckles filled my ears and I thought I might vomit.

  The door swung open before I could make my fingers move to grip the knob and open it myself. Ali stood in front of me, slipping her tank top back on, with a smile on her face. Our eyes locked and her smile faded.

  “Here you go, princess,” Calvin said from behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her shoulder as he slipped a little zip-lock baggie into the palm of her hand.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Seth,” she whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

  Calvin moved past her. “I’m not,” he said, purposely bumping my shoulder as he walked past me and out into the hall.

  My eyes dropped to what Ali held in her hand and I felt like someone had just hit me in the gut with a sledge hammer. It was a tiny baggie of meth. She’d fucked my brother for a baggie of meth.

  Her fingers curled around it. “Seth, I just…” she stumbled on her words. “I'm sorry.”

  I heard her speak, but her words held no meaning to me. I found myself wondering if this was the first time, or if there were others that I didn't know about.

  “How could you?” I asked. “And with Calvin, of all people.” My eyes shifted to her face in time to see a tear slide down her cheek.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she sighed. “I’m so sorry, Seth.”

  I closed my eyes, curled my fingers into my palms, and dug my nails in as hard as I could. Physical pain felt better than the emotional pain I was feeling. Because the emotional pain, it felt worse than all of Calvin’s beatings combined together.

  “Seth.” Her fingers brushed across my forearm and I jerked away from her touch so quickly I surprised even myself.

  It was the first time her touch sickened me, making the nausea in my stomach rise up and roll over me in crashing waves. I couldn’t stand the feeling of her skin against mine, not after who it had just been pressed up against.

  “I’m telling you I’m sorry! It didn’t mean anything,” she sobbed. “Would you just look at me? Please!”

  I kept my eyes closed and struggled to keep my breathing even. “I can’t, because I can’t stand the sight of you right now, not after what you just did,” I said flatly. “Besides, I wouldn’t recognize you even if I did; the Ali I knew would never have fucked my brother for that shit.”

  “So, what are you saying?” she snapped in a strained voice. “That it’s over? You can’t even look at me anymore, so that’s it?”

  I opened my eyes and looked directly into hers. “I thought you were better than this, I loved you...” I trailed off, fighting back tears of my own. I turned and began walking down the
hall, headed for the already opened front door.

  “Seth, don’t go, don’t do this to me!” she sobbed behind me. “It will never happen again, I promise!”

  I paused at the edge of the hallway and glanced over my shoulder at her crumbled frame. “You did this to yourself, Ali,” I said and continued towards the door.

  “You look like you could use a pick me up, Seth…grab yourself out a few Oxycontins,” Calvin sneered and tossed a sandwich bag filled with pills at me. “Between that and the baggie I gave Ali, it should all even out to a good trade. She was a good fuck, after all.”

  I swatted the bag away and slammed the door shut behind me, just as something inside me released and the salty taste of my own tears touched my lips.

  I walked to the end of my street, wiping tears from my chin, and sat on the curb. I was tired of everything; of Calvin, of trying to make myself believe Ali was ever going to be anything other than what she was right now, an addict, and most of all, my horrible life.

  I sat on the curb in the hot midday sun and cried my heart out, because the girl I loved had just screwed my brother for drugs. I cried until the pain in my chest didn’t feel so raw. Until I had no more tears left to cry out. Until the only emotion remaining inside of me was an overpowering fury of rage so powerful I couldn’t sit there any longer. Hatred boiled through my veins. Hatred because Calvin knew Ali was my girlfriend. Hatred because Ali hadn’t even thought of how doing what she did would make me feel. Hatred because of how incredibly hurt I felt by it all.

  I stood and headed back towards my house, ready to confront my brother, this time for real. No more dirty looks, shouting, or getting in his face and shoving. This time I was going to throw the first punch and beat his ass for a change.

  I made it to the front door in what seemed like the mere blink of an eye. I swung it open and what I saw broke me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ali lay sprawled across my couch, her eyes closed as though she were sleeping, her face tinted with a bluish-chalky color, her lips dry looking and parted.