Better Left Buried

by Frisch, Belinda

When Jaxon held her hand she thought she’d faint. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell her about us.”

  He meant Harmony. Brea had used her as an excuse when she was really afraid that Rachael seeing her with Jaxon would make things worse between them. She wasn’t prepared to fight her. Harmony would never let her live down the fact that dating Jaxon was exactly what Brea’s mother wanted, but there was no danger in that, just aggravation. Rachael, on the other hand, had been waiting to get her alone for months.

  When Becky Clark walked past them laughing, Brea knew she was sunk.

  If he wouldn’t leave, she’d have to.

  “I have to go. We can talk about this later.” She tucked her journal inside her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  His stare burned at her back as she hurried toward the senior hallway, praying he didn’t follow her. Becky was an omen of something terrible from Rachael and Amanda, something Brea didn’t want Jaxon to see. There were only a couple of minutes left until the next bell when whatever happened would be visible to everyone. She felt sick to her stomach as she neared her locker. The word “whore” was written in crimson paint that streaked the metal door.

  “Have fun cleaning that up, whore.” Rachael’s laugh echoed as she turned the far corner.

  The air was thick with the tension of class about to be let out, of students flooding the halls, and of everyone seeing what Rachael had done.

  Brea used the gym shirt in her backpack as a rag, but the paint was already starting to dry. The letters were indelible. Even smeared, everyone could read them. Paint stained her fingertips and clothes, and as hard as she tried not to cry, she couldn’t help herself. Tears rolled down her cheeks, spilling from her eyes so heavily that they blurred her vision. Without Harmony, she was a fish in a barrel and Rachael had taken advantage. Her hands shook as she worked the combination lock, terrified of what else Rachael might have done. Please don’t let her have poured paint in there, too. The lock released and she pulled the door open, exhaling a brief sigh of relief that everything inside was intact. She wiped her tears with her sleeve and did a quick inventory of her things. Nothing was missing, but there was a folded piece of paper smudged with red paint on the floor. She unfolded it and a new wave of dread washed over her.

  “You better watch your back.”

  It’s what she’d been trying to do all along.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The number twelve bus was full of morning commuters, business people reading their newspapers and drinking coffee from go cups, going much deeper into the city than Harmony was. She leaned her head against the cold window and listened to Concrete Blonde playing loudly through her headphones.

  “This is such a bad idea.” She huffed an annoyed breath at the lady flipping and folding the Life section in the seat next to her.

  The woman stared at the pentagram necklace dangling above Harmony’s cleavage as though she hadn’t previously noticed it.

  “What?” Harmony pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and tapped the box repeatedly against the heel of her hand.

  The woman tucked the paper under her arm and stood without answering, joining a neurotic, middle-aged man furiously texting on his smart phone in the aisle.

  Crowded as it was, no one took the empty seat.

  The bus slowed and stopped at the corner of 9th and Oak.

  Harmony pulled the cord for the driver to open the door. No surprise, she was the only one getting off. She forced her way through the line of standing passengers, most of them barely taking a step back.

  “Excuse me.”

  The smell of cologne, perfume, and sweat made her sick. The conjecture whispered between the commuters as she pushed her way past them reinforced what she’d always known: she didn’t belong.

  She stumbled onto the curb and held up her middle finger. “Assholes.”

  The bus driver, a graying man with thick glasses and lifeless eyes, shook his head and closed the door, leaving her alone in a part of town that would make a less confident girl uncomfortable.

  The state, in its infinite wisdom, had put the Department of Social Services offices in Mason, a ‘city’ by definition, but nothing like New York or Boston. The densely populated area had small pockets of nothingness, graffiti-laden areas not central to anything but drugs, crime, and the kind of people society would rather forget. There was no traffic because the roads didn’t lead anywhere anyone would want to go. People kept to themselves here, and no one ever snitched.

  Bennett’s office was four blocks away and even in broad daylight, the intimidating streets radiated a sense of danger from the bad things lurking among them.

  She opened the pack of cigarettes, hoping the nicotine would dispatch her unease. She pinched a cigarette between her lips and when the wind kicked up, catching her coat, she dropped her lighter.

  “Shit.”

  She bent down to pick it up and a wolf-whistle came from behind her, sending a chill up her spine. She turned to see a scruffy man—late-forties, missing teeth, wearing ripped-up jeans and paint-splattered work boots—walking toward her.

  He looked like the men who paid to have sex with her mother.

  “Hey,” he said. “Need a hand?”

  She pulled her coat closed and ignored him.

  “I’m talking to you.” The man unscrewed the top off a brown-bagged bottle and took a long sip. It was clear from his slow and slurred speech that it wasn’t his first of the day. “Hey, girl.”

  “I’m not a girl,” she mumbled and picked up her pace.

  9th Street was primarily subsidized apartments with a smattering of private businesses so few and far between that the chances of ducking in somewhere were slim.

  “I’m sorry. No offense meant. Will you stop a minute?”

  “No.” She walked faster, farther into desolation when she should have been going the other way. She only had to make it four blocks. She’d dealt with drunks before.

  This one was persistent.

  “Come on, sexy, where’re you going?” As if going from ‘girl’ to ‘sexy’ would change anything. His untied boots clapped against the cement as he jogged toward her.

  “It’s way too early for this, loser.”

  He closed the gap.

  The smell of alcohol, cigarettes, and filth rolled off of him.

  “I just want to talk to you. You’re so beautiful.” A long scar extended down his right cheek and he had a rough tattoo on his neck, the kind either done in someone’s kitchen or in prison.

  “Right. Look, I’m not interested.” She held up her hand. “I mean it, man. Leave me alone.”

  An elderly Asian shopkeeper, the only other person in sight, looked in the other direction.

  “How do you know you’re not interested if you haven’t heard my offer?” He smirked, no doubt fancying himself clever.

  “Because I’m not looking for anything.”

  He smiled, half of his teeth broken or missing. “Well I’m not, either. I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Why don’t you join me for a drink? You’d like that, right?” He held the bottle out to her. She slapped it from his hand. The glass shattered when it hit the sidewalk and brown liquid seeped through the bag.

  The man’s face contorted with anger.

  She knew she’d made a mistake. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  The man narrowed his dark eyes, bending the edge of his scar. “I just bought that you little bitch.” He grabbed Harmony’s biceps with both hands.

  “Let go of me!” She tried to shake him, but he was much stronger than he looked. “Help! Someone help me!”

  Panic replaced anger and the man shoved her backward, hard, into a brick wall to shut her up.

  “Shhh. Stop your damn yelling!” Her head ached like he’d split her skull and all she could see was white light and the edges of shapes forming in her peripheral vision. “You stay quiet. You shut the hell up or I’ll kill you, you hear me?” He s
hoved her again, this jolt to her head harder than the last, and her knees buckled as she fought passing out.

  Something hard, like a gun, jabbed her side as the man hooked her arm around his neck. He dragged her into a nearby alley and spun her around to face him. She was propped up against a dumpster that smelled of spoiled food. Saliva filled her mouth and she thought she’d be sick. She dry heaved.

  The man laughed.

  “Leave me alone,” she mumbled, praying to regain her strength.

  Her vision cleared, though her ears rang loudly, and she was able to get her feet firmly under her.

  He held onto her with one hand and unzipped his pants with the other, reaching inside his tattered boxers with a hand he’d spit on. “Come on, come on.” He was trying to work himself up and failing. “You see what you did, you little bitch?”

  He pulled her hair to force her gaze downward. She pinched her eyes shut, easing her hand toward her pocket.

  The man kept at himself. “You see? You see what you did?” He’d become obsessed with his inability to perform, his focus almost entirely off of her.

  She had to play things right because chances were, even drunk, the man was faster and stronger than she was. He groaned and tugged, closing his eyes, imagining God knows what. She waited for him to reopen them and blasted him with an ill-placed stream of pepper spray that rained down on them both. A clear thread poured from the man’s large nose and his eyes watered, but whether it was the booze keeping him from feeling the pain or something else, the irritant didn’t deter him.

  It angered him.

  “You stupid little whore. Fight all you want. Please. That just makes this better.”

  He pushed her to the ground, grinning with malicious intent as he exposing her breasts and tore out the crotch of her stockings. His eyelids were swelling, but he kept blinking, determined to take what he wanted. “You think that’s the first time I’ve ever been sprayed?” His laugh bordered on maniacal.

  She coughed, her chest tightened, and she could scarcely breathe, but she kept her knees pressed tightly together even as he tried to force them back apart. Her eyes burned, watering heavier as the spray worked its way between her lids. The man mistook that for tears.

  “Stop crying.” His calloused hands scraped her skin as he clawed at her. He was hard now. It was only a matter of time.

  She fought for all she was worth, kicking and punching, but she couldn’t match his strength or intensity.

  None of this would have happened if she had let Adam take her to the appointment.

  She screamed, each word burning her constricting throat.

  “Help. Help. Help!”

  Tires squealed and the smell of burnt rubber moved as a cloud through the alley.

  Adam appeared; his face tight with anger. He pulled the man off her and delivered a single solid punch to his jaw, knocking him into the dumpster. The half-dressed drunk collapsed, one arm over his head, revealing a gun in his waistband.

  Harmony froze from shock.

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Adam backed away and looked her over like a parent examining a child who had fallen. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Harmony, can you move?”

  She forced herself to sit up, her shoulders and hips hurting, gravel ground into the skin on her back. She shook the trash from her hair and adjusted her shirt, unable to stop staring at the man who had attacked her.

  A pool of blood seeped from his temple, matching a spot on the dumpster where his head had slammed into the metal edge.

  Adam followed her gaze. “Come on. We have to go.” She didn’t answer. “Harmony, we have to get out of here. Now!”

  Her mind played out the inevitable police scenario. She looked around for anything she may have dropped. “We have to get my things. They’ll trace this back to me. We have to get everything.”

  Adam eased her onto her feet and into the passenger’s side of his truck. “I’ll make sure I grab it all.”

  She watched as he scurried to put things right, praying the man she’d have killed herself five minutes earlier wasn’t dead.

  “Check.” Adam got into the driver’s seat, sweaty and spattered with blood, and set her stuff between them. “Check to make sure that’s all of it.”

  She did as much of an inventory as her strained mind could manage. “I think so.”

  “Shit, Harmony. This is bad.” He was hurt. There was blood on his hand and at least some of it was his.

  She wanted to dote, to ask if he was okay, but all she kept thinking was why had he shown up in the first place.

  “How did you find me?” She stared ahead, dazed, hurt, and scared.

  “That’s what you have to say to me right now?” He squeezed the fish mouth wound closed to help it clot, but he was bleeding pretty hard. “I got what I could get done at the shop, but I told Walter I had to go to your appointment. I went to Bennett’s office and when you weren’t there, I just started circling the bus stop near 9th. When I saw that broken bottle, I was afraid something was wrong.” Blood spilled over the back of his hand. “Then I heard you screaming.”

  “Just my luck, right?”

  “I’d call it pretty lucky.” Adam unclenched his jaw and pointed to the glove compartment. “Hand me a napkin.”

  She passed him a wrinkled stack. “Why did you think you had to come to Bennett’s?”

  He wrapped the napkins around his knuckles and started the truck. “How about ‘thank you for saving me from the rapey pervert’?” He pulled out onto 9th Street, heading back toward Bennett’s.

  “You still don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anyone, Harmony.” The truth was hard to hear. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened to you back there?”

  “I had it handled.”

  “Sure looked like it, too.” He rolled his eyes. “You can take care of yourself. I get that. I’m just trying to help.”

  “I help myself.”

  “You’re going to help yourself right back into the system going to Bennett dressed like that. You don’t get it, do you? You have to do what they want. Six months from now you can tell them all to go to hell, but if you don’t want to end up in a group home, away from me and Brea and anything else you care about, then play by the rules for once in your life.” He reached behind the seat and handed her a plastic grocery sack with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt inside. “Here, put these on.”

  “I’m not going to change how I dress for these people. I am who I am.”

  “This isn’t a negotiation.” He pulled into Parker Center—an old, brick school converted to office space that housed most of the county’s programs—and parked at the far end of the lot. He flipped down the visor for her to get a good look at herself. Her clothes were torn, her skin scraped, and her hair a mess. “How are you going to explain this to Bennett? Don’t make this worse on yourself than it has to be. Change your clothes and clean up in the bathroom.”

  “Fine.”

  There was no other choice.

  She changed, cleaning up the best she could with what was in the glove compartment, and eased out of the truck wearing a pair of faded jeans and a pink t-shirt with glitter lettering that read “Tough Girl”.

  “Where did you even get this ridiculous outfit?”

  “Goodwill,” he said. “You needed something in your wardrobe that didn’t come from Hot Topic.”

  “I really hate you right now.”

  He stepped in front of her and kissed her. “I know, but I still love you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Adam stood behind Harmony in the doorway of the overfull waiting room, his arms wrapped around her, their fingers knitted together at her waist. There were pieces of napkin stuck in his now clotted wound and his hands were stained grease black.

  No matter how often he washed them, they never came clean.

  A white noise generator hissed under the chair next to them, masking the behind closed doors conversations. The phone rang nearly non-stop and
a red-headed girl with Down’s syndrome pleaded with her elderly mother to go home.

  “Pease,” she begged. “I wanna l-e-a-v-e. Pretty pease.”

  Harmony understood the sentiment. Nervous sweat dripped down her sides and back, filling her nose with the scent of lavender deodorant.

  “I should have cancelled.”

  Adam shook his head. “It’s going to be fine. You’re cleaned up. You look the part. Just go in there and act the shit out of this thing. Whatever he says, you do.”

  “Harmony Wolcott?” Dr. Bennett stood in his office doorway, his wrinkled khakis an inch too short and the tails of his button-down shirt hanging beneath the waistband of a food-stained sweater vest.

  She walked toward him with her head down. Her eyes burned and were no doubt still red, despite her rinsing them. She could smell and taste the pepper spray and refused to make eye contact.

  “Good to see you again,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She collapsed on the lumpy couch, still warm from the previous patient, and coughed.

  Therapy wasn’t like in the movies—no high-end leather or panoramic views from the forty-sixth floor of a high rise—at least, not at the kind of places Social Services refers you to. The flattened, red-on-blue plaid cushion sucked her in and she tucked her leg underneath her for balance.

  “Are you all right? Would you like a glass of water?” He leaned his head to get a better look at her.

  “No, thank you. Let’s just get this over with.” Adam’s voice in the back of her head told her to be nice. “I’m sorry. I just mean I’m not feeling that well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Bennett lingered in the doorway.

  “You can close the door,” she said. “My mother’s not coming.”

  “Oh?” He closed the door, took a seat behind his laminate oak desk, and opened her voluminous chart. “I thought I was clear when I said that her attendance was mandatory.”

  His close-set eyes reminded her of a pig’s and were magnified by the coke bottle horn rimmed glasses perpetually sliding down his narrow nose. His thinning salt and pepper hair was tied back in a low ponytail and his breath reeked of onions.