The Paper Swan

by Leylah Attar

  My muscles tensed as I heard footsteps outside the door. I was soaked in a pool of sweat, and my finger was starting to throb. I jumped at the loud thud on the door, expecting it to burst open, but it remained locked. There was a muffled gasp and then more thudding.

  For a moment I thought he had dragged in another victim, that she was struggling to get away, but the thudding turned rhythmic and the sounds coming out of her alternated between pleasure and pain.

  Damian was fucking her against the door. Hard. Fast. The sick bastard wanted to make sure I knew exactly what he was doing—he was choosing her over me, working out the sexual frustration I’d stirred up in him. He’d rather pay a local hooker than acknowledge lust, desire, or weakness for any part of me. I was a non-entity, an empty vessel for vengeance. All the time that I’d spent imagining him forcing himself on me had been cruel, deliberate punishment. He’d set it loose in my head—passed on the baton and I’d run with it. I had let him defile me and violate me in the most unspeakable ways and I had done it all by myself, in my head.

  I didn’t like the emotions surging through me. I should’ve been grateful it was her and not me, but I felt humiliated. Dejected. Rejected. I should’ve been disgusted by the sounds of their sex, steadfast in my hatred of Damian, but I was wobbly and confused.

  The woman cried out when she climaxed—a sharp, shuddering sigh. Everything went still, except for the sound of heavy breathing. It didn’t last long though. The pounding resumed. I could hear her begging, pleading, but I didn’t know whether it was for him to stop or not stop.

  They moved away from the door. There was a crash. Something cluttered to the floor. I closed my eyes, hoping to shut out the guttural sounds coming from the galley. It’s a silly thing we do—shutting our eyes to stop ourselves from hearing something. And it made it worse. I could picture them in the room now, her bent over the chair as he took her like an animal, because that’s what sex with Damian sounded like—wild and primal and ferocious.

  It went on forever. The man was a beast. When he let go, it was in a series of short, breathless grunts. I unclenched my teeth, realizing I’d been coiled up through the whole thing, as if I’d been there with him.

  The woman said something, but it was too soft for me to catch. I thought I heard Damian laugh, but I couldn’t picture him doing that—ever—so I must have imagined it. They conversed in low tones for a while. Then I heard their footsteps up on deck.

  Damian was paying the men, or the woman, or both. Fuel and water for the boat, a good fuck for its owner. We were all set. I didn’t stand a chance—there would be no opportunity to escape. I listened to the drone of the pangas fading into the distance.

  Damian entered the room when they were gone. He was still wearing his baseball cap. I doubted he’d let the woman see his full face, or if he’d even completely disrobed. Probably just dropped his pants and taken her against the door.

  He surveyed me as I lay on the bed, my legs splayed, with nothing on but my shorts and my bra. “Dinner,” he said, as he removed the gag from my mouth.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He took his time undoing the straps around my legs and wrists.

  “I think you’re forgetting how this works,” he said quietly, deliberately examining my bandaged finger.

  He didn’t have to say anything else. I loathed him, loathed myself for letting him break me. I followed him out to the galley, rubbing my sore wrists. He unfolded a greasy paper bag and placed some hot dogs on a plate. I should have been all over them after days of fish and rice, but all I could smell was Scent of Whore. The dish rack was on the floor and things looked liked they’d been swept right off the counter.

  “Eat.” Damian wolfed down his share, and started putting away the supplies he’d picked up.

  When the fridge was stocked up, he got a can-opener and opened a can of evaporated milk. I watched him pour it into a clear, lidded jar. I guessed it stored better than fresh milk. He turned to the coffee maker and started measuring out the coffee.

  My eyes fell on the jagged, metal top of the can he’d just opened. It was lying in the garbage, by my feet. I reached down and grabbed it. Damian still had his back to me.

  I closed my palm over the circular piece of tin and felt the sharp, barbed edge. That’s what I needed to sink into his jugular.

  On five, Skye. On five.

  I took a deep breath and counted down.

  5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .

  I caught him as he turned. It was a perfect cut, except he intercepted my wrist before I could go deeper. His eyes widened at the sharp, piercing pain before the hard thwack of his slap hit me. He flung me clear across the kitchen, my cheek turning red from the imprint of his palm.

  He plucked the metal out of his neck and clamped his hand to the wound. I wanted his blood to spurt out onto the counter, where he’d spilled mine. I wanted him to fall to his knees and die in a pool of red vengeance. I wanted to see me in his eyes when he took his last breath.

  None of that happened. Damian swore and removed his hand to inspect the damage. It was a nice sized gash, but I had just scratched the surface—a couple of Band-Aids and he’d be good to go. He started walking towards me, an unrelenting, indestructible force that I just couldn’t get away from, and I broke down. I nursed my throbbing cheek and sobbed. And sobbed.

  “If you can’t take, don’t give,” he growled.

  If you can’t take, don’t give.

  If you can’t take don’t give.

  A boy I once adored had said that. Right after he’d knocked Gideon Benedict St. John’s tooth out.

  My thoughts flip-flopped like livewires on an overloaded circuit.

  No.

  Every atom in me rebelled at the idea.

  I looked up at the figure looming over me. The boy had changed into a man—his body had changed, his voice had changed, his face had changed. But people’s eyes should never be so different that you no longer recognized their souls; they should never turn so hard that they shut all the doors to the past.

  “Esteban?” I whispered.

  No. Please say no.

  “There is no Esteban. Esteban died a long time ago.” He pulled me up and trapped me against the counter. “There is only Damian. And you don’t defy or escape or seduce Damian. And you sure as hell don’t fantasize about him,” he spit out.

  I blinked, trying to come to terms with the fact that the boy I’d worshiped and the man I abhorred were one and the same, but I couldn’t bridge the bleak, black chasm in-between. It started stretching, opening, swallowing me up. The ground was disappearing from under my feet.

  “Skye.” Damian shook me, but it only made the crack inside me worse. I felt myself falling into it, welcoming the nothingness that enveloped me.

  WHEN I CAME AROUND, DAMIAN was sleeping next to me.

  Yes, Dah-me-yahn.

  Because that’s who he was now. I tried to look for the boy I’d known, but there was no place for him to hide in the harsh planes of Damian’s face. He had been twelve years old the last time I’d seen him. Fifteen years had changed him into the man before me now, taken away the softness, the expressions, deepened his voice, hardened his heart. The moon turned his skin a silvery-blue and accentuated the shadow of his brows and nose. He was sleeping shirtless for the first time, as if he was done with all the masks and layers and pretenses. For all I knew, he wasn’t wearing a stitch under the covers.

  I inched away from him, towards the edge of the bed. Something wet and lumpy shifted under me. A thawed out bag of frozen veggies for my cheek.

  That’s right, Damian. Slap me and ice me better.

  Can’t kill me, but can’t let me go either.

  I finally understood what I had seen in his eyes. Black battling Black. Damian keeping Esteban at bay. Cruelty with glimpses of mercy. Friendship holding vengeance back by a thread.

  I couldn’t understand his actions, but there was obviously bad blood between my father and Damian, and I needed to figure it
out. As far as I knew, the last time the two had been together was the day of my ninth birthday, when my father had asked Victor to enroll him in Miss Edmond’s class.

  Esteban had never showed. I had woken up and waited for MaMaLu, but she never came—not that day, or the next, or the day after that. When one of the maids came in and started packing my clothes in a large trunk, I threw a tantrum.

  “Why is Abella putting my things away?” I asked when my father arrived. “Where is MaMaLu?”

  “We’re going to San Diego, Skye.” My father folded the papers he was holding and rubbed his temples. “We’ll be away for a while. MaMaLu took another job.”

  “You never said anything about going away! When? MaMaLu and Esteban would never leave without saying goodbye.”

  “Skye, I know you’ve always thought of them as family, but they go where MaMaLu’s work takes her. I’m sure they just wanted to make this easy for you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I pushed him away. “I’m not going anywhere until I see them.”

  “Those can stay,” my father said to Abella, who was tucking away the paper creations that Esteban had made for me.

  “I’m not leaving those behind!” I grabbed the box from her.

  “We only have room for important stuff, Skye, and we have to be quick about it. We leave for the airport soon. I need you to help Abella, and get ready. Can you do that, Skye?”

  “No! I won’t! I’m not going anywhere. I’m not packing anything. You go.”

  “Skye—”

  “You’re always gone anyways. I’m staying here, and when MaMaLu finds out, she’ll come back and we’ll—”

  “Skye!”

  I don’t know which of us was more surprised when he slapped me. It was hard and sharp, and it stung. The box fell out of my hands and we both stared at the paper animals lying at our feet.

  “When are you going to understand that they’re just the help?” said my father. “They’re not blood, they’re not family. The only person you can count on is me. And the only person I can count on is you. Everything else and everyone else will come and go. If MaMaLu and Esteban want to see you, they will find a way. And you can write to them. As often as you like. But we have to leave now, Skye. We don’t have a choice.”

  And so I’d gone, even though I kept turning back as we left Casa Paloma. I thought I heard Esteban calling my name, but all I saw through the rear window were plumes of dust as we drove down the dirt road. I turned back when we left Mexico. I turned back when we landed in the States. I turned back every time I saw a boy with skin like Esteban, and I turned back every time I caught a glimpse of long, dark hair adorned with flowers.

  After a while, I stopped turning back because MaMaLu and Esteban never replied to the strawberry scented letters I sent, or the carefully glued photo collages I made: This is my new school. This is my new room. This is my new address. This is my new hair cut because my hair grew too long and there’s no one to brush it for me, now. I miss you, MaMaLu. Write back, Esteban. On five, okay?

  Eventually, I buried the memories, along with the hurt. Our trip to San Diego turned out to be a permanent stay. When my father slapped me that day, he’d slammed the door shut—my world had turned wary and guarded. Family is family. Friends aren’t forever. Everything will break. People say goodbye. Get too close and you get hurt.

  When Damian slapped me, he’d blown the same world apart, bringing down tiny little pieces that I was still trying to put together. There was more to the story than my father had told me. MaMaLu and Esteban hadn’t just left without saying goodbye. Something had happened. Something that had turned Esteban into Damian.

  I thought he’d chopped and dyed my hair black to keep people from recognizing me, but he’d done it for himself, so I bore no resemblance to the girl he used to know. Damian was set on revenge for whatever horrible, terrible thing he thought my father had done, and whatever associations he had of me were buried so deep in his psyche that he was able to do horrible, terrible things to me. He treated me like a thing rather than a person to safeguard himself. He hurt me, humiliated me, shut out my voice, my face, my tears. But once in a while, those memories came back, and they still meant something because they shook him out of the red haze of anger and hatred. The Esteban I knew was in there somewhere, and he’d heard me praying for him. He was the only reason I was still alive.

  I didn’t know how long I had, but I knew there was no point asking Damian to explain why he was doing this. He would never have come this far if he didn’t feel justified. There was only one person who could get through to him.

  I had to find a way to get to MaMaLu before it was too late.

  BREAKFAST WAS TIGHT-LIPPED AS DAMIAN and I stared into our plates. I wanted to look at him so badly in the daylight, to really, really look at him. It hurt to chew. My lip was swollen so I pushed the food around. Damian had covered the cut on his neck with a piece of gauze. The longer we stayed together, the longer our list of cuts and bruises grew—both inside and out.

  “How is MaMaLu?” I asked, holding on to my coffee.

  The sea was rough and things were sliding back and forth on the counter.

  “I’d like to see her,” I said, when he didn’t reply.

  He dumped his plate into the sink and turned to me. “That’s where we’re headed. If you can make it through the next fourteen days, you’ll get to see her.”

  Damian had mentioned twenty-one days earlier. We had been on the boat for about a week, which meant that he had been counting down the days until he saw MaMaLu.

  “Does she know . . . ?” That you planned to kill me? “Does she know to expect me?”

  I caught a pained expression cross his eyes before he turned away. Of course she didn’t know. She would never stand for it. If I could just make it to her in one piece, MaMaLu would fix everything. MaMaLu knew how to fix things—lost things, hurt things, cracked things, cut and bruised things.

  I watched through the porthole as we left Bahia Tortugas. A colony of sea lions surfed behind us, playing in our wake.

  Ay, yai, yai, yai,

  Sing and do not cry. . .

  The thought of seeing MaMaLu comforted me and for the first time, I felt a glimmer of hope.

  We sailed past rocky cliffs obscured by swirling clouds of haze. As the day progressed, the waves got choppier and the sky turned dark and ominous. I could hear the crackle of the radio from upstairs, but Damian’s voice was drowned out as the bar stools toppled over. Everything went crashing and rolling as the boat lurched and heaved.

  I held on to the walls as I made my way upstairs. Sharp, cold needles of rain pelted down on me. The sky was a scene of high drama. Black clouds roiled towards us, dragging deep shadows across white-capped water. The wind whistled in the rigging and came at me in shrieking gusts. I couldn’t make out the horizon. Then I peered into the eerie darkness and realized why. Up ahead was a wall of water so high, that I had to tilt my head back.

  HOLY FUCK.

  “Get back down!” Damian shouted over the chaos as I struggled to stay on my feet.

  The boat began flying off the crests and crashing into the troughs, bringing us to an abrupt, heart-stopping halt through each terrifying wave. I held on to the railing, but the metal was wet and I kept losing my grip. Buckets of water were being tossed in my face and my feet slipped on the deck.

  Damian barked something into the radio and hung up. He made his way towards me, fighting against the wind, and slipped a life vest over me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. We were falling into each wave with a resounding crash. He pointed towards the stairs and started inching his way back to the cockpit.

  I was almost there when I heard something whip past me—a high-pitched, metallic whoosh. I looked up and realized that one of the lines securing the dinghy had come loose and was whipping around in the wind—probably the one I had unlatched partially when I was on the roof. The heavy, steel fastener at the end had just missed me and was swinging back, heading
straight for me. I stood paralyzed, unable to move, unable to breath, as the wrecking ball of death came for me.

  “Skye!” Damian pushed me out of the way a millisecond before it hit.

  I rolled on the deck, knocked off my feet. I heard a crash, the sound of glass shattering, and opened my eyes. The line had slammed into one of the windows and the hook was lodged in its frame. The dinghy was barely contained by the two remaining latches, and looked like it was about to come loose.

  “Damian.” I turned to him.

  He was lying by my side, but didn’t respond. There was big, wide gash on the side of his head. Blood was oozing out and mixing with the rain.

  “Damian!” I knelt beside him.

  Oh God. Please wake up.

  But his body was limp and his head rolled from side to side as the boat lurched like a bucking bronco.

  “Damian, please,” I cried. I can’t do this alone.

  The ocean swelled around us in wild, terrifying chaos. I needed him. I needed his fierce brutality to conquer the waves and take us to MaMaLu. I needed his frost and his bite and his unrelenting fury to power us through the storm.

  “What do you do, Skye?” I thought I heard him say as I held his bleeding head in my lap.

  I glanced at the cockpit. Damian hadn’t locked the radio up. It was still crackling with static. This was my chance—to escape, to get away, to make a run for it. So why was I still holding on to Damian?

  Because he saved you.

  Because he pushed you out of the way.

  Because if you call the authorities, you know they’ll put him away.

  Don’t be a fucking idiot, Skye. Make the call!

  I stumbled to the radio, my stomach dropping every time the boat fell into a wave. I fiddled with the controls until I figured out which one I pressed to talk. I had no idea who was out there, in Mexican waters, or what the proper procedure was for a distress call.

  “This is Skye Sedgewick. Hello? Can anyone hear me?”