Proof

by Craze, Chelle C.

  “Your girl?” Cal spat out in disbelief, and then a smile played along his lips and his eyes dared me to answer.

  I didn’t, mostly because my mouth forgot how to form words. I’m sure he thought I was quiet due to the title. Nope. I never knew he had a brother. He’d only ever mentioned a sister. Seemed about right. Destiny was a tricky bitch, and the curveball she’d just thrown at me was one of her best. Hearing Dax call me his girl wasn’t something I was used to yet, but could I get used to it? Maybe. My skin flushed from embarrassment and I fixated my eyes onto the couple of chips that flew between Cal and him. Uncertainty swarmed my body in a flood-like manner. Before, I’d only thought I’d given up on the day as I hesitantly dipped my toes into the water. Now it was clear, I was only about halfway committed as if I’d tried a beautiful swan dive, but the end result was a horrific belly flop. There were no questions left inside me. I’d had enough for one day. I hadn’t even been in high school for a full day and I’d already experienced more than my share of drama. I felt like the world had picked me up, tossed me into the bleakness of a snow globe and shook it as hard as possible. Everything inside that glass dome was flying around in a tornado of confusion, including me.

  “Yeah, she’s the one I told you about.” He smiled to me and then to Cal, his brother. I wanted to crawl into an early grave. This day kept getting better with each new piece of information. Not only had Cal treated me like a stranger, he knew his brother and I were, well, I didn’t know what we were in his eyes. At this point I was grasping at straws, or maybe I already had lost the battle at birth. I clearly didn’t do well with change, like I thought I did. Previously, my life was a big ball of changes. Mom and I moved all the time. Things changed all the time. I guess, perhaps, I’d been fed my serving of change, and my palate had moved beyond the taste it brought along with it.

  “I know. We met before, remember?”

  “You did?” Mar questioned him, her voice dripping with accusation.

  “Yeah, we have. Why don’t you tell her, Cal?” I jumped back into the conversation before Cal thought of a way to get out of it.

  “Blue here followed my lead and pulled him off the same bridge I pulled her off,” Dax interjected before Cal or I could add any more to the story.

  “Wait. He pulled you off a bridge. Were you?”

  “No! You know better than that, Mar,” I all but snapped at her and then tried reining in my emotions. I knew if I didn’t, I was about to lose it, and she didn’t deserve being on the receiving end of one ounce of my anger.

  I had no idea what it was with everyone thinking I was going to commit suicide, but they all jumped to conclusions and were positively mad. It wasn’t the reverse. My life might not have been an easy one, but I’d never thought of killing myself, mostly because I’d seen it. Finding Dad’s body was something I’d never intentionally put on someone, not that he had any control over dying. It wasn’t his choice, but that didn’t change the fact Cal and I had found his body. I wouldn’t throw that unpredictability up into the air and gamble with someone’s future like that, because it didn’t matter who you were or what you wanted to be when you grew up. Once you saw death, you were different. As if you’d walked the earth naïve of the perversion of death. You were fully aware of its reality, but until you laid eyes upon it, it was something made up, like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. Well, I was here to testify death was very real and ever-changing.

  The thing was, I hadn’t been the only one to find Dad. No. Cal was there with me, but neither of us mentioned any part of that. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I owed him some form of privacy, given he’d not ratted me out thus far. Maybe he didn’t want everyone to know he was in a psychiatric hospital—I sure as heck didn’t. Actually, other than talking with him about it, I hadn’t discussed that part of my life with anyone. Not much of it had really even been talked over with Mom. Talking about my problems just wasn’t who I was. I hadn’t told anyone about that part of my life, and maybe he hadn’t either. Perhaps Dax did us both a favor by telling his version of the truth. He unknowingly saved me from having to talk about the most difficult times of my life, something I kept locked away from everyone I met. No one needed to know everything about me, did they?

  The bell rang, and the four of us went our separate ways with unanswered questions, but hopefully Mar and Dax had enough answers to pacify them. I wasn’t playing a canary in this story. We all had heard what happened to them when the gases got to toxic levels. They died first to alert everyone else to get out of danger’s reach. I’m sorry, but as much as I had run my whole life, I didn’t plan to be caged now.

  Eighteen

  Cal

  The first day of my senior year was finally over. It was the beginning, one step closer to leaving this hellish town. The only thing that was even remotely interesting was Jaci. The problem was, she barely knew I existed. It was undeniable we were drawn to one another, but she refused to talk to me. I didn’t know why exactly, but I had a pretty good idea. Females didn’t tend to like being ignored, and that was precisely what I’d been doing to her, hoping to never see her again. She didn’t need to see life through the glasses I’d worn since I was little. Besides, how was I to know she was going to be attending the same school I did?

  The euphoria forced through the wall of my veins, and I told myself this would be the last time, but I always said that. Being an addict wasn’t like what most people thought it was. The majority of people only saw addicts as people purely dependent on drugs. They saw what they wanted to see. I didn’t judge them too much for it actually. It was effortless to believe what the media and word-of-mouth wanted you to because it’s what we were surrounded by today. For most, it was easier to call people like me a junkie and forever turn their back, family or not. At least it would be, but I didn’t make it easy on anyone. My imperfections had run so deep for so long they’d become a part of me. If you’re always messed up, people tended to question things less. It was your normal state. Who they were used to you being. I didn’t use drugs in the conventional sense that people were used to. Why make it easy on them? Keeping them guessing was a lot more fun.

  Sure, I’d dabbled in this, that, and the other, but sometimes, I simply allowed life to be my choice of poison. At times, the evil in the world was dark enough to intoxicate you. I’d found myself beneath the shade once or twice, and it was enough to feed my need. When it came to me, prediction was out of the question. Even I didn’t know what was going to happen. I never knew from one day to the next what I would choose.

  I worked out every day in some form or another. This morning before school it was running, which was typically the outlet I chose. Some days, though, it was push-ups and lifting weights. Others, I shoved synthetic happiness into my body, but it wasn’t necessarily drugs. It just depended on the day really. A lot of times, it relied on the mood I was in when I awoke. What could I say? I liked to change things up. It didn’t really matter what I did as long as it was something.

  It’d been weeks since we’d spoken to one another, and it was all my doing. Only thing was, I never thought I’d regret pushing her away as much as I did. The worst part was, the distance I placed between us let someone else wedge themselves right into the place I stupidly thought I might have at some point. Actually, I didn’t know which was worse: the fact she was dating someone who wasn’t me or that the someone was my stepbrother.

  Some people were born into sadness, a time when everyone else around was supposed to be happy. I absolutely fell into that awful category. For me, my birth wasn’t a particularly celebrated one. At least it wasn’t at first. My parents were married, and I had an older sister to look out for me, but the problem wasn’t with her. It was with Mom and Dad. They weren’t married to one another. Things tended to get messy when a child was the product of an affair, and that’s how my story began. An abomination. I just thanked my, whatever in the hell someone without luck thanked, because it sure as shit wasn’t stars, that Mom didn�
��t believe in abortion. Sometimes, though, I almost wished she had. My dad definitely didn’t support the idea. He must have supported the opposite. He was an absolute pro-life type of person as far as I could tell. He must have just barely gotten off and then crawled into bed with my stepmom because my brother and I were born only days apart.

  Fast-forward eighteen years later, our moms were best friends and our living situation could be considered less than conventional. We all lived together in a huge house they bought six years back, after the jealousy and hurt feelings subsided, of course. Females were weird. Either that or I was… maybe it was both. Neither of them could afford this place on their own, and Dax’s mom was the one to approach my mom with the idea. They both agreed Dax and I needed to get to know each other as brothers since we were more rivals at that point. We both missed people and needed someone, other than a therapist to talk to, seeing as I eventually straight up refused to go to my appointments, and Dax wasn’t making progress either. We were both pretty strange kids, but where Dax threw himself into any extracurricular activity to cope, I pushed myself harder. I did that and then some. It’s actually what led to me trying cocaine when we were fifteen, wanting to be the faster runner of the two of us. Horrible idea. I ended up having a panic attack because I thought my heart was going to explode.

  At first, Dax and I fought over everything, and I do mean everything. Thinking back to that time made me smile. Neither of our mothers was very big. We both must have gotten our height from our dad. I couldn’t count the times they had to try to pull us apart. That was usually what caused us all to laugh. Don’t get me wrong, though. Despite my mom being a half a foot shorter than me that woman could take me down in two seconds flat by pulling my ear.

  As Jaci’s head fell backward with laughter over something he’d whispered into her ear and she playfully swatted at his shoulder, I grunted. Jealousy was a nasty creature, but to be beneath its power was worse, in my opinion. Regardless of how bad you wanted to go on about your day, you were incapable. Even when you’d somehow escaped its grasp, being jealous found a way to slither up your body and tickle your ear with its forked tongue.

  I wanted to be happy for the two of them. Really I did, but the more I tried, the harder it was. At least that’s what I told myself. Probably just to feel a little better about myself. Honestly, I had no reason to feel the way I did. She made it clear she didn’t reciprocate the feelings. I’d tried to make small talk with her a few times, but it never amounted to more than a few words.

  The most obvious reason I shouldn’t be was my girlfriend, Amaris. She was beautiful. Not Jaci beautiful, but they weren’t people who could be compared. Amaris probably had the skin tone that could be classified with snow and long blonde hair, and the way her brown eyes watched me was like I was the only person she’d ever cared for. She was amazing. We liked the same crazy music for the most part, and she had the same don’t-give-a-shit attitude that I did. There shouldn’t be any amount of doubt about us at all, but there was.

  My brother slung his arm around Jaci and pulled her to his side, sneaking a quick kiss to her forehead while none of the teachers were watching. Every day we four ate lunch together and every day we both did our best to ignore one another. Amaris and my brother were both too oblivious and wrapped up in themselves to really pick up on the lingering awkwardness between Jaci and me.

  The thing about comparing Amaris and Jaci was even if I told myself they were equals, they weren’t. Amaris walked in the light of life, and Jaci confided in ghosts. She was the type of person who left you questioning everything, but she was the closest thing to heaven I’d ever seen. She didn’t want the world to see her imperfections, but it was her imperfections that called to me. As long as I didn’t hurt anyone in the process, everything should be fine. I didn’t think I was using Amaris, but maybe I was. I started to break it off with her, but the fact was, the feelings we shared were real. She was basically a chick version of me. Jaci didn’t want me, so I needed to forget whatever movements she inspired in my world, right? It didn’t matter she’d unknowingly helped me through the worst times of my life, if she didn’t care about me. It shouldn’t at least, but it did, even if I didn’t want it to. No amount of drugs, alcohol, or working out could get her out of my system. She ran as true as the blood in my veins, but I had to deny her. Denying her felt like refusing my lungs of air, but it was what had to be done. I didn’t want to hurt Amaris, and I was already hurt by the relationship my brother had, so it didn’t matter what happened to me. Not that I would ever admit any of that shit out loud, because I wasn’t a pussy or anything.

  The only thing that remotely pissed me off was neither my brother nor Amaris was aware of the past Jaci and I shared, or at least I didn’t think they were. I’d mentioned a psycho girl pulling me off a bridge and referred to her blue eyes, and my brother immediately knew who she was. Maybe that was my reason for distancing myself from her. At least it was at first. Dax looked so defeated when I talked about her, and he was a hopeless romantic, always was. Every woman he encountered was placed on that pedestal people talked about. He sure didn’t get his manners from our dad. In truth, I had no idea where they came from, seeing as the rest of the family didn’t have the standards he did. The rest of us Trahans were the people everyone else talked about. We’d all been called trashy and a waste of space—not Dax, and rightfully so. He really was a golden boy. I think he thought he had to live up to Dad’s legacy, before he got two women pregnant, that was.

  Our dad’s picture was showcased behind glass in the trophy cabinet, along with all the other town greats. There was even a scholarship with his name on it, painting him as a town hero. I guess it wasn’t typical for a local man to amount to much, especially for one to become an astronomer. And it definitely wasn’t normal for him to discover groundbreaking information. I wasn’t even sure what he’d discovered, mostly because I wasn’t interested enough to figure it out. To me, though, he was just a man I used to look up to and yet another shadow cast over me. Now Dax, on the other hand, could practically recite Dad’s research papers word for word. Life was funny like that. Dad had two sons and a daughter. I guess statistically, one had to be a fuck up and one had to excel. Luna, however, met the saddest statistic of all when she died.

  “Do you want my potatoes, babe?” Amaris asked, pulling me back to the present, and scooted her tray closer to mine. She sneered her nose at the only full section of her tray.

  “Sure?” I answered, a little leery as to why she was getting rid of them. I eyed them for bugs or a fingernail, but they looked perfectly normal to me, so I spooned them on top of the pile on my tray without questioning her reasoning of passing them along.

  “She doesn’t like them, Cal,” Jaci explained, picking up on my hesitation, and it was more than she’d said to me in weeks. Chills swirled around my body, and goosebumps appeared on my arms. I made some noise that I hoped resembled a word to acknowledge her, but didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to be obvious that she could influence me just merely by speaking my name. That would not only make this weird for me, but everyone sitting at the table. The predicament we’d fallen into wasn’t a traditional one, but it was hard to tell if I was the only one that picked up on it.

  “Especially not as well as you do,” she pointed out and clamped her lips together, pushing her tray to me and offering her serving as well. I arched an eyebrow, and a smile found my lips, remembering how much potatoes I’d put on my plate when we were kids. When my mind ventured into the tree house, I let it linger a little too long and stared at her. Everyone noticed.

  Jaci cleared her throat and arched her eyebrows, motioning to my brother and then Amaris. It was clear she and everyone else were waiting for an explanation of me zeroing in on her lips. I did the only thing a person could do when I was put on the spot…share the spotlight.

  Using my spoon, I shoved as much potatoes as possible onto Jaci’s face. Her hatred for me was undeniable. This much was expected. I didn�
�t think she’d enjoy me smearing food all over her face, but I had to create a distraction. I wasn’t the only one that had stared a little too long. When my eyes weren’t on her lips, they were mirroring the desire I saw in hers. This situation was the most confusing one I’d ever been a part of, and I used to be into some pretty challenging things. Football. Chess. I even tutored people in calculus, but never broadcasted that fact. I didn’t want to be known as a nerd.

  “You’re an asshole, Calvary Trahan!” she shouted, wiping the food from her face, and stormed out of the cafeteria. Sheesh! I knew she’d be upset, but that was a little much. I looked to my brother, and he simply shook his head when she wasn’t looking at him.

  “Bro, she was already upset. Don’t worry about it,” Dax said, shoveling in as much food as he could as he stood. “She said something about the date being a bad one for her in history,” he mumbled with a mouth full of food and shrugged his shoulders, eating on the way to the tray dumping station before placing his tray on the rest after he’d finished scraping it clean with his utensils.

  Amaris’ agitation was clear before I even looked back to her. Her tapping nails were making a clicking sound against the table’s surface. I needed to think of something and quick, and so I did.

  “Babe, I thought she would think it was funny.” It was a pitiful excuse, but all I had in me. I didn’t like lying to good people. Now, if they weren’t a good person, it didn’t really matter what I said to them because what was one more lie in their crap life?