by Kara Storti
“Your scar,” she says. “How did you get it?”
I freeze. Didn’t know freezing was possible in the warm blanket state I’m in. I think about answering her, maybe it would be a release.
“Come on. Do we really want to get into this now? Let’s ride this out.”
“I’m already coming down,” she says. With her finger, she traces a line from the top of my forehead down to the beginning of my scar, then she stops. I tighten up. I don’t blame her for not wanting to caress me there. I know what that skin feels like: rumpled, raised, wrecked. Ugly-ass scar. War wound.
“Don’t really want to talk about it,” I say.
Taylor props herself up on her elbow, face now taking on a greenish yellowish color, cotton candy gone, eyes glassy and all surface. “I’ve always wanted to know. Everyone’s been curious, for like, years.”
“Everyone should mind their own business. Do I ask you personal shit like that?” I stare up at the ceiling, not wanting to address her probing eyes. The high is beginning its descent.
“No. But you might want to start if we’re going to continue to do this.”
“Do what?”
“You know, this.” She gestures between us. “Like, date.”
I start laughing. “For real? You call this dating? I wanted to get high, have a good time, chill, you know? I thought we were cool like that. Casual.”
Taylor takes a moment to collect herself.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you,” she says, sitting upright, putting her face in her hands. “Is that all you care about?”
“Baby,” I say, rubbing her back, still lying down, “of course that’s not all I care about. I want to be your friend. You’re important to me.”
She slaps her hands on the comforter of her bed, groaning. “You’re such a liar, Finn, you know that?”
Ugh to it all. The nausea has caught up with me, dragging me into its wretched space. Can’t see straight, my scar is burning up, like I’m being singed over again.
“Everyone knows that it probably has something to do with the fact that your dad’s a drunk and your mom’s a pill head.”
My blood boils so fast—my surroundings speed up like a time-lapse movie. I feel my hand raising, flat, rigid, unforgiving, ready to strike. To hit. I see Taylor cowering, shielding her face. Oh my God, I say to myself, oh my God, this is me throwing my arm down before the damage is done, this is me squeezing it to my side, thoughts going at top speed, regret, regret, forget, forget, stomach about to spill its contents.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she says, pointing to the door. “Get out. Get out. I don’t want to see you again. Go find your own dope.”
I scramble to put my clothes on, saying I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Taylor, I’m just not myself right now, I’m so screwed up, but it makes her yell even louder.
“Get out, you piece of shit!”
Hightail it to the bathroom down the hall, destroy her toilet with vomit, seems like gallons of it, clean up the best I can, wipe my face, water from the faucet I gurgle and spit out. Don’t look at yourself, Finn, don’t you dare look at yourself in the mirror. But I do.
Brown hair, mussed up, sticking out in different directions. Haunted house–worthy shadows under my eyes. Skin a terrible shade of sick. Bruises around my throat. And my scar. It eats up the side of my face and a section of my chin, engulfing me, disfigured and beyond repair, I can’t stand it, not because of vanity, but because it’s showcasing what’s on the inside. A Coca Cola–level advertisement of who I really am.
Chapter Nineteen
Phone call on our landline in the middle of the night. I look at the time: 2:45 a.m. Probably the wrong number, so I don’t answer it, plus I don’t think I’m physically capable of crawling out of bed. My body aches to the bone; no, scratch that, my body aches to the marrow. Sleep carries me away soon enough, I’m dreaming about Stacey, her hair, the curve of her neck, wearing Keds sneakers instead of the knock-off Louboutins girls flash around here. Even in my dream I’m aware that I want to stay in the dream forever, and there’s a persistent ache that resides in my chest because I know I can’t. The incident with Taylor earlier today seems so far away.
Ring, ring. The phone again. I let it go. Ring, ring. Christ almighty. Faith yells at me to get it and I hear my parents rustling around in bed.
“Fine,” I say, dramatically throwing the covers off, setting my feet on the ground, dragging my hands over my face. My skin is so sensitive from being sober it’s screaming from the contact.
Ring, ring. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I yell.
I pick up the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen. “Hello?”
Dead space on the line, until I listen carefully. Breathing. Raspy. What is this, a goddamn horror movie?
“Hello?” I say again, scratching the back of my neck. I scoff loud enough so the person on the other end hears it. “Well, good-bye then.”
Click.
It’s got to be Mike. I knifed his foot and made Jason my punching bag and that’s not going to go over well regardless of the amount of apologies and free weed I gave him this past week. Jason, listen man, I’m sorry, shit be crazy, but I’m going to make this right . . . we’ll all get a cut of the profit, once I get my hands on this candy . . . you understand . . . in the meantime, why don’t you take this as an apology . . . It took my angel of a sister to convince him not to press charges. Faith’s persuasion tactics were so powerful, Jason didn’t sic his brother and the state of Vermont after me. Maybe the stress of diminishing sales and increasing heat from the police are working in my favor—Mike is too preoccupied to immediately destroy me, or at least that’s what I thought. Now my heart’s punching over and over against my ribcage. The phone is still in my hands. Deep breaths, deep breaths. He’s after my blood and it’s just a matter of time. He’s playing with me, making me wait and just when I forgot, there he is, pow.
“Who was that?” Pop asks, appearing in the kitchen, giving me a start. He’s wearing a maroon bathrobe he’s had since the beginning of time, rubs his glasses on the sleeve and puts them on. Pop’s a smaller man than he was, all that muscle and verve diminished, he’s just an echo of himself. The only weightlifting he does is picking up a bottle.
“Wrong number,” I say, placing the phone back in its carriage.
“Sure.”
He pushes past me and opens the fridge and starts taking out the fixings for a bologna and cheese sandwich, beer stench wafting off him. Who the hell eats a bologna and cheese sandwich at 3:00 a.m.? He twists the lid off the jar of mayo and slaps it on two pieces of Wonder bread. As a little kid I’d get all tense when he was in a mood and gauge how bad it was by the size of his forehead vein. I still catch myself evaluating it now. I’ve seen it worse.
Bologna first, packaged cheese slice, slimy iceberg lettuce, squish down, slice of a knife. Pop’s fading masculinity, if that’s what you want to call it, isn’t helping his sales at the car dealership. He’s doing worse than when he was drunk and angry. Now he’s just drunk. Mom’s afraid they’ll lay him off soon, with the economy in the shitter.
I make a move to leave. He sits down, leans back, stops me with his eyes.
“Heard you got detention. For beating up some kid,” he says, not considerate enough to whisper.
My brain’s stammering even before the words escape. “It was for a girl—kind of. I mean—”
“For a girl, huh?” he says, bobbing his head in acknowledgment, contemplating his sandwich. With a giant chomp down, he starts chewing.
“Yeah, well, she’s the new girl, you know, she just arrived at school. Her father’s a cop, somebody put a pig’s head in her locker . . . but I took her to the nurse, I think she’s going to be all right, she’s one tough cookie . . .” I’m rambling on and on, feeling eleven years old again, explaining my way out of trouble.
“So when’s it going to end, Finn?” He takes another bite of his sandwich and drops it on his plate in disgust. In the
dim light over the stove I see the crumbs scatter across the table.
“When’s what going to end?”
I hate how he nods, like I’ve already given him the answer. Tears off a piece of crust and shoves it in his mouth, and points at me. “You and your sister. Born from the same egg, but so different. Why’s that, you think?”
The boxes around us block the view of the front windows of the trailer, yet despite that I still see the lights of a car driving by. Extra paranoid is what I’m going to be for the next few days. Trapped in this trailer, trapped in a conversation with Pop who keeps asking questions I don’t know how to answer.
“Actually Pop, since we’re fraternal twins, Faith and I came from two separate eggs. You must be thinking of identical twins. They develop from the same zygote that splits into two embryos.” I don’t realize I’m doing it, spitting out my worthless facts, I really don’t, until he starts laughing with his mouth open, bits of soggy crust flying.
“You’re a real trip, you know that? Telling me how it is. If you put that much effort into applying yourself in school, in life,” he says, laying his hand flat on the table, “then maybe you’d be more like your sister.”
I shrug; there’s no answer to this. I wish for once I could be viewed as a separate person from Faith—people can’t seem to think of me without thinking of her. As long as this happens, I’m always going to come up short.
“Right now the future’s not looking so hot for you, son. You continue to sell drugs, do drugs, and you’ll end up dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“I’m sorry I’m not everything you hoped and dreamed,” I say, knowing the sarcasm of my tone is more than childish.
He shrugs, tears off a slice of bologna and considers it, but doesn’t eat it. “Hey, shit happens.”
I’ve seen pictures of Pop and Mom when they were younger, doing things I could never imagine them doing today—going to a baseball game, playing Frisbee, setting up a picnic. One picture I came across is of a field of wildflowers. Mom is wearing a pink dress with short sleeves, and Pop is in jeans and a green T-shirt. The vibrancy of their youth blasts you in the face. Apparently this was during a time when Mom liked to bake Pop peanut butter cookies and Pop would sew up loose buttons on her blouses. Never seen them do either of these things, but the pictures don’t lie.
“Shit sure does happen,” I say, ready to take him on. “I don’t think Mom signed up for a drunk like you.”
He bunches up his napkin, chucks it on his plate, and pushes the chair out from the table. The metal upon linoleum elicits a screech like nothing else. I don’t flinch, though. I want him to come at me.
But he doesn’t. He hasn’t in years. Instead, he goes to the kitchen sink and wipes his plate off with the back of his hand. Without turning around he says, “I didn’t sign up for any of this. Yet I don’t blame myself. I blame—”
“Just say it, Pop. I’d love to hear you say it. You blame me. Come on, it’ll feel good.”
With his back to me, he’s deliberating as I wait. The thought is always there: if I was the male version of Faith, none of this would have happened. Pop would be in tip-top shape and Mom would still be excited about her pretty curtains and when Faith would smile, both eyes would light up instead of just one. This is where I run the risk: if I start thinking that it’s all my fault, then I’ll start believing it’s true. Maybe I already do.
Pop faces me. Then he shuts the conversation down. “Going to go get more shut eye. God knows I need it.”
“Sure.” I force out a yawn to make sure I get nonchalance across loud and clear, even though every fiber in my body is screaming, every muscle is poised for a fight.
Sunday, April 21
Chapter Twenty
The sub shop is dead. My apron is covered in every condiment known to man and I’m ready to go home, take a shower, wash this day off me. Wash this month off me. It’s between lunch and dinner and a few guys are outside smoking butts, holding their skateboards upright. I wave, they wave back. I hear the roll of gritty wheels and they’re off.
The Birds of America is opened up on the shelf underneath the cash register at the sub shop, so I can refer to it when I’m feeling antsy or bored. The page I’m on is a picture of hawks, red-tailed, showcasing their undeniable beauty and ruthlessness. Hawks are known to flap their wings as little as possible to conserve energy and their cry sounds like a steam whistle. When the door jingles open, I’m daydreaming about hawks circling around me, in a blur. The male plummets deeply and then climbs again, as the female soars and coasts with indifference.
I hear footsteps up to the counter. I look up reluctantly.
Stacey.
Blond hair swaying as she moves. Lord have mercy. I haven’t seen her since the locker incident; she’s been staying away from school to recover.
I blow air out of my mouth to calm down.
“Italian mix? Extra cheese extra dressing?” I say. Did my voice just crack? Christ.
She smiles tightly and runs her finger along the edge of the counter. She totally hates me. I’m a barbarian to her, club and all, she thinks I’m going to throw her over a shoulder and drag her to my cave. The menu doesn’t seem to interest her, but my face does. Oh, okay. It’s kind of electrifying, her taking me in. She takes in my eyes and the shape of my mouth. I wonder if she minds my scar, I wonder if it grosses her out.
“Thank you,” she says simply.
I’m confused. “For what?”
She threads a thumb through her belt loop and releases a heavy exhale. “For taking care of me the other day. For making me go to the hospital. I know I was a pain in the ass. I’m fine, by the way.”
“Oh—yeah, I meant to ask. Sorry.” I clench my teeth in shame. Good job, Finn, real smooth and considerate, not inquiring about the lady’s condition.
She laughs quietly. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t—” She places her hand on her cheek and looks away, eyes bright.
“That’s really good.” I smile, and it’s not forced like with other girls. “I’m glad you listened to me—going to the hospital and all. I know what I’m talking about.”
Her grin is halfway there and then it fades. “My father knows who did it. Someone in NYC who doesn’t like him cracking down on the drug problem around here. He wants to let my dad know he’s still watching.”
I’m nodding, trying not to burn her up with my eyes. Then I register what she’s saying. “So it definitely wasn’t Jason,” I say, more to myself than to her, wanting her to confirm it to make sure I really understand.
She’s narrowing her eyes at me, trying to gauge if I feel regret. Of course I feel regret. I went all WWF on his ass for no reason, no reason whatsoever.
“No, it wasn’t Jason.”
Okay, Finn, get into this conversation, get in. “Pretty personal watching. The pig’s head, I mean. That’s quite a message to send,” I say.
She shrugs. “My dad’s used to it.” She pauses, then adds, “He thought that transferring here would get us away from the violence.”
“I guess he was wrong,” I say.
“Perhaps,” she says, her gaze drifting toward the smeared window that I should have cleaned days ago. I can tell she doesn’t want to get into it. “My father had a talk with the guy who did it. Hopefully things will be calmer now.”
Who the hell is the guy? My curiosity is acid eating away at me, but I fight it, out of respect for her.
“You’re not scared?” I ask. She has to be; I sense the tension in her energy and notice the tautness of her jaw.
“I was,” she says. “Especially with the police detail parked outside my house for the past few nights. But my father’s a good negotiator . . . and he knows how to handle crime—whether it comes from the city or this Podunk town.”
I nod, liking how she says “Podunk,” liking how the insignificant can become significant when it comes from her mouth. At the same time I’m desperate to know who her father was dealing with in the city. Could it have been Early
? Could he be the one who called me, not Mike? Or both of them? My head is spinning, I want to ask questions, but I don’t want to bring her in to this, know what she really thinks of me. I don’t even want to know what Faith is thinking of me right now.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, I just—”
“I’m a good listener,” I can’t resist saying. “You feel comfortable with me, admit it.” She looks appalled and my spunk diminishes as I step away from the counter, mentally chastising myself for being so bold. “I’m sorry, that was—”
“Listen Finn, whatever. I’m not here to say that just because you helped me last week means that I’ve forgotten about you beating up Jason. Yeah, I get he’s kind of an idiot, but what you did to him was terrifically screwed up.”
“He’ll be fine,” I say. I gave him two black eyes, a split lip, and a limp that I know he’s milking to get attention from girls. It’s all temporary, I tell myself.
“What about you?” She lifts her chin in my direction.
“Oh—well . . . no, I can withstand a lot,” I say. She doesn’t answer. I’m not sure why she’s just standing there, not saying anything, just looking at me looking at her, it’s unnerving really, even though the eye contact is making me tipsy.
“Do you think what you did was wrong?” she finally asks. Oh, okay, shit’s getting real. This is not the type of conversation I want to be having right now.
“If we’re gonna have a dialogue about morality, hold up, I’ve got to go fetch my fresh tweed blazer with the elbow patches.”
She doesn’t laugh. “I’m serious, Finn. What do you think?”
I blurt, “I wasn’t thinking, that’s the problem.” I look down at the hawks on the page. Their fierceness is admirable and so is their one-track mind. All they want to do is fly and hunt—this is their nature, their calling, and what a blessing to have life reduced to such simplicity.
“I wonder sometimes . . . what makes people do things like that? Like what’s going through your head, right before, and during? Is it blank, white fury?”