Take Chances

by Jessica Sorensen

  He doesn’t answer me and a few minutes later he stops the car at a turnout beneath a canopy of tree branches. I look around, wondering why we’re here, wondering why he won’t look at me. Wondering if he’ll ever look at me again.

  Without saying a word, he turns off the engine, gets out of the car, and stands in the rain in front of the car. I watch him lower his head, the rain pounding down on him, making him sink lower, like he’s drowning.

  Finally I get out of the car and take tentative steps toward him, the ground below me soft, and my sandals sink into it. When I reach him, he doesn’t look up at me right away. He stares at the ground, a thin trail of water trickling off his forehead. The longer the silence goes on, the more I wish he would look at me. Please. I can’t take the silence anymore. The invisibility.

  Eventually, he gives me what I want without asking, elevating his chin, and his eyes lock with mine. Part of me wishes I could take back my inner wish, that I could tell him to look at the ground, because he’s looking at me like he hates me.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” he asks, stepping forward. “How much I’m going to deal with for you knocking on that damn door?”

  “I said I was sorry,” I tell him in a shaky voice. “But you weren’t coming out, and I don’t know another way to get a hold of you.”

  My excuses make him angrier, his face reddening. “Then you should have just waited by the car like I told you.”

  “But it was raining,” I say, wrapping my arms around me as the cold seeps into my bones. “And I got cold.”

  “Cold.” He gapes at me, fury burning in his eyes as thunder and lightning snap above us. “You’ve made the next week of my life a living hell because you were cold.” He lets out this sharp laugh, but not because he thinks it’s funny. He starts pacing in front of the car, running his fingers through his wet hair, clenching his hands into fists. “Do you know what it’s like? To be yelled at all the time?” He pauses, like he’s waiting for me to answer, and I shake my head. “Of course you don’t.” He laughs again, and it’s filled with so much pain and anger that it makes my hairs stand on end. “I should have never got involved with you,” he says. “You were too immature. I knew it, yet I looked past it because I wanted you.” He turns away from me and starts walking toward the trees, like he’s going to disappear into the forest and leave me alone. “God, you can’t even listen to a simple direction.”

  I panic the further he gets from me, not wanting to be alone, and ultimately I rush after him. “Dylan, I’m sorry,” I say. “I promise, I’ll make it better. Tell me what I can do to make it better.” I catch up with him and wrap my fingers around his arm, trying to pull him back to me.

  As soon as I touch him, I feel this ripple course through his body. I don’t even realize what’s happening until it’s over. Until his fist collides with my cheek. Until my ears start to ring. Until the world spins. Until the pain sets in.

  I cup my aching cheek as he stands in front of me, looking so much calmer as hot tears spill down my cheeks and the raindrops instantly wash them away.

  When I replay the moment in my mind, I can see how my pain brought him some sort of peace from his own internal pain, pain that I would never fully begin to understand. But at the time, I didn’t see it. At the time, I only felt my own pain and shame. My own worry that this meant it was all over.

  That I was no longer Odette.

  The swan.

  That I would become Delilah again.

  It seemed so repulsive. So horrifying. To become that girl again. The one no one saw. The one that lived in the shadows.

  God, what I would give to be that girl again.

  Chapter 8

  The Death of Delilah and the Making of Red

  Over the next couple of days, I keep my distance from Dylan, and he seems to be keeping his distance from me. I see him working on his car sometimes, but I don’t dare go out, afraid of what he’ll say to me, afraid he’ll hit me again, afraid he’ll say that’s it’s really over, that he never wants to see me again.

  I’d like to tell you that part of the reason I kept my distance was because I was mad at him for hitting me, but sadly that wasn’t the case. Anger over that never crossed my mind. Only fear. I was so afraid of being alone again that it consumed my mind.

  The fear only grew whenever I’d spend time in the kitchen, eating breakfast with my mom and her latest one-night stand.

  “Your cheek looks like it’s healing,” my mom notes as she pours syrup onto a stack of pancakes. It’s the fifth morning in a row I’ve eaten breakfast with her and a different guy.

  I touch my cheek, remembering the snap of lightning before the strike, remembering how Dylan dropped me off at home without saying a word, and how when my mother asked me what happened, I said a got into a fight with a girl at a party. “It still hurts, though,” I say.

  “Well, maybe you should walk away from the fight next time,” she says, cutting her pancakes with her fork.

  Her twentysomething-year-old with a goatee looks up from his pancakes. “Why? Girl fights are hot.”

  She smiles at him, this haunting smile, and I’m pretty sure he catches his breath. It annoys me the way that he’s looking at her, and I want him to stop it. I want him to look at me.

  “I get into them all the time,” I say, trying to get him to look away from my mother.

  He doesn’t. In fact, he leans in and kisses her. A few touches and groans later, they’re in my mother’s room and music is playing. And again I’ve become Invisible Girl, sitting in the shadows of the kitchen, the quiet wrapped around me.

  I eat my pancakes, taking my time, knowing that when I’m done I’m going to have nothing else to do. I’m swallowing my last bite when I hear a knock on the door. I get up and make my way over to the door, sadness overpowering me. I no longer feel like Odette. Not even a swan. My wings are gone, and all the magic that Dylan created is dead, and I feel like I died right along with it.

  Then I open the door, and he’s standing there with a single rose in his hand. His eyes are on me, remorse on his face, pain and sadness in shadowing his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says with agony in his voice. His gaze locks on my cheek, where a bit of red still remains. “I was just so upset and I… God, I’m such an asshole, hitting you like that.” He pauses, like he’s waiting for me to say something, but I can’t find my voice. So he steps closer into the doorway and I don’t step back. “I was just upset… my mom was yelling at me all morning and it just made me so angry… it always does.” He swallows hard. “I promise, I’ll never hurt you again. I swear to God, if you give me another chance…” He dares to touch my face and holds my cheek in his palm. “Please tell me you’ll give me another chance.”

  As his words crash into me, so does the music from my mother’s room. They both overwhelm me, one washing me away, one giving me back the light I so desperately want. I’m not even sure if I fully believe him, yet I tell myself I do as I nod.

  “I forgive you,” I say.

  He smiles, leaning in to kiss me, and I kiss him back, let his kiss consume me and make everything feel better.

  One might look at it as the point at which my fall started, where I made the wrong choice that would lead to five years of wrong choices that ultimately would lead to my half-beaten body being left for dead near the riverbank, reflecting on my life instead of living it.

  But I don’t believe it was.

  I believe I started falling the moment I put on that red dress; the moment I stopped being who I really was. The moment I changed for someone else simply because he noticed me.

  The moment I stopped being Delilah and I became Red.

  Tristan: Finding Hope

  Prologue

  19 years old…

  I think I’ve finally become invisible. That I’ve somehow faded into a ghost just like I pretended to do when I was a kid. It was number two on my list of superpowers I wanted to have, right before X-ray vision—mainly because I w
ished I could see through Tina Bellonte’s shirt—and right after wishing how to fly. I’m pretty sure the invisibility parts came true. X-ray vision got scratched off because I can see underneath women’s shirts now pretty much whenever I feel like it. And flying… well, I’m fairly sure I know how to fly right now. I swear to God I do. I just need to get the balls to test the theory. Take the last step.

  “Tristan man, get down from there. You’re fucking tripping,” Dylan calls out from three stories down where the bottom of the apartment reaches the concrete, proving that I might have been wrong about the invisibility because apparently he can see me. But then again, being seen by Dylan isn’t that great of a thing. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a friend, but probably as close as I’ve ever got to having one. He doesn’t talk much, doesn’t ask me questions about my life, which I like. Although he is kind of a douche, but hey, aren’t we all at some point.

  “Leave me alone,” I holler back, the night sky above me, so far away, yet when I reach my hand up, it feels like I’m touching the stars.

  “Not until your dumb ass gets down,” he shouts, then takes a swig of his beer.

  I shake my head, cigarette resting between my lips, arms outstretched to my sides, the wind in my hair. One more step and my flying theory will be tested. “No way. Not unless I jump. It’s the only way.”

  “To what?”

  “To see if I can fly.”

  Dylan shakes his head. “Not that shit again. Jesus, you do this every time you hit acid, man.” He chucks the beer bottle out into the parking lot, annoyed.

  “I’m not even that high anymore.” Sadly, it’s the truth. I’m up here of my own free will. Because I was sitting in a room full of people, laughing, drinking, doing drugs, and I was just there, existent, but nonexistent at the same time. It’s been that way forever, me just living life in the shadows while everyone else seems to be in the sunlight.

  “Tristan, the last thing anyone needs here is for the police to show up because your dumb ass couldn’t handle his high and decided to try and kill himself,” Dylan says, getting really pissed off now.

  “That’s not what I’m doing.” I stare straight ahead at the trees across the street. I’m not lying either. I don’t have a death wish. I’m just confused and trying to sort stuff out, trying to find a point to all of this. Life. It confuses the hell out of me. People, they confuse the hell out of me. Hell, I confuse the hell out of myself.

  I’ve been confused for years, the feeling only amplifying the day my parents found out my sister, Ryder, died in a car accident. A car accident where my cousin, Quinton, was driving and crashed into another car—not his fault, just a freak accident. My parents blame him for it though and have been focusing all their energy on making sure to hate him every single day of his life since it happened. They’ve been telling me to do the same, but I’ve never been one to hold grudges. It takes too much energy that I don’t have. So when Quinton called me up, asking for a place to crash this summer, I said okay without much hesitation. Granted I was fucking stoned out of my mind, but still, I’m sure I would have done it sober too. Besides, from what I’ve heard through the family grapevine, Quinton’s been paying for what happened through his own depressing, drug-induced life. So why should I add to his misery?

  When I told my parents he was staying with me, though, I officially got shunned by the family. I’ve been shunned by the family a total of nineteen times or so. It’s nothing new. Being alone is nothing new. I’m sure eventually they’ll talk to me again and I’ll let it all go, because that’s what I do. I’m not even sure why I care to have them in my life. They’ve barely acknowledged me ever since I turned sixteen and started getting into trouble, doing drugs for no other reason than I felt lost in life and alone and drugs temporarily filled that void. I couldn’t find a purpose in anything. Couldn’t find friends. But drugs numbed the confusion and made the people around me doing the same thing relatable enough that I could pretend I had friends. When I’m stoned, I’m not so alone, or at least I can see it that way.

  This has been my life for the last few years. Getting stoned, drunk, trashed, and each time I got busted, my parents ignored me even more. I became more invisible. After Ryder died, it only got worse. She was “the good one,” according to them. And maybe she was. She did well in school while I wasted my “intelligent mind.” She didn’t get arrested for being a minor under the influence and get put on probation. Didn’t move out of the house to live in a “shithole trailer park to deal drugs.” And they’re right. She was the good one. I’m the bad and I can’t change it. I am who I am.

  “I’m going to fucking do it this time,” I yell to Dylan, taking a few massively deep breaths, psyching myself up as I inch my feet closer to the ledge. “I swear I am. And just watch. I’m going to make it.”

  “Come down and I’ll get Mallory to fuck you,” he entices.

  “I don’t want a pity fuck,” I say. “I’ve had way too many of those.”

  Dylan shakes his head and then throws his arms in the air, exasperated. “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want. It’s your funeral.” Then he storms off toward the entrance to the apartment, leaving me alone. There’s nothing stopping me from jumping off the ledge.

  Just move your feet. Do it! Stop being such a pussy and fly.

  I wonder if I fell off the roof, if anyone would see me. Or if maybe I’d just fly away to the stars, never to be seen again. I could do it and find out—I should do it and find out. But after standing there for what seems like hours, I realize it’s not going to happen and I step back.

  Instead of flying for the night, I settle on climbing down from the roof and going back into the house to take another hit. I hang out with people who don’t see me. Sleep with a girl who doesn’t know my name. Then I pass out, knowing that when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll do the whole thing over again. This is my life. There is no meaning. And I wonder if this is how it’ll always be. If I’ll always feel so dead and disconnected inside. So alone.

  So invisible.

  Chapter 1

  4 years later…

  My life is one bumpy roller coaster. The last few years I’ve been getting high, getting sober. High. Sober. High. Sober. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve gotten clean. I want to say I’ll never do it again, but I’d be the biggest fucking liar on the planet. I’ll probably do it again, because I struggle to find motivation not to do it and being sober just makes me focus on life. You’d think after spending years on a downward spiral, almost OD’ing, losing my sister, falling in love with a girl—Nova Reed—who ended up falling in love with my cousin—Quinton—getting hepatitis C and having to go through a bunch of treatment to get rid of it, that I’d finally point the finger to the drugs and say that they must be doing this all to me. Sometimes I can see it, how fucked up I am on them, and so I try to stop. But I still always fall back to them, the pull too strong, the need to block out too great. I’m an addict. Plain and simple.

  Right now, I’m supposed to be a builder. I’ve been spending the last several months on the road working for Habitat for Humanity. It’s actually more Quinton’s thing. Ever since he got sober, he’s been all about helping the world. I think he thinks if he is always doing something good then it’ll make up for the accident, which maybe that’s the case. And I’m happy he found his sanctuary, the place that makes him feel whole without being jacked up on heroin and methamphetamine. I think Nova helps with that too—helps him stay clean.

  Me, well I’m not that strong. I don’t really have anyone but myself, which makes it easier to disappear and fall off the cliff again until someone convinces me to climb back up for a little bit. Which is why I’m here. Well, sort of. I was basically dragged into this because Quinton and Nova thought I needed a good distraction from my life of misdirection and bad choices. And they’re probably right. I just wish I could focus more on the distraction instead of the addiction.

  “Hey, hand me that nail gun, would you?” Quinton says while messi
ng around with one of the cupboard doors. The house we’re working on right now should be finished by tomorrow and then we’ll be on the road again, to I think Georgia.

  Quinton wipes some sweat from his brow as I reach down and pick up the nail gun beside my feet with the hand that’s not holding the cigarette. I give it to him and he shoots a few nails in the side of the house. “I’m fucking hot.” My shirt is soaked in sweat and sticking to my back. “When are we quitting today?”

  Quinton sighs. I’m sure he’s getting irritated with my lack of motivation. But he’ll never say anything because of my sister. I think part of him will always blame himself for her death, and for some reason he thinks he needs to be nice to me even when I might not deserve it. “You can take off if you want to, but I think Nova had something planned for tonight.” He puts the nail gun on the ground and picks up a bottle of water. “To celebrate you being hepatitis free and all.”

  I shake my head. I just found out yesterday at my doctor visit that I’m officially disease free again and I’m glad. “She knows it’s not normal to celebrate something like that, right? It’s not like I was cured of cancer or something.” I grab my own bottle of water that’s beside the cooler. “I got the disease because I was a fucking idiot and shared needles with a bunch of druggies.”

  He scratches the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable, then takes along sip of his water. “Look, man. I totally get the self-blame and everything.” He raises his eyebrows as he puts the lid back on the water. “But trust me, just be grateful you’re clean and healthy now. We can celebrate that, right?”

  I want to point out how many times I’ve slipped up on the clean part—the last time being only three weeks ago, a day when I did a line of meth—but I decide to be cooperative since he’s letting me bail on building early. “All right, I’m down for celebrating, but what I’d really like to do is get laid. It’s been a long time.”