Beneath the Skin

by Kyla Stone

  “Not about school.”

  “What then?”

  I stared at the cigarette still smoldering in Ma’s ashtray, watched a thin curl of smoke drift over the table. “It’s—it’s about Dad. He’s been drinking, a lot.”

  “Everyone needs a drink to relax. Your dad works hard to provide for this family.”

  “That’s not it. When he’s drunk, he—he does things.”

  Ma looked at me. “Now don’t you get started on that again. You kids stress him out to no end. With your complaining, your disrespect, your attitude. He’s gonna raise you right, whether you like it or not. All good parents discipline their kids.”

  Outside, Aaron shrieked. Frankie answered with a sharp bark of laughter.

  My heart stuttered in my chest. I licked my lips, gripped my own hands beneath the table, my fingernails digging into the flesh of my palms. The shred of pain kept me there, kept me going, kept my butt in the chair. “That’s not it, either. The way he looks at me sometimes. Two nights ago, he came into my room and he did something. Ma, he—”

  Ma stood up so fast, she banged into the table. “You insolent little slut.”

  My head snapped up like she’d slapped me. “What?”

  She took a long slug of her wine, wiped her mouth with her arm. Her eyes weren’t soft and drowsy anymore. “You prance around this house, dressed like a fancy little whore, flirting with anyone with a dick. Don’t think I don’t see you, don’t see what you’re doing. Girls better and prettier than you have tried to come between me and your daddy. They never stick. You wanna know why? Because we have something special, something no one else has. Nobody can take that away from us.”

  My brain was full of fog. I could barely follow her words. “But I didn’t—I don’t—”

  “You dress like trash, you act like trash. People gonna treat you like trash. You understand that?”

  I looked down at my jean shorts riding high up my legs, the pale expanse of my upper thighs. The straps of my low cut tank top dug into my shoulders. “I’m not.”

  She snorted into her wine glass. “Look at yourself. What’re you doing with that lipstick rubbed all over your mouth? It’s disgusting. Get out of my sight.”

  I ran outside, wiping furiously at my mouth. My eyes burned and blurred with tears. The hatred was the biggest, darkest thing I had ever felt. It was a monster birthed deep inside me, a creature slick and trembling, just waiting to break free and destroy everything it could reach. I imagined torching our ugly little trailer, setting fire to the whole town.

  Aaron squealed in pain. He sat on the brown grass, clutching his elbow, crying loudly. I covered the space between us in three swift steps. I grabbed his shirt and screamed in his face. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  I turned and fled. I ran the mile and a half over the asphalt roads shimmering with heat to the school campus. I ran until my sides ached and my eyes were blurry with sweat. I followed the chain link fence to the back of the property and waded through the underbrush along the riverbank until I reached the rock. Jasmine and I had found it two years ago in sixth grade, when we first grew brave enough to cut classes. She hadn’t bothered to come out there in almost a year.

  I crouched on the rock and punched it with my fists until my knuckles split open. My insides were a cauldron of dark and ugly things spitting and hissing and raging. I beat the rock and screamed out my despair. There was no one to hear me. There was no one.

  Only me. Only the terror and the darkness and everything ugly living inside me.

  I clawed at my bare legs with my fingernails. Long, red welts appeared on my skin like magic. Slowly, slowly, the pain brought me back to myself. I wept as I scratched myself, my own self-loathing scraping me raw. But it brought the calm, the cold, sharp relief. The roaring in my ears softened to the dull thudding of my heart. The rattle in my chest slowed to a murmur.

  The brown river rushed by beneath my feet, splashing against the rock. I could fill my pockets with stones and slide right in. The water would slip over my head, carrying me down, down, down to the murky bottom. The fish would nibble on my bloated carcass until I was unrecognizable. Until I was nothing but sharp, gleaming bones.

  “Sidney? Are you okay?”

  I blink up at Dr. Yang, the cool air conditioning pimpling my skin, the nubby fabric of the chair against my bare arms. “I’m fine. Fantastic.”

  “You went somewhere. Can you tell me what you were thinking about?”

  I shake my head, fight back the emotions I can’t let myself feel. I tried to speak it once. There’s no way I can ever do it again. “I was thinking about how I can’t wait until Halloween.”

  “And why is that?”

  I blink back the tears I can’t let him to see. “I’ve always wanted to skin a black cat and offer it as a sacrifice to Satan, to see if it’ll really give me dark powers.”

  Dr. Yang takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “What were you really thinking?”

  After the rock that day, I walked home, scratched and bloodied, drenched in sweat. I dreaded how angry she would be, terrified of what Frank would do once he found out I’d told. But when I dragged open the screen door and went inside, Ma was at the counter slicing up watermelon. The boys sat at the table eating cheese and tomato sandwiches. Frank sat next to them. The table was covered with cleaning rods and rags stained with barrel oil and solvents. His rifle and two shotguns lay on the table, the Glock 22 in parts spread out on a newspaper. He swabbed out the chamber with his cleaning rod.

  “Hey you,” he said.

  Ma smiled her slow, lazy smile. “We’ve been waiting for you. Get cleaned up and eat with us.” She was Ma again, acting like nothing had even happened. She effectively erased the whole thing, like it never happened at all.

  “Sidney?” Dr. Yang prodded.

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

  He writes something down on his notebook. “Do you often feel this way? Like nothing matters?”

  “Stop psychoanalyzing me, okay? I’ll write your stupid letter.”

  “You know this is a safe place, Sidney. What you say here stays here.”

  I roll my eyes. I don’t have any safe places, but I’m not going to tell him that. I don’t need my reputation further shredded by confirming those rumored accusations are actually true. Slut. Whore. Skank. My soul is a black, repulsive thing. That monster still lives inside me, as ravenous as ever. This dark thing isn’t just after me, it’s inside of me.

  I need to get out of here. “It’s been nice chatting with you, but I gotta roll.” I’m out of his office with the door shut before he can even speak.

  13

  Lucas corners me in Classic Lit. He sits on my desk and folds his lanky arms over his chest. “Come with me to the beach party tomorrow night.”

  I don’t even look at him. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m fun, interesting, and a terrific conversationalist.”

  “I highly doubt it,” I say, but I feel the nearness of his body like static electricity.

  “Don’t tell me you have something better to do.”

  “I hate parties. Too many idiots crammed into small spaces.”

  “But this is the beach. There’s more space. You can walk as far as you want in either direction.” He cocks his head. “We can even go swimming.”

  “This is Michigan, not Florida. Remember? We try to avoid hyperthermia around here.”

  More students pile into the room. They eye us as they shuffle past.

  “Isn’t it sad how some people are just born ugly?” Peyton slides into her seat.

  “I actually feel sorry for you,” Nyah says.

  “Really? I don’t think about you at all.” I need them to go away and leave me alone. I can’t stand them, can’t stand this place.

  A few people snicker. Nyah rolls her eyes.

  “Keep rolling your eyes,” I mutter. “Maybe someday you’ll find a brain back there.”

&nb
sp; Lucas laughs.

  “What’s so funny, Pizza Face?” Peyton snaps. “Just shut up.”

  “Pretty sure it’s a free country still,” Lucas says in a neutral tone. He turns back to me. “Can I see your phone for a second?”

  I take it out of my backpack and hand it to him without thinking. I don’t know why, maybe something to do with the clean, woodsy scent of him. The bell rings. Miss Pierre starts talking about the madness of King Lear again. Lucas sits in his own seat, still fiddling with my phone.

  A minute later, he hands it back to me. He’s entered his phone number under the handle “Lucas, aka Stud Muffin.” He also punched in an appointment reminder for Friday night: “Beach with Stud Muffin.”

  I shake my head, about to delete it, when Miss Pierre clears her throat from the front of the room. “Is that a phone I see in your hands, Sidney Shaw?”

  I slip the phone into my backpack. “No ma’am.”

  “Good. That’s what I want to hear. Now, let’s talk about last night’s reading. What did you think of Cordelia’s response to her sisters?”

  The rest of the day blurs. I do my homework. I do my shift at Bill’s. I manage to stay away from Jasmine and Margot, except for the times they hurl insults under their breath as they pass me in the hallways and sit behind me in class. But that’s nothing. Thursday night, I eat peanut butter from the jar with a spoon as I scribble an apology letter to Jackson Cole. The first several drafts don’t go so well. “You’ve raised your son to be a prick and your daughter is a raving bitch from hell” is not going to keep Jasmine’s stepdad from doing anything stupid, like pressing charges. I finally come up with something appropriately sniveling and stuff it beneath Dr. Yang’s office door Friday morning.

  Everyone’s talking about the party tonight, but the sound is like a current flowing around me. I barely hear it. In Classic Lit, Xavier Jones-Gray stands at the door and hands out flyers with directions. He’s tall and wiry, with dark brown skin, close-cropped black hair, and a too-wide, too-bright smile. “Oops, almost gave you one,” he says as I edge past. “No losers allowed.”

  My fingers curl at my sides. “I guess you’re banned from your own party then.”

  “Why do you have to be such a flaming bitch, Shaw?”

  “Don’t like my sarcasm? Too bad. I don’t like your stupid.” I give him the finger, just to make sure my point comes through loud and clear.

  “Rude much?” Payton says. I ignore her.

  Lucas looks at me hopefully when I sit down. “See you tonight?”

  I don’t bother to answer. My whole body aches from the tension of keeping it all together. This day can’t end soon enough.

  In Government, Arianna drops a paper on my desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “An outline of the chapters our paper is based on. Why don’t you look at it over the weekend, and we can get together on Monday to discuss a thesis topic. Maybe at lunch?”

  “That’s not going to work for me. Look, I don’t do partners. This is how it goes: I’ll write the whole freakin’ paper, and you’ll turn it in with both our names on it and still get your A. Okay?”

  Arianna frowns and shakes her head. Her dark hair fans around her face. “That’s cheating.”

  “Did you not hear me correctly? I do the work. You get the grade.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because it’s wrong, and because I do my own work.” She points at the paper. “Just read it over the weekend. I’ll find you Monday morning.”

  No one’s ever had a problem with this my entire high school career. Now here’s perfect little Arianna Torrès, shaking her head because she’s a goody-goody Christian, who apparently picks when and where she’s gonna act the part. Damn it all to hell.

  14

  Frank is drunk. I smell it as soon as I step through the front door. My shift at Bill’s ended at 7:00, and I’m hungry and cranky. Bill sent me home with a Styrofoam container filled with fried fish strips and tartar sauce. I bolted down two strips in the car.

  Frank and Ma are in the living room. Frank laughs a loud, braying laugh. Ma murmurs something I can’t quite make out. I have to go past them to get to my bedroom. I drop my keys and the leftovers on the table and edge out into the living room. My gut tightens, my skin prickling. Maybe they won’t see me.

  Fat chance.

  “Sidney!” Frank bellows. “Where you headin’, baby girl?” He’s got a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and an empty cup in the other. His feet are planted wide on the carpet, but his top half sways like a flower in a breeze. He raises the bottle and grins at me. “Want some?”

  I press my body against the wall. I’m only ten or so feet from my bedroom door, but it might as well be a thousand. If I run, he’ll sense my terror and be on me like a wolf. “You need to go to bed, Frank. Sleep it off.”

  “Oh, he’s just havin’ fun.” Ma’s voice is high and slurred. She’s sitting on the edge of the couch, wearing only high heels and her bra and underwear. A long black dress is slung over the back of the couch.

  “Mother.” I force my voice to stay controlled. “You’re having a baby. You can’t get drunk when you’re pregnant. What are you thinking?”

  “We’re just celebratin’, that’s all. I had my ultrasound today. Baby’s healthy, just a little small. But that’ll make it easier come time for birthing it.” She hiccups.

  I stare at them, acid creeping up my throat. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  She shrugs. “Dunno yet. Baby wouldn’t show us. But it’s okay. Frank’s gonna pay for another appointment. No yellow baby outfits for this little ‘un. Your daddy’s still taking me out, though. ’Cept I couldn’t get into my dress. Isn’t that a hoot? Bought that dress last month two sizes too big and I’m too fat to fit in it.” She laughs again, a high hysterical laugh, slapping her bare thigh.

  I close my eyes. Why should I care about this baby when my mother is so obviously trying to destroy it? I should shut the hell up and escape to my room, but I can’t. My stomach is a curdled soup of dread, but I still can’t shut my damn mouth. “Who cares about your stupid dress? Do you want your baby deformed? You want to murder it?”

  “Hey!” Frank yells, taking an unsteady step toward me. He shakes the bottle, small drops of brown liquid slurping over the top and spilling to the floor. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you! Don’t yell at your mother!”

  “Then you do it! Someone needs to.” I’m making it worse. There’s a reason Aaron and Frankie are already squirreled away in their room. The first rule of this house is to know when to get lost. What he does next will be my fault, but the bile is surging up my throat. I’m choking on it. I cannot keep silent. “Neither of you are fit to raise a dog.”

  Ma’s laughter bubbles into tears. She begins to sob. “Don’t let her talk to me that way, Frank. You see how terrible she is to me? It’s so awful when you’re gone. You leave me here all alone with this smart-mouthed little slut.”

  Every muscle in my body tenses. I’m frozen in place, forced to watch. If I move, his gaze might snag on me next.

  “Shut up!” Frank whirls on Ma. His slicked hair is mussed, his eyes red-rimmed.

  “You don’t love me!” Ma whimpers. “That’s why you’re always gone. You think I’m fat, don’t you? Ellie was right about you. Admit it, you despise everything I’ve given you, everything I’ve sacrificed!”

  “Stop it!” Frank shakes the bottle at her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Her gaze fastens on Frank, wide and pleading. “Don’t hurt me . . . I’ll stop. I love you baby, I’ll stop . . .”

  “Sorry? You make me sick, you stupid cow.” Frank looms over Ma. Her hands tremble and flutter about her face, mascara tracking in black smears beneath her eyes.

  My veins are ice. I’m barely breathing. A hundred bricks are pressing on my chest, slowly crushing my rib cage. I have to get out of here. They’ve both forgotten about me,
but that can change fast. Frank’s in the mood to horrify and humiliate, and I’ve already seen everything I need to know. As long as Frankie and Aaron stay in their room, they should be safe. Forgotten. But I won’t be. Not for long.

  Carefully, I back out of the living room and head through the kitchen. My elbow bumps into Ma’s ugly rooster cookie jar, but I catch it before it falls. I freeze, listening. But there’s nothing. I shut the front door softly. The porch light is still switched on from when I came home ten minutes ago. Bugs buzz around the light. The sun is just sinking behind the line of trees across the road.

  I sag against the door. I can still hear Ma whimpering, but Frank is silent. His silence is the worst. It’s when he’s the most dangerous.

  I try to stand up, but my legs give out. I hug them to my chest and rest my head on my knees. I can’t stay here. But I’m so shaky, there’s no way I can drive. Besides, my car keys are inside on the kitchen table. I can’t go back in there.

  My phone beeps. I pull it out of my back pocket. The appointment alarm. The beach party. I close my eyes. Open them slowly. Anywhere is better than here.

  There are only five numbers in my phone book. Home, Bill’s Bar and Grill, Frank, Jasmine’s old number which I never got around to deleting, and now Lucas, aka Stud Muffin. I tap on his name.

  He answers on the first ring. “Hey you.”

  “I need to know something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why’d you come to the restaurant?”

  “I told you. I like you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re full of sunshine and rainbows?”

  I choke out a strangled laugh. “No. For real.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a minute. “Can we not do this over the phone?”

  I don’t speak. I count his breaths. I’m still shaking, like I’m lying on the tracks while a train roars over me. I need him. I hate it but I do. I need to get out of here. I take a deep breath. “Do you want to pick me up?”