Beneath the Skin

by Kyla Stone

  “You pointed the gun at him? Like on purpose?”

  I close my eyes. She’s not getting it. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I try to sit up, but waves of dizziness surge through me. I start to fade.

  “Woah!” Arianna grabs me and helps me back to the floor. “Don’t move. You look like a ghost. What in the world is going on? Should I call the police?”

  “NO! I mean, no. Please. I need—I had nowhere else to go. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. You can stay right here as long as you need to. Do you want to move to the couch? My bedroom?”

  I shake my head, and the ceiling tilts. I won’t make it that far.

  “Sidney, you need help. Let me help you. Talk to me.”

  The cold tiles press against my back. Hot tears prick my eyes. I cannot cry. The tears will drown me. I close my eyes. I think of Ma, the scorn on her face, the way her eyes shuttered and turned away from me. I remember Jasmine, how her mouth curled in satisfaction when she slurred the words, “emo cutter freak”, how I’d wanted to tell her my secrets so badly that summer, how I started with the cuts, the least and weakest of my demons, how my weakness just gave her more fuel to hurt me. You can’t give any part of yourself to anyone. They’ll just use it to break you. You’re already broken, a voice whispers inside my head. What more do you have to lose?

  It’s now or never. Bile rises up in my throat and I can’t stop the tears leaking down my face. I have to be brave. I choose to be brave. I take a deep, ragged breath. “Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a small white house in the center of a field of corn. And in her house the walls yelled, and screamed, and banged and slapped and wept long tears. The little girl just thought it was normal. When the walls got really loud, the girl’s little brothers came into her room in their pjs with their blankies and teddies, and she tucked them into her bed. Then she fell asleep with sweet baby breath on her cheek and a sharp elbow in her back, but it was safe in her room. Her room was the safest place in the whole house, in the whole universe. For a time, the little girl even believed she had magic in her fingers. She could fold her baby brothers into her arms and they would stop crying, they would stop being afraid. The little girl was never afraid—that’s what gave her the magic.

  “Then the little girl started to grow up. And her father started going on journeys into the corn fields to find money while her mother fell under long spells where she wouldn’t wake up. No matter how many times the girl touched her mother with her magic fingers, her mother wouldn’t get up.

  “And then—” My voice snags. Salty tears leak into my mouth. Every word tastes like vomit, scalds like poison. “The walls had shadows. When the night was darkest and the most still, the shadow stepped out of the wall and slid into the girl’s room and it didn’t make a sound. The walls didn’t stop him. The magic didn’t stop him. The things the shadow did weren’t happy things. The girl didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t do anything. She lay still as a statue and her heartbeat slowed and her breath spiraled up past the ceiling and disappeared. Her skin turned papery and her bones grew brittle and broke right through her flesh. Up she drifted, like a butterfly, like the Pale Spotted Swallowtail, heavy black wings shimmering obsidian. There she could look down on her brothers, and make sure they were safe. There she could look down on her mother, alone in her bed. She could flutter through her window and explore the night sky. So whenever the shadow came, the girl broke out of her body and shed her skin and flapped up and away to somewhere else.”

  Arianna’s warm, dry hand grabs mine. A soft moan escapes her lips.

  I don’t look at her. I can’t. I stare at the ceiling, at a small crack in the corner shaped like a spider’s web. My breath comes out harder, sharper. Pain scalds my throat, my tongue. But I don’t quit. I won’t. “So it went until the night shadows bled into the day. Even though she’d given the shadow everything he wanted, it still wasn’t enough. He was still hungry. He wanted more. He snared her, tethered her down. He tore her wings so she couldn’t fly away anymore. Now the girl knew whatever magic she thought she had was never really there. She just laid there and did nothing. She was just a coward, after all. And it was like everybody knew, like it was carved on her forehead. Like they could see the truth of what she really was. All the names they called her were true.” I spit out the last few words like they’re toxic.

  “Oh, Sidney.”

  I force myself to turn my head, waiting for the judgment, the mockery, the contempt I know I deserve.

  Only she doesn’t say anything like that. Tears drip down her cheeks. Her eyes are deep wells of sadness. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I let him do—I let it happen. For four years.”

  “No. You can’t think like that. He is responsible. You were just an innocent kid.”

  “Everything they say about me is true.”

  “No.” Her voice goes hard. “No. What he did to you is not your fault.”

  “I just laid there, pretended it wasn’t happening, but then I tried to make him stop. I didn’t want to be this way—so ugly and filthy inside. I wanted it to stop. But he wouldn’t. I couldn’t—I couldn’t make him stop.” Until now.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “My mother’s pregnant.” The words are bitter in my mouth. “With a girl.”

  Arianna squeezes my hand. I don’t pull away. I’m too damn tired.

  “That’s why you did it.”

  I nod dully. My insides are hollowed out.

  “When?”

  “Just now. I don’t know. Thirty, forty minutes ago.”

  Arianna’s eyes widen. “You’re sure he’s . . .?”

  “He’s dead. My mother checked.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She came home right after. She was crying and screaming, then all of a sudden she got quiet. She told me to leave. She wiped off the gun. I don’t know what she’s going to do. I’m just waiting for the cops, I guess, to come take me away.”

  “But he—he hurt you. It was self-defense, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I pointed the gun at him. He walked away. He wasn’t trying to kill me. I knew what I was doing.”

  Arianna’s mouth presses into a thin line. Her face is drained of color. “You’re shaking like a leaf. I’m going to get some blankets. You can lie on the couch. My parents won’t be home for a couple of hours. You can stay here.”

  I take a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll figure something out. It’ll be okay.”

  Tears melt and crackle behind my eyelids. “No, it won’t.”

  24

  For the next two hours, I lie on Arianna’s couch wrapped in her lacy, lavender comforter. Arianna turns up the heat past 82 degrees, but I can’t get warm. My body is wracked with tremors and my teeth keep chattering. I can’t stop seeing his eyes. My eyes.

  Arianna bakes me a fancy macaroni and cheese dish with gourmet cheeses like gruyere, asiago, and Fontina, none of which I’ve ever tasted. I try to eat it, but I start heaving. Arianna puts it in the fridge for her parents.

  She stalks back and forth in front of the couch. “What about Lucas? Should I call him?”

  “No!”

  She glances at me, surprised.

  Shame engulfs me at the thought of Lucas finding out the truth about me. I barely survived telling Arianna. He won’t want a thing to do with me after the rock anyway. “I mean, I can’t, okay? Nobody else. Please.”

  “Okay. Nobody else.” She sinks into the couch next to me and fiddles with her phone. She sucks in a breath. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

  “What?”

  “I hope you don’t mind. I just, I wanted to look it up and see if . . .”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Patricide is the legal term for what you—what happened.” Her voice is wobbly, unsure, like she thinks I’m going to leap up and bite her head off any second.
“There are about 300 cases a year in the U.S. In almost all cases, severe abuse of the child incited the incident . . .”

  “Don’t stop now. Just say it, whatever it is.”

  She rubs her temple and sighs. “The prosecutors decline to prosecute in only a minority of cases, in spite of known abuse. The average sentence is 15 to 20 years.”

  I echo her sigh. I try to imagine prison. It can’t be worse than the prison I’ve already endured. Still, my future claps shut like a steel trap. “Well, that’s not awesome.”

  “It’s not justice,” Arianna growls. She slaps her phone down on the arm of the couch. She jumps up, starts pacing in front of the glass coffee table, biting at her fingernails like she’s going to rip them off. She’s angrier than I’ve ever seen her. “How is that fair? He subjected you to horrible—and then you go to prison for 20 years? Rapists get out in like seven years. Child molesters in four years. This is nuts. I can’t believe it. This can’t be happening.”

  I just watch her pace and mutter. I’m separated from it all, distant, like I’m watching myself watching her. Arianna switches on a lamp and we both notice the blue-tinged twilight through the windows at the same time.

  Terror clamps down on my windpipe. I can barely force out the words. “I should go back.”

  “You could run,” Arianna says suddenly. “I have fifteen thousand in the bank, for college. You can have it.”

  I shake my head. “Where would I go? How would I get a job? I haven’t even graduated high school. They would find me. Besides, I’m done with being a coward. Whatever happens next, I’ll face it.”

  Arianna begins to cry. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  I pull myself to a sitting position. Waves of dizziness wash over me. I push aside the blankets and stand up. My legs hold me. Barely.

  “You don’t have a coat. You can borrow one of mine and give it back later.”

  Like there’ll be a later. Like I won’t be killing time for the next fifty years in a concrete prison cell. I change shirts and shrug into a snug black leather jacket I can barely button.

  Arianna’s eyes are closed, her lips barely moving.

  “What are you doing?”

  She opens her eyes. “Praying.”

  I want to say I don’t need her prayers, but I’m desperate. I’ll take anything.

  Arianna puts her hand on my shoulder. “I’m coming with you. You don’t have to face this alone.” She hesitates, a shadow passing over her features. “At least, not this part.”

  Part of me wants to tell her thanks, but no thanks. But the other, bigger part of me is utterly terrified. I have no idea what I’m going home to.

  25

  Several police cars and a forensic van are parked on the side of the road. Yellow tape cordons off the area around the trailer. I get out of the car. Arianna joins me and we walk up the driveway. Gravel crunches beneath my feet. The wind is sharp as a knife, slashing at my face, neck, and hands.

  Dread scrabbles up my spine. My whole body is shaking. I want to run. I want to get as far away from this terrible place as I can. I want it to just stop. But it won’t. The red lights flash across the yard and the front of the house. I hear muffled voices, the scratchy sound of radios. This is real. This is happening. In a few minutes, they’ll be closing the cuffs around my wrists. They’ll be putting me in the back of the police car, behind the grate. Already in a cage. My legs start to give out and I stumble. Arianna holds me up.

  A young cop in a starched blue uniform stops us. “You can’t go in there, ma’am. This is a crime scene.”

  I can see uniformed bodies moving around the house, people in papery body suits and booties, collecting evidence. In my house. I imagine them ruffling through underwear drawers and examining soiled bedsheets and collecting dust, dirt, and dead cockroaches from underneath the beds. I imagine Aaron, terrified, cowering in a corner while strangers clomp through his room. My stomach clenches. “Where’s Ma? Where are my brothers?”

  “What’s your name, miss?” the cop asks.

  “Her name is Sidney Shaw,” Arianna says. “This is her house.”

  The cop’s radio crackles as he murmurs something into it.

  “Where are my brothers?” I ask again, my voice rising. “Frankie! Aaron!”

  “Please stay calm. The detectives are coming out to talk to you. Just stay calm.”

  Arianna’s fingers grip my arm. Only her hand keeps me tethered to the here and now. I’m about to burst out of my skin.

  Two people wearing regular clothes walk down the porch steps and duck beneath the yellow tape. The man is tall and lean, with a full beard and cold, dark eyes. The woman’s auburn hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s holding a notepad in her hand. “Hello. I’m Detective Henricksen, and this is Detective Okonjo. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Where’s my mom? Where the hell are my brothers? I need to see them.” My fingers curl into fists. My nails dig into the flesh of my palms. I have to see the boys before they take me away. I have to hug them both, wrap my arms around them and whisper all the things I’ve been afraid to say.

  “Well, honey, we have some difficult news to tell you. We’ve just taken your mother into custody for the murder of your father.”

  “What?” I take a step back, stunned.

  “Your mother confessed to the arriving officer on the scene.”

  I’m drowning. Someone is holding my head underwater. I can’t open my lungs to take in air. I’m going under. Ma confessed? It doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t do that. She’s lazy and stupid and selfish, and every other insult Frank ever called her. She wouldn’t. “There must be some mistake—”

  Detective Henricksen shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”

  I can’t think straight. I can barely follow the words the detectives are saying, let alone figure out what they mean. I just need my brothers. I have to see them. “Where are the boys?”

  “A child advocate picked them up about 90 minutes ago. They’re safe, don’t worry.”

  “Foster care? You put my brothers in foster care?”

  Detective Henricksen squints at me. “In an emergency placement, yes. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “I can put you in touch with the child advocate or you can stay with friends or family members, if you wish. I believe your mother informed DHS about a possible aunt who could take the children. If this is the case, your brothers will be out of the system soon. The child advocate will contact the aunt to facilitate the process. But you can’t stay here tonight. This is a crime scene.”

  I look past the detectives at the flashing lights reflecting off the windows, the dilapidated siding, the sagging front porch. I was born here. In my mind’s eye, I see everything the forensic team can see, the tired, sad little house with the cheap furniture and the peeling laminate counter tops and the dingy bedrooms with the tattered toys juxtaposed against the big screen TVs, the PlayStation, the shiny new iPhones. And the kitchen scattered with ceramic shards and the narrow hallway with the frame knocked off the wall and the bedroom sprayed with red.

  How long until they see something, some piece of evidence pointing a bloody finger straight at me? And the body—is his body still in there? Do his dead eyes scream an accusation? Does his dead mouth whisper, I know who killed me?

  My knees buckle. Arianna’s arm encircles my waist. Her shoulder leans into mine, holding me up. This is all real. Right now is really happening.

  “I know this is a very difficult time for you,” Detective Okonjo says. “But it would be very helpful if you could help us establish the timeline of events. Can you tell me what you did and when today? Did you attend school?”

  Somehow, I manage to nod.

  “And what did you do after school ended at 3 p.m? Did you come home?” Detective Henricksen asks, her pen poised over her spiral-bound notepad.

  Arianna speaks before I have a chance. “She came to my house. She was with me.”


  26

  The days after the shooting are a gray blur. Once again, Arianna saved me. I spend the next week at her house. I curl up on her floor in a pile of blankets and goose-down pillows. I can’t stop shaking. I shake all day and all night long. The chill goes all the way down to my bones.

  The bang of the gun keeps going off in my head, shattering my skull into shards, so impossibly loud, impossibly final. I drift in and out of consciousness, plagued with nightmares. I wake up trembling, drenched in sweat, my mouth clamping down over my screams. I feel like I’m dying. The pressure is excruciating, like a hundred bricks placed one on top of the other on my chest, slowly crushing my rib cage. Everything’s compressed, squashed, condensed into a heartbeat, pain shooting into every vein and artery. Everything hurts.

  My waking mind is a snarl of panic, fear, guilt, dread, and longing. I want my brothers. I even want my mother, but the thought of her brings a tangled, muddled mess of emotions I don’t know what to do with. Even with Arianna right next to me, I’m more alone than I’ve ever felt. I’m like a little kid again, like what I want more than anything is for my mother to wrap me up in her safe, warm arms and tell me everything is okay now, everything will be fine. I yearn for something I can barely remember, if I ever even had it.

  I don’t answer my texts or calls or look at my phone. I know most of them are from Lucas. But I just can’t. I don’t go to school. The thought of enduring all the questions, the pitying looks, the muffled whispers and averted gazes is too much to bear. Dr. Yang gets my work for me from my teachers, which Arianna brings home to me in stacks. I haven’t touched them. She tells me Lucas asks about me. Everyone asks about me, like they were ever concerned in the first place.

  Arianna cooks me every meal. Authentic Colombian meals like canary bean and chorizo soup, yucca balls stuffed with cheese, and Columbian plantains with tomato and onion chutney. She makes me arugula salads with candied walnuts, dried cranberries, and crumbled feta cheese, hand-tossed flatbreads baked with a creamy white sauce, spinach, and oregano, and light foamy custard that clings to my lips. I eat and eat and eat, though I barely taste anything. Arianna watches me with concerned eyes. I tell her to eat, too. She takes careful, tiny bites.