Chasing the Tide

by A. Meredith Walters

  I liked going to the school library after school. It was quiet and no one bothered me. I could read the books I didn’t dare let anyone know I was interested in. I was currently reading Jane Eyre. I liked how romantic Mr. Rochester was. Even though he was obviously hiding something. I loved getting lost in stories. It was a hell of a lot better than the shit life I had.

  I needed an escape desperately.

  Something about Flynn interested me.

  Like my books, he was something different from everything else I knew.

  We didn’t talk much. Sometimes he commented on my piercings or what I was wearing. He seemed a little too fixated on the colors I dyed my hair. He was definitely strange. But in a good way. He said what he wanted without worrying about consequences. He had no filter and though I’d never say it aloud, I appreciated that.

  His honesty was nice, even when it hurt. It was better to hear the truth than sustained by a lie.

  I watched him. I couldn’t help it. He would draw pictures in the margins of his notebooks, and they were amazing. Sometimes it was a building or a flower. Other times I noticed that he would draw me.

  That made me feel something inside I had never felt before. It was warm and spread out from the center of my chest to my fingers and toes.

  No one had ever drawn a picture of me before. He made me look beautiful. Was that how he saw me? As something beautiful?

  It seemed unlikely. I was trash. Worthless. Ugly. I had been told that enough times to believe it.

  But Flynn appeared to see something else.

  “Hey!” I called out but Flynn kept walking. I found myself jogging after him.

  “Hey!” I called again, and this time I noticed his steps quickened. Was he running away from me?

  Not that I blamed him. I wasn’t nice to him. And Stu and Dania were downright cruel. I could admit that I felt bad when they teased Flynn. Because he didn’t deserve that.

  No one did.

  “Flynn, stop!” I yelled, reaching out to grab ahold of his arm. He whipped around to face me, pushing my hands away.

  “Don’t touch me!” he screamed in my face, and I realized my mistake. Flynn Hendrick didn’t like to be touched. He hated it. I understood the feeling. When touch only led to something bad, it was easier to avoid it all together.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asked, and I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I smiled. He made it easy to smile.

  “Why would I be mad at you?” I asked him.

  “You were frowning and your mouth looks mean. I thought that meant you were mad,” he said and I found myself smiling wider.

  There was that honesty again. I consumed it hungrily.

  So I walked home with him that day and he let me into his house. He gave me some of his mom’s homemade banana bread and we watched TV together.

  And I smiled a lot.

  For the first time in a long time, I was happy.

  **

  “Ellie!” Jeb called out, looking up when I walked into the convenience store.

  After Flynn left for work I had spent the next few hours calling and following up with several places where I had submitted resumes, ignoring the twinge of mortification at being so blatantly pathetic. No one had much to tell me. Some seemed annoyed by my calls. Others were downright rude.

  I suppressed the urge to tell them where to shove their shitty jobs. Call it character growth. Even though I was beginning to feel like I was banging my head against a wall.

  A very hard, unyielding wall.

  Without giving myself time to change my mind, I headed into town to talk to Jeb. I hated how he seemed to know he was saving my ass.

  “Hey Jeb, you got a minute?” I asked, swallowing my pride. It was bitter on the way down.

  “Sure, for you I have nothing but minutes,” Jeb chuckled.

  “I was just wondering if that offer to pick up some hours was still available?” I asked in a rush, getting the words out before I could choke on them.

  “No luck finding anything?” Jeb asked, getting straight to the shame filled point.

  I instantly felt defensive. I wanted to bare my teeth and hiss in warning—Watch your step, entering dangerous territory.

  Instead I just shook my head.

  “Well, I just hired a kid to take the third shift,” Jeb replied, picking up a handful of candy bars and dumping them in the discount bin near the register. I felt myself deflate even further. God, it was bad enough that I had come crawling back to my former crappy job—it sucked even more being turned away from said crappy job.

  “Oh, okay. That’s cool. I’ll just get out of your hair,” I said wanting to run and hide.

  “Hang on a sec, kiddo. I didn’t say I couldn’t use you around. I need someone to fill in for shifts when people call out which, as you know, is a lot. It definitely won’t be full-time or anything. Hell it won’t even be part-time. I just can’t afford that. But I could use an extra person on the weekends. It gets sort of crazy in here,” Jeb said, and I raised my eyebrows.

  He couldn’t be serious. I looked around and saw that I was the only person besides him in the store. I had often wondered how Jeb afforded to keep the place open. I suspected it had something to do with tax write-offs, though I never bothered to ask. It was a paycheck, that’s all that had ever mattered.

  And Jeb knew that business wasn’t great and never had been. So for him to say that he needed the extra help because of his booming trade was laughable. I almost called him out on his obvious delusion when I stopped myself. Realizing exactly what he was doing.

  Jeb picked up the box of potato chips and walked down the aisle, distributing them on the shelves as he went. “So what do you think? Are you okay with that?” he asked.

  I found that my chest was suddenly uncomfortably tight as I followed the balding, middle-aged shop owner throughout the store.

  He didn’t need someone extra on the weekends. He was giving me hours because he knew I was desperate for the money. This had everything to do with helping me out and absolutely nothing about him.

  “Um, yeah, that would be great,” I said around the giant lump that seemed lodged in my throat. Shit. I was going to cry or something.

  “Okay, well come in on Friday evening and take over for Melanie. You can close up. We close at ten,” he said, not realizing how much his offer was affecting me.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I replied, my voice rough and ragged.

  Jeb looked up at me with a frown on his face. “Are you all right, kid?” he asked.

  I tentatively put my hand on his shoulder and gave it an awkward pat. Jeb looked surprised and glanced down at my hand as though it were a bug.

  “Thanks, Jeb. I mean that,” I said, clearing my throat. I wasn’t used to thanking anyone for anything. I had been shown so little kindness in Wellston that I had stopped even looking for it.

  To find it here, from Jeb of all people, left me a little off balance. And feeling like maybe this Podunk little town in the middle of nowhere wasn’t so bad after all.

  “I’ll see you on Friday?” Jeb asked, obviously weirded out by my mood. I didn’t blame him. I was standing there in the middle of his store looking like I was about to cry.

  I straightened my shoulders and removed my hand from Jeb’s sleeve. “Yeah, sure. What time do you want me?” I asked.

  “How about five o’clock,” he said, still frowning slightly.

  “Sounds good. See ya then,” I told him and then all but ran from the store, feeling a little embarrassed by my behavior.

  Well, I had a job. It wasn’t exactly what I had dreamed that I’d be doing when I graduated from college, but it was better than nothing. Because I wasn’t hearing my phone ringing with all those great opportunities.

  Even with the burden of impending pennilessness alleviated for the time being, I didn’t feel exactly giddy. I couldn’t help but feeling like a failure.

  What was the point of all that hard work if I ended right back where I started?<
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  Get it together, Ellie! You need to go and have lunch with Flynn and you can’t be in a bad mood! I scolded myself.

  I all but marched down the street to the IGA. I snatched up a basket and started walking up and down the aisles, grabbing random stuff, not really paying attention to what they were.

  “Well, look here, Mable. It’s our little Eleanor.” The deep, gruff voice sent uncontrollable shivers down my spine and my body went into instant fight or flight mode. My fingers curled around the handle of the basket and gripped so hard I could feel the metal biting into my flesh.

  I didn’t want to look up.

  Fuck. When was I going to realize shopping at IGA was a bad idea?

  I wanted to walk away without ever looking into the much hated smug, self-satisfied face. But to do that would be to admit that after all these years, he still got to me. That after everything he had put me through, his presence still affected me.

  I clenched my teeth and blanked my face. There would be no expression. I would give him nothing.

  “Hello Mr. Beretti,” I said, meeting my former foster father’s eyes without flinching. Then I turned to his noxious wife. “Mrs. Beretti,” I muttered, nodding in her direction.

  Her thin lips curled up like she smelled something bad. She looked down her nose at me as though I were still a troubled fourteen-year-old girl. A fourteen-year-old girl she allowed to be victimized under her own roof.

  In some ways I hated Mrs. Beretti more than I could ever hate her husband. She knew exactly what her husband was doing yet would always look the other way. Choosing to blame the young girls in her home for his predatory transgressions.

  I had spent two years in their home. It was the longest I had lived anywhere since entering the foster care system at the age of five. And I had loathed and despised every minute of it. If it hadn’t been for Dania’s constant presence, I would have possibly murdered them both in their sleep and not thought twice about it.

  “You look good, Eleanor. It seems that life is treating you well,” Mr. Beretti purred, oozing slime, his beady eyes lingering on my body in a way that was all too familiar. He looked the exact same as he had the last time I had seen him. His hair may now be grey and he had clearly put on some weight, but he still wore that same greedy expression. As though I were candy he wanted to devour.

  “It’s Ellie. My name is Ellie,” I corrected, trying to loosen the death grip I had on my grocery basket so I wouldn’t hit him in the head with it.

  Mr. Beretti had always insisted on calling me Eleanor. It wasn’t my real name and no one I met had ever called me Eleanor before. But he felt that Eleanor was a suitable name for such a beautiful girl. At first I thought it was sort of nice but that was until it became sordid and ugly.

  He liked to call me Eleanor when forcing me to touch him. It became a curse on his lips.

  I would never be able to hear the name again without wanting to throw up.

  Or kill someone.

  “How are you?” he asked, ignoring my defiant pronouncement.

  “I graduated from college,” I spit out, not sure what possessed me to share any piece of information with him. Only that I wanted him to know that I had done something with my life. Something that neither he nor his wife would have thought me capable of. Something good.

  I didn’t want to prove anything to Mr. Beretti. I hated the man. But I needed him to know that he hadn’t destroyed me. That no one had. No matter how hard they had tried.

  Mrs. Beretti snorted, and I looked at her. She really was a sad woman. Hideously unattractive and desperately trying to hold onto a sick man with criminal appetites. A man who looked at everyone else, including his foster children, rather than at her.

  “What’s so funny about that?” I demanded, my voice rising. I knew I was close to making a scene, yet I couldn’t stop myself.

  Mrs. Beretti’s cold eyes appraised me and clearly found me lacking. She didn’t need to say a word. Her thoughts and feelings were written all over her face. They were broadcasted loud and clear.

  You are nothing.

  “Arnold, we have to get going,” Mrs. Beretti said, turning away from me and pulling on her husband’s arm. It was then that I noticed a girl, no more than thirteen, beside them. She stood behind Mrs. Beretti, almost cowering in her shadow.

  She appeared timid and meek. Nothing like the girl I had been at her age. But I could see the strain of living with the Berettis on her despondent face. It was an expression I could identify with.

  “It was good seeing you again, Eleanor. Wasn’t it, Mable?” Mr. Beretti said, his eyes searing and heated, trying to exert the power he used to have over me. He wanted me to feel scared and small. He was a bully and a pervert, and it disgusted me to know that they were still fostering kids.

  Mrs. Beretti didn’t say anything. She glared at me with a look of pure hatred. When I had first gone to live with them I had briefly hoped that she would become a mother figure. I had been so desperate for one that I would have accepted any substitute. But this woman, so vicious and hateful, wasn’t capable of loving anyone but her pedophilic husband. She was just as sick as he was.

  “Come on, Cheyenne,” Mr. Beretti said, putting his hand on the young girl’s arm. I watched as Cheyenne flinched but didn’t pull away. She looked trapped. Like a rabbit in a snare with no way out.

  I knew that girl.

  I had been that girl.

  And I hated being reminded of her with these people as my witness.

  After the Berettis disappeared down the aisle, I hurried to the checkout wanting to get out of the store as fast as I could.

  When I was back in my car, grocery bags in hand, I sagged against the seat. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I put the keys in the ignition. I sat in the car for a long time, the engine idling, unable to pull out of the parking lot.

  I watched as the Berettis left the IGA, with poor Cheyenne trailing behind them, looking so much like fourteen-year-old Ellie McCallum.

  What was I doing here?

  Why had I come back?

  I didn’t want to be here.

  I didn’t want to live with the chance of running into the very people I had tried so hard to forget.

  I didn’t want to know that I could see Dania on the street or the Berettis in the grocery store. I didn’t want to have to crawl back with my pride in tatters for a job at JACs.

  I thought on that day that I had packed my car and drove out of Wellston that I had made my break.

  And I had believed when I came back to be with Flynn that things were different.

  I was different.

  So why was I sitting here in my car, feeling entirely too much like the girl I used to be. Violated. Miserable. A failure.

  I looked over at the bags containing Flynn’s lunch and knew he was expecting me. I checked the time and saw that I only had a few minutes to get over to the community college before he would start wondering where I was.

  It was important for me to remember why I was here.

  I was here because of Flynn.

  Flynn Hendrick.

  My Flynn.

  I repeated his name over and over again in my head. Desperately wanting that to be all that mattered.

  Flynn.

  Flynn.

  Flynn.

  So why did I still feel sick inside?

  Chapter Twelve

  -Ellie-

  The house was quiet.

  Not the sort of quiet that was relaxing and made me want to take a nap.

  It was the sort of quiet that had me on edge and hyper aware of every sound.

  I had heard Dania out in the hallway earlier. The closed door had muffled her voice. I had also heard Mr. Beretti’s baritone. Their words hadn’t reached my ears and then it had gone silent.

  And it had been that way ever since.

  I pulled out a notebook from my book bag, instantly tossing aside the homework. I didn’t make a habit of actually completing school assignments.

&nbs
p; Instead I flipped through the pages until I found the folded up paper toward the back. I slowly opened it and looked down at the simple sketch. It made my heart beat faster and my lips stretch upwards into a rusty semblance of a smile.

  Flynn had drawn it just this evening. I had gone back to his house, which had strangely become our routine. We had eaten his mom’s banana bread and then watched TV. And when it was time for Flynn and his mom to have dinner (I was never invited to join, which hurt more than I cared to admit), and I was putting on my coat he shoved the paper into my pocket.

  “What is it?” I had asked, wondering why he seemed so shy all of the sudden.

  I had come to realize that Flynn was blunt. His honesty was brutal. He wasn’t the sort to mince words to make you feel better.

  We were a lot alike, Flynn and me.

  So his vagueness had my curiosity piqued.

  I had started to unfold the paper but Flynn reached out, squeezing my fingers tightly, crumpling the paper. “Don’t. Just look at it later.”

  I had frowned, not understanding. But then his mother had called him to the table and that had been my cue to leave.

  I hated those moments when I transitioned from the warm safety his house provided to the cold, harsh world that I lived in. My feet would hesitate, digging into the ground, not wanting to leave.

  I wanted to turn around and run back inside, begging Flynn and his mother to keep me forever.

  Because there, with Flynn, I was kind of, sort of happy.

  But it never lasted. It wasn’t meant to.

  Girls like me didn’t belong in places like that.

  I had refused to look at the paper on the walk back, no matter how much I wanted to.

  When I had gotten to the Beretti’s house, I had been told to do my chores and get the fuck to my room. Mrs. Beretti was in a mood. And that usually meant her husband was giving her less attention. Which also meant his pervy sights were set on some poor girl. Be it Dania, me, or the thirteen-year-old girl who delivered the newspaper.

  I looked down at Flynn’s drawing and felt that bubbly, warm sensation that I only ever experienced at the Hendrick’s home deep in my gut.