by Lainy Lane
“What are you doing up here?” she asks as hatefully as she can make it sound. “Get out of my room. I just want to be—” She breaks off as she battles with the best way to finish the sentence. “I just want to be!”
“I won’t stand idly by and let that boy take you down with him,” he yells.
“Take me down? What are you even talking about right now, Dad? The only place Tristan wants to take me is to church, which should make you of all people happy!” She emphasizes the word dad and gives it a slight touch of disgust as she says it.
“He will destroy you, Calandra. You may not know it, but I do! I know it all too well!”
The anger boils inside of her, ready to explode. She tries to fight it back down, but it’s no use. “What? You mean like you did Mom?” She hadn’t meant to say it, but there was no turning back now. She didn’t even know why she said it. It wasn’t like she actually knew anything about her mom, let alone the story behind their love. All she knows is what she has seen in her little daydreams, and after her latest one she really doesn’t have the slightest idea of what to think of her mom.
Chase never talks about his relationship with her mom, or her death … or her at all really. It is a topic that is just never brought up; a topic that Calandra has always left buried away somewhere secret, until now. The curiosity burns inside her when she realizes, by the look on Chase’s face, that there must be some kind of truth in what she said. His skin turns blanket white, and his forehead is clammy. There’s something in his eyes, something she’s never seen. Before she can try and figure out what it is, he blinks and it instantly switches back to anger.
“You know what, Calandra? I’m done! You obviously have your mom and Echo in you even though I’ve tried to stomp it out.” He stands there and stares at her.
“Why didn’t you defend my claim to you ruining Mom? What does that mean?” she squeaks out. She can’t focus on anything other than the fact that he had said nothing to her accusation.
Chase turns and walks out the door. “You’ll find out soon enough I suppose,” he yells as he slams the door behind him.
The tears break through then, but they aren’t just sad tears. They are anger mixed with confusion, angst, betrayal, and desperation for answers. Before she knows what she’s doing, Calandra finds herself throwing a duffle bag on her bed and she begins to fill it with clothes. She storms into her bathroom and fills her arms with hygiene necessities and jams them into the bag. Unplugging her phone charger from the wall, she throws it in before she forces the zipper closed. Tossing the bag over her shoulder, she wipes the tears from her eyes.
Before exiting her room, she stares at herself in the mirror on her vanity, which is right next to her door. Her hair is blonde with small red and orange streaks throughout. She is slender and of average height; her skin is on the extra pale side, which only makes her eyes stand out more than they already do. Her eyes are bright and tawny colored, but what makes them more than a little unusual are the tiny streaks of orange in them. Calandra has never exactly fit into any category for looks. She’s always stood out, which is what Tristan says makes her beautiful, but she doesn’t buy into it, to her it just makes her a freak. Her face is currently red and puffy from crying, but there isn’t anything she can do about that now, so she takes a few deep breaths and walks out of her room.
Without a second thought, she walks right past Chase, who is sitting on the couch, and turns toward the front door. The hallway has never seemed as long before as it does at this moment. Calandra anticipates the noise of Chase’s footsteps behind her before she actually hears them. “Just go away, Dad!” Calandra sucks up her tears and refuses to let her voice break as she says it. “I don’t want to talk, I just want to go.”
“Go where?” he yells.
“What do you care?”
“You are still my responsibility!” Chase hesitates before he says it, cutting the knife even further into Calandra’s chest.
“Are you going to tell me what your silence up there meant about Mom?” The tears become harder to hold back and Calandra knows she has to wrap up and leave or she won’t be able to hold them off any longer.
Chase stares back at her blankly. He opens his mouth, but closes it again before any words make it out. He looks down at the ground before turning and walking back down the hall.
Calandra’s eyes sting against the tears as she turns to watch him walk away. “So that’s it?” she asks, mixing her shock and hurt into her tone.
“You’re asking questions you probably don’t actually want to know the answers to, Calandra. Despite what you may want to believe, a lot of times, the truth has a tendency to hurt,” he says as he walks the rest of the way down the hall and leaves her standing at the door alone.
“So what, I guess that means that lies are beautiful?” She sighs as the tears break through and she walks out the door.
She jogs to her car, unsure of why she’s in such a hurry. She has a feeling Chase isn’t going to come after her regardless. Her heart races, and the adrenaline pumps through her veins. Her head is throbbing, and her eyelids feel like they are on fire from the stinging tears that are streaming down her face. The tears blur in the corners of her eyes, and she has to blink rapidly to clear her vision as she makes her way to the car.
Her phone still sits in the middle console from the drive that morning. She picks it up and pushes the unlock button. There’s a message waiting from Tristan.
You doing okay Cal?
Calandra smiles for the first time since before Tristan left her and types a quick response.
I will be once I see you. It was worse than usual, I’m leaving now.
She wipes her eyes once more and turns on the engine. Her radio had been left turned up too loud and the sudden noise makes her jump. She instantly turns the radio off, and pulls out of the driveway. With her car in the road, just next to her driveway, she takes one last deep breath. Looking up to the house once more, her heart breaks again when she sees her father hasn’t made the effort to come out for her. She sighs and drives away.
The thoughts pound through her head. The vibration of the car, the soft humming of the engine, the random bumps in the road. Everything combines and makes the wheels in her head turn faster than they ever have before. Why couldn’t he have just come after her? She feels as if she can’t keep up with herself. She tries to focus on the cars as they pass by, hoping the light will blind everything else out of her mind.
Just as her head finally starts to clear, the cars quit coming. She’s alone on the road. The night fills the world around her as she starts down a stretch of road filled with mostly trees and only a few houses scattered in. The thoughts threaten to flood back in, and she fights against it. Calandra reaches down to turn the radio back on in hopes the music will kill her last few lingering thoughts. She manages to calm her shakes and her limbs that can’t seem to stay still enough to keep the car moving and on the road. She spends most of the drive to Tristan’s house trying to calm herself and ignore the thoughts echoing in her head. It feels like an eternity before she makes it to Tristan’s, and she finds him standing in the driveway, waiting for her arrival. He is at the car before she’s able to turn off the engine. Opening the door, he pops his head inside the car instantly.
“Are you okay, Cal?” he asks sincerely.
Calandra tries, but she can’t seem to make herself say anything, she simply stares at him. The beauty of his eyes overtakes her, and for once, she doesn’t fight the urge to get lost in them. Being lost is all she wants at this point. She is broken, more so than she usually is after an argument with her dad, but then again he’s also never actually let her leave before.
“Cal, you’re shaking.” Tristan reaches over her and takes the keys out of the ignition. He grabs her bag from the passenger seat and gently brings it over her, careful not to hit her as he does so. Calandra still sits frozen and stares at him. Tristan puts her bag on his shoulder, reaches his arm around Calandra’s back,
and pulls her out of the car gently.
She slightly pulls out of her daze long enough to allow him to help her out of the car. Her head is clouded in thoughts and pictures of the fight; she is in a state of mind that will hardly allow her to move. She feels completely exasperated because it’s like she isn’t really here, as if she is somewhere else entirely, and in a way she wishes she was. Calandra tries to help Tristan walk her into the house, but she isn’t very successful in doing so and she practically just leans into him while he does all the work. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Tristan’s parents in the doorway as they walk in. His mom opens her mouth to say something, but Tristan waves her off before any words make it out.
“She’s okay, she just needs to get away from him for a bit. I’m going to get her situated in my room and I’ll come back down and sleep on the couch. We’ll talk then,” he whispers even though Calandra can hear every word he says.
Tristan’s mom nods and his parents disappear into the living room. Tristan smiles reassuringly at Calandra. “Let’s get you laying down, okay? You’ll feel better after you get some sleep.” Without waiting for a response, he leads her up the stairs to his room.
Tristan gently lowers Calandra’s body on the bed, lays her bags on the floor next to the end table, and crawls into bed next to her. He scoots his body directly next to hers and wraps his arm around her. Calandra feels like a zombie. Her head is pounding and the thoughts feel as if they are trying to beat their way out of her skull. She tries a few times to talk, to explain to Tristan what’s wrong, but nothing comes out.
“We can talk about it later. For now, just get some rest,” Tristan whispers, pulling her head into his chest.
Relieved for the first time of the night, Calandra breathes in his scent. She washes out her mind the best she can, and lets the tears flow freely into Tristan’s chest while he runs his fingers gently through her hair until she finally falls asleep.
Chapter Four
No Apology
Calandra awakes to find herself alone in Tristan’s room. Not that she expected any less, but it doesn’t stop the loneliness from creeping in and filling her with dread. It’s only a few moments before her mind clears enough for her to register where Tristan should be; downstairs sleeping on the couch. This wasn’t the first time her and Chase had gotten into a fight bad enough for her to leave and look for a place to stay for the night. Tristan always gave up his bed when she needed it, and he slept on the couch. Calandra had a feeling his parents probably didn’t actually sleep on those nights, but they would never turn her away.
There have certainly been plenty of times that Calandra finds herself wishing she had a family more like Tristan’s. They are what you could call the All-American dream family, like Leave it to Beaver or The Walton’s, but modern day. Tristan’s dad, Kyle, works for a decent sized corporation in their IT department doing something Calandra can’t even begin to understand. Trisha, Tristan’s mother, is a stay at home mom and has always been involved in Tristan’s school and extra-curricular activities. Currently, she is the mother that always brings the fun snacks to football practices and games, and all of the players call her mom. Kyle and Trisha don’t have any children other than Tristan, and though Calandra doesn’t know the exact details behind why, she is quite certain—judging by their personalities—that it wasn’t their choice to only have one child.
Tristan has never wanted for anything, other than maybe to sleep in every once in a while. This household was the kind of house that everyone was up by seven a.m., regardless of what day it is. That was the only thing that Calandra really hated about being here; they didn’t seem to believe in sleeping in for some reason. If her and Tristan did end up getting married one day, that was going to have to be the first thing she instilled in him.
The Victorian style house is filled with pictures of Tristan. He is their pride and joy, and they aren’t ashamed to show it. Their family went to church every Sunday, but unlike Calandra’s father, they raised Tristan without spite. Spite was what Calandra felt her father used when it came to dealing with her. She has always wondered if Chase blamed Calandra for her mother, Hollyn, being gone. He hadn’t exactly signed up or been in the least bit prepared to be a single father, at least that was the defense Tristan always brought to her attention when things got rough between them.
Calandra stretches every limb as far as she can, trying to convince herself to get out of bed and head downstairs. The scent of bacon and eggs coming from the kitchen should be more than enough to entice her lazy butt to crawl down there and act like something a little more coherent than a zombie, but her body isn’t entirely convinced yet. Her stomach is willing, but the rest of her is still debating whether or not it is really worth the effort required. Her head feels groggy and clouded as she wills herself to sit up. She feels top heavy, and for a few moments she thinks she might actually fall forward in the bed. She closes her eyes and puts her head in her hands, massaging her temples in hopes that her head will unfuzz enough to function the least little bit.
“Oh good, you’re awake.” Tristan’s voice is always way too cheerful first thing in the morning, Calandra has never understood how that happens as she is the furthest thing from a morning person. Tristan walks in with a silver tray in hand, a plethora of breakfast foods and juices spread across it.
“I take it there was probably a debate going on downstairs as to whether or not I was alive just yet.”
“Always is when you stay the night.” Tristan chuckles. “You know us crazy morning people don’t fully understand you afternoon people!”
“Like you said, y’all are the crazy ones.” Calandra’s voice is still scratchy from just waking up and her esophagus burns a bit as she speaks.
“How are you feeling today, babe?” Tristan sets the tray of food on the bed and takes a seat across from her, thoroughly studying her for any sign of demise.
This is the normal routine after she gets into a fight with her dad. She’s been through it enough times to know what every step of the ‘feel better Cal’ process is. It all starts with breakfast, which was Calandra’s favorite part of the entire ordeal since Chase isn’t much of a cook. Step two is the slightly annoying study of her movements as she eats, incorporated with a game of twenty questions to check on her emotional stability. Once that was over, he would give her enough space to allow her to get ready, then the ‘let me know if you need anything, you know I’ll be there in an instant’ speech would happen before she was allowed to leave. Tristan’s parents would stay quiet and off to the side, and do nothing more than give her sympathetic apology faces as she walked out of the house.
The entire process took less time than usual today, and Calandra finds herself in her car with the music turned up and the windows rolled down before she knows it. The going back home and apologizing was the part that she always seemed to dread the most. It was usually worse than the fight was, mainly because of the anticipation of it. At least when they got into fights, no matter how bad they ended up, there was no time for her to work up her nerves before it happened. The apology and return part of the process was another story. She had the entire fifteen minute drive from Tristan’s house to hers to do nothing other than mull over how mad Chase would be when she got there, how she would attempt to word the conversation, and ways to keep it all from leading to another argument, which would land her back into square one all over again.
Calandra pulls into the driveway with her heart racing and on the verge of having a full blown anxiety attack, which is normally a good time to have Tristan around, but he always sent her for the big return alone. It was something she had to do on her own, according to him. Calandra lingers at the front door with her hand on the knob for a minute before gathering enough nerve to turn it and walk into the house.
“Dad?” she calls out, her voice laced with an apologetic tone.
No response. He was probably upstairs packing for his trip and distracted. He always waited until the very last sec
ond to pack for his trips, which led to way more stress than he ever seemed to actually know what to do with. Calandra walks over to the stairs and calls out for him. Still nothing.
“Hmm.” Sighing, she walks into the dining room to put her things down.
Just as she drops her bags onto the table, the yellow piece of notepaper catches her eye. It is covered in the scraggily handwriting that Calandra instantly recognizes as her father’s.
Calandra,
There was an issue with my previous flight arrangements. To prevent having to travel in coach, I had to reschedule things and take an earlier flight out. I cancelled your arrangements to go to your grandmother’s as you obviously won’t go anyways. There is money in the flour jar in the kitchen for while I am gone. Your grandmother has more stashed away if that isn’t enough to get you by, though I trust that it should be.