by LP Tvorik
In crowded hallways and pre-bell classrooms, I stalked and gathered intelligence. My ears picked up snippets of conversation. Certain words drew my attention like a blaring red light, lasering my focus into discussions about ‘tits’ and ‘love to fuck’ and ‘that ass’ and ‘pussy.’ If those conversations weren’t about my girl, I left it alone.
If they were?
I’d been at the same school for years. I knew everyone’s voice. So when Lance Curry, five feet behind me and pulling books out of his locker, told his friends he’d ‘bend the preacher’s girl over a desk and fuck her ‘till she cries,’ I pretended not to notice, made a mental note, and went on with my day.
Then, after school, I called in sick to work and waited in the near-abandoned parking lot until football practice released. When Lance reached his car, I came up behind him, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and slammed him face first into the hood of his shiny red coupe.
“What the fuck!” he cried out. He was bigger than me, but I had him at a disadvantage, bent awkwardly over the hood with his left wrist in my free hand. I twisted the arm up behind his back like the cops had inadvertently taught me, stressing his shoulder until he cried out in pain.
“I hear you wanna bend my girl over and fuck ‘till she cries,” I hissed. He tried to rear back, and I let him have a few inches before slamming him back into the hood.
“Fuck you!” Lance growled, cheek mushed into the warm metal.
“All I want is an apology,” I said, stressing his arm just a little bit more. He screamed. “And a promise you’ll keep your goddamned mouth shut. Give me that and I’ll let you keep your arm in working order.” I pushed again, glancing around just long enough to make sure we were still alone. We were.
“My dad’s a lawyer,” Lance groaned, hoarse and breathless. “He’ll put you away for years if you hurt me.”
“Okay” I said, pretending that notion didn’t turn my blood to ice water. Of course, if it was true, backing out now would be the worst thing I could do. If he wanted to play the intimidation game, the only way out was to win. “But even if I’m in jail, you’ll still be down a working shoulder. I don’t think those scouts are gonna look at you twice for college ball if you’re sitting on the bench with your arm in a sling.”
Lance went still in my grip. “Fuck you!” he growled again, but his voice was weaker, thick with tears of pain, and I knew I was winning. I layered it on.
“I don’t wanna go to jail, Lance,” I said, leaning close, smiling at the poetic justice of his position, bent double and crying in pain. “But even if I do, you’re fucked. Even if you tell me what I want to hear and tattle on me when I leave, you’re fucked. I’ve got friends in low places and if you go crying to daddy— even if I wind up behind bars— your shoulder is going to be the least of your worries. You understand?”
“Fucking fine!” Lance yelled, twitching in my grip. “I’m sorry, alright? I won’t talk about her.”
“You won’t look at her,” I added, squeezing the back of his neck hard enough to make him squirm.
“I won’t look at her.”
“And if your friends want to talk shit?”
“I’ll tell them to shut up,” he said.
“Good job!” I said sunnily. With one last nudge on his strained shoulder, I let him go and took a few steps back.
As expected, Lance launched off the car and came at me swinging. Fortunately, athleticism in one field doesn’t necessarily translate to another. Lance was a stellar quarterback with the upper body strength of a gorilla, but he threw a punch like a two-year-old— eyes closed and flailing. I ducked beneath it and darted forward, hammering one, two, three strikes into his midsection before slipping away.
Lance collapsed to the ground, curling around his stomach. I pushed at his shoulder with my foot, nudging him onto his back. “You done?” I asked, but he didn’t respond. Just moaned and rolled around weakly. “You’re done,” I answered for him.
I left him on the ground and strode back to my truck. By the time he got up and staggered to his car I was turning out of the parking lot and watching him in my rearview.
And that was how I hunted. One by one, I picked off the predators, until rumor and fear took care of the rest. My days were pure bliss. My grades were improving, I spent nearly every waking moment with Alex, and for the first time in my life I looked at the future and saw something other than a bleak, gray struggle to survive. I felt strong and smart and happy. I guess that’s what makes me culpable for everything that came next.
I’m not much of a Bible guy, but I’ve read the thing a couple times. Once because there was nothing else to read, and once because Alex was reading it and we never stopped loving our book-club-of-two idea.
By and large, I was never a huge fan of the ‘Good Book.’ It’s kind of boring and repetitive in places, and I could never reconcile an omniscient, omnipotent, loving deity creating the world in which I lived. Even so, there’s one passage that stuck with me as absolute truth, lingering over my life and casting a shadow of foreboding on every happy moment— Proverbs 16:18.
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Chapter sixteen
alex
“This doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Nate grumbled, letting his head thunk onto the heavy textbook, open on the desk in front of him. I looked up from my book and glanced around us, but we were the only ones in our section of the library.
“Aw, it’ll be okay,” I said condescendingly, patting his back. “You’re just dumb, that’s all.”
“I think I actually am, Al,” he whined, sitting up and scratching out his latest failed attempt at the math problem. “I’ve been at this for an hour and it still doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s okay,” I said, more serious. “You just don’t have the foundation, that’s all. This is what you get for sleeping through trig.”
He scowled, slouching in his seat. “Trig was dumb and easy. This is hard.”
“Trig is the foundation for half of what we’re doing in this class,” I argued, stealing his notebook and flipping to a blank page. “And it was only easy because you were in the basic class so you didn’t have to understand what you were doing. You just had to regurgitate answers.”
“Your wisdom doesn’t make me any less fucked on this problem set, Alex,” Nate snapped, scrubbing a hand through his hair and staring angrily at the textbook like he could intimidate the problems into solving themselves.
“Stop being dramatic,” I said, rolling my eyes and tugging on his arm. “Check it out…”
I sketched out a right triangle on my blank page and proceeded to walk him through the definition of sine, cosine, and tangent. Then we moved on to the unit circle. Then we practiced graphing the functions on an x/y plane. By the end of the hour, Nate was flying through the remaining problems and I had my nose buried back in Crime and Punishment. It was Nate’s latest pick for our two-man book club. He seemed to have an affinity for godawfully depressing books.
Because I was so far ahead in classes, and Nate so un-fixably behind, we both had study hall during the fourth period, right after lunch. I liked it because the rest of the school population was in class, so we had the place to ourselves. Usually we worked in the library, at this little table tucked back into the corner. Sometimes we sat in the courtyard and read.
I’d gotten my cast taken off weeks prior, and the scar on my forehead had faded from angry red to pink. It would never fade completely, but I didn’t really mind. It gave my face character, and every time I saw it I thought of that pivotal night in my life. The night I came back to life. The night I exchanged secrecy for striding purposefully through life with my favorite person at my side. I loved that scar.
Nate liked it, too. Or maybe he just wanted me to know it didn’t turn him off. Either way, he treated it like a sacred symb
ol. He always traced it with his fingertips before we kissed, his eyes warm and fierce with possessive need.
Without moving my head, I looked up from my book, watching him covertly. He was hunched over the table, left hand shoved into his hair while his right flew over the paper, scribbling out solutions that— now that he understood the process— I knew would be invariably flawless.
It almost made me angry how easily he picked things up. The concept I’d just taught him had taken me a week of nose-to-the-grindstone studying to understand. He’d mastered it in less than an hour. I’d never thought he was stupid, but the longer we studied together the more I realized just how much potential he was wasting by not graduating.
“You could be an engineer,” I said suddenly, startling him. He jerked his head up, frowning at me.
“What?”
“You’re crazy smart,” I reasoned, closing my book and setting in on the table before leaning forward, resting a hand on his arm. “You need to apply to colleges. There’s still time.”
“We’ve been over this, Al,” he said warningly, his voice low, eyes narrow as he studied my face.
“I know,” I whined. “It just bothers me. You could do anything you want.”
“Maybe I want to be a mechanic,” he snapped, turning back to his notebook. “Did that occur to you?”
“Do you?” I asked, unphased by his irritation. I think I was the only person in town who didn’t fear the infamous Nate Reynolds temper.
He didn’t answer, making a show of going back to work, his pencil digging a little too hard into the paper. I smiled. Sooner or later, I’d break him down. He wanted more, just like me, and I’d be damned if I went to the stars and didn’t take him with me.
‥ ‥ ‥
“Shit!” I screamed, shaking out my hand. Every cast iron pan should have the handle painted red so idiots like me don’t grab them.
“Don’t curse, sugar,” Daddy said, his voice mellow. He had his back to me and was bent over the sink, dutifully washing the endless stream of dishes I was sending his way. It was nearly three in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day. I had gravy on one burner, cranberry sauce on another, a massive pot of mashed potatoes on the third, and a cooling, cast-iron pan of cornbread on the last. That was the pan I’d just grabbed with my bare hand and shit it fucking hurt.
Thanksgiving at the Winger house was an affair. Daddy always invited a family or two from his church, so the panicked flurry on Thanksgiving morning was its own tradition.
The difference was that, this year, I was in charge. This year, Momma was gone. Fortunately, I didn’t have time to be sad about it because my whole world had become a chaos of beeping oven timers and food splatter.
“They’re gonna be here in an hour,” I said, blowing on my fingers, although they weren’t actually burned, and the pain was already fading. I pulled a stack of plates from the cupboard.
“Tom!” I called, and he bustled in from the living room seconds later, standing at attention. I’d tried to keep him involved with odd jobs all day like Momma used to. He loved to help.
“I need you to start setting the table,” I said, handing him the plates and praying like hell he wouldn’t drop them. “One at each spot at the adults’ table, okay? Come back for silverware when you’re done.”
By the time I reached a semblance of readiness with the food, I only had five minutes before the guests would start arriving.
“Go ahead, Aly,” my father said, ever level-headed. “Me and Tom will finish up, here.”
Oh, what heroes, I wanted to snark, but I didn’t have time. I needed to get ready quick. Nate and his siblings had somehow made it onto Daddy’s charity invite list this year and I couldn’t leave my boyfriend alone with the wolves. The gossip circle at the church was even more dubious of our relationship than the one at my school.
I took a quick shower, washing away sweat and flour and splatters of food. Wearing a towel, I wove my hair into a french braid and threw on some mascara. As I dashed from the bathroom to my bedroom, I heard voices downstairs. Nate’s wasn’t one of them. Was he late? Shit. What if he didn’t show up at all? Double shit. That’d look really bad.
I knew it shouldn’t matter to me what other people thought. Nate was all about that— just living your life and not worrying about other folks’ opinions. I tended to fret a little, though, especially where he was concerned. I wanted everyone to think as highly of him as I did, but he made it hard, especially back then. Sometimes I felt like he was bound and determined to live up to everyone’s awful expectations just to be spiteful.
In my bedroom, I hastily donned leggings, a skirt, and a modest white top with a cardigan, and shoved my feet into my favorite ankle boots. Before leaving, I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of my door. I looked respectable. A perfect little preacher’s daughter. Definitely not someone who had lost her virginity in the midnight woods to the town’s most notorious juvenile delinquent. I grinned at my reflection, tracing a finger over the scar on my temple. Almost respectable.
I found our living room filled to brimming with adults, nursing wine glasses and chatting. Daddy had invited two families from his church— the Smiths and the Popoviches. Peter and Jodie Smith were a nice couple with two little boys, aged six and four. Peter got laid off at the paper plant outside of town in September, and they’d been struggling ever since. Jodie had to get a job waiting tables at a restaurant downtown, and Peter was working odd jobs. Daddy said they were good people. They had a strong marriage and had protected their children from the worst of their struggles. They had ‘stayed true to God,’ whatever the hell that meant.
Neil and Harriet Popovich were an older couple whose children had all left home years ago. My father invited them to dinner because their eldest son, Jack, was overseas, serving in Iraq. They were having a hard time with it, Daddy said, and needed a little distraction, especially during the holiday season.
Then there were my guests, who sat in a corner, looking about as out-of-place as possible in my Momma’s pristine living room. Nate sat at one end of the couch. The littlest boy sat in his lap, clinging to his arm and watching the room full of adults with wide, terrified eyes. The little girl sat almost as close, but her eyes were bright with excitement, a half-smile on her lips. The older boy —Ronnie? — sat a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest, scowling at everything. Deb wasn’t there. I’d made a point of extending the invite to her, but I have to admit I was relieved she hadn’t showed up. She hated me.
“You didn’t tell me there was a dress code,” Nate hissed, glaring at me, when I drew close.
I hadn’t. I’d thought it was implied by the occasion. Apparently I shouldn’t have assumed. Nate’s entire entourage, himself included, were wearing jeans. Nate was wearing a plain gray t-shirt, the little girl a stained pink sweater, and the little boy what looked like a pajama top with a kids’ show logo emblazoned on the front. Ronnie hadn’t even removed his puffy, duct-tape-patched overcoat.
“You’re fine,” I lied, trying not to smile.
“No we’re fucking not,” Nate argued, his voice low as his eyes swept over the room of well-dressed adults. “We look like assholes, Al.”
“You sound like an asshole, too,” I whispered, leaning close. “Stop cursing.”
“Shit, sorry,” he dropped back against the couch, clearly overwhelmed. “This was a bad idea.”
“Don’t be a baby,” I said, crouching in front of him so I was eye level with the little kids. “Do you guys want to come see the toy room?”
The little girl’s eyes brightened. “There’s a room just for toys?” she asked, breathless. Even the little boy looked intrigued, although he still cowered in Nate’s lap.
Nate’s ragtag crew trailed me as I wove through the sea of adults and led them downstairs to the basement. It was furnished, and my parents had converted it to a sort of den/playroom for me
and Tom. Over the years, it had become more Tom’s space than mine as I outgrew its appeal. There were Legos and toy cars, a train table, a small trampoline, a TV with attached Nintendo and VCR, a big puffy couch, and bins of dolls and dress up clothes from when I was little.
Ronnie made a beeline for the gaming console, abandoning our group to slump in front of the TV. Tom, kneeling by the train table, looked over his shoulder when we came down the stairs. His boyish face split into a wide grin when he saw us.
“Nate!” he said gleefully, abandoning his game and bouncing up. Nate placed the little boy on the ground to receive Tom’s overzealous hug, and then set about introducing each of the kids to my delighted older brother.
One upside of Tom’s condition was that he adored kids, and got along with them great. He was low on friends, so any potential new playmate was a delight. He already had the Smith kids embroiled in some made-up story on the train table. I envied the persistence of his imagination—the enduring technicolor a stark contrast to my own fading, sepia-toned view of the world.
“Tom-Tom, this is Paul,” Nate said, picking up the boy again. “He’s a little shy, so you gotta be extra nice, okay?”
Tom nodded vehemently. The little girl spoke up before Nate could do it for her. “I’m Trish!” she said, holding up her arms as if asking to be picked up. Tom looked at me, and I nodded. He picked her up in one arm and shook her tiny hand.
“I’m Tom,” he said. “Do you like to play trains?”
“I don’t have trains,” Trish said. “What do you do?”
“I’ll show you,” Tom said brightly, setting her down by the table. He coaxed the Smiths into abandoning their game for a few minutes so he could line up all the trains and tell Trish their names and their jobs. She listened intently, nodding along.
“You oughta join ‘em,” Nate said to Paul, but the little boy shook his head hard and buried his face in Nate’s shoulder. Nate rolled his eyes at me. “C’mon, buddy,” he coaxed, kneeling down and peeling the boy away from him, setting him on his feet. “Tom’s really cool, okay? He won’t hurt you, I promise. Besides, you love trains. How many chances are you gonna get to play with real ones? C’mon, I’ll come with you.”