“Sure, not a problem,Mom,” I said, swallowing the lump of sorrow in my throat. I held my chin up, trying hard not to show her my tears. The rest of the drive home was my mother telling me how awful of a person I was and how much trouble it had been to raise a whore, a piece of lying, good for nothing trash daughter, who was just like my father.
The minute she yanked the truck into park in front of our house, I jumped out and ran inside. Owen was sitting at the dining room table with two big guys smoking a huge joint together. He laughed when I stumbled inside. Ignoring them, I raced down the hallway and into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. From under my bed, I pulled out my schoolbag and dumped the contents all over the floor. Rummaging through my drawers, I grabbed a few days’ worth of clothes, my deodorant, my albums full of photos, a few of my sketchpads, a shitload of my favorite books, and shoved them in my bag. Dashing past the high-as-hell assholes in the living room, I yanked Jase’s truck keys out of the hands of the personwho spit me out of her womb,and started loading the truck with everything I could that belonged to me. I made about five trips as those assholes rolled on the floor and laughed their asses off at me. I even took the damn ashtray I made for my mother in art class when I was in fifth grade, a box (yes,box) of her preciouswhite-trashwine, and her most prized possessions: herentirecollection of painkillers that filled up ten bottles along the top glass shelf of the medicine cabinet.FUCK her.
I took my bank account books, and the stash of rolled up hundreds my mother kept hidden from Owen inside her make-up case in the bathroom, shoved deep inside an empty bottle of wrinkle cream. I held on tightly to the cash and leaned against the cool, tiled wall of the bathroom as tears streamed down my cheeks. I forced myself to look at my reflection in the mirror behind the sink before I left. The person who stared back scared the hell out of me. It was the face of a complete stranger, with knotted tangled hair stuck against the sides of her face and giant, frightened, red-rimmed eyes with deep purplish skin below them. You couldn’t see any bruises or cuts on my skin. The pain that ached and hurt in me was somewhere deep inside, far away from the surface. But the pain was pure and real, and mine.
I staggered through the rest of the house, sobbing. Without saying goodbye, I walked out the front door, hoping to God it was the last time I ever had to see those disgusting people.
I stumbled down the porch steps and fell to my knees on the walkway.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Mrs. Delaney sitting just inside her entrance door, watching me. She was in the wheelchair, just like that first day, but now she was alone. There was no kid bouncing a basketball against her and no husband carrying her luggage.
"You weak bitch!" I screamed at her, grabbing a handful of her garden pebbles and hurling them against the glass door she hid behind. "You are going to live with this. What he did. What you let him do. Youheardme screaming.You heard me. I hope you rot in hell." I crawled around the dirt and grass throwing whatever I could grab with my hands, and screamed until my throat was raw.
I was completely dead inside when I started Jase’s truck and took off, peeling out and smoking the tires when I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. Somehow, someday, I hoped I would be able to say I survived what had happened to me. But the truth was, at that moment, all I wished for was a quick and painless death. Something to just end all the chaos, end all the sorrow that was overwhelming me.
I drove to the only place I could think of….the cemetery. I needed my best friend.
I made it all the way there, crying and screaming at my windshield while taking huge gulps from the box of wine. Parking the truck on the side entrance to the cemetery, I hauled myself over the cement wall, clutching my wine and landing with a hard thud against the hard ground. Pathetically enough, even in the pitch dark of night, I knew exactly how to get to Joey’s gravestone. I probably could have walked blindfolded and found it. I fell on my knees in front of his marker, praying, and talking to Joey.
“Please, just a minute,” I cried, slurring my words. “Just talk to me for a minute. Tell me what to do to make this shitty life worth living. Tell me what I need to do. You were my best friend, and I lost you. I lost Jase, and I lost everything. Please talk to me one last time and tell me what to do.” The silence that answered back almost killed me.
Alone.
I felt sodirty.
Helpless.
I felt soashamed.
I’m so fucking scared.
I emptied the box of wine and I could no longer read the name on the gravestone through my blurry vision. Quickly, I forgot the hands that touched me and the lips that kissed me, but I still saw that cold, blue stare hovering over me when I closed my eyes. Slowly, the raw pain of my dirty shame got swallowed, along with the alcohol that surged through my system, and I floated along the dark sky of clouds above me.
I don’t know how long I slept on the soft grass above the grave of my dead best friend, but I woke when the sun was warm and shining brightly against the front of my eyelids.
With throbbing eye sockets, I climbed back into the stolen truck and drove without a shred of direction.
When all was said and done, when it was all over, I was numb. Then, it rushed back in flashes. Minutes after, days after, months and years after. When I showered alone, when I was in a crowded room with people who thought they knew and loved me, when I was shopping for food. The flashes came and they reminded me, reminded me of who I am, and what was done, and what I’ve lost.
And every day after Mr. Delaney raped me, a little more of me died. It peeled away my layers of skin, little by little; my self-worth, my beauty, my innocence, my smile—until I was nothing but a bag of bones. The further the days got from what happened, the further I got from the seventeen-year-old girl I once was. It shredded me into fine, little pieces of thin tissue paper. He took everything that wasme, and all I could wonder waswho would I be now?I had no sense of self. I didn’t know who I should be. What was the right me, because even though I knew it was wrong and I hated it, my body responded to him. Did I really want him? Did I ask for it?
How could I go back to beingmenow, afterthat? How could I face Jase after what I had done with his father? How could I ever let him see me again? His last name was like a poison to me. All these people poisoning my life; the bullies who thought they had the right to punch people and hurt them, call them names, scar them, kill them, touch them, all these people in my life who had made their poison seep through my skin. I was done with it. I couldn’t be that girl anymore. I couldn’t be Charlie anymore.
This wasn’t how my story was supposed to be written.
This wasn’t the way I wanted my story to go.
So I needed to rewrite it.
Word for word.
Rewritten.
Because, I was so young.
So young.
And utterly broken.
