In fact, I dreamed of one of those times last night. When he first learned the truth about our families. That his dad may be a dick, but mine…mine could be a monster. It was the night David first gave me my new nickname, Bea, and I can’t deny that his presence made the memory that much less awful.
I was nine when our families went to Vermont for a ski weekend, and Sammy and David were caught up in a basketball game in the gym, leaving me forgotten and bored on the sidelines. At some point David tapped out and told Sammy he’d take me to get ice cream, which he did. He didn’t mention he also planned on sneaking us into the movie the resort was showing without tickets, but I didn’t complain. As always, I was eager to follow his lead, trusting him implicitly, excited for a bit of adventure. Only, the movie ran past my curfew, and we lost track of time, and though he rushed us through the hotel like two bats right out of hell, the ominous, familiar sounds of doom hit us before we even reached our destination.
The memory is so vivid, my subconscious just having relived every awful moment of it—and every impossibly not-so-awful moment…
The sound of raised voices from the room I’d been sharing with Sammy and David, and my stunned fear as they reverberated from the barely ajar door. David’s confusion, which quickly morphed to shock, and—most unwelcome—pity.
But it all registered at once, and I felt nothing in that moment other than sheer terror as I froze outside our door.
A loud crash preluded my father’s vicious, accusatory voice as he laid into my brother, demanding he tell him where I was, and my mother’s high-pitched pleas—never for herself, always for Sammy. And Sammy’s progressively more defiant, smartass replies.
I remember how, for a moment, I thought David might go inside to back up his friend against my own father, and my heart stopped beating. But he must have seen something on my face, because he grabbed my hand instead, and rushed me down the hall and through a door.
One of the two lightbulbs was out in the small room fitted with two vending machines and an ice dispenser, and the dimness made it easier to hide. I didn’t dare meet David’s eyes. He didn’t dare say a word. I backed against the far wall and leaned against it for support. I swore I could still hear my dad, could feel the vibrations of his fury in the walls, could smell the vodka fumes through the vents. I stared down at my camouflage Uggs—I’d refused to buy the pink sparkly ones the rest of the girls always wore—until David took a sudden step toward me.
“Bits…” he said hesitantly, looking down at me from his height advantage with concern and pity, and I hated it.
There was a small nook between the last vending machine and the wall, and I tucked myself into the corner of the room, folding my knees into my chest and wrapping my arms around them as if I could hold myself together that way.
I knew it was my fault. My father was mad because I was late. And I also knew I was an awful sister. That my father might hit Sammy again. Or my mom.
But I also knew the damage was already done. That once my father’s switch had flipped, there was no shutting him down. Not until he either wore himself out, or did something violent enough to shock himself out of it. It wasn’t like I could just walk into the room and say, “here I am!” and all would have been forgiven. Even at nine, I had enough experience to know my father would have just found something else to be angry about. He’d have just blamed Sammy or my mom, or both of them, for wherever I was, whoever I was with, and for every second I was late. And if it wasn’t me, it would have been something my mom had said at dinner, or something Sammy had done a month ago. And the truth is, I know not one of them would have wanted David to witness it, anyway. We did have our pride, after all. Or they did, at least.
Not that I even had a conscious choice in that moment. My response to my dad’s rare but brutal alcoholic rages had been conditioned since before conscious memory, and it wasn’t the first time I’d found myself waiting it out in a dark corner somewhere.
David surprised me when he sat down beside me, squeezing his lanky frame between me and the vending machine. His arm came around my shoulders and he sighed. “Bits,” he said again, waiting for me to meet his eyes. They were more serious than I’d ever seen them. “Does that happen a lot?” he asked.
I shook my head, no. I was so distressed at the time that it didn’t occur to me to question how quickly and accurately he’d pegged the situation.
“But it does happen?”
I forcibly swallowed down the denial, and finally nodded.
David’s jaw clenched. “To you?”
Another head shake, and it seemed to ease his tension one iota.
He jerked his chin in the direction of our hotel room. “To them?”
In his eyes I could already see him make the connection to my mom’s familiar bruises, to his best friend’s—to Sammy’s broken arm we both now knew didn’t happen playing football.
I nodded again.
David’s arm tightened around me, and my head dropped onto his shoulder. We sat like that for a while, and I was grateful he didn’t ask any more questions.
“Why do you still call me Bits?” I asked after a while.
David frowned. “What else would I call you?”
I didn’t reply.
“Everyone still calls you Bits. Cap…Tuck…”
“It’s a baby nickname,” I murmured. For some reason, David was the last person I wanted seeing me as a baby.
“And Dave is so mature?” He scoffed.
“It’s better than Bits.”
