I put my head in my hands and I think of all the times we have been intimate, and I wonder if any of it meant anything to her or if everything was bullshit.
Was it all a lie, Carrie?’
Surely not, I hope, I pray, I plead. Because it can’t all have been a lie. It can’t all have been fake. She must have cared once. But not now, and I see that. I see right through her. All she cares about is Adam. All she wants to do is ruin his family like she ruined mine. But I won’t let her. I’ll warn Adam what she’s like, and then he’ll hate her too. And then he’ll stay away from her. He’ll go back to his wife and kids and he won’t tell them about Carrie and the biggest mistake of his life. He won’t ever tell anyone. He’ll just be grateful that he got away from the walking train wreck that she is before she destroyed him like she destroyed me.
And now I’ve made a plan. Now I know what to do. And then…and then…
And then what?
What do I do then?
When Adam is out of the picture…when I can finally be free of her…what do I do then?
‘You eliminate the problem, kid.’
That’s what Benny used to say. Of course he was talking about the hospital, and when the beatings got so bad I thought I was going to die. And I did almost die. He was talking about the men that took me to their cells and told me that they would do things to me that shouldn’t be done to a young boy. It would be vengeance for the girl I killed because they had a daughter her age. They had a daughter just like Carrie. And prison was too good for me.
‘She deserved better,’they said.
‘She did,’I agreed.
But she’s not dead. She can’t be.I thought.
And all this time, she wasn’t.
She was just pretending. She was just hiding. She was just trying to escape…me?
See, I met Benny in the infirmary at the hospital.
He taught me how to not be a pussy anymore.
He taught me how to be strong, and how to play the system.
He helped convince the doctors that prison was wrong for me.
I don’t know why he helped; I never asked. Maybe he was just happy to have someone fucking listening to him for the few weeks that we were in there together. Happy that someone gave a shit about what he had to say.
And I did give a shit. I listened to what he had to say, and though most of it was bullshit, a lot of it wasn’t. He taught me so much. Helped shape the man I am today.
Much more than my own dad ever did.
A dad who doesn’t speak to me anymore.
Not since that fateful night.
