A More Deserving Blackness (3 page)

             
The flock swoops instantly, bloodthirsty red leather crows slamming him violently, face-first into the metal wall of lockers.  He growls with fury, his palms slapping to either side of his face, fingers white claws, and I flinch as his cheek crunches against the cold door, lips pulled back over teeth in a gritted snarl.

             
“Enough!”

             
Still wrapped around his wounded hand, Carter is glaring murderously as his friends ease back, jostling the guy enough to rap his head against the lockers again as their muscled circle widens.

             
The guy straightens, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist.  Slowly he turns to the bulky man standing just outside the crowd of red.

             
The man ignores him.  “Guys, get to class,” he commands with easy authority.  “Carter, get some ice on that hand.”

             
I hear a few mutters of “Yes, Coach,” and they dissipate, shooting testosterone-laced glares over their thick shoulders as they do.

             
The guy named Carter is the last to leave, experimentally stretching the reddened fingers of his crushed hand at his side, his fuming brown eyes fixed on the guy they’d left standing there.  Finally he moves completely out of view, still glaring.

             
The Coach turns coldly.  “Keep a lid on that temper, boy,” he spits at him, clearly meant as an insult.  “One phone call.  That’s all it would take.  One phone call, and we’ll see how quickly you slip those cuffs a second time.”

             
Then he turns and disappears back into his classroom, leaving the guy to seethe, vibrating in impotent wrath before slamming the locker shut and storming away.

             
And I’m alone in the empty hall, still staring after the dark shape of him, when the tardy bell cuts like a scalpel, straight down my spine.

              “Hey, Bree?”

             
I look up from the six thousand pound tiger shark charging the screen in front of me when Trish pokes her head into the living room, sunglasses pushed up on her head and her purse in her hand.  She’s not wearing her usual uniform, though, but a pair of high-heeled brown boots and a green sweater dress, so I already know what she’s going to say.

             
“I was going to meet a couple of the girls for drinks tonight.  Do you mind?”

             
I shake my head, giving her my best encouraging smile.

             
Trish hesitates, her stalwart, lipstick red smile faltering slightly.  “Honey, I don’t have to go.  If you’d rather . . .”

             
But I shake my head vehemently, and I mean it.  I like that she doesn’t hover around me, just waiting for something to break off that she could scoop up and glue back into place.

             
“Will you be all right?”

             
Nod.  Like I’m following a script.

             
But Trish sinks onto the couch cushion next to me, propping her purse in her lap.  “You know, it wouldn’t hurt for you to get out sometimes, either.” 

             
She reaches over, and I press my thumb between the tendons in my wrist, just testing it, as she readjusts a chunk of my long hair.  Her lips twist at the corner, and I can tell she’s debating with herself.  She takes a breath. 

             
“What happened – you can’t live through something like that and not be . . . changed.  I just don’t want you to let that take your whole life away from you.”

             
She’s trying.  I know she’s trying.  She’s doing the best she can in an impossible situation, and I’m grateful.  I am.

             
“No one blames you for being scared.  Just – just think about it, okay?”

             
Meeting her eyes, I nod.

             
“All right,” she says, satisfied enough for now, and pushes to her feet, smoothing the skirt over the slim curves of her hips. 

             
But she’s wrong.  I’m not worried something like that night is going to happen again.  I’m aware of the odds, aware that a repeat of the incident would be enormously unlikely. I’m not scared of going out. 

             
I’m scared of what’s in my head.

             
Trish steps away, and I turn back to the reruns of
Shark Week
I’m not really watching.

             
“Mom called yesterday,” she adds softly, and I nod, feigning interest at the bloody, frothing mess on TV.  “She wanted to talk to you but you were asleep.”

             
I wasn’t.  I’d heard Trish on the phone.  Telling my mother how well I was doing, that she shouldn’t worry, that it was going to take some time, that I needed to heal and adjust.  All with her ceaseless optimism in full swing.  It was exactly what my mother needed to hear.  Her baby girl was fine.  She could move on with her life, stop worrying, stop being so sad, stop waiting for everything to get better.

             
“She said to tell you she loves you, and she misses you.”

             
I smile and nod again, and Trish tells me she’ll be back late, and to call if I need anything.

             
The front door closes and I can already feel the soothing licks of pain radiating up my arm.               

             
I know they love me.  My mom, my dad, Trish.  They all care about me, worry about me.  And yes, my parents miss me.  Of course they miss me.  But they miss the girl I used to be, before.  Not the girl that had barely allowed them to hug her in the driveway of her childhood home at the beginning of the summer, unresponsive before she’d climbed into Trish’s car.  They miss their daughter, and I’m not that girl anymore.

             
I’m what was left.

              It’s the second Wednesday of classes when Erik asks me out on a date.

             
“It’s not a date or anything, I just -” he lowers his voice, leans toward me.  “Jess is going to be there and I don’t want to show up alone, you know?  You want to come with me?  It’ll be fun, I promise.”

             
I stare at him.  Jess?  Oh, right.  The girlfriend that had dumped him after the first day of school.  Classy.

             
I highly doubt the fun part, and I hesitate, but going to a party was the height of normal as a teenager.  Trish would be thrilled, and so, in turn, would my parents.  Erik didn’t strike me as dangerous, either, but still.

             
Besides, pre-calc Dylan keeps mentioning something about this weekend, suggestively leaving it hanging in the air like I’m supposed to grab at it gratefully.  Poor little mute girl, throw her a bone.  Maybe he’s just trying to be nice, trying to include me, but I wish he’d stop.

             
“Please?”

             
It’s the please that gets me, and I realize it’s been so long since anyone has asked anything of me.  Everyone who knows me thinks – knows? – thinks I would shatter at the smallest request, and everyone who doesn’t is too put off by my freakish refusal to speak to approach me.  Even my teachers ask little more from me than that I show up in order to pass their classes. 

             
Erik is waiting, with a little shake of his head and a lift of his eyebrows. 
Well?

             
I’m surprised to feel myself nodding slowly.  As I write down my address on Erik’s palm as he insists I do, eyebrows waggling and adorable dimples flashing, I can’t help but feel the burn of a set of dark, serious eyes on my back.  But when I look behind me the guy is just staring down at the desktop between his forearms, alone and quiet as usual.

             
The movement of turning toward him knocks my notebook, pages fluttering, to the aisle between the tables, smacking onto the hard floor like a broken white bird.  They guy leans over, slowly reaching an arm down over his knee and plucking up the notebook with his long middle finger hooked into the spine.  He rights the pages and then hands it over to me, and when I try to thank him with a look I see the blank, spectral void of his stare.  Not unkind, not angry at all, but utterly detached.  It passes through me like I’m not even there.

              Erik picks me up at my house at seven o’clock on Friday.  He knocks at the door and I hear Trish answer it, hear her laugh a little too loudly while they wait for me.  I glance in the mirror in the hallway as I pass.  I didn’t think much about my outfit, just tugged a pair of dark jeans over the swell of my hips and a v-neck grey t-shirt over my ample boobs like always, plaiting my reddish hair into a quick braid that hung to the middle of my back, not trying to impress anyone.  Add that to the minimal amount of makeup I’d applied to my face and I looked . . . ordinary.  Curvy, but not as curvy as I used to be, before.  I’d lost some weight in the last two years.  Even still, I couldn’t avoid being curvy unless I wore a burlap sack.  Curvy but ordinary.

             
But Erik charms Trish by grinning when he sees me.  “Bree.  You look beautiful.”

             
I roll my eyes and he just grins at me again.  He looks nice himself, wearing a vintage Bad Company t-shirt over straight black jeans that only accentuate his height.  His eyes are partially hidden behind a pair of graduated brown aviator sunglasses, his black hair spiky and glossed with some sort of product.

             
When Erik offers his arm with a quirky kind of smile, one brow arched over the top of the lenses, have no choice but to take it.  I’m uncomfortable but Trish is humming with delight, and gives me a quick hug before sending me out the door.  Erik drives an enormous red truck, and as short as I am I have to grab the handle and the inside of the door and heave myself into the cab like a disabled hippo climbing out of the water.  Trish actually waves as he backs us down the driveway in his shiny diesel, high hopes shining in her eyes under the sweep of his headlights.

             
I’d told her about the party that afternoon, with a note I’d shoved under her nose while she’d sipped a latte, the bluish light of her computer screen making her lips look purple.  She’d squinted, refocusing on my scribbled writing, and then her eyes had gone round.

             
“You’re going to a party?”

             
I’d nodded and shrugged at the same time, painfully aware that I was already failing, that my level of forced enthusiasm didn’t come anywhere near hers.

             
“That’s great!”

             
Trish had pushed up from the table, slapping her latte down next to the laptop and gathering me in a spirited hug.  Her arms had squeezed around my shoulders and I’d breathed shallowly through my nose.  I couldn’t help but stiffen, though at least I’d forced myself not to wrench out of her grasp. 

             
She didn’t appear to notice though, or if she did it wasn’t enough to snuff her hopeful exuberance.   When she’d pulled back her eyes had been moist with tears.  “You’ll have fun, Honey.  You will.  Give people a chance, okay?  Oh, I can’t wait to tell Mom.”

             
Now, Erik flashes those dimples across the cab at me, and it occurs to me that two years ago, I might’ve found him attractive.  Two years ago, I would’ve been flattered.  But now I can barely muster a smile.  My palms are sweating and my heart rate is elevated and we’re hardly even out of the driveway.  This is already feeling like a calamitous mistake.

             
Erik hesitates just a second, driving slowly down my road and leaning forward to look over me out the passenger side window.  I glance to my right, curious as to what might have put that vaguely disturbed look on his face.  I have just enough time to see a guy in jeans and a holey, plain white shirt, steadily rolling dark brown paint over the spray-painted word on his garage door.  Then Erik frowns, adjusts his glasses, and presses the gas.  The truck surges forward with a ridiculously loud growl, and I glance in the side mirror in time to see the scarlet red E slathered over with glistening wet brown.  It leaves just the word
“Murder”
as the guy bends down to recoat his roller. 

             
I want him to look up so I can see his face, but he doesn’t. 

             
With an odd sort of frown, somewhere between pity and aversion, Erik steers the truck around the corner, and we’re gone.

Chapter 3

The noise level is inhuman.  No gathering of people should be this loud, regardless of their
number or the surprisingly small house they were occupying, all crammed on top of each other so you can barely move without bumping up into someone.  Maybe that’s the point.  My skin is crawling.  I can’t keep my eyes from darting around the room, desperately searching for an exit.

             
Thirty minutes.  That’s how long I’d lasted.  Thirty minutes.  That wouldn’t be nearly long enough to convince Trish that I was adjusting, that I’d gone out and had myself a normal teenage good time, that she didn’t have to goddamn worry about me so much because the guilt was going to eat me alive.  I’d have to find something to do.  Stop by a twenty-four-hour department store and wander the aisles for about forty minutes before I make my way home.  Anything less and there would be questions, questions she knew I’d never answer but she’d ask anyway.

             
But, crap, I don’t have my car, hadn’t driven it for over two years now, and Erik’s nowhere to be seen. 

             
After an awkward drive, my “date” unmistakably uncomfortable with silence, Erik had pulled up to the party and killed the engine, tossing his sunglasses carelessly onto the dash and looking over at me with an enthusiastic, “Ready?”

             
I’d shrugged and he’d sighed.  “Come on Bree, let’s just go have some fun.”

             
I’d glanced at the house, windows blazing like even the light inside was trying to flee.  I’d been able hear the loud music through the closed windows of the truck, and was really starting to regret the insanity of coming with him in the first place.

             
“Are you ever going to talk to me?”

             
I’d just gaped at him.  What?

             
“Just one little word?  What can it hurt?”

             
After a minute Erik had shrugged at my expression, giving up as easily as it had come.  “All right,” he’d teased.  “But I’ll get you talking sometime.  You can’t live your whole life without ever speaking to anyone.” 

             
He’d flashed me a smile, oblivious to the groundbreaking level of ignorance those last comments had just reached, and leapt down, closing the door behind him.  I’d followed more slowly, clambering down from the outrageous height of his gargantuan truck.  He’d smiled back and held the front door open for me, and I’d willed my hands not to shake as I’d stepped up the two concrete front steps, passed under a porch light fluttering with moths, and slipped through the door. 

             
As soon as I was through Erik handed over a large red plastic cup that he’d gotten from God knows where. “Here.”

             
And that was when it had occurred to me, as I’d stared at the brown liquid that was dribbling down one side onto my finger, that I didn’t even know whose house it was, and I was standing there in some stranger’s living room holding a Solo full of beer all in an attempt to make my sister-turned-guardian happy.

             
“You want to get something to eat?” Erik had practically yelled at me over the music, and I’d blinked at him stupidly.

             
Then my gaze had shifted over his shoulder and there were no less than six people staring at me, people I’d never met and couldn’t remember ever seeing before in my life. 
              “Hey, come on,” Erik had prompted, looping an arm around my back and leading me deeper into the house, and I’d tried not to flinch at his touch, letting him steer me around while he exchanged quick greetings with the people he knew.  There were a lot.  Eventually, my skin tight like cellophane on my face, I’d casually slipped from his side.  Idly, I’d rested my untouched cup on a counter as I’d passed by, with no intention of ever picking it back up. 

             
Now it’s thirty minutes later and I’ve only seen Erik once more, flirting with some girl I can only assume is his recent ex, Jenny or Jessy or whatever the hell her name is.  He’d winked at me over her shoulder, like we’d reached some sort of silent agreement together and I hadn’t even known how to respond to that.

             
He’d waved me over to them invitingly but I’d just forced a smile and shook my head.  Thanks, but no thanks.

             
So I scan the crowd, starting to feel short of breath under the lights and the music, and . . .

             
There. 

             
Past the moron standing on his head for the sake of some drinking game I don’t care to understand and on the other side of the fair mountain of speakers blasting out incessant noise everyone is either ignoring or shouting over but no one is dancing to is – thank the Lord – the door. 

             
Yes. 

             
I push my way toward it, mentally filleting myself for ever agreeing to this debacle of a foray into the fancies of normal teenage lives.  I am not normal.  I will never be normal.  And all I have to last is one more year, one more year of pulling off a passing performance for my family’s sake and then I would remove myself from anyone in a wide radius of the black hole that had consumed me.

             
I almost make it to the door.  I really do.  But my single-minded focus on that goal prevents me from spotting Dylan – God, not Dylan – intercepting my escape, and his thick arm is draped around my waist, a hand on my opposite hip before I even know he’s anywhere near me.  I go stiff under his touch, frozen, not breathing.

             
Blink my eyes over swirling lights and falling rain.

             
“Don’t go, Beautiful,” he breathes beer at me with that perfect smile, and I snap back, my right hand closing in a vice grip over my opposite wrist. Dylan’s voice is playful like we’d known each other for years, and I stare at him in shock. 

             
Longish sandy brown hair fashionably tousled, massive biceps under a collared red shirt, chiseled cheekbones.  His eyes are heavy-lidded and more than a little bloodshot.  “You want a drink?”

             
Forcing air into my lungs I look around the room, taking it in, the very stationary, normal ceiling light fixtures and the crowd of people.  No spinning.  No rain.  I shake my head, trying to pull away from him, but he doesn’t notice as he steers me around to a group of his friends all lounging across furniture like pillows missing half their stuffing, cradling brimming red cups.

             
“This is Alex,” he yells in my ear, and I nod automatically at the guy in a black striped shirt and – seriously? – tight, stark white pants.  The guy doesn’t try to hide his close visual assessment of my more-than-average curves, and when his eyes lift back to mine and my skin is crawling he just tips his beer in a silent salute and takes a slow sip.

             
“That’s Carter, that’s Bishop, and that’s the Beast,” Dylan finishes, and though I recognize Carter as the guy who’d smiled at me sweetly and five seconds later had had his hand closed in a locker door, I don’t even bother looking at all of them.  I just nod in the general direction of the furniture, part of me wondering what the skinny, tallish guy on the end did to deserve the nickname “the Beast,” assuming that that wasn’t the name his adoring, tallish mother had given him at birth. 

             
Dylan reaches across me to slap some hands, laughing about something I hadn’t heard, and the hand that is still cupped around my hip knocks me off balance against him.  His body is warm and strong and I hate it on a visceral level.

             
I shove a shoulder into his side, done with my guest role on the normal teenager game show.

             
He misinterprets my not very subtle signal and guides me away, hugging me intimately against his side.  “Dance with me,” he leans down to shout in my ear, not a question, and I feel his rough cheek catch on my hair.

             
I shake my head.

             
Dylan screws up his tanned face into an exaggerated pout, like I’ve wounded him with my silent refusal.  He stares at me for a second and I wonder if he’s going to pass out and land on top of me, his body smothering me with its cruel weight, but then he shocks me again when he lowers his voice and asks, “Need some air?”

             
I nod without thinking.  Yes.  Air.  Yes.

             
He leads me out by the waist, and I try not to focus on his arm around me because he’s getting me out, please get me out.  But my heart starts pounding and my lungs seize in my chest when I realize we aren’t headed to the front door at all; he’s steering me down the hall, deeper into the house. 

             
Spots bursting in my vision, I dig my heels into the carpet.

             
Dylan feels me stiffen.  He looks down.  “You okay?” he asks, and I shake my head. 
No.

             
He screws up his face again, perhaps it’s meant to look like concern or sympathy, but then he leans down to kiss me and I just react, shoving him, hard, in the chest.  My heart crawls up my throat, battering my esophagus in its manic rush toward my mouth.

             
Though he rocks back, Dylan’s arm never loosens around me, and my stomach jerks with nausea.

             
“Hey, I’m trying to help,” he says lightheartedly, but I just shake my head again, trying to breathe steadily when all the oxygen is spraying from the house like blood from a gutted pig. 

             
“Relax, Beautiful.”

             
He smiles easily, holding me snugly against him, his other hand up and rubbing my arm, leaving the skin beneath prickling like snakeskin. 

             
“Just relax,” he murmurs in my ear again as he leans in a second time and I feel the back of my head bump the wall behind me, the screaming in my mind blocking out every other sound from the party but his voice.  “It’ll be nice, I promise.”  His face swallowing up everything else.  “If you don’t like it you can just tell me to stop, okay?”

             
He whispers it seductively, and I know he knows, everyone knows.  But I can’t dwell on it because suddenly he’s on top of me, smiling to himself in lazy satisfaction.  I try to talk, try to tell him no, force the sound up my throat, the word bubbling desperately inside me, but it scrapes in my throat and lodges sideways with a pain like shrapnel and then it’s too late because he’s kissing me and my mind explodes.  I’m screaming and screaming but of course I’m not, I’m not making a sound, and Dylan’s kissing me and I can’t breathe.

             
“Hey!”

             
Dylan’s lips leave mine with a hollow pop and he whips his head around, narrowing his eyes at the owner of the one voice that had somehow leaked past the anguished screaming in my ears.  The arms around me hold me just as tightly, though I can now feel my own arms between our bodies, can feel the thumb that passes over and over and over the skin of my wrist as I stare at the red collar too close in front of my nose.

             
“What?”
Dylan barks, his tone suddenly acidic.

             
“Leave her alone, Dylan,” the low voice says, unmistakably male and, for some reason, unmistakably pissed.  It’s instantly familiar to me, vaguely unsettling, even though I don’t recognize it.

             
“Or what?” Dylan bites back crudely.

             
I fight to control my panicked breathing, fight to control the fraught way I’m scraping my thumb over and over across my wrist, fight to control the deafening screams no one else can hear, but his hands are one me and his body is pressing against mine and my back is against the wall and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.

             
“What are you gonna do?” Dylan demands.

             
“Let.  Her.  Go.” 

             
Despite the obvious threat the voice holds, breaking through the dull roar of everything, Dylan only pulls me tighter, his breath in my ear.  I taste bile splash in the back of my throat.

             
“If she doesn’t want to she can say so on her own.”

             
A second goes by in silence and suddenly I realize I’m just standing there screaming myself hoarse even though no one can hear me and I elbow him, hard in the ribs, forcing his body a few inches from mine. 

             
It doesn’t help me breathe.  I thought it would help me breathe, but it doesn’t.