Home From Within (6 page)

“Cool.”

They stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

“Do you wanna hang out with us?” He motioned toward his friends. “We’re goin’ over to Alicia’s house and then back to mine.”

Jessica could not believe what she was hearing. He thinks she wants to party. The thought scared her, and for the first time, she understood what Eddie warned her about.

“I have to go. I have to watch my little brother until my mother gets home from work.” She felt guilty lying but thought she had no choice in order to get out of the invite with her reputation intact.

“Sure. Whatever.”

“See you tomorrow,” she said and walked off before Paul could say good-bye.

That night in bed, she had two worries about the following day: seeing Paul in homeroom and her father’s return home.

C
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6

It was over the summer. All the neighborhood kids were out playing Ghost in the Graveyard. Even the high schoolers got involved, so they could hide with their sweetheart and make out, or at least that’s what Marilee thought. Jessica would peek from behind the curtain in her bedroom at all the kids. Marilee and Barbara were allowed to play, and sometimes Marilee would sneak over and wave to Jessica, who was at the closed window. One night, trying to impress a boy she liked—according to Marilee—Barbara decided it would be funny to throw rocks at Jessica’s window, trying to get her to come outside. Barbara’s aim was not very good, and she started hitting other parts of the house. When Jessica heard the commotion, she opened the window to see Barbara and some of the neighborhood boys whispering for her to come down because one of the boys liked her. Jessica told them to leave before her father came, but it was too late. The next thing Jessica knew, she was being dragged back into her room by the neck of her nightgown and thrown onto the bed. As soon as Barbara saw Jessica get tugged in she took off, but the boys, who did not catch on as quickly, just stood there. When her father stuck his head out the window, the boys started running in different directions.

“Step back on my property again you’ll find bullet holes in your heads,” he bellowed.

Her father yanked the window down, locked it, and then turned toward Jessica, who was hugging her pillow with her knees pulled up to her chest. Her mother dashed in just as her father unleashed a bunch of expletives.

“Jim, please,” her mother said.

“She was about to climb down the window and meet a group of boys.”

Her mother looked at Jessica. “Is this true?”

She shook her head no as she stuffed in the tears. She would not show them her tears.

“Bullshit! I will not listen to any more of it.” Her father’s face was contorted and small beads of sweat had built around the edges of his buzz cut. His fists looked like tightly wound pieces of barbed wire.

“Jim, will you please go downstairs? I want to make sure those boys don’t try to get into the house.”

Her father’s chest was heaving. “You’re a whore and a liar.”

“Jim, please,” her mother pleaded. He backed up and slowly walked out of the room with her mother following. Jessica could no longer hold in her pain. Her tears tumbled out, spilling all over the pristine Egyptian cotton comforter.

Later that night, she was awoken by the sounds of drilling. Standing between the hall and her open bedroom door with an electric drill in hand was her father. His large mass was shaded in dark as he worked with only a headlamp. He decided the only way to keep a better eye on Jessica was to take off her door. This way he or Katherine would have easier access to the goings-on in her room. Jessica pretended she was sleeping when her father announced this out loud, but it did not matter to her anyway. He had won.

Before Jessica left for school, she placed a welcome home letter for her father on the kitchen island. Leaving a note was an easier way to bridge the hello and awkwardness of him not being in her life for two months. In the note, she included her grades, the Honor Society and Key Club information, along with a few tidbits of her personal life. She was unsure if he cared about that last part, but it was a continued effort for Jessica to connect with him on an intimate level.

During homeroom, Jessica sat with the regulars, and Paul. No words were spoken about yesterday. Even Jeff did not bring it up. As abruptly as Jeff asked her out, he had stopped paying her any attention. The whole situation made Jessica feel strange, but she was glad there was no weirdness between them. She just wanted things normal again.

At lunchtime, she spotted Paul with his friends heading toward the outside door. A girl named Alicia chased after them and grabbed Paul’s ass. Jessica couldn’t believe what she saw. Paul turned around and put her in a playful headlock; it was the type of headlock a boy would give to a girl he liked. Jessica lost her appetite watching the scene play out. Alicia was a sophomore according to Marilee. She liked bad boys and the rumor was she’d had sex with at least five. The girls couldn’t deny why he’d be attracted to her—perfectly feathered blond hair, kick-ass body, and makeup to show off her model-like face.

Marilee pushed away her tater tots and threw her napkin in. “How can we compete with that?”

Jessica never thought about having to compete for a boy. It was new territory for her, and she couldn’t picture herself fighting for her man. Paul was not even her man, well at least in real life. Her fantasies were a different story. At night, she would put pillows alongside her body and pretend they were sharing the same bed together. Part of her felt it was wrong, but the lonely part that ached for love and affection wanted more.

“I wonder if that’s his girlfriend,” Jessica said.

“Who knows? But hey, look around. We’re in paradise.”

Jessica and Marilee scanned the lunchroom looking for cute boys. All they saw were guys who had not reached their full potential or puberty. Some of them still looked like they were ten, all skinny with acne and nervous twitches. The girls looked at each other and busted out laughing.

“I guess we need a new plan,” Marilee said.

During Humanities, Jessica thought she saw a hickey on the side of Paul’s neck. She had learned about them in computer class when a sophomore girl was showing off her hickeys, bragging about who gave them to her. Jessica was unsure how the hickeys got there, so she asked Marilee, who then asked Julie.

“Like, a boy sucks on your neck so he can leave that mark. Gross,” Marilee exclaimed.

“My parents would kill me. No, they would kill the boy,” Jessica said.

“You’re not kidding. Your dad would come up to school and shoot him.”

Jessica thought about that. Would her father be capable of murdering a boy over a hickey? The answer she came up with did not surprise her. It was a definite yes.

The day after the “boys-under-the-window” incident, her father told Jessica they needed to have a talk. Jessica waited for him in the office, seated on the capacious leather sofa, staring at the angry-faced bear. When her father entered, he placed two Colt .45s on the table between them. Jessica was used to seeing weapons in the house. Her father was a hunter and ran a business in which he used weapons and had special containers with locks for the arsenal he would take on business trips. He also had a large collection of antique swords, knives, and other devices that inflict catastrophic harm displayed on the walls. Jessica often thought no one in his right mind would ever want to break into this residence.

“I need for you to understand that I will not have you jumping out the window to hang out with boys.” He leaned forward in his chair. “You see these on the table?”

Jessica looked at them and nodded.

“You ever have any boys outside your window again, they will be filled with bullets from these two guns. I will tell my cop friends that they were trying to break in. I will be completely absolved of any wrongdoing.”

Jessica held her breath for a few seconds so she could steady herself.

He stared at her with an intense yet distant look. It was as if he had roadblocks in front of his emotional highway and was not sure how to navigate around.

“You are my daughter, and I will not allow anything bad to happen to you. Do you understand?”

Jessica started to dig her nails into the palms of each hand. How was she going to control Barbara or anyone else in the neighborhood who thought it would be funny to throw rocks at her window? The pressure she felt at that moment was insurmountable. Kids could be killed, and none of it was in her control. Where was her mother in all this? Just a casual observer in a possible murder case?

“I understand but . . .”

“No, no buts. I have made it clear what the consequence will be if you disobey my rules again.”

And with that, he collected his guns and walked out of the room, leaving Jessica to wrestle with this newfound madness.

At dismissal time, Jessica was surprised to find Paul walking with her to her locker.

“Are you going home to watch your little brother?” he asked.

She looked at him puzzled, until the lie from yesterday came rushing back. “Oh, no not today.”

“So you wanna do something?”

“You mean right now?”

“We have been set free.”

Jessica smirked at that statement. Free was definitely relative. “Um, I wish I could, but my father’s coming back from a business trip so I have to go right home.”

“Okay. What about tomorrow?”

Jessica started to blush. She realized that he was asking her out.

“Uh . . . I . . . I don’t know.”

Paul was staring at her face. He looked around as they slowly approached her locker. “I wanna go out and do something.”

“Do you mean with just me?” she whispered so the other students around could not hear.

“Yeah,” he said, looking straight into her eyes.

This moment was one she had fantasized about for the last two months. Funny thing is she had always daydreamed about scenarios in which they were already a couple, never about that first moment when he asked her out. Despite mounds of excitement that piled into her, reality began to bare its ugly teeth. She could never be Paul’s girlfriend, her father would see to that.

Jessica stared back at his crystal clear blue eyes. There was no heaviness or glassy look to them this time.