Little Battles (34 page)

O Lord my God, in thee do I put my trust: save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me.

My back hit something hard and I was sinking down onto the ground, feeling light as He answered me visually. I caught the flash of the syringe and understood that Stephen’s chemicals were my salvation, my deliverance.

I breathed deeply, finally able to get enough oxygen into my lungs to supply my organs with what they needed. I watched as the needle pressed into the thin skin of my arm and breathed out as I felt the familiar burn.

I would see Sophie soon. I would go to her work again as soon as I could, and I hoped she would smile for me like she had the last time. I would hold her hand and smile back at her.

I blinked twice and barely flinched when Stephen cradled my face in his hand, while he looked deeply into my eyes.

I was calm and at peace when Robin brushed my hair back from my forehead.

“Elliott, let go.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about until she grasped my hand and pulled it from my mouth. I tasted my own blood and looked down to see the damage my teeth had caused to one hand, and what the plate had done to the other.

“Sssssssorry.”

Robin shook her head, her expression very noticeably less clinical than I was used to. “No,
I’m
sorry.”

“I’m g-g-g-going t-to m-m-mmmy r-r-r-r-r-room n-now.” Between my stutters and the pauses between words, it took me much too long to say that simple sentence.

I had to let Stephen see to my hands before they let me go upstairs. On shaky legs, I made it to my room and closed and locked my door, happy that it was dark.

I wanted Sophie here to help me, but she wasn’t. I wanted Jane, but she was helping David.

So I settled for music as I laid down on my bed, curling into a tight ball.

I was early to pick Sophie up from work, anxious to see her. It was hard to sleep last night, and I was tired, but knew that just being with her would help.

I hadn’t spoken at all today, not that there were many people around to speak to. Jane and David were out of the house, Robin wasn’t there, and Stephen chose to spend most of his time in his study. He checked on me a few times, acting like I was a fragile thing to be handled with care.

But I was at Sophie’s work now. I wanted to see her smile. I needed to be with her in order to heal.

She would see my re-bandaged hands and ask me what happened, but I wouldn’t tell her, and I knew she wouldn’t push.

I rounded the customer service desk and ignored Megan Simons watching me. I stopped when I caught sight of Sophie down the canned vegetable aisle. She was sitting on a stepstool, leaning in toward the middle of the aisle. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder and although I was too far away to actually see them, the small indentations of her fork scar showed.

She was so beautiful, even though it was obvious she was in some pain.

But I couldn’t focus on how beautiful she was because her hand was within someone else’s. On the other side of the aisle, a long-haired guy was crouched down, leaning into the center of the walkway. He was holding her hand and said something that made her smile.

I fisted my injured hands tightly in my coat pockets. Heat radiated out of the pain and filled my whole body with warm anger.

There was red on her hand that my slow brain recognized as blood. I was torn between being angry that this guy had let her get hurt, and being angry that he was touching her. I didn’t want anyone else to touch her, even if they were cleaning and bandaging a wound.

It should have been me.

I fought hard to figure out what to do. I wanted to hurt him; to take cans of food and beat him senseless with them until the ambulance had to take him away. His stupid beard would be stained with his own blood, and the sheriff would come and arrest me, looking at me like he looked at Trent.

I wanted to yell at him to get away from her, to never touch her
ever
again.

I finally propelled myself forward and stopped a few safe feet away. My glare was hot, but the guy didn’t even notice.

“Elliott!”

I forced myself to look away from the guy to Sophie. I was happy I did. Her smile was wonderful and it took away much of the anger. I forgot about the other guy until I looked down to find he was still holding her hand in both of his.

Their connection sickened me, and before I could stop myself I wrapped my hand painfully around Sophie’s wrist and pulled her up and away from him. It was as if I’d lost my ability to hear as I led her out of the aisle. I didn’t want to stop at the front to talk, because then Megan would be staring at us, but I couldn’t just have a conversation with her in front of that guy either, so I practically yanked her over to a quiet section of the store.

“Ow, Elliott, that fucking hurts.” Sophie pulled her arm back when we stopped.

Fear overtook me because I hadn’t realized that I’d been holding her so tightly. She was rubbing her wrist with her bandaged hand. When I looked up, she was focused on me, her brow furrowed.

“Ssssssorry,” I said in a breath. I was really sorry. I hadn’t meant to hurt her in any way.

“What happened?”

I shook my head and pointed to her bandage. “W-w-what hhhhappened to
your
hhhhand?”

“I cut it.”

“Hhhhhe w-w-w-was hhhhholding it.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “He put a Band-Aid on it, Elliott, he wasn’t
holding
my hand.” Sophie studied me for another few seconds before she said softly, “I told him you were my boyfriend.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think. Anger clouded my head as I thought she just told me that he was her boyfriend, but then it registered that she had told him
I
was her boyfriend. I looked at her, my mouth open as I searched her eyes for some kind of explanation.

“Is that okay? I mean, do you…I mean, are you…okay with that?”

She was asking me if it was okay that she’d said I was her boyfriend. I needed to respond, to let her know that it was okay. If I was her boyfriend, then she was my girlfriend, and with that thought, all of my anger subsided.

I nodded rapidly. “Y-y-y-yes.”

“What happened to your hands?” she asked again.

“It’s n-nothing,” I answered, avoiding the question and taking up her injured one. I was much gentler this time when I tugged on her, happy that she came with me willingly.

I waited for her to clock out, but as soon as we were out in the vestibule, I pressed her up against the glass window and kissed her, just because I wanted to.

She was my girlfriend.

I was so happy that she was mine, and I didn’t want her to be taken from me.

“Wow,” she whispered, then licked her lips and pressed them together when I pulled back.

I reached up and stroked her scar, then stared at her for a long while until she looked away, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. I wanted to touch her face, but I knew it would make her uncomfortable, and this was such a perfect moment, I didn’t want to ruin it.

“C-c-can w-we go to your hhhhhouse?”

She nodded and she let me hold her hand out to my car. I couldn’t help but smile the entire time.

This was another little battle won.

Sophie Young was my girlfriend

It felt strange being so possessive of Sophie, and then attacking her so hungrily when I picked her up from work on Sunday. She seemed to like it, but I didn’t know how I felt that I got upset about someone else taking care of her.

But if I was her boyfriend now, I didn’t want anyone else to touch my girlfriend.

I was trying not to obsess about our new terminology, or what the definitions meant. If I thought too much about it, I was sure to panic, or at least be short of breath for a while. There were so many worries now, even more than before.

While I had some questions floating around in my head before this new change in status, I could at least deduce a few answers here and there based on how Sophie acted. But I didn’t know anything about what it meant to have a girlfriend, or be someone’s boyfriend.

Would it be okay to introduce her to people as my girlfriend? Not that I’d introduce her to many people, since I was rarely exposed to someone new.

My thoughts drifted to how Stephen and Robin were forcing me to do just that.

I hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Sophie since Saturday night. I would have talked to Jane, but she wasn’t around much. It was just as well. The whole situation was upsetting, and I needed to pull my thoughts away from it.

Sophie and I didn’t kiss again that night; we just listened to music on her little CD player until I had to go home. If she was still grounded, it didn’t seem like it. I wondered if her father had any idea how to actually
be
a parent.

I smiled. Another battle won. She was off drugs and as an added spoil of victory, she now called herself my girlfriend. She had admitted that she’d been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend, in addition to being neglected and physically and mentally abused by her own mother. Sophie was slowly revealing herself to me and for that, I was thankful. I felt closer to her than ever and now, although it was frightening and gave me some anxiety, I was beginning to feel like I could trust her with my own secrets.

I was going to have to. She wouldn’t wait forever to find out why I couldn’t be physically close to her. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook, just like I hadn’t let her. I had battles of my own to fight and conquer.

When we pulled into the parking lot before school on Monday, she stood by the car, waiting for me to get out. I was nervous, since we hadn’t discussed how we would act with each other at school now that she was my girlfriend. Were we supposed to be any different? Should it stay between us? Would everyone just
know
?

Forcing my mind to quiet, I got out of the car and Sophie took my hand. After looking at her for a few seconds, I finally began walking. Her holding my hand felt strange. Usually I enjoyed the feeling, but today I felt slightly panicked.

The parking lot was nearly empty, but my panic kept rising. I caught sight of a freshman whose locker was five down from mine, glancing at us. I dropped Sophie’s hand.

I felt bad when I saw the wounded look she gave me. I hadn’t known she would want to hold hands, and maybe she really didn’t. Maybe she wanted to be the one who let go first. That was how it had always been with us.

We stood there silent for a few moments until she cocked an eyebrow and leveled me with her stare. “So, do you want to deal with this shit now, or hold onto it all day?”

“W-w-what?”

“Whatever’s got you weird and jittery.”

She thought I was weird and jittery. It felt like confirmation that all of my thoughts about myself were correct, even though I knew she didn’t mean it that way. She was just being Sophie, and Sophie never sugarcoated things. This was her way of confronting me for acting strange, and she didn’t work to make it sound nice or comforting. Everyone else talked to me like I was a child, making everything sound good when it wasn’t, but not Sophie.

“I’ve n-n-never hhhhad a girlfriend.”

She blew out a breath like she was relieved. Then she smiled and shook her head. “Well, you’re in luck, because I’ve never had a boyfriend, so we’re pretty much on level footing.”

“B-b-b-but…”

“If you don’t like it when people look at you, I’m cool with not holding your hand in public, because I don’t want them to look at me either.”

“
Everyone’s
lllllooking,” I said quietly, even though in truth, there had only been that one guy.

“Would you feel better if I told you how I feel about it?”

I nodded.

“Fine. It’s cool if I’m blunt, right?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure?”

Now she was making me even more nervous about the whole thing, but I nodded again.

“I’d rather not hold hands at school because it invites people into my business, and I don’t like that. I wasn’t going to hold your hand for long, so it’s cool that you let go, but it sucks that you stopped holding it because someone was looking, and not because you were finished holding my hand. I wish you didn’t care what people thought about you.” She paused. “Why do you? They’re just assholes trying to make themselves feel better about being assholes.”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

“And back to the hand-holding, I was just trying to reassure you. We’re not going to kiss in front of people, because I don’t think it’s necessary. We’re not going to go to dances and shit, because I don’t like that stuff. I’ll be your girlfriend, Elliott, and if you need me to do any of those things, I will. But you’ll have to tell me, because I’m as new at this as you are.”

I was confused. Perhaps what she said was simple, but I still had no idea what was expected of me.

She sighed and answered the ridiculous questions in my mind. “Nothing has to change.”

“B-b-but you’re m-m-my g-girlfriend now.”

“I don’t understand. Can’t we just, you know,
be
? Can’t we just be Elliott and Sophie like always, and keep everything else to ourselves?”

I wanted to say yes. To tell her that I wanted to be her boyfriend and that it was okay if we just kept it to ourselves, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

“You were so much more confident last night at my work, but now that we’re at school, you’ve gone all quiet and shy. Just say ‘screw you’ to these people and let’s go in. It’s cold.”

I wished I could’ve understood this terror that seized me. I didn’t want her to think that I was being this way because of anything she’d done, but I couldn’t get my feet to move or my mouth to speak. I wondered how long Sophie would put up with me as a boyfriend when I not only couldn’t give her all the physical love she wanted, but I couldn’t even walk into a building with her now that she’d called me her boyfriend.

“Look, Elliott, you don’t have to be my boyfriend at all.”

The terror bubbled over into total panic. “I w-w-w-w-want to b-b-b-be your…”

She smiled widely. “Good.”

There was no doubt about it, I liked Sophie. Her smile calmed me.

“We’ll take out the titles, okay? You don’t have to be my ‘boyfriend’, you’re my…Elliott and I’m your Sophie.”

When she wasn’t high, Sophie was a pretty reasonable person. The logic of me just being her Elliott and her just being my Sophie was so simple, but it was so pure and it made sense to me. She didn’t even have to explain it. I felt calmer almost right away.

“O-o-okay.”

Her eyes sparkled a little and the wide smile gave way to a soft one that equally calmed and warmed me. She squeezed my hands gently. I suspected that she was being extra careful because the cuts were no longer covered in bandages. Not to mention my still-healing fingers.

“Just to be clear about it so no one has to worry, we’re going into that school and you’re going to do what Elliott does, and be who Elliott is, and I’m going to do what Sophie does, and be whoever the hell Sophie is, and when we come back together for Study Hall and at lunch, we’ll be Elliott and Sophie, individually together, right?”

I nodded as my mind worked over what she’d said. We could just be ourselves, only together, and nothing really had to change. I would know that she was my girlfriend and that I was her boyfriend, but no one else had to.

I breathed deeply. “Thank you, SSSophie.”

Her smile slipped. There was a crease in her brow as she nibbled on her bottom lip. “Whatever,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to be distinguishable. “Can we go in now?”

As far as I could tell, she was doing fine without getting high, but it seemed that her new mechanism to get through the day was to sleep through it. All Sophie did during Study Hall and lunch was sleep, and Jane mentioned Sophie being tired in Photography. I would think that she might have some issues going to sleep around so many people and without a closed and locked door, but all she did was scoot her chair closer to mine and rest her head on her arms.

She slept through Horticulture. It wasn’t hard to see that Mr. Reese was annoyed by it.

Sophie came over after school. No one but Stephen was home again, relieving me of any obligation to speak. I was still only speaking to her.

She made meatloaf and potatoes. Well, she made
me
make the potatoes. She said I would’ve been responsible for the meatloaf if my hands hadn’t been in the shape that they were. She made me watch her make it, though. She said I needed to learn how to take care of myself, and she was right. I knew how to clean because my father insisted upon it, but I had never been responsible for cooking.

The panic I had felt earlier in the day had lessened steadily and now, eating dinner with her on the floor of my room, it was completely gone. She was right. We didn’t have to be any different now that she was my girlfriend. I could still just be me and for some reason, she seemed to like me that way.

Tuesday was the first weekday morning in a long time that I wasn’t awakened by David’s booming voice and constant pounding on the door. I rolled over and blinked at the clock.

It was half-past eight. I was late for school, but more importantly, late to pick up Sophie. How had David allowed this to happen? He was always very careful about being punctual.

After pulling on a t-shirt and tugging down the legs of my black pajama pants, I stumbled out of my room and down the stairs to find Jane and David eating cereal at the kitchen table. I glanced at the clock on the microwave and it still said that it was after eight-thirty. I went straight for the coffee, my confusion growing.

“W-w-what’s g-g-g…”

“Snow day!” David said loudly before shoving more cereal into his mouth. “We’re going sledding.” He narrowed his eyes and pointed his spoon at me. “And you’re going too.”

“You should call Sophie,” Jane suggested.

I wondered, if left on her own, whether Sophie would even be awake right now. Before I could ponder too much, the phone rang and Jane picked it up. My head snapped up as soon as she said Sophie’s name.

Even though she had called me, talking to Sophie on the phone was strange and awkward. I hated using the phone. She asked me to come over because the buses weren’t running, and she had no way to get here.

She wanted to spend her entire free day with me.

Then I got nervous, and I couldn’t say anything without sounding like a complete idiot. Sophie reminded me that there was nothing different about today and we were just hanging out.

She called me her Elliott again before hanging up.