Perfectly Flawed (49 page)

I would be like him, worthless, pathetic, and
alone.

“Hello?” Hilary calls when she walks through
the door. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor, all I know
is that I’m crying and I don’t want Zephyr to let go of my hand.
“Where is everyone, I see the li—oh, my God, Joey, what happened?”
My aunt crashes to floor next to my sobbing form; taking my shaking
shoulders and pulling me close for a tight hug, yanking me from
Zephyr’s grasp. My body feels weak without his touch.

I turn to her, taking in her worried green
eyes, her concerned face, her trembling lip, and all that I can
think is
1127
. Letter and letter, note and note, from my
father to me, and then something flows into my mind, coming back
like a stubborn cold. A few weeks ago, after my September visit
with Dr. Jett, Hilary sat at the dining room table in her robin’s
egg blue robe, holding a similarly pink envelope in her hand. I
remember it because she looked so scared to see it. Once she
realized I was home, she slipped it into her pocket, out of sight.
I never asked about, I was quick to shrug it away as nothing.

It was a letter from him. I know it now. And
she was keeping it from me when I should have known about it, when
I should have been given the chance to read it or throw it away
myself.

She took away my decision.

I look at her and all I see is betrayal, all
I see is secrecy, and I don’t want her arm around me.

I shove her away and throw the crumpled
envelope at her. “What is that?” I ask, no, demand, shocking both
Hilary and Zephyr as they each make audible gasps.

“What is what?” She grabs the paper ball and
smoothes it out, looking at the name,
J. Lucas
, in the neat
penmanship. “Where did you get this?” she asks without looking up
at me. Her body tenses in worry and concern but I don’t want her
worry or her concern, I want the truth. I think I deserve that much
right now.

“It was in the mail,” I growl through
clenched teeth, standing to get away from her, backing into the
dining room table. “Is that from my father?” I ask, nearly yelling.
Aunt Hil doesn’t answer me, doesn’t look at me, just reaches for
the crumpled ball on the floor by Zephyr’s feet. “
IS THAT FROM
HIM?
” I yell, pointing to the wad of paper.

“Yes,” she answers simply, timidly. Her gaze
shifts up, toward Zephyr. Concern covering her face. “Zephyr, I
think you should go.”

He hesitates, looking to me for permission.
I’m not sure if it’s to stay or go, but he shouldn’t see this. This
is the last thing I want him to witness.

“Just go home,” I tell him, trying to remain
strong and focused, though I can feel my resolve start to slip. The
last thing I need right now is to crumble.

He slowly stands, keeping his eyes on me. I
avoid the gaze, looking to the space by Hilary’s head. Zephyr
leaves, leaving his books behind on the kitchen table—he can always
come back, slowly taking one more look to me, as if he’ll never see
me again and he wants to remember me, before he disappears out
through the front door.

“Tell me,” I order once we’re alone,
demanding to know what secrets she’s been keeping from me, from the
looks of it, for years—many, many years.

“It’s just a letter, Joey,” Hilary tells me
defensively. “It doesn’t mean anything. Not a thing, Joey.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Aunt Hil?” I ask,
seriously struck dumb. “It’s a letter that says
Letter 1127
on the top,” I point out, knowing she can see the evidence staring
her in the face. “That means there are more of them, aren’t there?”
She remains quiet, keeping her green eyes to the floor. “
ARE
THERE MORE LETTERS FROM HIM OR NOT? AM I INSANE FOR THINKING THIS
AT ALL, AUNT HIL?
” I yell, practically screaming at her,
wishing, praying that she’d just answer the damn question and be
honest with me.

“There is, Joey,” Hilary yells back to me,
with less ferocity, but the bite still stings and I take a step
back, knocking the chair into the table. “Does that make you happy
to hear?” My aunt stands up. “He’s been writing you since the
moment he was convicted, Joey.” She shrugs her shoulders

“Why have you been keeping them from me?” I
ask quietly, still angry with my aunt.

“Because I wasn’t going to open them, I
didn’t know what the hell he was writing to you, and you don’t need
to hear from him, Joey,” she explains, counting things on her
fingers. She then starts to rip up the letter. “You never needed to
know about them. Not a single one. And I’ll be damned if I see him
sink his claws into you through these letter like he did to your
mother.”

I watch her throw the shreds of his words
into the garbage can, attempting to erase that one blemish from my
already disfigured and bespeckled life. I don’t want her to toss
them away. Actually, I’m not sure what I want, I just want to
option to decide for myself like the adult she’s raising me to
be.

“Why are Grandma and Grandpa sending them
here if I don’t need to know about them?” I ask, neglecting to call
my grandparents by their respective nicknames.

“I don’t know, Joey,” she answers, exhausted.
My aunt turns to me and drops her arms down to her sides with a
slap
. “I’ve never asked them to stop. I wanted to, I just
never brought myself to do it.”

“And you’ve been keeping this from me for
what? Eight years?” I ask, shocked. “It’s something I needed to
know. It’s something I
deserved
to know.”

“You didn’t need to know anything about it,
Joey, nothing, not a thing, damn it.”

“Are you
kidding me
, Aunt Hil?” My
tone shocks her. “He’s my father.” That shocks her more, and she
recoils like I just punched her in the stomach. “I can’t believe
this,” I say to myself, grabbing my jacket from the back of the
chair at the table.

“What are you doing?” Hilary asks, fear in
her voice as she follows closely behind me. “Where are you
going?”

“GOING FOR A WALK,” I yell. “GOT A
PROBLEM
WITH THAT?” I scream before I slam the door, knowing
that the entire block can hear me throw my temper tantrum, and
start down the street like a woman on a mission.

I lift up the hood on my jacket, shove my
hands deep into my pockets, and walk quickly to the neighborhood
park at the end of the street. My iPod, thankfully, is still in my
pocket so I turn it on, jamming the buds into my ears as I let
Corey Taylor scream the lyrics of
People = Shit
into my
ears. It seems like an appropriate song choice to me right now.

I make it to the park—big shocker since I’m
only a block away—and lo and behold, it’s completely empty and
devoid of life. Just like I thought it would be. The sky is
darkening in that beautiful gray sky shadow that only happens when
rain is on the horizon and no one that was
not
up to any
trouble would still want to be at the park. So I take refuge on the
large rock near the basketball courts and parking lot, cranking up
the volume on my iPod to drown out the silence of the night. It’s a
horrible thing to do when you’re alone in a park at night but a
rats ass, I do not give.

Not gracefully anyway.

Ten minutes of angry metal pass before I see
the pinprick of a light enter the park on the other side of the
field. It bounces around, the person commanding it deciding which
direction they wish to head. If they’re looking for me, whom I
suspect
he
is, both forks in the path lead him to me.

Great. Just great.

Not what I needed at all right
now
.

I just want to be alone.

The person holding the flashlight follows the
path on the left, taking the short cut to my location, until they
see me sitting on the giant rock, flashing the bright light in my
face. They walk up, the form growing larger and taller, and I
already know who it is.

Zephyr.

He jumps onto the rock next to me, tucking
his hands into his pocket after he sets the flashlight in his lap,
the light illuminating a tree in front of us. He doesn’t look at
me, he doesn’t say anything, he only clicks off the tiny flashlight
and slides it into his pants pocket. Now we’re encased in darkness,
nothing but us and wind.

After a few moments of Slipknot blaring in my
head and Zephyr not trying to communicate with me, I tug a bud from
my right ear and ask, “Aunt Hil send you to find me?”

“She didn’t have to,” he admits, also
admitting Hilary spoke to him. “Want to talk about it?” Zephyr
stares off into the dark, staring at something I can’t see in the
distance.

“Would you?” I ask bitterly, absently playing
with the cord to my headphones.

He thinks a moment. “Fair enough,” he
responds, matter-of-factly. “We just going to sit out here?” he
asks. There’s a good foot of space separating us. It’s small to the
naked eye but feels like a canyon between us.

“Yep,” I answer, both tapping my toe on the
rock to the beat of the music and wrapping the cord around my index
finger until my starts to throb. In this light, I can’t see my
finger turn purple so I give up the goal. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to be wherever you are,” he tells me,
turning his head to look at me. I can feel his eyes, feel that
they’re filled with concern, not pity, as you’d expect from some
people in his position.

I push my hood back, dragging my hand through
my hair, and let him pull me to his chest. His scent overwhelms me;
calming me. For someone reason, I start crying, soaking his
sweatshirt in tears I didn’t know I wanted to shed. I couldn’t tell
you the reason I’m crying, there’s just some part of me that needs
to release all this emotion.

“I don’t know why I let this shit get to me,”
I blubber as his hand rubs against my back. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.
I know he didn’t want to date an emotionally unstable nut bag that
cries every time something doesn’t go her way—no one wants that. I
feel like one of those girls on those stupid television shows they
target to teenagers, the girl that can’t seem to get her life
together but the boyfriend stays with her because he just can’t
find the courage to leave her.

I don’t want to be that girl or turn Zephyr
into that guy.

“Stop apologizing,” Zephyr whispers,
smoothing down my frizzing hair as his voice cuts into my thoughts.
His words stop them before I start sobbing uncontrollably while
overcome with self-loathing.

We sat on that rock for a good hour or two
before I stopped crying, his hand tangling in my unruly curls as he
continued to rub my back. It was another hour before I decided to
head home and face my aunt. And then just another thirty minutes
before I could convince myself to climb from the rock and take my
ass home to face the music of what I do.

And the music sounded like cats going through
a woodchipper to me.

The house is toasty warm when I walk through
the door, instantly shivering because of the temperature change. It
started raining during our walk—turned run—home.

I ditched Zephyr at his house, forcing him to
let me do this alone. I loved that he wanted to be there for me,
this was just something I needed to do alone.

“Joey?” Hilary asks quietly from the kitchen.
She pokes her head around the wall, looking into the living room
and smiles when she sees me. I return it faintly. “I’ve been
worried.”

“I know, Aunt Hil,” I tell her, walking and
dripping into the kitchen. I’m soaked through, the rain I predicted
turned into a downpour and now I look like a drowned rat. Hilary is
at the stove stirring cheese in a saucepan.
Random.
“I’m
sorry.”

“No, I should apologize,” she tells me
sincerely, continuing to stir. “I should have told you about the
letters a long time ago, I really do apologize for keeping you in
the dark for so long.”

“I can understand why you didn’t tell
me.”

Hilary pauses for a moment, thinking about
something while tucking her orange hair behind her ear. “Here,
continue stirring this for me, please.” She thrusts the spoon into
my hand and I take her place at the stove, slowly stirring whatever
it is she is making. “I’ll be right back.”

She leaves me in the kitchen; I can hear her
quick steps up the stairs to her room. A moment later, three or
four seconds, her steps are carefully descending the stairs and
she’s back in the kitchen holding a very large bin.

“What is that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow as
I stare at the gray bin in her hands.

“These are all of the letters he sent you
since you’ve been living with me.” My aunt drops the bin and wipes
her hands as if she were happy to be rid of the baggage. “I’ve
never opened them, I’ve never wanted to, and I don’t really know
why I kept them all these years, it would have been smart to trash
them as I got them—maybe, I wanted to give you this choice, maybe
I’m just an idiot—but here you go.” She quickly turns, grabbing
something from the table, and places it on top of the bin.

The letter that she ripped up, she must’ve
taped it back together for me after I stormed out.

“Are there really one thousand, one hundred,
and twenty-six letters waiting for me in that thing?” I ask. I’m a
little weirded out by that little piece of information alone than
what could possibly
be
in the letters.

“I’m not sure if that’s the exact number,”
she starts, puzzled. “It would kind of be weird if I just sat
around counting his letters to you, but I promise you, they’re all
there, every one you’ve ever received since living with me.” Hilary
rubs her hands on her jeans. “I’m sorry I tried to keep them from
you, you’re right, I’m not the one who should make the decision
whether you read them or not. It should be you.” I think that might
be a first, right there. “And if you still want to talk about what
little I know about your past and that night, I might be able to do
that too.”