Perfectly Flawed (51 page)

“I do,” I answer, my hand on the banister.
“But I want to grab a pair of sweats first.” I start up the stairs,
my flip-flops
thwacking
against my heels with every step.
Standing in front of the open door made my legs freeze; they feel
like popsicles.

I grab an oversized pair of sweats from my
dresser, sliding them on over my shorts, then run down the stairs,
passing my aunt as she sits on the couch, reading the back of my
book. I never pegged her as a paranormal romance fan.

“Don’t forget the Golden Oreos,” she calls
playfully as I slip out the door.

When I get home from the store, I camp out on
the couch with my book. Zephyr’s out of town on an away game,
Kennie’s with him, cheering for it, Harley’s visiting her father’s
side of the family in Oregon, and I’m bored. There’s only so much
reading I can do and I finish my book.

I could call Jamie, I mean, I haven’t hung
out with her since she dragged me dress shopping before Homecoming,
but she most likely has plans with Marcus.

What to do?
What to do?

I trudge up the stairs, taking my ice cream
with me, and toss the book on my bed. It hits my laptop before
sliding to the wall, almost falling between the bed and the wall.
I’m happy it doesn’t because I think a spider lives somewhere in
there and I’d rather we not meet.

I could look up
that
night. I set my
pint of Chunky Monkey on the bedside table, leaving the spoon in my
mouth, and flip open my laptop, quickly going to Google. I type my
name into the search bar—essentially following a trend some of my
friends do,
the Googling of one’s self
. The only things that
pop up are the usual
Did you mean: Josephine Archambault
followed by a few Ancestry UK posts.

So I’m not the only Josephine Archembault in
the world, even if I spell it differently—who knew? What am I say,
it’s a fairly common name, of course I’m not the only one.

But the envelope comes to mind.
J.
Lucas.

Am I really a
Lucas
?

It’s worth a shot, yeah?

I type in Josephine Lucas, thinking that
nothing will pop up because I can’t really be a Lucas, but what I
find shoots that thought dead.

Page after page of information pop up, but
most of the recent ones are not about me. After a few clicks,
reading news articles and blog posts, one catches my attention.
It’s from eight years ago.

I open the link of an old newspaper search
engine. The heading of the article catches my attention and chills
me to the bone.

Father Sentenced to Life for Murder and
Attempted Murder of His Wife and Three Children

San Antonio, Texas.

Last month, we all saw the tragic demise of
the Lucas family of San Antonio. Husband and Father, Benjamin
Lucas, murdered his wife and elder two children with stab wounds to
the neck and stomach. The youngest daughter, whose name is being
withheld, survived with major injuries to the stomach, back, and
chest. As we recall, she was the one to call the police, alerting
them to the tragedy within the home.

Only yesterday did we see justice for the
younger Lucas daughter, who was just recently released into the
custody of her paternal grandmother last Tuesday.

I skim the rest of the article barely taking
in where it mentions his death sentence. I continue reading the
article until I get to the comments listed at the bottom of the
page.

Poor little Josephine Lucas
someone
writes. It’s the first comment in a long thread. The others only
question how someone could do this to their family—
How crazy
must you be to take the life of your children, of your wife? The
woman you swore to protect, how could you just destroy your
family?
—while also questioning my father’s mental stability
(just as I do). But it’s that first comment that sticks in my
mind.

Poor little Josephine Lucas…

That person, whoever Anonymous23 is, knew me;
they knew my name, my old name—my birth name. That knowledge alone
is enough to send a shiver down my spine. Someone out in the world
knows
me.

And who is this paternal grandmother and why
am I no longer living with her? I can’t remember living with anyone
but Hilary.

Damn, I need to open those letters, don’t
I?

***

The weight presses me down, holding me under
the surface until I can’t take it anymore. Then it holds me longer.
This is the battle I fight, the fear I feel, and the sense of
hopelessness as the water surrounds me.

No air. No air can be found anywhere, and I
can’t hold my breath. But they’re taking me farther, deeper,
gripping onto my legs, holding my arms, and pulling me under.

This moment, I just want to give up. Call off
the fight and let go. Become so weightless that I just drift down.
It’d be so easy to give up,
it’d be so easy…

Fifteen

I still haven’t cracked open a single letter. I keep
opening the door to the closet with the intention but I can never
bring myself to open the tub and grab a letter. Part of me wants to
know what they say, part of me wants to know what he has to say,
the other part of me wants to burn them all without a second
thought. I don’t want to give this man the satisfaction that,
possibly, I may have read them. He’d think I believe him, he’d
think I’d love him when I just want him dead.

But I’m having a second thought.

On a happier note, Hilary and Patrick have
become an official couple. She seems extremely happy about it, like
dance around the house all the time annoying the hell out of her
niece
happy,
make her niece think she’s a lost a few
screws
happy. It’s nice she found someone and he seems like a
sweetheart so while I’m annoyed with all of the dancing, I’m still
extremely happy for her.

I haven’t learned much about Patrick, though.
I know that he’s a successful neurosurgeon and graduated from Johns
Hopkins University, I know that he’s in his late thirties; I know
that he went to college on a football scholarship, but that’s about
it. I’m tempted to sit down and interview him until he starts
spilling and I learn things about him I
can’t
find with a
Google search.

Though, after asking Patrick all the
questions I have pinging around in my brain, I still need to ask
Hilary about my paternal grandmother. However, that’s not a high
priority—so it can wait.

As scheduled, I have my monthly session with
Dr. Jett and talk about nothing, nothing at all. She asks me all of
the usual things about school—I have nothing new to tell her—and
she tells me that I’m making good progress.

Yay me!

The only problem is that she won’t tell me
anything about my own past either. It’s as if all the adults in my
life have gathered together with the sole purpose of keeping me in
the dark about my own mind. Though, I do get to ask her questions
about what I found on the internet.

“How much did you know about me before our
first session?” I ask during the start of our November session.
It’s raining and I watch droplets of water slide down the window,
collecting others and running a maze to a puddle on the sill.

“What exactly do you mean?” Dr. Jett replies
in question. I can see I’ve confused her but I don’t understand,
the question makes sense.

“Just what the question implies, Doc,” I
answer. “How much did you know about
me
before our first
session?” I assume that she was
briefed
, or whatever the
word is. She couldn’t have only relied on my filed for the past
eight years.

“Only what was stated in your file,” the
doctor replies with a shrug.

“Is there a lot in my file?” I wonder
aloud.

“I wouldn’t say
a lot
but enough,” Dr.
Jett, tapping her pen against the pad in her lap, mentions to me
with a casual shrug. “Why do you want to know about that?”

“Just curious,” I tell her, turning my gaze
back to the window. She’s lucky enough to have a window in her
office; it attracts my attention more than our conversation. That
isn’t a good thing to say but she loses me most of the time when
she speaks.

But that aside, I now know that there’s a
thick file folder with my name on it somewhere in this
building.

That is very good to know.

When I get home, the first thing I do is call
Harley and beg her to come over to my house. I do the same with
Zephyr but Harley arrives first.

“Hey, why the urgent call,” she asks as she
glides through the front door, shrugging off her jacket—or Avery’s
coat, I think—and tosses it on my bed.

“I’ll tell you when Zephyr gets here,” I
explain to her. Lucky for us, he doesn’t take his time.

“What’s up?” Zephyr asks before I close the
door to my room for privacy. My aunt already left for work but I
don’t want to risk the chance of her hearing what I have to say if
she just so happens to forget something and runs home. It’s
happened before… not again, please.

I’m a bit paranoid at times—sometimes I think
it’s justified.

“She just called me,” Harley offers from my
bed as she lounges against the pillows, her converse kicked to the
floor by my matching pair.

“Joey, what’s going on?” Zephyr asks, taking
a seat on the recliner in the corner of my room. He’s wet, his
jacket covered in droplets of water, his hair dripping. I wasn’t
aware of the rain outside. It was dry when I got home.

I am too excited, too nervous, to sit down so
I pace back and forth in the center of my room, the plan still
forming in my mind.

“I don’t know things and it’s bothering me,”
I begin, catching a raised eyebrow from both Harley and Zephyr. Not
even five minutes and I confuse them by speaking like a crazy
girl.

“What are you talking about?” Zephyr
blurts.

“I have this plan, this really stupid plan,”
I continue. “We’re going to break into my therapist’s office,” I
tell them, matter-of-factly, expecting agreements and
brainstorming, I mean, these two are my closest friends and I trust
them with my life.

That’s not what I got.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Zephyr
almost shouts. I can see him turning an awkward shade of red.

“What does it sound like, Zephyr?” I start,
excitedly. “I need answers, and I’m not going to get them by just
sitting on my ass hoping that I have another dream, I’m taking some
action,” I tell them. “Are you either of you in?” I ask, looking
back and forth between my boyfriend and my best friend but all I
see is blank faces.

But Harley perks up, appearing ready for
anything. “I’ll help you in any way that I can,” she chimes from my
bed.

That’s a best friend, right there. One
that’ll help you commit a crime.

Now what about Zephyr?

“This is crazy,” Zephyr mutters before
standing up and approaching me. Maybe I might only be doing this
with Harley. Possibly Kennie if I can convince her. “You’re talking
about breaking and entering. You can go to jail for that, Joey.
Doesn’t that place have surveillance cameras?”

“I’ve been going there for eight years,” I
tell them. “Trust me, there are no cameras. Zephyr, you don’t have
to go if you don’t want to.” I turn to look at Harley. “We can do
this on our own.”

“Forget that, I’m going,” Zephyr agrees,
sounding as if he was going all along. “I swear, we’re going to get
arrested, but you both need someone there to keep a level head,” he
grumbles, reclaiming the recliner in the corner.

That night we start the planning process.
Even if it’s the last thing I ever do, I will know what happened to
me, so help me, baby Jesus.

Sixteen

We push all of the planning aside for the Big
Heist—we need a better title for our crime—because I kind of have
to do that stupid Idol competition at school that Friday night.
Every time it popped into my mind, came back to me that I had to do
something terrifying in front of a group of people, I glared at
Zephyr—just started staring at him in anger one day. He eventually
caught on. Now, as I stand in the hallway wearing a black-and-white
striped dress, I continuously curse Zephyr for signing me up for
this stupid thing. A few people were in the various practice rooms
warming up their voices, others were talking in the hallway with
friends, I was just clutching the locket hanging around my neck and
counting down the minutes until this ended. One hundred,
forty-three minutes, and twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven
seconds to go.

Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to punch Zephyr
in the throat.

I really hope the time flies… but I doubt
I’ll be having any fun.

“Thank you all for coming,” one of the judges
from the audition, who I later discovered her name to be Brittany,
calls as she walks down the hall. She’s the size of a pixie with
short blonde hair cut in a bob. Her heels, which do absolutely
nothing to help her height, click-clack along the tiled floor as
she walks past us, ushering us into the green room near the end of
the hall. She closes the door behind us before she starts saying,
“I really love the turnout for this, thank you.” She’s in disbelief
over this, which is odd. “This is my Senior Project and it’s never
been done before. If it goes well, then the school was discussing
keeping it up as an annual thing.”

Yippee!
I want to grumble, but that
might be rude. I’m sure my disinterested stance isn’t helping my
case.

A stagehand walks into the room, dressed in
black, not much taller than Brittany, but she’s not wearing heels.
I think her name is Joanna. “Faith Simmons is first,” she reads
from the list stuck on her clipboard.

A slightly pudgy girl in a too small of a
bright orange dress and too much makeup stands up; her frizzy brown
hair is unsuccessfully pulled away from her face, poofing around
her head mimicking a lion’s mane. “That’s me,” she says in a voice
that, I swear, could rival Minnie Mouse. She doesn’t go to my
school, thank goodness, because that voice would make me want to
punch her daily.