Perfectly Flawed (63 page)

It won't hurt, I promise, baby girl.

“STOP!” I scream, shoving as hard as my weak
body will let me until Zephyr flings back, his eyes wild with
worry.

“Joey,” Zephyr calls as I grab my shirt from
the floor and bolt from my room, locking myself in the
bathroom.

I collapse against the far wall, my shaking
legs weak, and my bones brittle. One false move and I’ll crumble,
decay into ash, and blow away in the wind. One false move and I
disappear.

“Joey?” A light knock taps against the door
across the tiny room. “Joey, please, open up.”

I shake my head, tears streaming down my
cheeks. I clutch the shirt to my chest, trying to hide the
evidence. But the scars, they never go away, and they grow and grow
until I’m nothing but scar. Ruined skin walking around.

“Please, tell me what happened.”

I can't.

I don't even know.

“Please, just open the door.”

You are so beautiful, so beautiful
,
the voice continues. I clutch my hands to my ears, willing the
sounds to stop, willing them to disappear, but they only grow
louder.
Daddy's little girl, that's what you are. Daddy’s
beautiful baby girl.

“JOEY!”

I'm screaming. I’m screaming so loud, there’s
pain as my voice rips from my throat.

The door bounces against the wall before arms
circle around my body, tugging me to a hard chest that's warm and
comforting. But it’s not what I want. The thought of his touch
sickens me and I push against him.

“DON'T TOUCH ME!” I scream, shoving him away.
I crawl back as far as I can, hitting my head against the wall. I
wrap my arms around my legs and sob into my knees.

“Okay,” he concedes, backing away. Shock
covers his face as he watches me freak out against the wall. “I
won't touch you.” He holds up my shirt to me. “You should probably
put this on.”

I don't take the shirt. I let his hand fall
into his lap as he stares at me, sighing. His eyes train on the
t-shirt, staring at what I was wearing, and my mind trails back to
twenty minutes ago, when everything was okay.

“I'm sorry, Joey,” Zephyr begins, his voice
pleading. “What did I do? I'm sorry for whatever I did.” His hands
reach out for me but I recoil. He sees, defeat covering his face.
Never have I recoiled from his touch, I’ve always welcomed it; I’ve
always wanted him when everything else seemed to fail.

How can I tell him that he didn’t
do
anything? How can I tell him that it was the voice inside my head?
The voice of
him
.

“You need to go,” I blubber out.

“Joey—”

It takes everything in me, but I say it.
“Zephyr, you need to leave, now.”

I can't describe what happened to me, I can't
begin to understand what just went through my mind, but what I do
know is that there is something wrong with me, something that I
can't begin to tell him. No matter how much I love him, I can never
tell him this.

He leans back, drags his hand through his
hair, and stands up. He buttons his jeans before he leaves the
bathroom, taking one look at me before walking into my room to grab
his shoes and shirt. It isn't long before he is gone and I'm lying
across the floor, listening to the fireworks exploding outside the
house.

Happy New Year to me.

***

I spent the rest of break hiding in my room
with the blinds drawn, thinking about what my brain is trying to
decipher, what secrets it’s trying to decode. Hilary spent most of
her days off, because she was on a vacation, with Patrick, but she
stopped by my room a few times to check in on me.

“You okay?” she asked me one day. She walked
into my room, without knocking, and flicked on the overhead light,
blinding me as I lay in my bed. My blinds were drawn, I hadn’t
turned on the lamp even, I just wanted to be alone and wallow.

I even avoided Zephyr.

I drag the blanket over my eyes, ignoring her
question.

“Are you talking to me?” she asks angrily. I
can hear the harrumph in her voice. I still don’t acknowledge her.
“
Joey!
” she tries again.

I fling the blanket away from my head,
staring at my aunt as she stands over my bed. “What do you want?” I
snap.

“Don’t take that town with me, missy.” I
swear, she snaps. “I haven’t seen you for the better part of a
week. I’m making sure you’re alive.”

“I’m alive.” The anger surges my veins. Can’t
she see that I just want to be alone.

“What’s going on, Joey,” Hilary asks, concern
and worry thick in her voice.

“Nothing is going on,” I snap. “Why can’t
everyone just leave me alone?” I roll over to my side, tugging my
iPod from beneath my pillow and shoving the buds into my ears. I
just want to drown within the words of Otep.

I’m not sure how long she stayed, I’m not
sure when she left, I just know that when I turned back around, she
was gone and I was alone. The only time I left my bed was to turn
off my light.

The nightmares were getting worse, supremely,
and now things made more sense.

I’m six years old and lying in bed when they
start, they always start like that.

Mommy just put me to bed, singing me a
lullaby like she does every night, then she leaves and I’m alone in
the dark. I don’t like the dark, scary things that happen in the
dark, but Daddy won’t let me get a nightlight. I for a Disney
Princess one.

My eyes slowly close, shutting out the
minimal light streaming through the venetian blinds, and I fall
asleep.

The bed shifting wakes me with a start.

But it’s only Daddy.

“There’s my beautiful baby girl,” he whispers
in the night. His hand reaches up to smooth my hair down, moving it
away from my face. He’s blurry without my glasses. “Want to make
Daddy happy again?” he asks.

I know that means and I don’t like it, I
never did, but he tells me that it makes him happy, that it makes
him love me more. All I want is for him to love me.

I try to wake up then, I want to end it
there, but I’m never lucky. It all plays out in my head; every
sickening touch, every painful move, and I wake up in tears.

***

Zephyr continues to call me, text me, he even
emails me, but I don’t respond. I don’t know what to tell him.
Oh, yeah, sorry about New Year’s Eve but, as it turns out, my
dad molested me as a kid. That’s why I freaked the fuck out when
you touched me, because I had a memory. It’s not you, it’s me and
my psycho issues
. As much as that makes sense, I can’t tell him
that.

I should just break up with him. It’d be
easier to cut the ties sooner rather than later.

When classes start up, I do my best just to
tune Jamie out in the morning, pretending there’s something I need
to do in my room before we head out for school. I even ignore
Zephyr as he tries to talk to me, but it’s useless, he’s in my
first class of the day—sitting right next to me.

“I sit right next to you, Joey,” he starts
when Mr. Cheney has his back to the class. “I live right next door
to you; you’ll have to talk to me eventually.”

I shake my head, trying to drown out the
sweet, soothing sound of his voice as he inches closer to me. The
end of class is near; I continue looking at the clock above the
door, praying time moves faster, but like they say, a watched pot
never boils, so I continue my note taking while Zephyr tries to get
me to look at him.

I want to tell him to stop wasting his time.
I want to gain the nerve to break up with him, just tell him to
find someone better than me. There has to be someone out there
better for him than me. I’m crazy—I see that now. There’s something
deep within me, disgusting and twisted that has just revealed
itself. I’m not normal, I’m tainted and impure, I’m just… wrong for
him.

But I really don’t want to do that. The one
thing I fear, even if we were no longer together romantically, is
that I would lose his friendship.

I can’t lose that. Not now.

The bell rings and I bolt from the room,
carrying my notebook and textbook in my arms to save time, but
Zephyr catches up with me.

“Joey, you need to—” he starts, the sound of
hardback books and paper scattering cutting him off as my hands
drop and my things fall around us.

“
Balls!
” I say, dropping down to grab
everything.

None of this stops him, though. “Are you
going to talk to me?” he asks, grabbing my notes before someone
steps on them.

I don’t reply.

“Joey, please,” he begs, his eyes looking to
me. I can feel them.

“I can’t,” I whisper, dropping down until I’m
seated in the middle of the hallway. “I just can’t.” Tears swell in
my eyes, blurring my vision, and it’s taking all my strength not to
lose it. I need to remain in control if I’m going to do this.

“What do you mean?” Zephyr asks. “You can’t
what? You can’t do this anymore?”

I foolishly look up to him. “Zephyr.” I see
the pain on his face, the hurt in his eyes, and it’s like the
beginning all over again.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asks, his
voice an almost inaudible whisper. I shouldn’t have been able to
hear him, not with the students talking loudly as they passed, but
his voice was able to float through the air and stab me in the
heart.

It would be easy—breaking up with him, and it
would be for the best. He can do better than me, I know that. I’m
just finally able to admit it. Zephyr and I were never meant for
happily ever after, we would not get married, we would not grow old
together. We would not buy that perfect little house with a wooden
porch where we could sit out in the summer days watching our
grandchildren play in the yard. Those dreams are too farfetched for
someone like me.

Zephyr Kalivas, he can do so much better than
me. One day, he’ll see this was for the best. This is for the
best.

“Yes,” I tell the floor. Tears well in the
corners of my eyes and I try not to blink. I can’t blink—he can’t
see me cry. That would only mean that I’m wrong about this entire
thing. I can’t be wrong about this. This is for him, this is for
him, doing this is for him. I’ll keep saying that until its burned
into my brain, until I can fall asleep and say it in my dreams,
until I can look at him and know that he’ll have a better life than
he can ever have with me.

I’ll say it until it feels like the
truth.

I don’t see the look fall from his face, but
I know it does. I don’t see his breath halt in his lungs, but I
know it does. I don’t see a lot of things, but I know they happen,
just like I know that Zephyr waited for me to look up at him. I do
but I pray my eyes don’t deceive me, that they don’t reveal the
biggest secret hidden within me: I’m not sure I can move on without
Zephyr in my life.

His hand thrusts out, my notebook clutched
between his gripping fingers. “Here.” It’s fast and hollow, the
word that leaves his lips. No emotion on his face as he turns away
from me. I watch him walk down the hall, weaving through the crowd
until he disappears.

My body slumps, sags in on itself like I’ve
been deflated. My heart has. It’s for the best.
It’s for the
best
. I stare at random tiles on the floor as the hallway
empties around me. I’m supposed to be in class, I’m supposed to be
in Calculus, but I can’t force myself to move.
I can’t force
myself…

The last place that I want to be is school.
What I did—I know it’s for Zephyr’s best interests, it’s for his
own good that I push him away now rather than later and watch us
both get hurt. So I stand up, grab everything scattered around me
and go home.

I fling open the front door, spotting Hilary
sitting at the dining room table with a cup of steaming coffee and
the newspaper.

“Joey?” she asks, her eyes popping up from
the words in front of her. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in
school?”

I drop my backpack on the floor and rush over
to her to do something I’ve never willingly done before. I fall
into her arms and wait for them to encircle me. I cry into her robe
as she rubs her hands up and down my back.

“What happened, honey?” she coos quietly when
my blubbering calms. “Do you want to tell me?”

“I broke up with Zephyr,” I tell her.

“Why?”

“Because it’s inevitable.”

I can’t tell her the real reason. That when
he touches me, I see flashbacks; I hear voices of the past. That
since we started dating, my brain has been drowning in memories,
forcing me to suffocate beneath the waves.

“You couldn’t know that, honey,” she whispers
by my ear as my body shakes with sobs.

But I do because I am ruined; I am beyond
flawed to the point where I can’t even recognize myself. I was
chewed up and spit out, thrown away by my own mind. How can my own
body betray me like this?

Epilogue

The dark seemingly hollow place sucks me back in just
when I thought I’d escaped. Dragging me by my hair until I fall
away, pulling me lower and lower until the sensation is too much.
The feeling of suffocation and drowning, is all I can feel.

I try to fight. I try to claw my way to
freedom, but the struggle is too great, too overwhelming for my
weak body. I can’t pull myself to safety, I can’t free myself from
this hell I’ve dropped within.

Hell…
Such a simple yet complicated
word to describe this place.

This hell is too deep for me to climb from
and too large for me to wander. What I want, what I
crave
,
taunts and teases me as I wish for escape, pray for solace, but
none come. And as I walk through this valley, the desolate place of
heat and hell, I can’t help but wonder whom, if anyone can save
me.

My steps throb the longer I walk, the longer
my feet hit the worn path, my pace slowing as the fake stars blink
and twinkle above. The night sky taunts me, showing glimpses of a
freedom I can’t find.