Shattered Soul (17 page)

“Got anything good?” Ali asked Calvin. Her eyes
darted to mine and I knew she was just being spiteful.

I’d asked her not to do anymore and now she was going
to do one right in front of me. My jaw tightened. I shifted my eyes
from her vindictive gaze to Calvin’s glorified one. He was enjoying
the fact she’d just asked him for some more right in front of me so
much, he was practically getting off on it.

“I might have a line,” he teased her. “But, you’ll
have to do something for me to get it.” He knew she'd say yes to
almost anything to get back at me right now.

My stomach twisted and a sinking feeling overtook me.
I wanted to cuss him, I wanted to cuss her, but that would only
instigate the situation more.

“And what would that be?” Ali asked in a flirty tone,
her eyes leaving mine in search of his.

My heart pounded so forcefully my chest ached. I
didn’t know where this was going, but I knew it couldn’t be good.
“Ali, come on, don’t,” I pleaded, unable to keep my mouth shut any
longer.

“No, Seth, you don’t. Don’t tell me what to do,” she
shouted.

“Yeah, Seth, leave her alone.” Calvin had a smirk on
his face.

I watched as his eyes shifted to Ali, gleaming with
all the skill of a smooth predator. The way he looked at her, as
though she were a tasty morsel for him to devour, made an
uncontrollable rage sizzle through me.

I dropped my gaze to the floor. I had to tear my eyes
away from him, from her, from this. Because me watching was only
fueling the situation for each of them even more.

“If you kiss her,” Calvin said in a soft, hypnotic
tone and I knew he meant Kerri, “I’ll let you have one.”

My heart felt like it stopped beating for a drawn out
moment. I closed my eyes, my rage turning into absolute horror, and
silently prayed Ali would say no.

“All right,” she answered him far too quickly.

My breath flew from my lungs.
No!
I screamed
in my head while biting my tongue to keep myself from shouting out
loud. I opened my eyes. Kerri and Ali were smiling at each other
and everything seemed to shift into slow motion, including my heart
pounding in my chest.

Ali licked her lips in preparation as she leaned
forward across Calvin’s lap to meet Kerri’s lips and I felt
paralyzed, like I was alive, but trapped inside a dead body, unable
to move and stop what was about to happen in front of me.

Calvin had gotten to her. Calvin had won. With this
one situation falling so effortlessly into his lap because of me,
Calvin would know he’d won her soul. Now he knew that if she’d say
yes to something like this, then in a matter of time, she’d do
anything he asked for another line. My eyes met his and I swore I
heard him whisper thank you in my head.

I turned away the second before Ali’s lips met
Kerri’s.

“Yeah,” Calvin uttered in a pleasure-filled tone as
the soft smacking of lips filled my ears, followed by whistles of
approval from Brent.

My hands trembled and my body shook. I started
towards the door; I had to get out of here, I had to get away. The
weight of guilt I felt was crushing me.

Ali had been so innocent, so good, and so pure. Being
with me had sucked her into my world of destruction and torment
that surrounded me. I hated myself for having given her that first
taste. I hated myself for refusing to see the signs, refusing to
believe what Ali was transforming into before my eyes.

With my head down, I gripped the doorknob and turned
it. I stepped out into the sunlight and fresh air, closing the door
behind me, to block myself off from the dark nightmare which had
become my reality.

The girl I loved was becoming a stranger, and I knew
this moment, the moment her soul first began to shatter, would
haunt me for forever.

I walked the streets to nowhere in particular, my
hands in my pockets, rage burning through me and guilt circling my
heart. Hours must have passed without me realizing, because when I
finally found myself back in front of my house, Ali’s car was gone
and so was Kerri’s.

I was relieved.

I stepped inside, ready to escape everything through
a cloud of smoke. I made it two steps away from my bedroom door
before Calvin poked his head out of his room to gloat.

“Why did you leave, Seth? I was just trying to do you
a favor…a brunette and a blonde…every guy’s dream,” he grinned.

“Not mine,” I spat.

Calvin’s grin grew. “Why are you so angry? It was
just a kiss.”

I snorted in disgust. “To her maybe, but to you it
meant much more,” I said, without breaking eye contact.

He licked his lips and his grin took on a more
devilish twist. “Maybe.”

I took the two remaining steps towards my bedroom
door and slammed it shut behind me. Calvin’s laugh echoed through
my room a second later. I despised him. I literally despised him.
There was not one single thing I liked about him.

I grabbed my old tin box from my top drawer and sank
into my bed to smoke away all of my thoughts, my worries, my anger,
and most of all, my heartbreak.

A month passed. Summer was coming to an end and a new
school year lurked around the corner. The only good that had ever
walked into my life was slipping through my fingers like sand,
faster and faster with each passing day.

There were good days with Ali, days that reminded me
of what she’d been like before temptation. And then there were bad
days, days when she made it perfectly clear that all that was on
her mind was getting high off something, anything.

There were more of those days than not.

So many in fact, I questioned if Ali was with me
because she still cared for me, or simply because of the drugs
which always surrounded me and my straight connection to Calvin,
the supplier. I found myself torn inside by the probability of both
questions more than I liked.

I fell asleep many nights staring at the picture Ali
had given me of us, wishing I could get that Ali back somehow. I
didn’t like who she was becoming, but I was too afraid for her to
turn my back and let her go. I still loved her and hoped that would
be enough to fix everything.

I spent more time at Trip’s house than my own. He
didn’t seem to mind and neither did his parents. It was kind of a
win-win situation. Trip wasn’t home alone while his parents worked
and kept up their social status, and it gave me time away from
Calvin and my mom, who didn’t even seem to care about herself at
this point.

A week and a half before school started, I’d
practically moved into the guest bedroom at Trip's house
unintentionally.

I reached in the top drawer of the nightstand for the
pack of Newports I’d stashed the other day, Trip’s parents didn’t
know we smoked, and pulled one out. I tucked it behind my ear and
left the room, headed towards the sliding glass doors off the
dining room to hide in the backyard and smoke.

It was Saturday, and I hadn’t seen Ali in two days
because of a fight involving me telling her what to do and what not
to do. I missed her, but more than anything I was concerned for her
and I found myself hoping I wouldn’t find her somewhere high as a
kite off the one thing I’d fought with her so many times about. I
took another pull off my cigarette and decided I’d walk to her
house long after my feet had already begun to move in that
direction.

I walked the twenty-five minute stretch in the
afternoon heat from Trip’s house to hers, only to see her car
wasn’t in the driveway. My heart dropped and an awful gut feeling
of where she might be rippled through me. With sweat pouring down
the middle of my back and beading across my brow, I turned swiftly
and started towards my house.

Images of the last three times this month I’d found
Ali tweaking at my house flashed through my mind. Calvin had begun
spinning a web around her, making her into another of his
self-inflicted prisoners, and she was too blinded by her own
fiendish want to notice.

I thought of what I would say to her this time, maybe
now was the time to threaten telling her parents. I'd never thought
I'd resort to being a snitch, especially not when there was a real
potential of me going down too, but for Ali…I’d contemplated it
several times.

I was both saddened and amazed Ali's parents hadn’t
noticed any changes in her so far. In fact, they didn’t seem to
even have a clue of what their daughter was doing. You’d think her
dad, being a cop and all, would have noticed the textbook signs in
his own kid, but he hadn’t. Neither of them had.

Either they clearly didn't pay enough attention to
the only living child they still had, or maybe they simply thought
their daughter was being a normal teenager, living out a normal
summer, a summer where she was hardly ever home.

Whatever the reason for being so blind, it didn't
matter. Ali was slipping through their fingers just as quickly as
she was slipping through mine and one of us had to grab hold of
her.

Guess it was going to be me.

When I got to my house, Ali's car sat parked in my
driveway behind Kerri’s. Disappointment crushed me, again. I walked
straight to the front door without pausing, deciding this was the
moment I would tell her exactly how pissed I was about everything.
I slung the door open and stepped inside.

“Seth, hey!” Jade said in a strangely off tone.

My eyes darted around the room, noticing Ali wasn’t
there and neither was Calvin. Jade and Kerri looked as if they’d
been caught doing something they shouldn’t, and Brent continued
picking at his fingernails with a pocket knife, a smirk pulling at
the corners of his lips.

“Well…this should be interesting,” Brent muttered
under his breath. “Maybe you should snag one of your brother’s
Oxycontins and pop it before the shit hits the fan.”

I opened my mouth to ask what the hell he’d meant by
that, but closed it the second I heard Ali’s giggles coming from
the back of the house.

“What the fuck?” was all I said.

I left the door wide open behind me and followed her
giggles down the hall, pushing my way past Jade as she stood to try
and stop me. I stopped only when I realized the giggles were coming
from behind Calvin’s closed bedroom door.

I stared at it fixedly and bitterness swelled inside
of me, I could taste it in the back of my throat. My stomach rolled
as more giggles and chuckles filled my ears and I thought I might
vomit.

The door swung open before I could make my fingers
move to grip the knob and open it myself. Ali stood in front of me,
slipping her tank top back on, with a smile on her face. Our eyes
locked and her smile faded.

“Here you go, princess,” Calvin said from behind her.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her shoulder as he
slipped a little zip-lock baggie into the palm of her hand.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t believe
my eyes.

“Seth,” she whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

Calvin moved past her. “I’m not,” he said, purposely
bumping my shoulder as he walked past me and out into the hall.

My eyes dropped to what Ali held in her hand and I
felt like someone had just hit me in the gut with a sledge hammer.
It was a tiny baggie of meth. She’d fucked my brother for a baggie
of meth.

Her fingers curled around it. “Seth, I just…” she
stumbled on her words. “I'm sorry.”

I heard her speak, but her words held no meaning to
me. I found myself wondering if this was the first time, or if
there were others that I didn't know about.

“How could you?” I asked. “And with
Calvin
, of
all people.” My eyes shifted to her face in time to see a tear
slide down her cheek.

“I don’t know what to say,” she sighed. “I’m so
sorry, Seth.”

I closed my eyes, curled my fingers into my palms,
and dug my nails in as hard as I could. Physical pain felt better
than the emotional pain I was feeling. Because the emotional pain,
it felt worse than all of Calvin’s beatings combined together.

“Seth.” Her fingers brushed across my forearm and I
jerked away from her touch so quickly I surprised even myself.

It was the first time her touch sickened me, making
the nausea in my stomach rise up and roll over me in crashing
waves. I couldn’t stand the feeling of her skin against mine, not
after who it had just been pressed up against.

“I’m telling you I’m sorry! It didn’t mean anything,”
she sobbed. “Would you just look at me? Please!”

I kept my eyes closed and struggled to keep my
breathing even. “I can’t, because I can’t stand the sight of you
right now, not after what you just did,” I said flatly. “Besides, I
wouldn’t recognize you even if I did; the Ali I knew would never
have fucked my brother for that shit.”

“So, what are you saying?” she snapped in a strained
voice. “That it’s over? You can’t even look at me anymore, so
that’s it?”

I opened my eyes and looked directly into hers. “I
thought you were better than this, I loved you...” I trailed off,
fighting back tears of my own. I turned and began walking down the
hall, headed for the already opened front door.

“Seth, don’t go, don’t do this to me!” she sobbed
behind me. “It will never happen again, I promise!”

I paused at the edge of the hallway and glanced over
my shoulder at her crumbled frame. “You did this to yourself, Ali,”
I said and continued towards the door.

“You look like you could use a pick me up, Seth…grab
yourself out a few Oxycontins,” Calvin sneered and tossed a
sandwich bag filled with pills at me. “Between that and the baggie
I gave Ali, it should all even out to a good trade. She was a good
fuck, after all.”

I swatted the bag away and slammed the door shut
behind me, just as something inside me released and the salty taste
of my own tears touched my lips.