The Game Series (55 page)

Or a memory.

A memory can form and instead of it playing behind your eyes, you could watch it on the plain surface in front of you. Instead of it staying locked up inside where it should be, it could break free, a movie playing only for you.

My hands, linked together by my fingers and resting on my stomach, tense. My eyes burn and my head pounds as a memory pulls itself up from the depths of my mind. I’m sinking, falling deeper and deeper into the past, flattening under the suffocating weight of it.

And everything stops.

I can’t feel my heart beating. I can’t feel the rise and fall of my chest as I breathe frantically, gasping and choking as I take in too much air too quickly. I can’t feel my legs despite my best efforts to move them, and my arms feel like lead weights against my body. I’m paralyzed, stuck in a day long past, facing a person I trusted and loved. Facing the person that betrayed me and abused me in the worst ways. Facing the person that drained the will to live from my body day by day.

It’s like I’m straight back there. It’s as real as the day it happened.

I’m shaking just as hard as I was then; I’m just as scared as I was. I’m still cowering under the cold blue-green eyes that pinned me in place, and I can still feel the throbbing of my ankle as I fell backwards. I can hear my voice as I pleaded with him to stop, to calm down, to just take a step back and breathe for a minute. I can hear my crying over his deathly calm voice, the one that was more threatening than any amount of yelling he could do.

And the worst, I can feel his skin against mine. I can feel the tightening of his fingers as he grabbed my wrists and pinned them against the bed, the heaviness of his body as he pushed me into the mattress, the soreness of his thumb digging into my jaw as he held my face level with his.

I can hear his raspy whisper as he quietly threatened me, and smell the lingering essence of beer and vodka on his breath as it swept across my face.

I can hear, see, feel.

Everything.

All of it.

Just as clearly as when it really happened. It’s there, playing in front of me, around me, on me.

Real.

I know it’s not. A tiny part of my mind is screaming at me that it’s not real, it’s not really happening, it’s all in my head, but my logic can’t override my fear. I can’t break free from the hold this Pearce has over me.

I can’t rid myself of the pain or the feeling of dirt across my skin. I can’t stop the sobs that are wracking my body or the floods of tears I know are falling from my eyes. And the shouts. I can’t stop the shouts, because I want it to stop. More than anything. I just want it to stop. I need it to stop. I can’t make it stop, though, because I’m not in control.

I can do nothing but ride it out. I can do nothing but lie here, watching the memory play out in my mind and on my ceiling. I can’t fight it, I can’t focus on anything other than this. It’s the last memory I have of him. The worst one. The one that crushed whatever spirit I had left. It’s the one that tipped me over the edge.

And it stops.

He’s gone. The touch of his hands, the smell of alcohol, the blackness as I held my eyes tightly shut, it’s all gone.

And in its place is the warm embrace of my mom, rocking me gently and whispering in my ear with a shaky, tear-filled voice that everything will be okay.

If emotions were visible, Abbi’s would look the way the sky does when there’s a huge storm brewing. They’d look like the clouds do at the point of indecision, when they’re not quite sure whether or not they want to let loose and pelt you with everything they have. Her frustration each time she fucks up a step is like a bolt of lightning; fast, startling, and deadly. Her determination is the thunder, rolling overhead, peaking and dropping every so often.

And the storm is visible in her eyes. In her eyes, I can see the heavy clouds, full of rain, the way I imagine her eyes are full of held-back tears. The shadows there are darker than usual, and they just keep darkening, taking her over.

She
pirouettes
out of time and stops at the
barre
, smacking it with her hands. She grips it tightly, bending forward and hanging her head so her chin touches her chest. She looks so helpless standing there, her back heaving with the deep breaths she’s taking to calm herself.

I recognize it. I recognize it all.

This is her having a bad day, one of the days when the depression claws at her and doesn’t let up. When it won’t let her breathe or even think for herself.

I watched Tori act the same – the uneven steps, the uneasy leaps and turns, the overwhelming anger at something you should be able to but can’t control. And then I held her while she cried it all out.

I won’t watch Abbi cry it out. I can’t watch her do that.

I cross the empty studio floor, the rest of the class long gone, and stop just behind her. Her knuckles are white from her strong grip on the
barre
, and I uncurl her fingers from it. She flinches like my touch is burning her, and I take a deep breath in, reminding myself she’s not really here. Whatever is driving her right now, it’s not completely her.

Depression is a crazy thing. It can take the most headstrong, rational person and turn them into a quivering, blubbering mess of heartbreak over seemingly nothing at all.

Abbi’s head is still hanging and her eyes are focused on the floor. I pull her into the center of the room silently, the only sounds the swishing of our shoes against the floor. I stand to her side, wrap an arm around her back, and cup her chin with my other hand. I raise it up slowly so her eyes are facing the corner of the room, and take my hand away to rest it on her stomach.

Seconds pass until she moves
en pointe
shakily, and I give her a minute to gain her balance before I walk around her. My eyes never leave her, flickering up and down her profile, from the furrow in her brow to the downturn of her lips. I guide her round, feeling the movement of her stomach as she breathes in and out again.

She stops, drops from
pointe,
and shoves my arms away from her. She tears her bun out and lets her hair fall loose as she storms across the room. Her hands fall back on the
barre
and she steps back so she’s leaning right forward.

“Abbi-”

She shakes her head. Her silence is worse than any word she could say or any sound she could make. Abbi turns to face me, her hair falling naturally around her face and her eyes filling with the tears I know she’s been holding in. Her lips quiver as she swallows, and I’ve never seen anyone look quite as vulnerable as she does right now.

“I can’t do it,” she says so quietly I can barely hear it. “It’s not working. I can’t dance today. I’m just one big mess.”

I look her dead on, my stomach twisting at the absolute pain in her eyes. She’s no mess. Her emotions might be, but she isn’t. “Then you’re one hell of a beautiful mess.”

She shakes her head again. It’s like the few sentences she just said are all she can manage. She looks like every ounce of fight is draining slowly from her body. Today, she looks an awful lot like giving up.

Her hands rub her face, her thumbs swiping under eyes. I want to say something – anything – but I can’t find the words. Hell, I don’t even think I
have
the bloody words. She drops to sit on her ankles, resting her forehead against her knees, and links her fingers. Her arms stretch out in front of her making her sleeves rise up, exposing her bare skin.

My heart stops.

If we’d been anywhere else I wouldn’t have noticed. If it had been any other day, I wouldn’t have even looked.

The harsh studio lights bear down on her, highlighting the thin white lines that crisscross on her wrists. The lines that speak louder than words, cry harsher than any sob and hold more pain than any other injury.

But I can’t look away. I can’t tear my gaze from them, even as I’m transported back to my sister’s room.

I see the very same lines on Tori’s arms, some white, some pink, some still red. The bumps, the bruises, the accidental cuts – the second I saw her arms it all made sense to me. But it was still too late. I was still too late.

I shake the memory away. Abbi’s looking at me, her eyes wide. She realizes my gaze is falling to her wrists and stands quicker than I’ve ever seen her move, yanking her sleeves over her hands. Her feet pound against the floor as she runs towards her bag.

No. Not this time.

I race to her and stop in front of her. She crashes into me, and I grab her shoulders to stop her from going anywhere. Tears spill from her eyes and she fights me, turning her shoulders and wriggling as she tries to get away from me. Her head shakes, and mine does too, both of us stuck in limbo until one of us gives in.

But I won’t give in.

I won’t let her go.

It’s not a want anymore. It’s not an interest, a concern for her. It’s a need. I need to know what would cause her to do that to herself.

I need to know what it is that’s so bad it would make her take something to her beautiful skin and break it that way.

“Let me go,” she begs. “Please, Blake.”

I shake my head. “No. Not until you talk to me.”

She tries harder to throw me off her. “There’s nothing to talk about!”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of them matter a single damn bit!”

“It matters to me.”

She stops moving. Her eyes crash into mine as she snaps her head up, and her lips purse. “Well it shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

“Then why are you hiding them?”

“Because I hate them!” She finally knocks my hands off and turns, walking a few paces before stopping. “I hate them and everything they are. Everything they mean. Everything they remind me of.
I hate them
.”

Her voice is thick with tears both falling and unshed and her shoulders rise and fall with each heavy breath she takes. Standing in the middle of this huge studio, she looks tiny. And with her shoulders falling forward, her head hanging and her arms tucked around her, she looks completely and utterly broken.

She looks exactly how my heart feels.

Silence lingers between us. No words are spoken, and I’m waiting for her to say something. Anything. Even if she just tells me to piss off, that’ll do, even if it’s not what I want.

“They remind me of how things were,” she whispers, her voice barely there yet seeming to echo off the walls. “They’re everything my life was. Everything I don’t want it to be again. They’re hideous. They’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t believe I ever thought what caused them was beautiful. They taint my skin in the worst way, and I’m ashamed of them. If I knew I’d be stuck with them for the rest of my life I would never have done it or I would have cut even deeper.” Her voice trails off at the end.

My stomach rolls. “Don’t say that. Ever.”

“It’s true.”

I walk to her, coming up behind her again. I press my chest against her shuddering back, pull her into me, and rest my cheek against the side of her head. My hands take her arm and I ease the material of her leotard up to her elbows. She breathes in sharply and squeezes her eyes shut when I touch the pad of my thumb to her wrist.

The scars stretch up the inside of her arm, crossing each other and disappearing under her sleeve. I can barely believe what I’m looking at – each one of them is perfectly healed, some of them barely visible to my eyes. I know we see different things when we look at her arms.

“How many?” I whisper, my voice thick. “How many are there?”

“I don’t know. Hundreds, maybe. Everywhere. They’re everywhere.”

And I wonder how I missed it. Her body is always covered. Where the other girls wear no tights and short sleeved leotards, Abbi is always wrapped under opaque tights or leggings and long sleeves. Even out of class, she’s always hidden.

I brush my thumb up her arm, running it over the light bumps. “Why? Why did you do it?”

“Because it made the pain stop,” she breathes, raising her other arm and brushing her thumb along her skin after mine. “No matter how much it hurt, it always made it stop.”

“I don’t understand.”

She laughs sadly, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “You don’t have to understand. It’s better if you don’t.” She curls her fingers around her sleeve and pulls it down, covering her arm back up. My hands drop from her arm and she steps away.

“What if I want to understand?”

Tired eyes look back at me. “Then you’re stuck wanting, because I’ll never tell. Not you.”

I frown. “Why?”

“Because…” she says in the softest tone I’ve ever heard her use. “You’re much too perfect to be tarred by the mess that is my imperfect life. You’re much too perfect to know anything about the things that haunt me. I would never forgive myself if I destroyed you the way I’m so destroyed.”

“You’re not destroyed, and I’m far from perfect.” I take her chin in my hand, making her look at me, and rub my thumb across her cheek. It wipes away a tear only for another to replace it. And another. And another. “I’m nowhere near close to perfect, and even if I was, it wouldn’t make me want to know everything about you any less than I do right now. It wouldn’t stop me wanting to look into your eyes and put that spark I’m pretty fond of back in there. You might think you’re imperfect, and you might be right, but there’s nothing more perfect than imperfection. If I cared about true perfection I’d be stuck chasing something that doesn’t exist for the next forever.”

Abbi shakes, her eyes closing.

“Everything you see as a flaw – your scars, your demons, your darkness – that’s what makes you so damn beautiful. The only flaw is that you can’t see it. But I can. I see it every single time I look at you, and I won’t stop bugging the crap out of you until you can look in the mirror and see it for yourself.”

She half-laugh, half-sobs, and her legs buckle. I catch her with my other arm and pull her to me. My hand on her chin slides to the back of her head as we sink to the floor. Her hands grip the sides of my leotard, her face pressed into my chest, and I hold her shaking body against mine tighter than I’ve ever held anyone or anything before.

~

I twirl the empty beer bottle between my hands repeatedly. Tori’s face stares back at me from the bookcase, her green eyes illuminated by the sunshine in the background and her brown waves framing her cheeks. Her smile is wide and it’s a genuine one. A rare occurrence, something that could come and go faster than a shooting star. Sometimes I was afraid I would miss it if I blinked too slowly.

Now I have a permanent smile. A constant reminder of the girl that was buried deep inside, fighting a battle only she truly knew.

The only problem with that picture is it feels almost empty. It’s been almost ten years since she died, and every day that picture has lost a little of its light. The warmth has slowly left it, more so since I left London and arrived here in Brooklyn.

As much as I love Tori, a part of me resents her. A part of me hates her for leaving me to do this alone – what we should have been doing together. A part of me can’t forgive her for the choices she made, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to. It still hurts as much as it did the day she died. I don’t think it’ll ever hurt any less.

My phone rings from the kitchen side, but I make no move to answer it. And it rings. And it rings. And it rings. Then stops, before starting up again. I leave it to go to voicemail for a second time, still teasing the neck of my bottle, and clench my teeth when it rings for a third time. Only one person would call me this persistently.

My mother.

I lope across the kitchen and snatch up the simultaneously ringing and vibrating device. “Mum.”

“Whatever took you so long?”

“Hello to you too,” I reply sarcastically, leaving the bottle by the sink.

“Attitude, Blake,” she chastises me. “I was only calling to arrange our dinner on Thursday.”

“And it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? It’s midnight.”

“Not here it isn’t.” She sniffs. “Besides, you are awake.”

“Fine.”

“Have you found anywhere for us to eat? Not that place you work at. You know I’m particular about my seafood.”

And the rest of your life.