Bitter End (23 page)

“I got out later than I thought,” I said, trying to keep my voice as close to normal as possible. “I went to the school, but
everyone was gone.”

He finally turned. He had the look on his face that someone gives when you’ve said something so ridiculously stupid they can’t
believe you even opened your mouth. “Yeah. We were gone. That’s what we do when practice is over for an hour.”

He pulled the guitar strap over his head and laid the guitar on the floor beside him. He swiveled to face me, then leaned
his back against the wall behind him and stretched out his legs, crossing his feet in front of him, lacing his hands together
and resting them in his lap. As if he didn’t have a care in the world. As if he wasn’t furious with me.

The air in the room suddenly felt very cold. As if all happiness had been sucked out of it. Sort of like the tutor lab had
felt right before he’d grabbed my wrist.

“Look,” I said, trying to sound confident. Trying to
sound as if it really was no big deal. Trying to warm up the air around me. “I said I was sorry. I don’t know…”

“You’re sorry?” he said, his voice a boom in the quiet house. “You blew me off for another guy, Alex. Again. Same guy. Why
don’t you admit you want him, huh? He wants you. Why don’t the two of you go off and be very happy together? I don’t give
a shit. Just go do it.”

“I don’t want him,” I said, taking a step forward. “And he doesn’t want me. I want you, Cole, in case you didn’t notice.”

“You know? I didn’t notice. Because I was too busy noticing that my supposed girlfriend is a slut who can’t seem to pry herself
away from her next-door neighbor to come to my practice like she said she would. Oh, I mean
best friend
.
Neighbor
makes her sound like a total whore.
Best friend
is more just… slut.”

I stiffened. “I’m not a slut, and I’m not doing anything with him. And he is my best friend,” I said, my voice going high
and shrieky. “It’s not totally unheard of for a boy and a girl to be best friends without anything going on, you know.”

He nodded his head sarcastically, looking as if he was barely holding in laughter. “Whatever, slut,” he said. “Did you and
Bethany give him a nice little congratulations gift for getting the big part in the play?”

Suddenly all those feelings of worry were gone, replaced with anger. He was going too far. What kind of boyfriend calls his
girlfriend a slut to her face? Who acts like that? I
loved Cole, but sometimes loving him just felt like I was on a roller coaster and I couldn’t catch my breath between dips
and turns. And sometimes I just wanted off.

“Stop calling me that, Cole. If you’re too dense to see that…”

“Dense?” Anger flashed in his eyes and I saw the muscles in his stomach go taut, but I didn’t care. I was pissed.

“Yeah, it’s how you’re acting. Dense and jealous and stupid and rude.”

“Shut up, slut,” he breathed, but I kept going.

“And if you weren’t so stubborn and you actually tried to get along—”

But before I could so much as wrap my mouth around the next syllable, he was off the amp and across the room, one hand on
my neck. I made a surprised little noise in the back of my throat, but he was squeezing too tightly for me to say anything.
My hand reached up to his, but before I could pry his fingers off my neck, his other hand, curled in a tight fist, came down
high on my cheek, twice, hard. I saw flashes of light with each blow, and pain flared through my face. I cried out for real
this time.

“Don’t ever tell me what to do,” Cole said, so full of fury that foamy pieces of spit were gathering in the corners of his
mouth. “Don’t
ever
tell me what to do. I swear to God, Alex. Don’t. Do. It.” He shook me by my neck with every word, my head snapping back and
forth like the floppy head of a rag doll.

Just like that, my anger was shaken right out of me.
Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a huge deal to be called a slut. Suddenly all that mattered was the ringing in my ears and
the fact that my eye felt like jelly and my knees wanted to buckle right out from underneath me.

“Okay,” I cried, my voice rasping past his tight grip on my throat. I brought my hand up to my face, because I couldn’t think
of anything else to say or do other than cover and agree to whatever he said. Whatever it would take to make him stop. “Okay,
okay, okay, okay, I’m sorry,” I cried, tears pouring out of my eye in rivers, even though I had it squeezed shut. My stomach
lurched, and I had to clench my teeth to keep the vomit back.

He let go of my neck and I crumpled to the floor, holding my face and sobbing. Too afraid to run. Too surprised to stand.
Too hurt to be brave or indignant or anything other than broken. “I’m sorry,” I whimpered, curling up over my knees and pressing
my forehead into the carpet, willing my eye to stop watering. Willing my face and neck to stop hurting. “Oh my God, I’m so
sorry…”

I heard Cole breathing hard and pacing. Heard a clang as his guitar met with something hard. Heard the bedsprings twang as
he sat on it, heard them groan again a few seconds later as he got up. He was muttering things, how it was my own fault and
that I should keep my promises and how nobody talks to him like that. “Why don’t you write about it in one of your stupid
little poems?” he said at one point, but I didn’t answer. I was too afraid to lift my face, to look at him head-on.

None of this made sense. I still had the faint lines of bruises on the inside of my wrist. I’d been proud of myself for forgiving
him that time. I’d convinced myself that it was a one-time thing. How could this have happened again?

He’d promised—stood there in the parking lot of The Bread Bowl, pressing up against me and kissing me, and promised—that he’d
never touch me again. And this time he’d done more than grab my wrist. He’d hit me. Actually hit me. My whole head felt split
open, like a hot, gaping cavern, and throbbed like it was alive. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t breathe, I was crying
so hard.

I cried so long that I almost forgot all about Cole. I definitely lost track of time. And when I felt his arms slide around
my shoulders from behind, I jumped. Panic rocked me as I wondered what he would do to me this time. Would it be possible that
he’d just kill me right here in his bedroom with his mom downstairs humming and stirring soup?

But it was the warm Cole who wrapped around me. The tension in his body was gone. The fury in his voice all drained out.

“My Alex,” he breathed into the back of my neck. “Oh my God, my Alex.” Just like before. “Forgive me. You have to forgive
me. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want to have to… I just get so jealous… Jesus, I don’t want to lose you… please… please don’t
leave me… don’t go… I’ll make it better… God, I swear to you…”

I said nothing. Just cried harder, unsure how to move
after something like this had happened. Did I just get up and walk away as though my whole world hadn’t just been destroyed?
How? How did legs and feet and arms and lungs work after something like this? Was it even possible?

We stayed like that for a long time. He whispered things. Apologies. Excuses. Promises. They bounced off me, impossible to
absorb. I believed him and I didn’t. I hated him and I didn’t. I loved him and I didn’t. I hated me and I felt sorry for me.
Words had no meaning. There was no past and no future. It was as if all I had to do was live through this moment and everything
would be all right.

I kept my face down in the dark for so long that what had just happened began to feel like a dream. Like I was about to wake
up into something better. Like I’d open my eyes and things would be bright and pretty.

Instead, when he finally turned me around and I blinked the real world in again, all I saw was blurriness in my right eye,
and I felt an all-encompassing numbness.

My nose was running down into my mouth, and I was squinting against the light, my hair stuck to my face. And Cole looked pretty
much the same. We were grieving together, and in some way that felt right. Felt better. At least if I was going to be miserable,
I wasn’t going to be alone. At least he’d hurt himself, too.

I watched his face contort and his mouth move as he apologized, but I didn’t really hear his words. I watched him lean forward
to kiss my cheeks, my hair, my eyes, which hurt, but there was such a disconnect between the
hurt and my brain that I barely noticed. It was like the pain belonged to somebody else. Alex was there, but she wasn’t me.
She was someone else, shutting down, piece by piece.

I stopped crying.

I just watched.

Numb.

I watched myself slowly get up to leave. I watched myself start walking. I watched myself thump down the stairs and turn the
handle of the front door, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands. I watched myself get into my car and turn it on and back
out of Cole’s driveway and drive home. And I watched myself come home and go up to my bedroom and shut the door. I watched
myself pull off my clothes and step into pajamas, all in the dark, and curl up in bed and stare at the ceiling, the tears
leaking into my ears, the scene replaying on the blades of my ceiling fan.

But it was like watching myself from the end of a long, black tunnel. The poor girl on the other end—she was bruised and confused
and beaten and I felt sorry for her. Whoever she was.

All it took was one look in the bathroom mirror the next morning to convince me that there was no way I could go anywhere.

My eye had a smudgy-looking purple line underneath it—probably something I could cover up with makeup pretty easily—but my
cheekbone was a mess. It was puffy and bruised, and it hurt to look at, much less touch.

Walk out of this house looking like this
, I told myself,
and you’re going to have questions to answer. And are you prepared to answer them? No? I didn’t think so
.

I tried washing my face in the coldest water that would come out of the sink, but it didn’t help, except to soothe my eye,
which felt like it had sandpaper under the top lid. It was still hard to open my eye fully, and it watered from the sunlight.

In the end, I crawled back into bed, flopped onto my
side, pressing my cheek into the pillow to hide it, and called Celia into the room.

“What’s with you? Sick or something?” she asked, leaning in the doorway.

I nodded, gritting my teeth against the pain in my cheek, pushing up against the pillow like that. “Can you have Dad call
school? I’m supposed to work tonight, too, so have him call both.”

“Is it cramps?”

“No,” I said. Why couldn’t Celia make anything easy? “I think it’s the flu.”

She frowned. “You don’t look like you have the flu.”

I grunted exasperatedly. “Just… Celia, can you just do this one thing for me, please?”

“Whatever. But if you’re lying so you can hang out and have sex with Cole all day, don’t expect me to cover for you. Gross.”

If I could have, I would have thrown something at her at that moment. But I couldn’t let my cheek leave the pillow. Instead,
I pasted on my best pathetic, miserable fever face and batted away thoughts of killing her.

She left the room, yelling for Dad, and not for the first time I wondered how my sisters and I had grown so far apart. When
we were little and Dad was desperate and failing, we’d hung on to one another like lifelines. The sting of not having a mom
fresh and raw, we became one another’s mommy.

But after a while, it seemed like Shannin and Celia
just… forgot the sting. And because I didn’t fit into their world, perfect despite everything that was missing, they started
doing the stinging instead.

I knew Celia didn’t really hate me. But most days it felt like she did.

After a few minutes I heard Dad’s heavy boots scuffing down the hallway, and I checked my hair and pillows for maximum black-eye
coverage. I pulled the quilt up to my good cheek and curled into a ball, grabbing my knees and trying to shiver without being
obvious.

“Celia says you’re sick,” Dad said, standing in the doorway, hands hanging at his sides awkwardly.

I nodded. Gave a weak cough.

“I called school and work,” he said.

“Thanks,” I croaked.

“I can’t stay,” he said uncertainly. Not like I ever expected him to. Not since Shannin got old enough to babysit, anyway.

“ ’S okay,” I said, keeping my voice weak.

“Okay,” he said, squinting at me. I pushed my face harder into the pillow, just in case in my theatrics I’d started to show
some cheek. “Well, if you need anything…” But his voice trailed off, and I wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement.
He knocked twice on the doorframe with one knuckle and then started to leave but seemed to think better of it and turned back.
“When I called… that lady you work with,” he said. “She said I needed to look after you real close. Said she thought you might
be in some trouble.”

I almost forgot that I was trying to hide my cheek and
sat up. Georgia! She’d talked to my dad behind my back? How could she?

I shook my head slightly. “She must have meant that we’re all in trouble with the owner right now, that’s all. I’m not in
any trouble.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m not pregnant. I’ve just got a bug, Dad.”

He shuffled his boot against the hardwood floor, thankfully giving my face a rest. At least now the shivering I was doing
wasn’t an act. I was furious with Georgia for getting into my business. So mad I was shaking. If it wasn’t for my face, I’d
go up to The Bread Bowl and confront her right now. She had no right.

“You know what your mother would say about trouble,” he said, and I nodded, even though I never knew what my mother would
have said about anything. If she’d ever said anything to me, I didn’t remember it. Just once I wished he would stop insisting
that I knew what my mother would have said or done about something and acknowledge that I, truly, had no clue.

He tramped back down the hallway. A few minutes later I heard him and Celia talking as they headed out the front door, and
at last I could relax.