The Silent Waters (26 page)

Get fixed?

What if I wasn’t broken? What if this was just me?

Where was Daddy? I needed him to come home. I needed him to try to make sense of Mama’s mind. I needed him to fix this. I kept struggling in her hold as she dragged me up the stairs. “This is for your own good, Maggie. I’m sorry, but this is for your own good.”

I resisted, but she wouldn’t let me go. She wouldn’t let me free. I blinked my eyes and saw him. The devil.

He apologized for hurting me, apologized for pushing a few fingers into the side of my neck, making it harder and harder for me to find my next breaths.

“Mom! Let her go!” Calvin said, coming out of his room. He tried to get Mama off of me, but she shoved him away.

“Stay out of this, Calvin. Your sister is fine.”

No, I’m not. You’re hurting me.

Cheryl came out, and I saw the fear in her eyes. I was certain she saw it in my stare too.

Help me.

“Mom,” she started, but Mama shut her up quick, too.

She dragged me to my room and shoved me inside. With haste, she shut the door, then held it closed from the outside. “You’ll see, Maggie. I’m doing this for you. I’m protecting you.”

What was wrong with her? Why was she acting so insane? I pounded on the door, trying my best to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I shoved my body against it, over and over again.
Let me out! Let me out!
My hands wrapped around my neck, and I could feel him there with me. He was choking me; he was going to kill me.
Let me out, let me out!

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe…I didn’t know what other option I had.

I didn’t know what else I could do, so I did the only thing that came to mind.

I fell to the floor.

I lay face down on the carpet.

I opened my mouth.

And I screamed.

I blinked.

The door flew open and Daddy charged toward me. I was tucked in the corner of my room, my hands slammed against my earlobes.

I blinked.

Mama followed in after him, and he flew around, screaming at her, telling her to leave.

Blink.

Mama cried and tried to get near me, but Calvin and Cheryl held her back.

Blink.

Daddy bent down, staring me in the eyes, checking if I was okay. “Maggie?” he whispered. He choked on air. “Maggie.”

Blink.

He combed through my hair, lifted me up.

“Let me near her,” Mama begged.

Daddy laid me in my bed and then ushered Mama out of the room.

Blink.

I could feel him. It felt so real. He was choking me again. He was taking my air. He was back. It was real. It was real…

Blink.

Daddy left the room to go scream at Mama. All they did was scream. Calvin and Cheryl came into my room.

Blink.

The two climbed into bed with me and wrapped their arms around me. They held me tight as I shook in their grips.

Blink.

Cheryl kept telling me I was fine, and Calvin kept agreeing as I cried into my sheets, shaking, feeling broken, confused. Scared. So scared.

Shh…

Shh…

Why did Mama do that? Why did she drag me? Why did the devil do that? Why did he kill that woman? Why did he try to kill me?

Blink.

I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to blink anymore. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see, but I still saw. I saw him. I felt him. I tasted him. I saw Mama, too. I saw her. I felt her. I loved her.

I hated her.

Why did she hurt me?

Why did she send away the things I loved?

Everything grew darker.

Everything became shadows.

Everything went black.

“You okay today, Magnet?” Brooks asked, standing in my doorway. He hadn’t been allowed into our house for the past week, and since Mama wasn’t home, I assumed Daddy had let him in. Mama had gone to stay with her sister for a few days, a request Daddy had made. I was happy she disappeared for a while.

Seeing Brooks standing there, leaning against my doorframe, broke my heart.

How was it possible?

How could you miss someone who was only steps away from you?

He didn’t ask to come into my room like usual; he stayed there with his hands stuffed into his pockets. “We fly out in the morning. We fly out to meet with the producer, to talk about our future.” He smiled, but it felt more like a frown. That made me sadder than I had known I could be. Music was his dream, and his dream was coming true, yet still, he seemed so sad.

I’m so proud of you.

He snickered and looked down at the ground, sniffling. “What’s going on, Maggie May? In your head?”

I don’t know.

He stepped into my bedroom. “Do you love me?”

Yes.

“But you don’t want to be with me?”

I hesitated to write, because I knew my words would be confusing to him. I couldn’t be with Brooks, especially now. He had his dream finally coming to life, and the last thing he needed was for me to interrupt it with my issues. How could we date, with my parents falling apart? How could we be in love, with him halfway across the country? Even though I hated it, Mama was right. Brooks did deserve more than me. He deserved to be loved out loud, and my love was a whisper in the wind that obviously only he could hear.

He cleared his throat, my nonresponse seeming like all the words he was afraid to hear. “Do you love me?” he asked again.

I do.

He turned away from me for a second and wiped at his eyes. When he turned back, he gave me a tight smile and walked over to me. “Can I hold your hands?”

I held them out, and when he wrapped his fingers with mine, I felt it—the feeling of home rushing through me. A building with walls wasn’t a home. Home was the place where the warmest kinds of love lived between two people. Brooks was home to me.

It took everything for me to not cry.

“You know that moment when you discover a new song? You think, no big deal, you’ve heard a lot of new songs, and this one’s gonna be like all the rest, but when the introduction hits your ears and it rockets through you, you feel it in your bones. Then when it hits the chorus, you know.
You just know
. You know that song is going to change you forever. You’ll never be able to remember your life without those rhythms, those lyrics, those chords. When the song ends, you race to replay it, and each time you hear it, it’s better than you remembered. How is that possible? How could the same words mean more and more each time? You play it over and over again until it’s ingrained in you, until it races through your body, becoming the flow that makes your heart beat.”

My hands trembled in his, and his trembled in mine. We moved in closer, and he rested his forehead against mine.

“Maggie May, you’re my favorite song.”

I couldn’t fight the tears, and he couldn’t fight his, as our faces rested against one another. “I’m so torn right now, Maggie. A part of me wants to go to Los Angeles and chase the dream, but another part of me knows
you
are the dream. You’re it. So tell me what you want. Tell me you want me. I’ll stay. I swear, I’ll stay.”

I stepped back from him, dropping his hands.

His dream was in Los Angeles.

Mama was right.

I was no kind of life for him.

I wasn’t his dream. I was his waking nightmare.

“Tell me to stay, and I’ll stay,” he begged. “Tell me to go, and I’ll go, but don’t keep me here in limbo, Maggie May. Don’t let me leave, not knowing. Don’t make me swim in unknown waters, because I’m certain the unknown is where I’ll drown.”

Go.

He read the words on my board, and I saw the switch in his eyes. He seemed shocked by my response. Hurt. Broken. The look of despair in his eyes stunned me. I rushed over to him and started trying to pull him into a hug.

“Stop, Maggie. It’s fine.”

No. It wasn’t. He was hurting because of me. He was breaking, because I’d broken him.
Please. I need you to understand. Please.

I held up my hand.

Five minutes.

That’s all I needed. Five more minutes.

He sighed and nodded. “Okay. Five minutes.”

I pulled him into a hug and forced him to hold me.

He choked out a cough. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. We were happy.”

I held him tighter and looked up at him. Our lips grazed against one another, and we kissed. We kissed softly first, and then harder. We kissed with our hopes and our apologies all at once. It amazed me how in the past, five minutes had felt like forever, but in that moment, five minutes was a blur.

“Maggie May,” Brooks whispered, his voice cracking. “How did you do that? How did you break my heart and fix it all at once, with just one kiss?”

I felt it, too. Whenever our lips found each other, the kisses hurt and healed. We were thunderstorms and sunlight all at once. How did we do that to one another? Why did we do it? And how were we ever supposed to truly say goodbye?

He touched the anchor necklace I hadn’t taken off in years before he let me go and stepped backward. “I can’t stay here…I gotta go. I gotta let you go.” Within seconds he walked out of my bedroom and out of my life.