The Struggle (The Things We Can't Change Book 2) (6 page)

Do it,
I tell myself. And then aloud, because I haven’t moved, “Do it, you coward. Just do it.”

My hand doesn’t seem connected to my body anymore. I watch it as though it belongs to a stranger, watch as it reaches out and grasps the doorknob. Turns it slowly. Pushes it so the door swings open.

My eyes close of their own accord before I can actually look inside the room. I’m arguing with myself, telling myself to open them when Cindy’s scent hits me. It practically knocks me over. Trapped inside this room for over a month, it’s potent and heart-achingly familiar. It’s not like Evie’s fruity, sexily exotic smell. It’s… younger, more innocent. Vanilla and sweetness. Sugar cookies. It reminds me of Christmas.

I take a step inside and open my eyes. The room is just how Cindy left it, untouched. Bed, desk, and a long bookshelf shoved against one wall, large flat mirrors and a real barre along the entire other wall. I’d helped Dad to install it as a birthday present when I was thirteen, just before my mom got sick. Cindy had actually screamed with joy the first time she’d seen it.

I take a few more steps and slowly, carefully, sink down onto Cindy’s bed. I take in a deep breath, embracing at least Cindy’s scent, if I can’t actually hold her. I look to my right, at her nightstand.

There’s a lamp, a clock, and two framed pictures. I drew both of them. One is old; my mom, back when all was well. Before she got sick, before she ran off and left us and showed me how selfish the world really is. It’s a good drawing, colored and precise, done as a gift on our last Mother’s Day together. She’s laughing and there’s a light in her dark eyes that I remember being thrilled about capturing.

Before I realize it, my blood is running hot and I’ve reached out and knocked my mom’s picture off the nightstand. It lands face down on the hardwood floor and I hear glass shatter and something crack. It gives me a small measure of satisfaction.

“It’s what you deserve,” I mutter, and then I pick up the second frame.

It’s of Cindy, mid-ballet leap. The picture I drew of her. The last drawing I did, almost two months ago. At her funeral, I vowed never to draw again, and there was more force behind this than when my mom left. I want Cindy with me forever, I don’t want to tarnish her memory. She will always be the last, and I won’t sully her memory by drawing anyone or anything else.

A tear slides down my cheek, blazingly, fiery hot, burning my skin as it trickles down my chin and around the curve of my jaw and underneath.

“
No
,” I say aloud. Order, really. I take a quick breath in and it sounds dangerously close to a sniffle. “Hell no.”

I close my eyes and take deep breaths, trying to think innocuous thoughts. School. Cameron. Tessa. Working for Dr. Parker.

That thought gives me a flash of irritation, which banishes the urge to cry. Exhaustion suddenly hits me, and I allow myself to fall sideways onto Cindy’s pillow, pulling my legs up onto her too-small bed. I fall asleep there, still holding the drawing, frame and all, to my chest and fall asleep.

When I wake up in the darkness, hours later, I’m still clutching the frame and my pillow and cheeks are damp. Soaking, really. But because I’m just as crazy as Evie, as Tony and my dad, as everyone seems to be in this messed up world, I pretend they aren’t there. I don’t even wipe at my face as I close Cindy’s door and walk back to my own room.

I just prop Cindy’s picture up on my own nightstand and then stare at it until I fall asleep.

Evangeline

29

I stare at the blank notepad, rapidly clicking my pen until the noise begins to irritate even me. I stop, then glare out the window at the bright, sunny Sunday afternoon.

Come on, Evie. Just write
something.
A character sketch. A lame joke. A short story about Chantal and Tiffany being rejected by Channing Tatum.

I give a huff of laughter at the last one, but nothing comes out. Stalling, I swipe my finger over the mouse pad of my laptop so the screen lights up. It’s open to my blog page, Blood From a Broken Soul. I’ve been running it, anonymously and secretly, for over two years now. Sometimes the title feels a little overdramatic, too far, but other times it feels exactly right. Usually after Tony hit me.

That was when I started it, after the first time he touched me, been physically violent. It helped keep me sane, to come up with the dark words to describe how I was feeling, how trapped and alone and broken I had felt. In the past, I always kept a journal, but the idea of my dad or Clarissa finding it and reading it, finding out what Tony was doing, had terrified me.

Then the blog idea had come. Not to tell my story, oh no. To just get it all
out
. To try and see if there were people out there who felt as broken as I did. I wrote small bits, just my thoughts, feelings, not so much poetry because I didn’t seem to have the turn of hand for it. But thoughts, reflections, short stories, glimmers of hope and triumph, usually quickly snuffed out.

I gained a large following, even set up a matching Twitter. Then I’d gotten my first email, asking me to share someone’s story. It had imploded from there, people sending me similar things to what I wrote, or their actual stories, things they wanted posted anonymously. They just wanted to get it out, as I did, to gain comfort and importance and a feeling of companionship from all the people commenting on it.

I knew all too well how hard it was to share, to tell anyone, even anonymously, what was going on. So I shared everything I was sent, mixing my own stuff in as well. Those stories were what had kept the blog alive for the past three months. I hadn’t been able to write since the first time Tony had…

The thought trails off, because I can’t make myself think the actual word. It’s ugly and grating to the ear and the mind. I’ve only just gotten to the point where I can say aloud that I was in an abusive relationship. I’ll need months of therapy before I can say the R-word.

People have begun to notice that I haven’t posted anything original in a while. People I’ve developed good online relationships with have begun asking if I’m all right. I hadn’t been, before.

But I should be now. Tony is gone, out of my life. Unable to touch me. And yet somehow, he still has an ironclad hold over me. I hate it. Hate that with everything I do, I still think of him. Hate that I still consider his opinion, that all he did is still affecting me.

I should be
better
. I
want
to be better, to be healed. And yet I don’t know how to get there, what’s missing to make me get there. Unwittingly, my eyes stray to my cell phone, sitting silent on my desk. I’m lying to myself, deep down. I know what’s holding me back.

Pain, raw and forceful, slams into me.
Guilt.
The guilt for what I’ve done cuts so deep. I’ve ruined so many lives, not just my own, by keeping Tony’s abuse secret. Tony’s, Zeke’s, Cindy’s, their dad’s, my own father’s. The feeling is overwhelming, choking me, and when I hear a soft
plop
I realize that I’m crying, arms wrapping around my middle as I slowly rock back and forth in my chair. Not sobbing, just… crying. Big, slow, fat tears that roll gently down my cheeks and land softly on my desk and notebook.

I try to do as Dr. Gottlieb has been telling me, picture a different place to be in, reflect on happy times, remember that I am
free
, that none of this is my fault, but I know that it is. My mind won’t let me escape to a happier place. Instead, I can feel the thoughts leaking out, the airy feeling entering my limbs as my brain tries to escape the pain and guilt by floating into nothing.

I can’t do that. I
can’t.
Last time my dad caught me, found me on the couch and said he was shaking me for five minutes before I was able to come back into myself. He’d almost taken me to the hospital, had asked too many questions. I can’t let it happen. Pain. I need pain to keep myself grounded, to feel it in my body so I can remember that is where I have to
stay
. I have to feel the physical pain in order to stay inside my body, so I can feel the emotional pain, let myself drown in it because it’s all my fault and I deserve it.

A sudden stinging along my thighs brings me sharply back to reality, and I look down and see four long red marks along the length of my legs. I’ve scratched myself, and hard too, I realize as I see blood oozing at the beginning on the scratches, the deepest parts of them.
Stop
, I tell myself. I know it’s bad. I know I need to tell Dr. Gottlieb, or my dad. I just can’t make myself. They’ll try to get to the root of it, try to find out why I still feel so guilty that I am trying to escape reality, and then I’ll have to tell them about the message, and I just can’t.

Even as I’m thinking about it, I’m panicking, everything pushing and pulling and crash-careening inside of me and my overloaded brain is trying desperately to push it all out, to escape it all. It’s not enough, not enough pain to keep me here, and I rake my nails up my thighs again, and again, until the entire tops of my legs are red and raw, tender to the touch and stinging at random points where my nails have broken the skin.

“Stop! Stop!” I don’t know who I’m talking to,
what
I’m talking to. Telling myself to stop hurting myself, or telling Tony to stop haunting me. Or telling my guilt to just stop, or my mind to stop trying to leave my body, or if I’m just begging for all of it at once.

Finally I manage to still my hands, bang a fist on the top of my desk and lay my head down on the hard, cool wood, tears still leaking out of my eyes. “Stop! Stop it!” I say it over and over, pounding my fist onto my desk with each word, until my hand is stinging and raw with pain just like my legs. Finally, I feel grounded, safe inside my own body, though now I am consumed with repulsion at myself, at what I’ve done, what I’m still doing even though I shouldn’t have a need for it.

“You’re disgusting,” I say it out loud, so I’m forced to hear it, to acknowledge it. “Just like Tony always said.”

No, no, no. Tony is WRONG!
That sane part of me, the smallest, least dominant part of my mind that is so easily overruled, is screaming the words, but they are ignored. My emotions are running high, everything mashed together, so confusing, so overwhelming. The guilt, the sadness, the disgust with myself and Tony, the
guilt
. Tony. Zeke. Cindy. My dad.

I deserve it. I know I deserve it, deserve to be tortured.
No, you don’t. You don’t. You were a victim, you couldn’t have known! Stop it, Evie! Just stop it! Don’t do it!

Even as I’m screaming at myself to stop, even though I promised myself I wasn’t going to do it again, that I would delete the damn thing, I’m still reaching for my cell phone. Dialing not my dad, asking him for help, to come and make me feel safe, to talk with me about this as I am supposed to, but dialing just a single number.

One.

Voicemail.

And then Tony’s panicked, tear-filled voice is filling my ear and I’m sobbing all over again.

Ezekiel

30

I step out of my dad’s battered old car and he drives quickly away, abandoning me to my fate. It’s insanely early, way too early to be up in the summertime, and the air already feels a little sticky, though it’s cloudy out. That’s Ohio in the summer for you; uncomfortable heat waves that are worse than Florida. And my ass gets to work outside in it. All summer.

I shake my head and stare up at the long, winding drive before me. They live on a hill. Who lives on a hill? I look left, then right. Apparently, everyone on Riverside Drive. Small, sloping green valleys with perfectly manicured lawns and shrubs sit between each hill and house, the land slanting down, then coming back upward in a large mound so a house can sit and crown it, big and level at the top so there’s room for all the necessities. You know, the pool, the tri-level deck, the gazebo and sauna and hot tub and maybe even a tennis court or two. Trees are plentiful on the properties, adding to the owners privacy.

Behind me, morning rush hour is whizzing by on Riverside Drive, so named for the broad river that is on the other side of the four-lane road. The river side has the coveted, if somewhat smaller houses where wealth is shown with the speed and cleanliness of your boat.

I look back to my side of Riverside Drive, the land side, where the sprawling almost-mansions look out over the road and offer a view of the Scioto River. The houses are all built with heavy grey stone, turret towers and carefully grown ivy, Gothic windows and arches and brick fences flanking the driveways.

Brick fences,
I think to myself as I begin my way up the long driveway. I feel
wrong
, somehow, just walking up the big, wide expanse of blacktop. It’s big enough to deserve a sidewalk, really. I feel like I shouldn’t be here. Which technically, I think with a scowl, I shouldn’t. I didn’t ask Evie or her dad to intervene. But, I remind myself, it’s better than the alternative. Or at least… I’m pretty sure that it is.