I knew it. Believed it.
And I’d give anything to know how to love her back, the way she should be loved, wholly and without all the bullshit holding me down. I wanted to be enough. My spirit writhed. How could I ever be?
When I turned and walked out the door, Aly moaned as if in pain, but she didn’t try to stop me.
I barreled downstairs. Night had completely taken hold. I hopped on the piece-of-shit bike I had bought to get here. I turned it over and the engine churned to life. I rolled it out, trying to see through the anxiety that seized me, constricting my lungs, jackhammering my heart. Everything about this was wrong… so wrong.
Stopping at the gate, I rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes, a loud groan loosed into the air. An unknown emotion welled thick, urgent at the base of my throat as it fought for release. I widened my eyes, striving to clear my vision as I turned out onto the blurry street.
I knew where I was headed.
Because I was drawn.
Traffic was heavy, the streets clogged. I wanted to scream. Raking a hand through my hair, I mumbled incoherencies, not sure I could hold it together. When I finally got across town, I slid the bike into the left-hand turn lane. The blinker flashed, and I wavered. I had a stranglehold on the handlebars when I crossed over the spot where I had taken it all, where she’d bled and I’d never wept. That unspent emotion clashed with the anger, fighting, struggling to break free.
A quarter of a mile down the street, I pulled off onto the shoulder. Dust billowed as I braked, a storm of energy rising around me. I stumbled from the bike. The old neighborhood was eerily quiet, lights glowing from windows, trees whispering in the breeze. Panting, I scoured the field that sat deserted across the street. I sucked in a steeling breath and ran across the street. Shoving the toe of my boot in the chain-link fence, I climbed it and swung my legs over as I jumped down on the other side.
Tall, grassy weeds grew high in the center of the field. I wandered out to the middle and fell to my hands and knees. Memories ran amok, a chaos that came too close and coursed too free. Aly as a little girl… my mother calling my name. Both pulled at me, a war between what I needed and this debt I would never be able to fully pay. Had I really deceived myself into believing if I came back here I could finally escape it? But I’d come on this impulse, an instinct that spurred me forward, promising things would be different.
Yeah. They were different, all right.
I wheezed for air.
I rose onto my knees, my hands pressed to the side of my head, trying to make sense of the million different emotions that were fighting inside my heart and mind.
“Mom,” I called out to her, wishing she could hear. Praying she could. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. I tried. I fucking tried, and no matter what I do, I can’t make this right. I want to make this right.”
I pitched forward, clutching my stomach, knowing that I was absolutely going to lose it. Her face flickered before me, her voice so soft.
“Mom,” I mumbled quietly, “please tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
I just didn’t fucking know anymore.
Hunched over, I buried my face in my hands. And I knew I couldn’t go on like this any longer. Something had to give. I’d tried, and I fucking failed. I was tired of failing. Tired of hurting people I cared about.
In this place, Aly’s presence consumed me. Impressions of the little girl who’d grown to possess me ran rampant, rushed along the hard ground, and drifted in the air.
TWENTY-FIVE
May 2006
Jared closed his eyes as he slumped back on his bed. Warmth shocked through his system, a moment’s euphoria, a moment’s relief. He floated, lifted, and fell. For just a little while, it didn’t hurt so bad.
But it never lasted.
He curled on his side, holding his stomach, trying to deflect the surge of feeling that came storming back. Fire coursed through his veins, a foreign voice shrieking from the hollowed-out hole where his soul had once been. Jared opened his mouth and forced his face into the pillow. A silent scream ripped from this throat.
He couldn’t do this anymore.
Jared sat up. He swayed. He steadied himself and tore a hand through his too long hair as he frantically looked around the haze of his room. He had to get it together and figure this shit out. He kept thinking he’d fill himself so full with poison that he’d sleep, that he’d fall and never wake. But it was never good enough, and he always was thrown back into this everlasting hell.
Jared yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk and shoved the few precious tokens of what had been into his backpack, unsure why he couldn’t leave them behind, topped it with the cheap bottle of whiskey he’d snatched from his dad’s cabinet. He buried his stash in the front pocket under a crumpled-up shirt he grabbed from the floor.
Not like it fucking mattered. He wouldn’t be getting caught this time. He’d see it through. He’d pay, and never again would he have the chance to destroy the good.
Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, Jared went to his window and parted the drapes. With his pulse pounding in his ears, he slowly slid it open. He cringed when it squeaked. He was supposed to be grounded. That was his father’s solution. Grounding. Jared had been arrested and expelled from school, and apparently that had been a just punishment.
Jared scoffed, his grip tightening on the frame of the window. God, his dad was clueless. Did he really think grounding him for a month and sending him to a new school was going to fix things? Really, he knew his dad didn’t want to deal with him or his shit.
Jared couldn’t blame him.
He’d ruined his life.
Night after night, Jared had lain and listened to his father weep, the sound resonating through the barren place that had once been their home. Courtney was gone. Two weeks after the funeral, she’d been sent to their grandparents’ because their father had lost the capacity to care for anything or anyone. It was only supposed to be temporary. Jared’s gut told him it was not. He just hoped she’d escaped this all, that his sister had been spared.
Jared’s father was only another life he had taken.
Jared quietly inched toward his door, inclined his ear to it and listened for his father. Anxiety crawled up his spine. He couldn’t afford to mess this up. A distant TV droned from the living room. The rest of the house echoed the cavernous void. Jared crossed his room to his window and pushed at the frame of the screen until it bent and gave. Holding his breath, he slipped over the sill and out into the night.
Crouched down, he ran across the yard, panting when he hit the garage wall of the Ramirezes’ two houses down. Jared peered through the small window. No lights shone, and their car was gone. For years he’d mowed their lawn, and just as many times he’d sat in their kitchen drinking from a glass of lemonade when Mrs. Ramirez would call him in to take a break from the sun. He also knew what they kept in the den.