“I’m sorry, this number is temporarily out of service. Message…”
There’s a pounding on the door. I push out a breath. It’s her! I race to it and open it but it’s Simon.
“What the fuck is going on?” he yells until he sees my face and his own goes from angry to confused to pitying, and I want to throw up and I’m on my knees.
“She’s gone. She’s fucking left me.”
Chapter 8
Megan
I thought I had beat it. Beat the voices behind my thoughts that said I’d never be good enough, smart enough, normal, that I don’t deserve to be happy, that I’m worthless, weak, selfish. I thought I had escaped the circumstances of my predetermined destiny, but sitting here now I realize I haven’t beat anything.
I’ve come to accept that I can’t keep blocking it out anymore, pretending it didn’t happen or that there was another existence. I have to face it if I have any hope of a future for myself especially with Kam.
The truth is I don’t remember the first seven years of my life. My first memory is sitting next to a social worker and meeting my new “family” aka the people who tolerated me, collected checks, and did as little as possible to parent me except the days the visits came. To not have any recollection of your mother or father is so much more complicated than you’d think.
My foster brothers and sisters, there were so many. But I still remember each one, the good and the bad ones. They all told me that I was lucky. I was lucky because I never knew my parents, and that it’s easier when you have no one to miss or forget.
I never felt lucky. When you don’t know who or where you come from, life is so much more terrifying. A frustrating puzzle, a game you play with no prize, only consequences. When you’re in fifth grade you can’t have crushes on the cute boy who passes you love notes because he could be your half-brother or a distant cousin. When you look in the mirror, you don’t know if your long dark hair came from your mom or if your green eyes came from you dad.
Everything about my life has always been a mystery and it’s not thrilling. More like suffocating. Your medical history is nonexistent. You’re not sure what diseases you’re predisposed to. You don’t know how to answer the doctor’s questions about family history. It makes you feel isolated, reminds you that you’re unwanted with no connections in the entire world. It’s why when I had severe headaches and there was no explanation I only had children’s Tylenol stuffed down my throat like orange juice. When my headaches started being accompanied by blackouts and the doctors didn’t see anything wrong on whatever tests my state-funded medical care afforded, my foster parents told me that I was a liar. They believed I was doing it for attention.
How or why a seven-year-old girl would inexplicably leave and end up miles away, not even remembering how she got there, would do it all for attention is beyond me. And no one cared to find out why.
When I was sent to a group home at thirteen a doctor told me it was panic attacks. At age fifteen I was diagnosed with PTSD. I was sixteen when I met Dr. Gavin. He was special. In his late fifties with a bald spot that caused his head to shine but he was kind and I knew he cared not about the stipend he’d get for seeing me but about my wellbeing. Of all the doctors I had seen, he was invested in my treatment and didn’t just speak to me for five minutes and hand my guardian a prescription for medication that made me tired or want to vomit. He really talked to me.
Our progress was slow but it was something. He cared and I believed he’d be the one to fix me. Right before I turned seventeen Dr. Gavin’s first grandchild was born and he moved to Michigan to help his daughter and that’s when Dr. Johnson took over his practice. It was like I had lost my best friend. My only friend. Dr. Johnson was nice enough. He smiled at me too, but his smile was different. He was younger. I wouldn’t say handsome, but a few girls I went to treatment with had crushes on him.
I didn’t.
I wasn’t looking for a guy to fawn over, I wanted someone who cared about me, who could help me like Dr. Gavin did. Dr. Johnson listened at first but then things changed. He began to talk to me about his life, issues he had with his wife, he asked about boys I liked, how it was normal for me to have crushes and have what he called “special feelings.”
A place I looked forward to going to became a place I dreaded. It started with little things like him rubbing my shoulders, longer-than-normal hugs, then he put his hand on my thigh for a little too long. I wanted to tell someone. I mentioned it to the other girls and they said no one would believe me or even care if they did. I had convinced myself I would ask for another doctor at the very least but then my scheduled day was changed to Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday morning.
I sat in the big comfy chair in front of his desk and he told me he wanted a schedule change so we could have more privacy to talk. He told me we’d be trying a new exercise and to stand and close my eyes. I was terrified but did what I was told. Then I felt his hand on my back, his body up against mine. I was terrified, not knowing what to do, afraid to scream. My body wouldn’t move to push him away. I resigned to it, closing my eyes and praying whatever he did to me would be over quick. And for the first time ever I welcomed the dull ache I hadn’t experienced in years, knowing a blackout was coming.
But when I came to, I wasn’t trembling in a corner. I didn’t feel dirty or invaded.
Dr. Johnson was on the floor, his eyes wide and afraid, blood seeping through his shirt, and I was on top of him with a knife to his throat…a knife I had never seen before. He didn’t press charges but it was decided that I would go to a special foster home and finish out high school online.
“Any more coffee hun?” the waitress asks me, knocking me from my thoughts. She looks tired and frustrated that I’m holding up her table by just ordering coffee.
“Uh, yeah and a side of bacon please.”
She smiles, seemingly appeased. I watch the door waiting for Blue. I’m so glad he said he’d come. I don’t know how I’ll repay him for hiding the truth from Kam, keeping things from Katie, and meeting me in the middle of Michigan, but I’ll have to find a way. Out of the corner of my eye a large man—maybe in his thirties, with dark hair down to his shoulders, bushy eyebrows that looks like they haven’t been washed in a week, and a patchy beard—is approaching my table. I glance up at him from my phone. He licks ketchup from the corner of his mouth. I try to ignore his eyes as they move down to stare at my cleavage.
“I’ve been watching you sitting here all by yourself, and I thought a pretty little girl like you would want some company,” he says with a thick southern drawl.
“No, I’m waiting for someone,” I say to him before turning away. I still feel him behind me. I turn my attention back to my phone to text Blue, asking him for his ETA, when bushy eyebrows plops down across from me in my booth.
“A lady like you shouldn’t be waiting for some jerk who can’t even show up on time.” He chuckles, but there’s a lace of viciousness underneath his laugh. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Look I’m sorry, but I’m not really in the mood to entertain anyone right now,” I say as politely as I can.