Crossing the Barrier (28 page)

And he loved her.

“But I have to get ready,” he said, sadly. “I have practice with the guys in a little while, and I need to go.”

“I know.”

She turned around and kissed him. She knew he was self-conscious about morning breath, and so was she, but she found it in herself not to care. This boy, this man, loved her. Why should she care about something so minor?

“Do you think we can do that, like, every day?” Lily asked. “You know, you and me, waking up in the same bed?”

“Let me think…” Malakai said, glancing up. “Yes!” he said, looking back at her with a wide grin on his face.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her again. When the kissing became too heated, he pulled away with a groan.

“I really do have to go,” he said, putting his forehead against hers. “I don’t want to.”

“But the others are counting on you.”

“Yeah.”

They both got up, and thirty minutes later, Lily was walking Malakai to the front door. Once there, he turned around to face her and gently put his hands on her cheeks. He lifted her face toward his and kissed her gently.

“I don’t want to go,” he whispered against her lips.

“You have too. I’ll see you later, okay?”

He gave her one final kiss and walked out the door. From the open doorway, Lily watched him pull from the curb and drive away. She had just closed the door and was about to turn around when she suddenly felt it: intense and irrational anger. In the next instant, she received a blow behind the head and knocked her forehead on the closed door in front of her.

“You little slut!” Beatrice screeched, as Lily turned around.

Lily hadn’t felt her approach. She hadn’t felt the chaos she now perceived coming from her mother. Beatrice felt insane with rage. If feelings had colors, this would look like a mosaic of rapidly changing ones.

Beatrice slapped her again, and as Lily brought her hands to protect her head, she continued hitting her.

“Stop! Stop!”

But Beatrice didn’t stop.

The chaos turned into anger, then to chaos again, and Beatrice kept on hitting her, scaring Lily to an inch of her wits.

“How could you? His jeep was parked in front of the house all night. The neighbors are going to know the little slut you really are. You couldn’t even do something decent with your life. You had to humiliate me by sleeping with that half-breed.

“And now, everybody will know you’re just a tramp, an ungrateful little bitch.”

Lily finally found her way to the stairs and ran up, Beatrice close behind. At least, while she was smaller, Lily was quicker. Once she got to her room, she slammed the door and locked it. A second later, Beatrice began pounding on the door, shouting insults at her.

Lily was too shocked to fully comprehend what had just happened. Slowly, her eyes fixed on the door, she backed away, taking steps after retreating steps, trying to put her head around what was going on. Never in her life had she thought something like this would happen to anyone.

But it was happening.

To her.

She had to get out of here, fast.

Lily frantically looked around for her phone, then she saw it.

On the floor.

Destroyed.

She then turned to her computer.

Also on the floor, broken.

The implications of her broken modes of communication crashed into her, and tears came to her eyes.

It was premeditated. Beatrice had planned this all along, which made things even more unrealistic.

How could anyone believe something like that was happening to her?

She had no way to reach the outside world now.

She was trapped.

Lily sat on the floor, putting her arms around her folded legs, at a loss for what to do.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” Beatrice screeched on the other side of the door.

Beatrice walked away, but Lily felt her in the house, waiting, anticipating, like a predator who had cornered her prey.

Beatrice had really gone off the deep end.

Lily had to find a way to reach out. She had to find a way to get help. She felt like she was in a bad horror movie, the type you would laugh at because it was so ridiculously unbelievable.

As insane as it may sound, this was not a movie.

It was real.

For a moment there, Lily wondered if vampires really existed.

Her mind racing, her heart still beating out of her chest from the fright, she looked around her room. Through her tears, she saw a pile of paper on her desk and an idea came to her.

She stood up, grabbed a few sheets and a pen, then wrote a nine, then a one, then another one, one to a page, in black marker. She took the pages to her window and taped them there, hoping Sandra or someone at the Joneses’ would see them.

And it worked.

An hour later, an hour that felt like a year to Lily, Sandra made her way across the street, glancing at her window. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang, but Lily knew Beatrice would never let her friend in. Frantically, Lily grabbed a pen and another piece of paper and wrote
Charlie
on it. As Sandra made her way back across the street, she looked at her window and nodded.

Lily had the impression another year had passed before Charlie finally showed up, even though it had been less than thirty minutes. When he got out of his car, Lily saw Sandra run to him and point to her window. Charlie then ran to the house, and he did not let Beatrice stop him.

“Lily!” he screamed. “Lily!”

Lily felt how furious he was and how worried.

As soon as she heard him coming up the stairs, she unlocked the door and threw it open. She then rushed to her uncle and collided with him, his arms encircling her.

“What happened? What happened?” he asked her, putting a hand on her cheek and pulling her hair away from her face with the other.

Lily’s eyes felt swollen, and her head hurt. She felt the lump forming on her forehead from hitting the door.

“That little slut slept with that
boy
,” Beatrice screamed, coming up the stairs followed by Sandra.

“Did she hit you?” Charlie asked, pulling her away from him and putting his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down to look into her eyes. “Did she?”

Lily nodded, and Charlie became rigid.

“She deserved it, that little tramp. She never listens to anything I say. She just follows her own program with no consideration to me, to what it would do to this family.”

“Charlie, tell me it’s not real. Tell me I’m in a bad dream,” she said, tears running from her eyes again.

Charlie turned toward Beatrice with eyes so cold they would have frozen hell over.

“If you weren’t a woman, I would give you my fist in your face.”

Lily felt Beatrice internally flinch at the menace, even though her face showed none of it.

“Go downstairs, now, before I forget you are one,” he added.

Beatrice crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised her chin.

“Now, or I swear…” Charlie said.

Beatrice unfolded her arms slowly, threw venom at Lily, and left.

“Sandra, please go home and call your uncle Ben over.”

“No, Charlie, no cops,” Lily said.

“Yes, Lily, he has to come,” Charlie said, taking her face in his hands as Sandra left them. “It’s the only way to make her stop. We need to scare her enough that she will never ever touch you again. If the cops come, we will have a much easier way to get your house back. We will have a documented history of violence.”

Lily didn’t know if it was true, but Charlie believed it to be. He wanted her safe, desperately.

“But…I thought you already had something on her,” she said, puzzled.

“Yes, I do but let’s get all the help we can get,” he said, putting a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Now go get dressed and prepare a bag. As soon as Sandra’s uncle is gone, I’m taking you to my place.

“And where’s your phone? I’ve been trying to call you.”

Lily glanced at her bedroom floor where her phone and computer lay broken. When he saw them, Charlie shook his head.

“We’ll get you new ones before we head to my place. Don’t touch them just yet. I want Ben to see. Once he’s done, we’ll try to have someone at least recuperate your data.

“Now, go get ready, okay? I’ll be waiting for you downstairs, and don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on Beatrice.”

Lily was surprised to see Officer Jones was already there when she came down the stairs fifteen minutes later. When she arrived in the living room, Beatrice threw daggers at her again but didn’t say anything. An officer was talking to her, and Lily felt how angry her mother was, even if she kept her expression relatively neutral, if not innocent.

“Lily,” Officer Jones said, walking to her.

“Hi,” she said, shoving her hands into her jeans pockets and looking at the ground between them.

She shifted her weight to her other foot. She didn’t want to talk to the cops again. Why did her life have to be so messed up that she had to talk to them twice in less than two months? Why couldn’t she be a normal teenager with a normal life and normal problems, one that only worries about the next time she would see her boyfriend?

“Come, let’s have a talk,” he said, taking her to the kitchen where they wouldn’t be overheard. “So, Lily, how have you been?” Officer Jones asked once they were sitting at the counter.

His attempt at making her more comfortable didn’t work, and Lily looked away. She had just spent this awesome night with the boy she loved, and now she felt like crap.

She shouldn’t be feeling this way. She should be basking in the afterglow of her night, not talking to a cop.

“It’s going to be okay,” the officer said with a reassuring smile.

“No, it’s not. She’s in the house my dad left me, and she’s beating the crap out of me for spending the night with my boyfriend.”

“Most parents don’t react well to learning their children are having sex.”

“Who said we were?” Lily asked. “Besides, would you beat the crap out of your son if he was to have a girl over for the night? Would you destroy his phone and his computer so he can’t reach anyone while you’re lurking outside his door in case he comes out of his room?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” the officer said, shaking his head. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”

She did. All of it.

“That was clever, the sign in the window,” he said approvingly.

“Sandra and I always had the code in case one of us needed it.”

“Was this the first time your mother came after you? Hurt you I mean?”

“No.”

She told him the time when Beatrice had grabbed her arm so hard she had a bruise the next day.

“Lily, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to document this and make a report, however, if it goes any further, it may be seen to some as disciplining. I don’t want to make this sound less serious than it is, but you need to know that.

“Now I don’t intend to tell your mother that because I believe, from what I hear you tell me, she went overboard. I want her scared enough she won’t touch you again. And of course I know your family situation since Nicole has asked me for advice about you before.”

Lily’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t known Nicole had taken things that far.

“Don’t be angry at her,” Officer Jones said gently. “She deeply cares about you. And so does your uncle.”

“But not my own mother,” Lily said bitterly.

“I know. Now let’s go upstairs so you can show me what she’s done. Your uncle told me he told you to leave everything the way you found it.”

Lily nodded.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Lily stood and, followed by Officer Jones, made her way up the stairs. She was about to walk in her room when the officer stopped her by putting an arm in front of her. He peered inside for a moment, then frowned.

“What is it?” Lily asked, now worried.

“Lily, please call Charlie over.”

Lily felt like the room temperature had gone down by ten degrees. She knew it was serious, very serious, but she didn’t know what it was.

“Charlie,” she called.

“Yes, kiddo?”

“Officer Jones wants you up here.”

A moment later, Charlie was standing next to them. Without a word, still standing in the doorway, Officer Jones pointed at something in her room. Lily followed the direction of his finger and saw her school backpack on the ground, next to her desk. It was on its side, opened.

“What is it?” she asked.

The flash of worry coming from Charlie made her turn to him.

“What is it, Charlie?” she asked again, then turned and looked at her backpack again.

A bag of something white was showing from inside—a bag big enough to contain a sandwich.

“Uncle Charlie?” she asked, not understanding what she was seeing.