RAGE (4 page)

I put my books on my bed quietly and slipped out the back door, holding the stinky backpack in one hand as far away from me as I could. So far, I’d managed to avoid Travis. I was pretty sure he was in bed. He usually was when I came home from school. I had a feeling he slept all day. Probably so he could stay up at night and bother me.

At the edge of our backyard was a forest. I used to like to walk around in it, exploring. But lately, I’d just been staying in my room trying to avoid Travis. Taking a shovel from our shed, I walked into the woods for the first time in a long time. I’d like to be able to say I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone into the forest behind our house, but that would be a lie. I remembered it very well. I probably always would.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I needed to get away from Travis. He’d been in my room the night before and had been rougher than usual with me. To take my mind off things, I set out into the woods preoccupied with finding a nest of baby squirrels.

I didn’t wear a watch. I didn’t even own a watch. Not then, not now. So I’d lost track of time. Disappointed that I hadn’t found any squirrels, I made my way back to the house. There was a rumbling in my stomach, and I hoped I could sneak some food to my room without Travis noticing me. And I might’ve been able to. But when I emerged from the tree line and stepped into the yard, Travis opened the back door. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.

As I saw the look on his face, I considered running to a neighbor’s house. I knew that if I did, what would happen to me would be far worse than what would happen if I just went into the house now. So I walked across the yard, dragging my feet. I slowly climbed the rickety steps that lead to the back door, my feet heavier with each step.

This close to Travis, I smelled the alcohol. I could also still detect the smell of sex left over from the night before. He stepped back so I could come inside. As I walked past him, he slammed the door, wrapped his arm around my neck, and dragged me into the living room where he beat me for more than an hour.

He told my mother I’d ran away and returned home battered and bruised. He said I must’ve been beaten up and realized that life outside our house was harder than I’d thought and returned.

All because I took a walk in the woods.

As I walked into the forest now, backpack clutched in my left hand, shovel in my right, I walked much farther than necessary. I just felt better with more distance between Travis and me.

I sat on my knees on the ground and put the backpack in front of me, unzipping it. It didn’t smell any better now than it had when it was hanging in my locker. Wishing I’d brought gloves, I reached in to pull out the cat, and then decided to dump it out instead.

With the cat lying on the ground, I tossed aside my backpack, which now had a large brown stain on the bottom from the cat’s blood.

He wasn’t a very large cat. He was black with grey stripes. One eye was missing, and his little pink tongue was hanging from his mouth. A rib was poking through his side. This was where the blood had come from. Looking at him, I couldn’t tell how he had died. He’d probably been run over. But it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Dominic had killed him somehow.

I stared at him for a long time, wondering what it felt like to be dead. There had been so many times that I wished I could die. I wanted to be dead. I wanted to be with my dad, and be rid of Travis and Dominic. I wanted to be where it didn’t matter that I was flunking almost all my classes. And the only way I knew to get all those things was to die.

I picked up a stick, and poked the cat with it. Then, I wondered the cat felt like. I knew what cats felt like when they were alive, but I’d never touched a dead one.

Tossing aside the stick, I slowly stuck out my hand, getting closer and closer to the cat. I thought of pulling it back, but I really wanted to touch it, to know what it felt like.

It was hard and stiff. I poked it with my finger a few times, but it was no better than poking it with a stick.

So I petted it. It sort of felt like petting a live cat, only it didn’t purr or meow or turn its butt around to face me.

So I picked it up. It felt like I was holding a fake cat. It was stiff as a board and not warm at all. If a stuffed animal was stuffed with concrete, I imagined this was what it would feel like.

In my mind, I heard Dominic telling me to have my way with it. He said this would be the only pussy I ever got. Sadly, I realized he was probably right, and the trembling I’d felt earlier when he made fun of me in front of all those boys returned. I didn’t fight it this time. I was alone in the woods. No one would see if I cried or got angry.

I punched the cat.

If the stupid thing hadn’t died, Dominic wouldn’t have found it and then he couldn’t have put it in my locker and he couldn’t have made fun of me and all those boys would’ve had no reason to laugh at me. Everything would’ve been fine.

I punched it again.

And again.

And then, I grabbed it tightly with both hands and raised it above my head. I brought it down quickly, slamming it against the ground to the sound of crunching bones. Again, I raised it and brought it down. And again. And again.

It felt good.

I kept slamming the cat’s lifeless body against the hard earth. After twenty or so times, I realized I was crying. And cursing. I was damning Dominic and Taylor and Spencer and Garrett. I was damning my mother and father. And I was double damning Travis.

How dare they? How dare they do this to me? I did nothing to any of them. I didn’t deserve to be treated the way they were treating me.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

After I’d exhausted myself, I stopped abusing the cat. I sat there, crying, until I’d calmed down enough to dig a hole. Overwhelmed with guilt, I then placed the cat’s broken body in the hole and filled it with dirt. I took my backpack back to the house where I tried to clean the blood out of the bottom. I got most of it, but I could still see the outline of the stain. I didn’t even care anymore.

I threw the backpack on the floor of my room and collapsed on the bed. As soon as I did, I heard Travis coming down the hall toward my room. I shut my eyes and prayed for him to just keep walking.

He threw open my door.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he yelled, shirtless and drunk.

“Outside.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing.”

He stomped into the room and jerked me off the bed by one arm.

“You ask me to go outside?”

I shook my head no.

“That’s right, you didn’t. Prick. You’re supposed to ask me. I’m your daddy. Right?”

I said nothing.

He slapped me across the face hard, causing my ears to ring.

“Say it,” he said through clenched teeth. “Say I’m your daddy.”

I hated him. I didn’t see him as my daddy so I said nothing.

He shoved me aside, sending me flying into the chest of drawers. He was at me before I could recover.

“Say it, you little bastard.” His eyes were wild and spit flew from his mouth as he spoke, splattering my face in foul-smelling drops.

“No,” I said, scared to death. I didn’t want to say it. It would be a lie.

He punched me in the face, his fist connecting with my left eye. I saw white flecks floating in front of my eyes, and blackness at the edge of my vision. I felt like I was floating. Unfortunately, it didn’t kill me. It didn’t even knock me out. And somehow, I’d managed to remain standing. Then I realized I was using the chest of drawers for support. I was pushing myself up against it, and with my hands behind me, was clutching the sides of it.

“You disrespectful little son of a bitch,” he said. He backhanded me with his E-V-I-L hand, making my head snap to the left.

He unzipped his pants.

“Don’t,” I said quietly, voice cracking.

“Shut up. If you won’t say what I tell you to say, keep your mouth shut.”

He grabbed my shoulders and spun me around so fast, I nearly fell.

“Drop your pants,” he shouted.

I hesitated.

“Now,” he barked into my ear, slapping the back of my head.

I unfastened my jeans as I fought to keep tears from falling. I didn’t want him to see me cry. I had a feeling he’d like it. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d hurt me.

I let my jeans fall to my ankles.

He punched me in the ribs.

“Underwear too, dumbass.”

I felt my chin quiver as I dropped my underwear.

He grabbed my throat from behind with his G-O-O-D hand and used his other to guide himself into me.

The pain was horrific. Not only the pain of what he was doing to me back there, but I was forced to watch in the cracked mirror that hung over my chest of drawers.

I saw my left eye growing black from where he’d punched me. My right cheek had his handprint welted on it from the backhand. I saw his hand wrapped around my throat, squeezing until I could barely breathe. And I saw his face as he raped me. He was enjoying himself. But then again, he always did.

And then I saw something that froze my soul. Tears were making their way down my cheeks, dripping onto his arm.

I’d fought so hard for so long to keep him from seeing me cry. And now it was over. I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t stop it. I was crying openly, though it was very difficult with the little oxygen I had. I had no brave front now. I had nothing to hide behind, no false bravado. He knew. He knew he hurt me and how bad he hurt me.

But I hadn’t called him daddy.

He met my eyes in the mirror, saw the tears, smiled and went at me harder.

As I walked to school Wednesday morning, I struggled to think up a lie to explain my black eye. I didn’t want to say I fell down. It was lame and everyone would know it was a lie. Besides, I’d used that one before.

I wanted to tell the truth, but I didn’t want to put my mom through that. She’d be sad and hurt. I’d seen her suffer after losing my dad, and it’s something I didn’t ever want to see her go through again. If she found out what Travis was doing to me, it would crush her.

I hung the stained but less smelly backpack in my locker and headed to Algebra. It wasn’t until I was seated that I realized I’d forgotten to bring my book to class. I didn’t care. It’s not like I was going to learn anything from it anyway. I had remembered to bring my notebook, though. So I spent the hour doodling.

Feeling Carly’s eyes on me in class, I didn’t look at her. I wanted to. But I was afraid she’d see my shame. A lot of people said that the eyes are the window to the soul. Other people said you could have things written all over your face. If either of those things were true, one look at me would tell Carly everything I didn’t want her to know about me. So I kept my eyes on my notebook.

When the bell rang, she followed me out of the class and to my locker, asking me questions. Questions I wanted to answer truthfully, but couldn’t.

“Brian, what happened to your eye?”

“I was playing baseball and took one to the eye. I’m not a very good catcher.”

“It’s pretty bad.” She continued walking with me, but was silent for a minute. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

“Call you?”

“Yeah. You were supposed to call so I could help you with your homework.”

“Oh yeah. I got busy. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It happens. You can call anytime. I’ll always be there to help you with your homework.”

We were at my locker now. She turned to me and leaned in a little bit and said, “I’ll be there to help you with anything, Brian.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If you want to talk or anything, just call me. Okay?”

I nodded. She walked away, and I got the feeling that she had an idea of what I was going through. I’m sure she didn’t know the half of it, but she knew something was going on with me. Maybe I should call her. Maybe talking about it would help. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to put so much on her. She was just thirteen too. What did I expect her to do? She couldn’t stop any of it anymore than I could.

In English Lit, I wasn’t surprised at all to realize I’d not only failed to read the story, but I hadn’t written the summary. Another F. Oh well.

Maybe I could focus more on my homework if I wasn’t always trying to fight off my mother’s husband.

I should’ve made the time to do it, though. Carly was trying to help me. I should be trying to help myself as well. But after Travis had used me, I’d spent the rest of the night curled in the fetal position on my bed crying. Except for the fifteen minutes I’d spent in the bathroom with the handful of pills, trying to think of a reason not to swallow them all.

But from now on, I needed to make time. No matter what was going on at home, I needed to make time to concentrate and get my homework done. At least if I failed because I got the answers wrong I’d know that I tried. Failing because I didn’t do it at all was really failing.

The next couple hours went smoothly. In Woodworking, Carly and I talked about the Spring Fling dance that was coming up.

“Who are you taking?” she asked.

“No one.”

“What? Who’d you ask? You did ask someone, didn’t you?”

I shook my head while taking measurements of a board.

“Brian! Why not?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Really? Are you just saying that to get out of it or do you really not want to go?”

I thought about just asking her to go with me. The worst thing that could happen is she’d say no. But I’d rather live the rest of my life thinking she would’ve said yes if I’d only asked than hearing her actually reject me.

“I don’t want to.”

She looked at me and thought for a moment. “What are you going to be doing that night if you’re not going to the dance?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I need to study.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you do. But you could study any other night. The Spring Fling only happens once a year.”

I said nothing.

“You should go.”

“Are you going?” I asked.

I could feel her looking at me as I marked the board for cutting.

Finally, she said, “I don’t know yet.”

“Has anyone asked you?”

“Yeah. Derek and Jake both asked me, but I don’t want to go with either of them.”

I finished marking the board and picked up the handsaw.

“Why not?”

“Derek’s a jerk and Jake only asked me because Miranda told him no.”

“So who do you want to go with?” My heart stopped in anticipation of her answer. Then, suddenly, I was afraid of her answer. There were plenty of other boys she might want to ask her to the dance. It would crush me to hear her say one of their names. But I’d already opened my dumb mouth and asked, so I braced myself for whatever answer she gave.

“I don’t know. I think I’ll just wait and see who else asks me.”

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I began cutting. I wanted to ask her. More than anything I’d ever wanted. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What if I’d read her wrong? What if she wasn’t referring to me asking her to the dance? How stupid would I look then?

I spent the rest of class cutting her boards. We then went to lunch, where I ate alone at my table and managed to avoid Dominic. In fact, my day was going pretty smooth. No incidents at lunch. In Biology, he ignored me because slicing open a frog was much more entertaining to him. But then came P.E. That’s when my day went to hell.