Scary Out There (14 page)

First she covered her mouth with her hands. Then she hugged the doctor, and she hugged Gordy, and that was that.

I vanished from the room.

•  •  •

Tuesday was nothing. Tuesday was quiet in the house and homework and my mother cleaning everything she could find. She bustled into my room without asking and ripped the sheets off my bed. Meanwhile, I thanked the Lord that I had my sleeves rolled down.

Noah called me at dinnertime.

“Can you come over?”

“Why?”

He sighed. “I need help with my math homework.”

“And?”

Another pause. “And my parents are out to dinner for at least two hours.”

•  •  •

So, I went to Noah's house. There was no homework. He pulled me inside and pushed me against the door without saying hello.

“Why are you doing this?” I breathed at him.

He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Casey, let's just enjoy the time we have.”

I used to enjoy this. I used to think it was secret and kind of sexy, and I was into it. But Mila kept talking about Noah, and she would report every interaction they had at lunch, and everyone followed their story with rapt attention, and I was supposed to follow along.

The first time he kissed me, I wanted to tell Mila first. I actually went up to her and said, “Mila, I have to tell you something.” And she responded, like a glowing mother, “Me too! I totally have a crush on Noah. It just, like, hit me. I think he's wonderful.”

Suddenly, I had betrayed her, and I hadn't even known.

“You know how much Mila likes you,” I said to Noah as he led me up into his room.

“I don't really care,” he said. “I don't want to date. Dating is pointless. I'm a senior in high school. I'm going to go to California next year.”

Pointless. Yeah.

“So, what are we doing?”

He let go of my arm. He turned slowly. “If you want to stop, just say so.”

How could I explain? That I hated him and loved him? That I knew it wasn't actually love, but my brain knew nothing else but this. That I wanted to be touched, that I used to think this was fun, that I wished I knew how to say no, even though I didn't want to stop forever, I just wanted to be in control.

I didn't say any of this. He kissed me again and erased my thoughts, and it seemed like maybe it was going to be okay until he went for my shirt and I forgot, I forgot, because it was Noah, because maybe I wanted him to see.

“What the hell?”

He stared at my wrists. Stared through my wrists.

We locked eyes. Fear permeated his gaze. He looked at me and he was disgusted.

I grabbed my shirt and ran.

•  •  •

Stupid stupid stupid.

As soon as I walked into school on Wednesday (my left calf was gone gone gone), Mila was waiting for me.

“You bitch,” she spat, and turned on her heel.

“Mila!” I shouted and ran after her. There was only one explanation. Noah had told someone that I'm some kind of circus freak. “I wanted to tell you!”

“Screw you, Casey,” she said as I jogged beside her. “I guess Noah probably already did, huh?”

“It's not like that. Mila, please!” I grabbed her arm. I pulled up my sleeve. “Look at me!”

She met my gaze, and she rolled her eyes and pulled out of my grasp. She didn't even glance at my arms.

I didn't eat lunch. I hid in the library; hid from the dirty looks everyone gave me. I threw up the protein bar that my mother made me eat this morning. Guess what happened this weekend? Crazy Casey went to Perfect Noah's and kissed him. Crazy Casey said she didn't care about her best friend Mila. (What a bitch.) She seduced Noah and they slept together, but it didn't mean anything to him, even though she was clearly obsessed with him and had been for months.

Nothing about her invisible limbs.

I went into the private study room in the back of the library. There was a girl in there, overweight with clothes stretched so tight, they looked like they were going to pop off at any minute. I was about to step back and apologize when she stood to face me. Her skin was tinged blue, almost like Sam's. Water dripped off her. Her hair was plastered to her face. And she was getting bigger, as if she were absorbing water.

She was sobbing. “Why can't I be pretty?”

Puffed up and waterlogged, like she'd thrown herself into a river and no one had found her.

I slowly slid my backpack around to throw at her, to make her go away like the others.

She bared her pointed teeth. “Like you!”

Then she rushed at me, hands going for my throat. I ran for the bathroom and locked the door. It wasn't real.

She banged on the door.

I slid down to the floor. It wasn't real.

“Give me your body,” she hissed. “Give me your pretty little head.”

“I'm not pretty.” I wrapped my hands around my face.

“Give it to me.” She gave a strangled scream.

“I'm not pretty!” I yelled into my knees. My nails bit into my tights, pinching my skin. “I'm nothing! Nothingnothingnothing!”

Silence crept up and rang in my ears. I was alone. I decided to stay in the bathroom for a while, except sitting there next to the toilet was making me feel sick. When I finally pushed up onto my feet, wobbling a few times, my vision spun. I grabbed the handicapped rail and pushed my hand against my eyes. My shirt had ridden up. I caught a glimpse of something.

I went to the mirror and lifted my shirt. There, across my stomach, as if someone had raked their hands across my navel, five long, see-through lines appeared. Like an animal had torn at me, but instead of blood and guts, there was nothing.

Someone knocked on the door. I tucked my shirt into my pants, stuffed my jacket on, and pushed out into the library again. There were kids peppered throughout the stacks, and I just kept thinking, someone heard me, someone
must
have heard me. But I was wrong. Either no one heard, or no one listened.

•  •  •

When I drove home, there was a second car in the driveway. It took me a solid minute to realize whose car it was. Dad's.

Gordon must be getting a transplant. Or he was dying. It was the only reason Dad would show up.

I walked into the house and smelled dinner. Transplant.

Macaroni and cheese. Gordon laughed. Dad waved at me. My breath whooshed out of me, and I had to steady myself for a second.

“Hey, Case Face.”

Definitely a transplant.

“Did we find someone?” The words rushed out of me.

“Yes, the doctor's found someone,” my mom said. “Now, sit down. It's Gordon's big night. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

I stared at Gordon all evening. I watched his little body moving, pictured his little bones beneath and the bullets in his blood that were tearing him apart. I watched him smile and tried to smile back, even when my family sat on the couch and my dad and mom plucked at Gordy's toes and counted them and laughed (one two three four five little piggies), just like they used to do with me. He was too old for it, but no one seemed to care.

(It's nothing.)

Ten times I tried to say,
Something is terribly wrong with me
, once for every missing toe.

•  •  •

I called Noah that night.

He answered but didn't speak. I could practically feel his breath on my neck as we sat silently.

“Why did you do it?” I said. My eyes burned.

“I got freaked, okay? I keep thinking about it. I'm sorry. I didn't want to do that to you. I really didn't. It just happened, and I thought if I pushed you away, then you would get help. Clearly, I'm not good for you. We're not good for each other anymore. But I could try to be better. I don't know anymore. But, Casey . . . you need hel—”

I hung up.

•  •  •

I awoke in a sweat with three pairs of eyes and three sets of broken teeth on me.

My hand was in the boy's mouth. I saw my flesh disappear between the yellow-white knives of enamel. It didn't hurt. It just was.

My skin was there and then it was not.

“Please don't,” I whispered.

The boy gave a smile, but it ripped right past where his lips should have been.

“Please don't,” he mocked.

All three of them chanted the words. The girl from the library fell on me and held my arms against my chest. The weight was crushing. The boy grabbed my legs. They still laughed and pretended to plead.

Sam walked up to me. She knelt down by my head. I could see her neck, still raw and burned. “You need help,” she said.

Stupid.

Her jaw opened wide, unhinged, like a snake.

“You're nothing.”

“You're ugly.”

“You bitch.”

She descended toward my throat, to shut me up forever, I hoped. I could finally stop hurting people, stop hurting myself. I could join Sam and the other kids who lost themselves, and then none of this would matter. I could finally stop pretending.

A knock sounded on the door.

The ghosts vanished.

I made sure all of me was covered before I peered into the hall. Gordy stared up at me. He was crying. He put his hand on his lips, to shush me. Dad was on the couch downstairs, so we had to be quiet. I opened my door wider for him.

He crawled into my bed and shook. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around him.

“Casey.”

“Yeah, Gord?”

He kept his eyes shut tight. “I'm scared.”

I pet his head. “About the transplant?”

He nodded.

“I'm scared too.”

He took my hand, the one that had just been bitten off, but his eyes were still closed.

“Why do Mom and Dad sleep in different rooms?”

“Sometimes people stop loving each other.” The words felt thick in my mouth. Surely they had said as much to him? I couldn't be the first one explaining divorce to Gordon.

“Do you not love me anymore?”

I didn't know what to say to that.

“I want to see you.”

I squeezed his hand. He burrowed into me.

“I miss you.”

I looked up from Gordon and saw the ghosts standing against the wall. Waiting their turn. They wanted to finish me off, and I almost let them. (I let them in.)

“I'm sorry, Gordy. I'm so sorry.”

I felt something in my toes, in my stomach, in my wrists. When I looked down, I could see them again. I could see the scabs. I could feel the burn from the cuts.

Gordon put his hands around my scars.

Rachel Tafoya
is an author, a teacher, a huge nerd, and a bookseller. She is a graduate of the Experimental Writing for Teens class, which she now teaches at the Doylestown Bookshop. She also works at that bookstore and crams in as much writing time as possible between those two jobs. She is the author of
The Night House
, and has been published in
Radius Magazine
. She is the daughter of author Dennis Tafoya. She and her adorable dog make their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Website:
todaysemotions.tumblr.com

Twitter: @RachelTafoya

Facebook:
facebook.com/RachelTafoya

ZAC BREWER

J
eremy Grainger had nothing to lose. His mom was never home, off spending her hard earned, bar-waitress cash on bingo and booze instead of groceries or rent. His dad had split before the words “I'm pregnant” could cross his mom's lips. The three assholes since who'd tried to take his place had been of a similar, slimy sort. Apparently mom had a type. All three had been unemployed in the legal sense, but sold drugs out the back of their piece of crap trailer. Only one had ever hit Jeremy. One had hugged him a little too long, a little too tightly. The other one just yelled. The best of the bunch was the yeller, Jeremy supposed. So what did he have to lose? The torn clothes he was embarrassed to wear, which he washed out in the kitchen sink with dish soap every night? The friends he didn't have? A shred of dignity, or even a splinter of hope? Neither of which he'd ever experienced. No. Nothing. Jeremy Grainger had nothing to lose.

Nothing at all but the pulse in his veins.

As he made his way down the dirt road that led out of the trailer park, he passed Bernie's truck and caught a glimpse of
his reflection. Bernie was a mean guy. He managed the trailer park, but made most of his money cashing in his elderly mother's social security checks. He was fat and smelled faintly of spoiled tapioca. But he was always smiling. Maybe because he knew what he was—a no-good piece of crap—and he was just fine with that. It must be nice, Jeremy thought, to know what you are and to be okay with that. For the most part Jeremy had no idea who he was. Unless you counted the passing thought that his own reflection whispered into his mind.
I'm a loser
, he thought.
A worthless loser.

And he was a loser. Born from a long line of losers. The furthest any of his relatives had gotten in school was his uncle who lived states away in Cincinnati, working as a mechanic. Everyone else made it to high school, but dropped out. Many of his relatives couldn't even read by that time. And the sad thing was that none of them seemed to care.

Jeremy had cared at first, but he learned quickly to give that all up. If he got good grades, he'd be accused of thinking he was better than them. If he interjected something he'd learned in school that day, mockery followed instead of praise. So Jeremy stopped caring and accepted his fate. He was a loser, and no one would give a crap if he threw himself off the Johnson Street bridge.

Inside his right front jeans pocket was a bus ticket to Saint Louis that he'd swiped from the purse of Mrs. Stevens, his English teacher. Sticking out of his left pocket was a flask filled
with something that smelled like his mom's breath whenever she “worked late.” He hadn't yet decided if he was getting on a bus or jumping off a bridge, but he was hoping the stuff inside the flask would help him make up his mind. Because Jeremy was done accepting the hand that fate had dealt him. He was going to take responsibility for his own life, no matter how little of it might be left. It was now or never. If he was going to die, he'd better get moving. The bus was leaving the station at five past midnight.