September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (8 page)

Then, I met Jake. He changed the way I
thought about my life and the choices I was making. The way I
looked at myself. He saw something in me. He valued me, I know he
did. It seeped into every word he said and flowed from his eyes
like a great, winding stream. His care was steady and I grew to
need it like my next breath.

I am rotting in this place,
decomposing on this thin cotton bunk with its one scratchy blanket
and concrete walls—it makes me wish for the one thing I thought I
never would. That I had never seen him, never talked to him or
heard his voice singing my name. I almost wish I never felt the
love he gave and took away. Because being here, knowing all of that
is gone is the worst kind of punishment. Being trapped in this
place makes even the best, sweetest moments sting with bitter
loss.

+++

My freshmen year in high
school, I learned to speak French in two weeks by reading a
French-to-English dictionary that the teacher handed out and forgot
it a month later. I took a semester of Spanish and quit because it
was too remedial; my brain absorbed everything in the text book
before we had our first major test. I’ve retained that easier than
the French, but still forgot most of it. I was like that with
algebra, too. When I looked at the problems, I knew the answers,
but struggled for that
A
because I didn’t know how I knew the answers and
couldn’t show my work on paper. Most times I can look at a puzzle
and know how the pieces fit together without having touched a
piece. Fat lot of good that’s done me.

All of that stuff that never mattered,
I could perform easily. I can still memorize nearly anything on a
page, written words and visual aids, too, but most times, that
ability doesn’t apply to names. And sometimes I blank-out on entire
conversations. So many times I have been talking with a person,
trying to open-up and let them in on my idiosyncrasies, only to
have them tell me they already know. I told them just yesterday or
a half hour ago, don’t I remember?

Now, I spend most of my days feeling
like a dumbass trapped in a fog.

But according to my medical records, I
was always an extraordinarily intelligent child, speaking in full
sentences by age two. I was reading chapter books by age three. I
skipped preschool and kindergarten, hopping straight into second
grade.

Then, the accident that did far more
than fracture my skull. It took time to heal. By the time I was
well enough to return to school, I was the same age as everyone
else in my class. And ever since, for as long as I can remember,
I’ve struggled with recall. How’s that for irony?

Yet, here I am, six years after the
most traumatic night of my life, wishing for the strength to
forget, dying to remember, and being asked to give every filthy
detail.

The assholes in overcoats: my lawyer,
the lady with the tight hair bun, and the quiet man with the sodas,
seem especially interested in the most painful parts.

As much as I love revisiting the time
I spent inside Jakes world, I know that telling these new strangers
what happened won’t help anything. It never made a difference
before and nothing with me or my case has changed so, I don’t see
what’s so unique about right now. But this is how it goes for me: I
have to do what they tell me.

My lawyer showed up at Canyon View a
couple months ago, trying to tell me that I had to appear in front
of this review board, even though it’s only been a few months since
the previous appeal was denied. Obviously, it’s to review my
case—like that’s never been done before. But he swears there’s a
good reason for it and that it’s in my best interest to play
along.

I don’t know why the state
wastes its’ time or money on this shit. No matter what I tell them,
no matter how much truth I give them, it can’t make a difference. I
am convicted; have been for the past six years. But I still have to
talk to them because it’s all about the routine. Making sure every
T is crossed so they can pat themselves on the back and say,
“We done good.”

Everything in these places is routine.
You wake up every day at the same time and go to bed at the same
time. Your meals are all planned out and served up at the same time
on the same day of a different week. You wear the same clothes,
sleep in the same bed. And if you’re not in your cell when the need
strikes, you have to ask to go to the bathroom. They usually make
me hold it.

This routine review comes
up every year. It starts with phone calls between doctors and the
lawyers. Then, a couple people request my presence at one place or
another. They tell me to revisit the places and people I’m dying to
forget, but never will. They want to know all about my relationship
with Avery—which is stupid because I don’t have one. Then, my
lawyer calls again or visits, and he’s always wearing a stupid
jacket. Even in August. Then, after a little more time passes, I
get a lengthy letter explaining why I don’t matter. They take three
pages to say what could easily be summed up in four words:
you’re full of shit
.

If the case reviewers do not come to
me, I have to go to them. That means waiting for the transfer order
to go through, before I get carted off to stand before the next set
of judges. Though, there are no robes or gavels in these hearings,
there is always judgment and a hefty price for reliving those
days.

This is how it is for me: I am
confined by their rules.

I hate seeing it. Not that I don’t,
because I do. Constantly. Vividly. My memories have never stayed
shut up in that box. They constantly flail around me, like small
birds caught up in a heavy gust of wind. Or dust particles from the
musty air vents.

Every day is the same as the one
before, except now, I have to take everything I have internalized
and spew about how and why I came to be the monster. A number on a
shirt. A problem on a sheet of paper. It’s because my life is
fucked beyond belief, because nobody I knew ever really gave a
shit, except the people I destroyed, and the ones that destroyed
me. Why do they want me to clarify the difference between what was
and is when no matter what I say, they tell me it doesn’t
matter?

I meditate on the question, slowly
drifting into oblivion.

+ + +

9

—
Avery

My right hand glides along the smooth
wall of my cell as I pace. It’s already late. The day has
completely disappeared. Not that it matters. Every day blends into
the next when you’ve got nothing to do. Every moment plays out like
the one before. No appointments, no one to talk to, nothing to do
or look forward to. Nothing to distinguish Monday from Friday, just
a ghostly nothing, no matter the time of day or night.

Its five long strides from one corner
of my box to the other. On the last step, I pivot, snapping back
around to walk toward the opposite corner, my left hand now
scraping along the dull wall.

As my body moves back and forth along
the wall, I force my mind roll back to another time, another
place—a moment when the possibility of ending up in a world like
this had never entered my mind . . .

+++

It was another shitty Monday. I was
strolling into Chemistry, tardy again.

Ms. Shine looked down over
the rims of her glasses and scribbled into the attendance log.
Changing the absent
A
to a
T
. Not
wanting a show, I tossed her an apologetic look and mouthed ‘girl
problems,’ while gesturing to my stomach.

Ms. Shine acknowledged with a slight
nod before standing from her desk and calling the class’ attention
to the white board where she’d written the assigned reading to
prepare for tomorrows’ lab. The class was to commence learning
right away.

I sat in my assigned chair at the
table I shared with Troy Bleecher. As with most days, he did not
acknowledge me. He’d already opened his textbook and was searching
for the assigned page.

I wasn’t usually the one who started
our conversations, I left that up to Troy, but that day was
different. I needed to talk to him. But no one could ever accuse
Troy of making things easy.

I’m not saying
anything
, I thought stubbornly, leaning
down to unzip my back pack. Glancing up, I saw that he wasn’t
facing me. In fact, the way he was turned, it looked like he was
concentrating on ignoring me. I took my binder and text book out to
begin the reading assignment as the burn of resentment welled up
and I decided he could go fuck himself.

Half way through the second page, Troy
had the nerve to lean in. Not much, but just enough for me to know
he was going to speak.

“Why did you bother telling me if you
weren’t going to let me do anything about it?” His voice was so
quiet, I could barely hear.

I didn’t turn, but
effectively glared from the corner of my eye. “Your
doing
is the reason I’m
in this situation. How’s your
girlfriend
?”

Troy had been dating this bitch named
Rosa on and off since the previous summer. I suspected, from a
fight that had taken place in the girls bathroom earlier that day
that Rosa was trying to use Angel to get to me, and from the blank
look on Troy’s face, I knew the rumors were true: they were back
on.

“Good news travels fast.” His tone was
flat, barely audible.

I cast a quick glance at Ms. Shine
before drawing my loaded gaze back to Troy. “Why?” I asked, truly
curious, but sounding forceful. I wanted to sound as if I were
talking about the assignment instead of our secret, non-existent
relationship. “Why did you go back with her?”

Troy shook his head the way he always
did when he sensed I might want something from him, like common
courtesy or respect. It was his way of warning me that I should
lower my voice and the bar of expectation.

“It’s not like you don’t have your own
things going on.”

I acknowledged with a tight nod. “You
can lock your window from now on.”

“I will.” He turned back to his
book.

For some reason I couldn’t unearth, I
liked that douche bag. He really was a terrible person and I
couldn’t stay away from him. Troy was an absurd contradiction of
cocky and sweet, smart and stupid, funny and lame. And I had been
sneaking out two or three nights a week to see him for the past
several months. Even though we would meet in different places—the
street outside his house, the park down the road from his place, or
sometimes at the stop sign at his corner—it seemed I always ended
up sneaking into his bedroom (it’s not like anything in Carlisle
was open after nine) and letting Troy do whatever he wanted, before
walking myself home as if it never happened.

Once, I didn’t leave his place until
four in the morning. I lived over two miles away and he didn’t even
get out of bed.

Another time, I left around one in the
morning and as I was walking myself home, I noticed a guy on a BMX
bike following me. I walked faster, but the strange boy kept
peddling, slow as could be, like he was trying to keep pace with
me, but also stopping here and there to tie his shoe or light a
cigarette—which kept him a creepy half-block behind me the whole
way.

When I was nearly home, the boy
suddenly sped up beside me. That was when I got my first real look
at him. He was about my age—seventeen or sixteen—with extremely
thin lips, straggly blond hair, and acne scars. He also had a long
scar across the bridge of his nose that curved down to his lip and
over part of one cheek. It wasn’t an ugly scar, but was thin and
long, as if someone had slashed him with a pink marker.

When he spoke, he started
with an apology for scaring me. I told him he didn’t, but it was a
lie. The boy asked if I lived close by, because he had just passed
his own house and wanted to make sure that I’d get home safe before
he went on his way. It was the first time in my life that anyone
had ever worried about
me
. I was blown away—a kindness
being offered without expectation? Did people actually do that—give
without taking?

Troy certainly didn’t.

I had never seen the boy
before and decided to test the waters. I told him that I was
walking home from my
boyfriends’
house. He said my
boyfriend
was an asshole to make me
walk in the first place, and a total dick for making me go alone,
in the middle of the night. He recommended that I dump his sorry
ass.

That made me smile. I told him not to
worry, that I was almost home, anyways. Then I pointed to my
house.

He nodded. “I’ll watch from here,
until you get inside.” On any other night, it might have freaked me
out, but that night I felt safe.

That nice boys’ face came back to me
just then, as I sat in the middle of chemistry, right beside the
person that a complete stranger had so aptly labeled.

“You
are
an asshole.”

Troy’s gaping mouth, along with
surrounding murmurs told me I spoke the realization a little too
loud. I looked up at the white board to find Ms. Shine staring at
me. And she wasn’t alone. As I searched the room, everyone else
seemed to have their eyes locked on me, too. Ms. Shine walked down
the aisle, dropping a pink slip onto my open textbook.