The Bullet List (The Saving Bailey Trilogy, #1) (4 page)

Chapter 5

Shortly after our dancing ends, the final bell rings and we depart for buses, cars, and for me, the sidewalk. Clad catches me right before I leave the building and asks, “Do you ever go clubbing?”

“Yeah, why?” I ask.

“Have you heard of Indigo? It’s a bar and club in Fort Myers,” he says, a nervous twinge in his voice.

“
Heard of it
? My mom works there!”

“That’s awesome, want to come dance sometime? I have a car and I could pick you up.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say, switching shoulders with my tote bag. “Except I’m illegal.”

“Your mom could get you in,” Clad suggests.

“Mom would kill me if she knew I was at Indigo. How do
you
get in?”

“Fake ID,” he says trying to sound slick. “I can make you one.”

“That’ll work, text me on the details,” I say.

“See ya’ around kid,” he says and raises his hand to wave but perhaps thinks better of it.

“See ya’ around,” I say and salute him like a soldier.

The sidewalks wind nearly all the way from the school to our apartment in Parkway Village; they are safe even for a haphazard kid like me. The sun is shining brightly, warming the top of my bruised head. It makes me sleepy and I can’t stop yawning.

I don’t ride the bus home because I would rather be running or strolling, alone with my thoughts. I am never able to think on the bus, with its loud air conditioning, and the driver’s radio blaring country songs. I do, however, take the bus each and every morning for Mom’s sake.

“I could walk to school,” I had proposed at the beginning of freshmen year. Her face had washed out in horror. “It will be dark outside that early in the morning. Someone might kidnap you, or you could be hit by a car. What if you get lost?” She tightened her lips into a thin line of worry. “I might never see you again.” It was settled then, I could walk home in the daylight, but in the morning I was to take the bus.

School has never been an easy thing for me, and I don’t mean academically. Whether it is the teachers or the students, going to school has always been like digging in a cereal box for a prize: the further you dig and the more cereal that piles onto your table and in bowls, the more hope you have that you are closer to that prize. I keep getting myself further into trouble while at school, attending it only because my mother makes me and because I blindly hope there will be some prize for the brutality that is being inflicted on me. Were it up to me, I would have given up on it years ago.

Today, I am relieved that it’s over. If only I didn’t have to come home to Mom and face the reality that I forgot her birthday, and made her promise to purge the house of her precious spirits.

She and I both know that the alcohol is a life-line. Without it she would surely slip into oblivion, and I have seen it happen once before when she tried quitting cold-turkey. The ache in my feet as I walk reminds me that although it is her medicine, it is also her poison.

Before Dad got himself locked away in the slammer, Mom was a pretty happy-go-lucky person. She would spend all day in the kitchen with an apron tied around her waist making pies and stews. She was a natural Caroline Ingalls, right out of a
Little House on the Prairie
book. When she wasn’t in the kitchen or tidying up the house, she would dress me up to look like a china-doll, bows and all. Family would come to visit, bringing me presents and fawning over how picture-perfect I looked.

I was content with the way things were. Alana would come over for play dates, and Mom was an important part of the community’s social circle.

Then one night she wanted to go out and party. She had given birth to me at such a young age – just after her eighteenth birthday – she had yet to let go of her teenage partying years. Dad was beyond that; he thought it was outrageous, and told her that she should stay at home and devote her life to taking care of me and him.

“That’s what a good wife would do,” I remember him saying.

She left that night; she had had enough of him forcing her to the play the role of a 1950s sitcom wife. She was young and free at heart, and Dad couldn’t comprehend how a woman with a child and husband could want one night to herself.

Human beings are a strange type of animal; they could be one way, stagnant for many years, and then one day something stirs inside them, a natural instinct to move on, to change. This is what happened to my parents, all at once. Both of my parents snapped and neither of them thought it would cost a person their life. My dad killed four people that night, whether he knows it or not.

Later, mom told me why dad had come apart. After she left, it dawned on Dad that he was sick of Mom’s taunting him; and he was tired of sitting at home drinking a cola in front of the 6 o’ clock news, every single night. Oh things had been close to perfect for me: I had the perfect parents, and the perfect home. No one thought how I would be affected; they didn’t stop to think that their decisions would ultimately fall on me.

On that night, Dad acquired a spontaneous thirst for alcohol. With none in the house, and alone with me, he did the only thing any sensible dad would do with a five-year-old child:
he took me to a bar
. Unbeknownst to Mom, he set out in his 1940s Ford pickup truck, instigated by a thirst for spirits. I nestled in the back seat on top of dirty towels and shirts, which he used during the day while working on various construction sites.

We arrived at a run-down little bar, and once talking his way into getting me in, we found a spot away from the raucous of drunken men playing pool.

“Stay right here little lady,” he said, and placed me on a bar stool that was too high for me to possibly get down from on my own. “I am going to get you a soda, don’t leave this stool.”

I nodded obediently. “Okay Daddy, I want a Coke please,” I said.

“Coke it is sweetie,” he said tweaking my nose.

Dad walked into the crowd at the bar and I lost sight of him. Many minutes passed and I became restless and fidgety. I needed to use the bathroom, but I could not climb down from the stool. I turned to a lady sitting next to me and tugged on her shirt to get her attention.

“Could you please get me down?” I asked her.

She plucked me off the seat and lowered me down.

“Thank you,” I said, remembering my manners.

As soon as my feet touched the ground I was swept up by huge arms. Dad was gripping me tighter than usual and his eyes were bulging, his teeth barred like an angry pit-bull.

“Let’s take this outside,” a man said to my dad in an angry tone. I smelled the alcohol on his breath.

“What about my Coke?” I asked, my tiny voice being drowned by the angry words tossed back and forth between my dad and the man.

“Come on punk, I ain’t scared to fight your ass. There will be nothing but bones left when I’m through with you,” my dad said, with me trembling under his arm.

I envisioned my dad turning the man into a skeleton, the kind you see hanging from haunted houses on Halloween.

The man walked outside of the bar, and Dad followed with me still tucked under his arm. I saw the dingy tile change to black asphalt.

“You sure have a big mouth for someone who can’t bench more than two pounds,” the man said, spitting on the asphalt of the parking lot.

My dad put me down roughly.

“You’re mean!” I shouted at the man who was drunk and swaying where he stood.

“I’ll eat that pretty little girl of yours for breakfast after I take care of you. Or maybe I’ll sell her on the market, got to be worth a couple grand,” he sneered drunkenly.

My dad struck him in the face for saying so. This punch was the first of many to be laid into the poor body of Jack.

Jack. That was his name, because people have names so you don’t forget they aren’t just a skeleton, wrapped in a casing of skin. Jack had feelings; he had a little girl like me, and a wife and two boys. Dad didn’t care to know this while he repeatedly pulled back his fist like a slingshot, slamming it again and again into Jack’s head.

Apart from a few random grunts of protests, and obscenities passed between them, the fight was silent. The punching stopped and the world seemed to be holding its breath right along with me.

Jack lay lifeless, his head resting on a speed bump, underneath the orange glow of a lamp-post. My dad walked over to me and bent down on one knee. He was covered in blood, his shirt tattered and tears running down his face. He plopped me on to his lap and whispered, “I killed him.”

I didn’t understand the full impact of his words, I was just happy he was alive.

“It was an accident,” he sobbed. “I did it for you angel cake. I did it for you.”

Mom says I could never have been able to remember the incident in such vivid detail; she believes I made up the conversation between Dad and I.
I wish it was make-believe
. Sometimes I press my hands firmly against my temples trying to extinguish the memory, but it won’t leave me.

Chapter 6

I lift up a potted plant outside the apartment door and retrieve the key. I unlock the door and step inside cautiously, a quick scan of the apartment suggests that Mom isn’t home. First thing I do is throw open the cabinets to see if she has kept her promise. Sure enough, the bottles are gone.

I go to the bathroom to inspect the damage done by the school day. I pull my shirt over my head and prod a long bruise below my ribcage. I am wincing in pain, and trying to bend to see if my ribs are broken, when Mom walks in the doorway.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask.

“I just got home from work, didn’t you hear me come in the door?” she says.

“No…” I say. Work? In the early afternoon? I can smell the alcohol on her breath when she speaks.

Mom runs her hand over my bruise.

“A girl kicked me in the stomach,” I say.

“You told the principal right? Your teacher? Or somebody?” Mom asks. I get another whiff of musty liquor, and cigarette veiled breath. I think about calling her out for drinking, and not being at work, but I still feel bad for the trouble I caused yesterday.

“Mhm,” I say.

“You’re lying,” she says.

“I’m too scared to, she would kill me if I told someone,” I say.

“That’s serious, Bailey. She could have really hurt you, and she may have,” Mom says, taking a severe tone with me.

I pull my shirt back on. “I’m alright Mom, just a little cat fight. You know how teenage girls are,” I say. Then to change to topic I say, “Enough about me. Yesterday was your birthday and I didn’t even tell you happy birthday. I was downright awful.” And in a quieter voice I say, “I ruined it. I’m sorry.”

She squints at me like she is focusing a camera. “
I
ruined it with my sour attitude,” she says. “I drank a bottle of vodka when I could have spent the night with my beautiful daughter, and then I proceeded to strike you down for reprimanding my reckless drinking. You didn’t ruin my birthday.” She smiles, though it seems out of place on her weary face.

I open my mouth to say something but she cuts me off. “I’m sorry about last night, maybe we can just forget about it and move on,” she says.

You mean forget about it the same way you forgot I saw my father kill a man at the tender age of five? Move on, as in sweep it under the doormat, but never deal with it properly?

I smile a fake smile, and say, “Yeah let’s do that.”

“Great, I’m going to cook spaghetti for dinner, I hope you are hungry,” she says cheerfully.

Once Mom has left me alone, I close the bathroom door with my foot, and take a good long look into the mirror.
What is it that makes everyone hate me?
I ask myself, searching for the answer in my reflection. Is it my dark, misty eyes, my pink and full lips; perhaps it is my small waist, or long hair? The answer escapes me, because I can’t fathom how someone could despise me only for my looks.

Mom knocks on the bathroom door. “Is everything okay in there, sweetie?” she asks.

I turn the sink on and rub my hands beneath the water to trick her, “Yep I’m just brushing my teeth.”

“How are your hands and feet looking?”

I stare down at my hands and yelp. The glue of the bandages has dissolved in the hot water, and the exposed cuts are red and stinging from the heat.

“Not good,” I mutter, trying to remove the bandages to dry them.

“Let me see,” she says, waiting for me to open the door.

I open up, being careful with my hands. “Maybe I should have gotten stiches,” I say, holding my upturned palms out to her.

“Maybe,” she says, cradling my hands in hers. “Well, I better put some fresh gauze on them.” She has a look in her eyes that says she is not yet over last night.

She wraps them up yet again and I sigh as the pain retreats. “I don’t want you to keep kicking yourself over what happened,” I say sternly. “You couldn’t have helped it, you said it yourself you don’t even
remember.”

“I know you are right,” she says to please me. “I’m your mom though; there are precautions I should have taken.”

“You’re never gonna let it go,” I say, pulling my hands from her lap.

“I don’t want to make that mistake again,” she says, caressing my cheek.

“The sauce is going to burn I need to go watch the food.” She excuses herself from the bathroom.

I’m sitting on the rug, the day’s events returning to my mind, when tears come to my eyes.
The Bullet List
. I don’t know how else to deal with Miemah and her crew, and I want to get even
so bad
. It’s not just from the torture she has been putting me through in high school, it goes much further back than that, all the way to elementary school. She spotted me then, and sunk her teeth into me, refusing to let go. Like a parasitic killer she has stayed with me, and slowly sucked away my life. At this point I feel like my only choice is to off her, and hey, if I’m going to off one person I might as well off a few others too.

“Bailey, dinner is done!” Mom hollers, a stitch of excitement in her voice. She hasn’t cooked a proper dinner in years.

I pick myself up off the floor, and amble sullenly into the kitchen. The aroma of fresh tomatoes and garlic enters my nostrils, perking me up. There is a pot by the sink, big enough to be a baby’s bathtub; it is filled to the brim with pasta. I laugh.

“You want me to eat all that?” I ask my mom, mid-laughter.

“Well,” she says thoughtfully, “I did make a little extra on account of you being so skinny and all.”

“I’ve always been skinny, why the effort to fatten me up now?” I ask taking my place at the table.

“You look sickly,” she says.

I’m too hungry to be angry with her, so I grab a plate and pay no mind to her slight.

“I’m starving,” I say, shoving a gigantic forkful of spaghetti into my mouth.

I realize now that the last time I ate was two days ago.
Maybe I am looking sickly
.

“Eat up, I made plenty,” Mom entices me.

I polish off one plate, and Mom serves me another, thrilled to have me eating. The idea of killing my classmates has worked up an appetite.

“Mom, can I ask you something?” I say, my interest turning to the night of Jack’s death.

“Sure, anything baby,” she says, unsuspecting of the topic I’m about to unbury, like a gravedigger scavenging for gold off the bodies of the dead.

“Did you ever say sorry to Jack’s family?”

She drops her fork in her spaghetti, causing sauce to splatter up and hit her in the face. I would laugh but it causes me to think of Jack’s blood, all over Dad’s shirt and face.

“Why would you say a thing like that?” she asks, her voice sounding like she is far away from me. Her eyes, too, are distant as she remembers the night.

“Don’t you think we owe them an apology for Dad?”

“We are not talking about this right now,” she says, sipping her grapefruit juice.

“We are,” I counter. “We must.”

“No,” Mom says, the corners of her mouth drooping.

“Mom, just please hear me out,” I plead. “They deserve at least a sorry; he had kids, what if someone had killed Dad?”

“They did,” she squeaks. “Jack and his family killed your dad. Let me ask you something, when was the last time you saw your father?” she asks.

“Eleven years ago,” I say.

“That was the last time Jack’s family saw him too,” she expels. “So tell me then, are they any worse off, and just who deserves the sorry?”

I push my chair out from the table, rise, and leave her.

I slam my bedroom door, because the feelings are coming back again; that night is pushing through the fog and I can see it as a dark figure advancing on me.

Mom knocks on my door; I push my hands against my head, and close my eyes tightly.

“Go away!” I scream. “Go!”

I stop screaming only when I hear her heavy footsteps retreating to the kitchen.

Mom is so twisted
. If I knew how to find them, I would hunt down Jack’s family and apologize until I’m blue in the face, because regardless of who started the fight, my dad is the one who ended it.

I let go of my head, and slump against my bed, heart pounding, and head throbbing. I sit like this for a long while before Mom finally returns, and says through the door, “Come eat, you need to eat.”

I pick up one of my boots and throw it at the door. “I already ate!” I howl at her.

“You’re acting crazy,” she says.

“You’re going to starve yourself and die if you keep not eating like this,” she warns me, and jiggles the door knob.

I pick up my other boot to throw when an idea rises in my mind.
“I’m killing myself,”
I whisper, because the idea is not yet fully formed, and I feel that this phrase could bring it to life.
I am killing myself
.

That’s it. Why take the lives of Miemah, Nessa, and Cecil, when I could just take one? If I die, then they can’t torture me anymore, and I won’t have to shoot them. There’s my escape route;
myself
. If I ended my life, then I would never have to remember Jack’s death again. I wouldn’t have to see the hurt in Clad’s eyes when I confess that I don’t love him; Miemah could no longer touch me, and Mom could drink all she wants.

“You’re too quiet,” Mom says, standing stationary outside my door. “Let me in.” She pounds her fists on the door.

“Damnit Bailey, let me in! I didn’t mean to upset you; all I wanted was to have a nice dinner. Should have known that wouldn’t be possible with a daughter like you.”

“Me too,” I say softly.

“What?” Mom asks.

“Me too. I just wanted to have a nice dinner too,” I repeat.

“We’re a mess,” she laughs, though her heart is not in it.

“One big wreck,” I agree. “At least we have each other,” I say, and open the door.
At least we have each other, until I take my life
.