Wednesday, February 27 – 10:30 PM
Owen
I stare up at the ceiling fan as I lay on the floor of the living room. Its blades go around and around just like the thoughts circling inside my head.
“Wow,” I whisper.
What a night. What an amazing night! I can still hear Maria’s voice in my mind, telling me how scared she was that she wouldn’t go out with me tonight. Craig thinks I’m insane for sticking by her, but I don’t see it like that.
The way I see it, I’m the luckiest man alive.
I understand having fears—having dark secrets you can’t get away from—and I’ve never felt more special than when Maria told me how scared she was. She pushed through her fears tonight, and for what? To go to dinner with me? What the hell did I do to deserve someone so amazing?
I close my eyes and thoughts of her fill my mind. She wore jeans and a plain, purple turtleneck to dinner, but if she was trying to dress down for the night, it didn’t work. All that the shirt did was draw my attention to her body even more. Everything that made her look so fantastic tonight came from her, not from the deceptive allure of an outfit. I hope she didn’t catch me staring at her too much, because I know I caught my eyes drifting down several times during dinner. I could barely help myself.
Maria is absolutely gorgeous, and I loved every minute of being with her tonight—even when started asking me about my family. I just wish... well, I wish that I wasn’t so screwed up that I can’t trust myself with her. She deserves a better guy than a mess like me.
The phone rings for the fifth time tonight, and my blood runs cold as I check the caller ID. It isn’t my mother this time.
It’s Dad.
I let the phone sit on the floor and ring until it goes to my voice mail, but it starts ringing again almost immediately. I should know better than to think that he’d stop. He’s going to keep calling again and again until I answer.
I take a deep breath, get up from the floor, and answer the phone.
“Hello?” I say into the receiver, pretending I don’t already know who it is. He doesn't buy it.
“Your mother says you’re not coming home again. You’d best be rethinking that, boy.”
The harsh growl of his voice immediately yanks me ten years back in time. I feel like I’m a child again and he’s towering above me, glaring down at me with hatred burning in his eyes.
“I can’t come home,” I argue, pacing back and forth. “I have a job and don’t get vacation days.”
“I didn’t ask for your excuses, you stupid son of a bitch ☺,” he snaps back at me. “Your mother ain’t seen you in four years, and if I have to, I’ll drive up there and haul your ass back here myself.”
“I’ll talk to my boss again, but...”
I start to shake as I sit down at the dining room table. I’m cracking already. I can’t even stand up to him from almost four hundred miles away.
“You’re coming down here. No buts!” he shouts over the line. “In case you don’t remember, you and I’ve got a score to settle, boy.”
All I can do is shake in silence and listen. What score? I wasn’t even home for most of that last summer! I worked at three jobs all summer long just to stay out of the house, and then I got on the bus to Cornell the first chance I had. There was never a chance for me to do anything wrong!
He’s insane. He’s completely insane.
“I know when your break starts, and if you ain’t home by then, you’re gonna be getting a visit from me,” he hisses, and then he slams down the receiver before I can say anything else.
I lean my head on the table as my heart pounds in my chest. Terrible thoughts and memories I can’t escape from start crawling out from dark places inside me.
“Come on... calm down,” I whisper, trying as hard as I can to relax. It isn’t working.
I’m back home in the basement office, and I’m seventeen again.
“Are you crying?” he screams as he slaps me across the face again and again. “Did I raise a son or a f*cking pansy? Shut the f*ck up, you worthless...”
He’s so angry that he can’t even finish his sentence to keep swearing at me. He grabs me by the back of the neck and slams me hard against the slate chalkboard hanging from the wall. Something cracks—I don’t know if it’s the chalkboard or my face—and then he throws me down on the floor.
As I try to get back up, I see the deep red pool forming on the white tile beneath me. I reach up to my nose and my hand comes back covered in blood.
“Get the f*ck up, boy!” he snarls, and he kicks me in the chest.
The sound of my pencil snapping between my teeth pulls me out of the nightmare and back to the dining room. I spit out the fragments of wood and look down in disgust at the broken pencil. My hands shake with pent-up anger and frustration, and it’s all I can do not to cry.
“I can’t even break a filthy childhood habit,” I whisper, my voice seething with self-hatred. “What f*cking good am I?”
I slam down my fist hard against the wooden table in a rage, and the table creaks as searing pain shoots through my arm.
“Oh damn it!” I gasp in pain as I cradle my injured hand. What is wrong with me?
I can’t hold it back anymore. My head drops to the table and I start to cry. The pain is horrible, but even worse is that all it took was one phone call for Dad to crush me. All he had to do was pick up the phone and he pulled me straight back into Hell again.
I've been running from myself for years, never going home, trying to forget my life even existed before college started, and it just doesn't work.
Waves of agony keep shooting up my arm, and when I finally calm down enough to stop crying and wipe away the tears, I realize that my hand is starting to turn black. I’m definitely going to need an ice pack. I try to move my thumb and bite my lip against the unbearable pain that surges through me. I really hurt myself this time.
This is why I need to stay away from Maria. Dad’s not the only nutcase in my family... what if I lose control and hit her? I could never forgive myself.
Besides, why would a girl like Maria want to deal with a mess like me?
I wrap my hand in an ice pack and sit back down on the couch, trying to put myself back together again. Humpty Dumpty’s got nothing on me.
“I’m not always a spineless wimp,” I think as I lie back on the couch and stare at the ceiling again. I knocked that snowboarder on his ass for harassing Maria, after all. That has to count for something, right?
Samantha’s angelic smile flits across my mind, a memory from so very long ago. Somehow, I think she’d be proud of me.