Friday, February 15 – 11:40 PM
Owen
It’s nearly midnight, I’m still a train-wreck, and I’ve only got two tests left to grade. This is the first time I’ve ever wished I had more work to do. I’m going to run out of things to keep my mind occupied at this rate.
I don’t know what came over me while I was out with Craig. When I saw Maria, that one quick glance, that fear in her eyes... it’s as if all the bad memories just burst back to life all at once. Every bad thought, every nightmare, they were all right there, fresh in my mind again.
I absentmindedly chew on the end of my pencil with my eyes closed tightly as Samantha stares blankly up at me from the bottom of the stairs. She’ll never forgive me for betraying her. How can she? She’s dead because of me.
The pencil crunches between my teeth, and the sound snaps me out of my waking nightmare and back to reality. I throw the broken pencil into the garbage, grab a fresh one, and I’m chewing shamefully on it again before I know it.
Two pages left on the test.
Grading this student’s test isn’t keeping my attention away from Samantha because not a damned thing’s been wrong yet. It’s the first one of the night without a single wrong answer, and the next page proves no different. I glance up at my laptop to check the grade-recording spreadsheet. The current average score is a sixty percent. This one’s going to blow the curve out of the water.
There is one mistake on the final page, but I’m not sure I should even mark it. The professor makes me grade students on their work as well as the final answer, and while her answer is right, the girl’s handwriting is so tiny that I can barely trace her work. I think she transposed a number on paper but kept it straight in her head.
“Hell with it, she’s got the right answer,” I mutter, and I subtract a single point. Her 99% grade just wrecked every other student in the class.
I type in the score, turn back to the first page of the test to grab her name, and nearly flip out as I read the name scrawled in tiny, nearly illegible script.
Maria Ayala.
“What the f*ck...”
I’m dumbfounded. I’d written her off as an idiot who failed the test so badly she was nearly in tears, and I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. My nervous, green-eyed student just broke the curve for everyone else in the class.
She wasn’t scared of failing at all. She was scared of me.
Dark, terrified eyes fill my mind, and I can’t tell if they belong to Samantha or Maria anymore. The fear is the same.
Why is Maria scared of me?
I drop her test on the wobbly coffee table, flop down on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. Most of the furniture that came with this apartment is garbage, but the couch is top-notch. I love how I sink into it—it feels like the couch is going to swallow me. My thumb instinctively traces along the scar on my jaw as my thoughts wander. My mind, not willing to give me even a moment’s peace tonight, immediately drags me back down into a deep, dark, and scary place inside me.
I’m twelve again, and Dad is towering above me in the kitchen. His face is twisted and his eyes clouded with rage.
I turn away and cower as Dad hurls the coffee mug at me. It shatters against my face, opening a long, deep gash in my skin, and I cry out in pain. I can feel the blood pouring into hands as I cover my face, but I don’t dare open my eyes to look. I don’t want to get glass in them and go blind, too.
“You’re the worst f*cking son on earth, Owen! How did I get stuck with a stupid shit like you?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t even apologize because I don’t know what I did this time.
My mother screams in horror from somewhere behind me, and for the last time I can remember, she comes to my rescue. Her arms are around me, shielding me from my father’s hatred as he continues to lash out at me. Another glass breaks, and but I still don’t open my eyes. If it hit Mom, I never found out.
I fell, of course. At least, that’s what they told the doctors. I was out riding my bike, and I fell over and hit the sharp corner of a mailbox. Nobody questioned it. Why would they? My dad was a great guy; everyone in our small town knew that.
Never mind the glass shards the surgeon had to extract from my face before stitching me up.
Mom never came to my aid again after that. I can’t even imagine what Dad did to her for defying him.
I shake away the terrible thoughts and try to focus on the last test. The first question is completely wrong, and I let my frustration out in a brutal flurry of red ink as I correct it. Minus fifteen.
Maria’s beautiful green eyes are still staring into my soul, and elsewhere in my mind, she is laughing and smiling as she walks alongside Craig’s friend Tina.
Why can’t I get her and Samantha out of my mind? What the hell is wrong with me?
Mark Williams’ forty-seven percent would have been roughly a C before Maria’s score entered the calculation. Tough luck. I enter the final test grade into the spreadsheet just as a text message hits my phone.
Owen – you’re going skiing with us next weekend. Don’t you dare chicken out.
I groan as I read Craig’s message and then lay on my back on the sofa as I reply. The ceiling fan spins around and around above me, creaking from a slight imbalance. I haven’t been skiing in years, and I was never good at it. I may be the world’s worst skier.
Who is *us* ??
“It could be anyone,” I think as I stuff the graded tests into my backpack. Craig has so many friends that I rarely meet the same one twice.
The apartment is already spotless thanks to the combination of my earlier cleaning binge, so instead I water my plants on the windowsill and get ready for bed while I wait for Craig’s response.
My phone beeps again minutes later, and I stare at Craig’s message in disbelief.
You’ll see. Don’t stand us up.