Without Merit

“Merit!”

Utah is knocking on my door as I pace my bedroom floor. What in the hell did I just interrupt?

I swing open the door and Utah pushes himself into my room and closes the door behind him. He looks angry and a little bit worried when he points at me. “Keep your mouth shut,” he says. “What I do is none of your business.”

I stop pacing and step closer to him. “Have I ever spilled your secrets before this?”

His anger fades with the mention of his past indiscretions.

“You think I forgot about that, Utah? Well, guess what? I didn’t. And I never will.”

He winces and I can see the guilt in his expression. I want to punch him, but I’m not a violent person. I don’t think. I’m not sure, because my hand balls into a fist right before he slips out of my bedroom and shuts the door.

I hate him. And I hate myself for never telling anyone the truth about him.

I sit down on my bed and squeeze my eyes shut. I feel like I might puke and I’m not even sure why, exactly. I think it’s everything. It’s Luck, Sagan, Utah, Honor, my father, Victoria, my mother.

This family is just as terrible as everyone in this town believes it to be. Maybe even worse. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the secrets and I’m sick of the lies. And I’m tired of being the one person in this house who has to hold on to all of them!

I have Utah’s secret.

I have my father’s secret.

My mother’s secret.

Honor’s secret.

Luck’s secret.

I don’t want any of them anymore!

Maybe if I let all the secrets out, they wouldn’t make me feel like drowning anymore.

Yes. Maybe that would help. Maybe getting it all out will help me feel like I’m not about to implode.

I reach to my nightstand and grab a pen, then open the drawer and sift through it until I find a notebook with enough empty pages to hold all these secrets.

It still hurts. All of it. The entire past few days. I grab the bottle of . . . what the hell am I even drinking? I read the label. Tequila. I grab the bottle of tequila and slide to the floor because I’m starting to feel dizzy. I grab my pen and notebook and open to the first blank page I can find. I squeeze my eyes shut until my vision feels sturdier. I feel wobbly. My hand feels wobbly when I start writing.

Dear inhabitants of Dollar Voss. Every last one of you. Except Moby. He’s the only one I like and still have respect for at this point.

I have so much anger building inside of me, and it has nothing to do with me. It’s anger at almost every single person in this house. Anger due to all the secrets you’ve been keeping from each other, from the outside world. I refuse to hold on to any of it for one more second. Every day, there are more and more secrets and I’m tired of looking like the bad guy. You all hate me. You all think every argument in this house is my fault. You all wonder why I’m so damn BRASH all the time. IT’S BECAUSE OF ALL OF YOU!

Where do I even begin?

How about I begin with the oldest secret? Did you think I would forget, Utah? Did you think, because I was only twelve, that I wouldn’t remember the night you forced me to kiss you?

It’s hard to forget something like that, Utah. If you knew how much I worshipped you as my big brother, you would understand why it’s so hard to forget when you did what you did.

“It’s not a big deal, Merit.”

That’s what you said to me when I shoved you away. You tried to make it seem like I was overreacting to what had just happened. One minute I was in my brother’s room watching a movie, the next minute my brother was trying to kiss me.

I ran out of your room that night and never looked back. Not once. I’ve never been to your bedroom since then. I’ve never allowed myself to be alone with you since then. And it’s like you don’t even care. You never even apologized. Do you even feel guilty?

Is that why you find it so difficult to look me in the eye? Because the few times you do look at me, you look at me with contempt and disgust. The same way I look at you.

All of you think I’m rude to Utah. You’re all telling me, “Calm down, Merit.” Think about how you would feel if your family tried to force you to be nice to the brother who stole your first kiss from you.

You disgust me, Utah. You disgust me and I’ll never forget and I’ll never forgive you.

But at least you have Honor. She worships you because she didn’t endure the side of you I endured. She thinks you’re sweet and innocent and the best thing to ever happen to her. She looks at me the same way you do, but only because she can’t understand how I can treat you so terribly when you do nothing to deserve it.

I know you probably find all of this hard to believe, Dad. Yes, I’m speaking to you now, Barnaby Voss. I’ve said all I need to say to Utah.

You’ve set the perfect example for us on how to treat each other, haven’t you? You created this beautiful family, but as soon as your wife became ill and couldn’t satisfy your needs anymore, you slept with her nurse. You couldn’t even be discreet about it. Couldn’t you have slept with her and then pretended it never happened once Mom got better? No. You had to take it a step further on the selfish scale and screw Victoria without a condom. Now we’re stuck with a woman who hates us. A woman who hates our mother.

I wonder how Victoria would react if she knew you were still sleeping with Mom?

Yeah, that sentence probably shocked ALL of you.

Sorry, Victoria, but it’s true. I saw it with my own two eyes. At least we have an explanation now for why our mother still dresses up every day. She lives in your basement, hoping her ex-husband will sneak down and pay her a visit, so she keeps her makeup pretty and her hair perfect and her legs nice and smooth.

Your husband is probably why our mother still lives here in the basement. He’s doing so much damage to her mentally that she’s under his complete control. He gets you in the bedroom and my mother in the basement. And you’re both Victoria, so he doesn’t even have to worry about screaming out the wrong name! He’s living every man’s fantasy. He doesn’t even have to worry about the two of you overlapping because he’s got my mother so doped on medication, she’s too scared to even leave the basement.