Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) (2 page)

2

My
panda slippers were well past worn, but my parents told me we couldn’t afford new ones and my birthday was a ways out. The soles were torn, to the point where I was almost barefoot, minus a thin layer of fabric, but I liked them. I really didn’t need to be wearing them anyway, since it was July and a million degrees, but even though I’d be starting junior high in the fall, I still felt like a kid.

It was ridiculous, too. I was growing up faster than the all the
other girls my age and I’d been wearing a full C cup bra for nearly a year now. It was awful. The girls hated me for looking like I did; they called me a slut and told me I was fat and ugly all the time. I didn’t think I was, but I did feel huge next to them. I had curves where they didn’t, and most days, I just wore the biggest clothes I could find to hide them.

The guys thought it was hilarious. They snapped the back of my bra like it was the best prank ever, and they made up nicknames for me. They weren’t even creative nicknames. Their favorite was Boobs, like it was brilliant and they were witty for thinking of it. But I wasn’t twelve yet and it was torture to be different.

I wasn’t thinking about them tonight, though. The summers were a respite, a break from the harassment at school. We couldn’t afford summer camp or the local pool or really anything, so most days, I sat at home reading or drawing. My mom had been traveling a lot lately for work, but since my dad was unemployed, she needed the extra income. It was lonely, but no one was making fun of me for having tits and that was basically the highlight of my summer.

I’d just finished a great book, about a girl with a magical phone that let her call herself in the future and get advice about the decisions she was making. Of course, she kept changing her mind based on the conversations with her future self, sending her adult life into chaos. I loved thinking about myself ten years in the future, wondering what I would be doing, if I’d be married, if I’d be in college and away from here. Although I didn’t have a lot of friends now, I sort of envisioned myself as popular, maybe a cheerleader, maybe with a gorgeous boyfriend. I figured I would keep doing well in school and then I could go to a top university and maybe I’d be a vet or even a lawyer. Something important.

The light was on in the kitchen, even though it was well past midnight, but I’d stayed up reading and I was thirsty. I crawled out of bed, wearing my tattered nightgown and slippers, and I headed to the kitchen for a drink. I was standing by the sink, sipping the glass of water, when my dad spoke to me from the adjoining living room. I hadn’t even realized he was up.

“It’s after midnight. Christ, Alana, what are you doing?”

I turned to face him. He was sitting in the dark, watching something on TV. The sound was off, but the light was flickering through the room. I could just barely make out his silhouette on the couch. It really sucked that we didn’t have the money to buy another TV. We always had to share and we fought a lot about who watched what. Although with me reading and my mom out on the road, I guess my dad could watch what he wanted finally.

“I was thirsty,” I explained.

I put down the glass and went to the doorway of the living room. The TV was angled toward him, making him eerie in the darkness. I didn’t know why all the lights were off, but he was always freaking out about wasting electricity. Still, it was kind of creepy to sit in the dark like that.

“You really shouldn’t walk around dressed like that,” he told me.

I looked down at myself. The nightgown was old, but I didn’t have a lot of clothes, and I liked this one. It was a little small and I’d grown several inches, so it was really more of a long shirt than a nightgown. It wasn’t too tight around the chest, though, and that was a big plus for me.

“It’s just you,” I said.

He didn’t say anything at first, just coughed. Then he patted the couch next to him. “Come here for a minute.”

I still think about that decision, and
I wish I had had a magic phone to call my future self, who would have warned me not to do it. But he was my dad. You don’t grow up afraid of your parents until they do something to warrant it, and when they do, well… then you know why people are afraid of other people.

I sat next to him and looked at the TV. I
t didn’t register at first what I was seeing. I was still young and the people on the screen were doing things I didn’t understand. At least not then. But my father saw me look and that was the invitation he needed, I guess. His hand covered my mouth, although I didn’t scream when he ripped my nightgown off. I didn’t even process the fact that he was only wearing his robe until he got on top of me and told me he wanted me to do the things the people were doing in the movie.

He pulled my
underwear off and threw it on the ground, holding my legs open. I knew, as he did those things to me, that nothing would ever be the same for me again. I wouldn’t be a cheerleader. I wouldn’t be a vet. This night, this moment, would forever define me. My slippers fell off as he pushed himself inside of me, tearing me apart, holding my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want to remember the way he seemed to enjoy it, but I didn’t want to see the TV, either. They seemed to enjoy what they were doing as well, but it was horrible. How could anyone enjoy it?

“I’m sorry,” my father repeated as he moved on top of me. “You’re beautiful, Alana. You’re just too beautiful to resist.” He grabbed me everywhere, kissed me everywhere. I don’t know how long it lasted. Probably not long, but it felt like forever. In many ways, it was, because when it was over, he wouldn’t look at me, and he told me to go to my room. I was broken, ruined, but even then, I thought it was a mistake, some kind of accident.

He continued all summer, though. When my mom was out of town, he made me sit with him and watch those movies, while his hands touched me everywhere. He would tell me what things he liked on the TV and then make me do them. He taught me a lot that summer, but they were not things an eleven-year-old girl needed to know, and they were definitely not things she should learn from her dad.

I thought maybe he would stop when my mom came home from her trips, but it only changed how it happened. He didn’t have the freedom to make me watch those things. Instead
, he would wait until she went to sleep and then sneak into my room. Sometimes he got on top of me and put himself inside me. Sometimes he made me use my hands or my mouth. A few times, he touched me or put his head between my legs and did things to me. I never cried. I never said anything. He did it every night for three months.

It stopped when my mother came home early from a work trip and found him on top of me on the couch,
with one of his videos playing. He was still inside of me as she registered what was happening. He didn’t even move, didn’t try to explain. She made him leave, but we never talked about it. It had happened; there wasn’t much that could be done about it anyway.

That year at school
, the taunts got worse. I was the school slut, and now, I couldn’t even argue. Because I really was.

3

“You don’t believe that still, do you?” Melinda asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I understand what he did, but if I wasn’t pretty… if I didn’t have tits, if my mom didn’t have to work…”

“No,” she says. “That was entirely on him. You cannot blame yourself for that.”

“I don’t blame myself. I just think sometimes people get dealt shitty hands. Mine is pretty bad, I guess.”

“Is your father the reason you see someone? The reason for the anxiety?”

“Among others,” I reply.

“Do you want to talk about them?” she asks

“Do you have that much time?”

She nods again, finally picking up the clipboard. “I can already say, Alana, that I will strongly advocate for your insurance to allow you to continue to see me. Would you like that?”

“I would,” I tell her. I felt instantly safe with her, and I haven’t felt this comfortable with a therapist in ages. Maybe ever.
I do want to be fixed; maybe she knows how.

“Okay, well, we need to do this intake form, and then we can make an appointment for next week?”

I nod and ready myself for the barrage of questions. You’d think it would get easier, but it really never does.

****

I have three texts from Jack when I get in the car. I don’t know if I should call him back yet. He still doesn’t know that I’m in therapy. Jack is aggressively opposed to mental health counseling. Partly because of his own suicide attempt and his time in the hospital, and partly because of the shitty doctor he saw who just wanted to drug him after his mom died. I don’t want to explain why I need it, though; he knows a lot about me, but some things, even Jack doesn’t need to know.

Besides, it’s been weird lately. I’ve loved Jack since I first saw him. He was so shy, so awkward when he transferred to my school freshman year. He was sitting in the back of my math class, his hoodie up, head down, looking angry at the world. I
’d heard a few kids whisper that he was a freak, even though it was his first day and we were only three classes into school. But I was well versed in assumptions, and I sat next to him, offering him a piece of gum.

It took a while for him to become my friend, to tell me a little about himself, but I knew
, on that first day in math class, that he was the love of my life. And now… well, he’s found
his
love of his life. She hasn’t shown any interest, not really, and he still calls me when he’s depressed, but it’s not fun being the one available rather than the one wanted.

Still… it’s Jack. I pick up my phone and text him back that
I’m at school for something. I also didn’t tell him that I dropped out. I dropped out six months ago and he still doesn’t know. It was too much to deal with, between the anxiety, the people, my mom, and just feeling like I didn’t belong. There was more… but like everything, I would rather not think about it. I know I should have gone somewhere else, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t start again somewhere else. I needed to be here, for him. Jack will never understand; college is everything to him. It’s also everything taking him from me.

It’s strange. He’s my best friend, yet there are so many things he doesn’t know about me. He doesn’t know what my days are like. He thinks I work, go to classes,
and spend time with my mom. Most days, though, I don’t even leave my room. I couldn’t stand being at school, and my mom panics every time I get anxious. Jack still thinks she’s the one with the problem, the one who’s unstable, but it’s more than that. Things are weird between us; I think she blames me because she can’t keep a man, since they have all turned out to be some twisted version of my father, but I also think she hates herself for blaming me and so she tries to overcompensate. When I would come home from classes shaking, she pushed the insurance company to up my prescription allowance. But stronger meds didn’t make it easier, so I left. She still thinks it’s because I didn’t like my major.

I haven’t even been working. I didn’t quit
exactly, but they’ve mostly stopped giving me hours. I called out too many times too close together, all at the beginning of the spring semester, and now I only get scheduled when they’re desperate. It’s okay, though. I like my room. My room is safe. Well,
now
it is. I don’t know that it will ever be truly safe, truly free of its history, but it’s the only place I have to go. My mother offered to swap rooms, but why? Location has nothing to do with the memories.

I don’t feel like driving right now, so I go over to the little park across the street. It’s the middle of the day on Wednesday, which means there is no one here. I find a small bench and grab my pack of cigarettes.
It’s the biggest event of my week – smoking in the middle of a park while everyone else
does
things.

I wish I was normal. I wish I wanted the things other people want, but
I feel like I’m just waiting, just breathing because it’s natural. I wasn’t lying when I told Melinda I didn’t want to die; I
don’t
want to die. I have never been suicidal. It’s something I don’t understand. I guess I still have this inexplicable hope that something will change, that life is just waiting to make sense. But I don’t feel like I’m living my life. Mostly, I just wait until tomorrow is yesterday and go on like that.

Jack would tell me it’s the meds. He was outspoken about his own, saying they made him
feel like a zombie, but I felt like this before the meds. The Xanax doesn’t make me feel soulless. My soul was torn from me almost ten years ago, along with my nightgown, on one summer night when my father decided that I was too pretty to resist.

Even thinking about
it makes me shake. The cigarette flickers as I try to keep my hands steady and I use my free hand to dig in my purse for my medication. I don’t remember when I took it last, but I need it. I feel the tremors starting and I can’t have a panic attack here, alone in the park.

I do this all to myself; I know it. I could ask for help. My mom’s been seeing a decent guy and Jack would try to do something. But they’re moving on. They’re both starting to be happy without me, and I’m still stuck on something that was taken from me, something that was stolen with no reason and with no explanation. Except that I’m beautiful.

It’s still true. A while ago, when I got drunk and made Jack go with me to pick up some strange guy in a bar so I could fuck him while Jack watched, I saw that most of the guys in the place would’ve fucked me. They don’t care. I do it too much. Some are married even, but it’s all I am. It’s all I’m good for. Even Jack…

No. Not him. Not Jack.
He might want that girl, but I know he doesn’t think it. At least… I hope he doesn’t. Because he’s all I’ve got left.