September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (17 page)

The expression made me feel naked. I
took my bandaged arm from him and covered myself.

“Why?” He set his palm against my
cheek and stared.

The raw emotion that seemed to surface
with that one word made me want to apologize. But I didn’t.
“Because I need to feel better.”

He closed his eyes again, his features
relaying the feeling hidden beneath his lids. He was hurt. “What I
mean is, why didn’t you tell me? I thought we were friends who
talked about this shit.”

“We are . . .
friends
.” The word felt
weird coming from me. I didn’t care to have friends. One reason
being they were always asking questions. “But I won’t talk about
it.”

My voice carried off when he leaned
closer and took my bandaged arm in both of his hands. “Friends
don’t judge. They listen . . . and maybe make fun of you later on.”
Jake offered a fake grin, trying to lighten the mood as he
continued. “But they can’t do that if they don’t talk to each other
first.”

Jake extended my folded elbow.
“Friends help each other heal.” He leaned down and set his lips to
the inside of my arm, kissing at the edge of the
dressing.

I tugged my arm back. “How could you
help, Jake?”

He straightened, looking me in the
face. “Any way you’ll let me. If you need to talk . . . or
whatever,” His brow scrunched again when I fidgeted. “For whatever
you need, I’m here.”

He sounded so sure and sincere.
Considering the way he looked at me and his attempt to help, I
decided it might be okay to be friends with Jake.

+ + +

16

—Angel

The first time I ever talked to Avery,
it was over the body of a dead kitten.

She had found the poor little thing
and showed me. A black and white bag of bones, covered in fleas,
abandoned by its’ mother, a stray cat that hung around the
apartment complex we both lived in at the time. She’d showed me to
an alcove behind the complex, where the trash was kept, and took me
back to a dark, stinking corner where the rest of the litter laid
lifeless. Four kittens in all; only one had found the strength to
make it out into the grass near the playground only to meet the
same fate. We cried over the tragedy and gave each a proper
burial.

I used to look back at that day and
find comfort in the fact that two small girls with so much working
against them were able to stare into the face of death and forge a
friendship. Now I look back and see it for what it really was:
nothing.

I need to get back to the important
stuff.

Where was I?
Oh, yes . . .

+++

Avery was staying over.

The bed spread sprawled open and
swayed to the floor like a lead feather. “I’ll sleep down here.
That way, if Deanna checks, I can slip under the bed.”

I laughed at Avery’s silliness. The
Foster worked nights and she didn’t care if I had a friend sleep
over—so long as that friend shared my gender. “And what if you’re
sleeping?”

Her mouth quirked to one side. “I’ll
be the monster under your bed.”

“The rails are too low. Your giant
head will get stuck and you’ll never get out.”

Avery’s green eyes brightened with
humor. “I’ll live on dust bunnies and lost socks.”

“I’ll bring you water once a
day.”

The trailer had a way of shaking so
that the slightest move shifted the house beneath your feet and
squeaky floorboards. When footsteps clattered down the hallway, we
knew by the beat it was my foster brother, Austen.

Avery straightened and leapt to
disappear behind the door as Austen opened it. His eyes swept over
me and the surfaces of my room. “Have you seen my headphones?” He
kept one hand on the knob and the other pushed his overgrown hair
back. It was thick and wavy and awful. He would have been so much
better looking if he kept it short.

“In the living room, on top of the
stereo, last I saw.”

He eyed the blankets and pillows on
the floor. “Thanks. Hey, I’m going to Sheila’s, later. You’ll be
okay tonight?”

I nodded, “Yeah.”

As he turned to leave, Avery jumped
out from behind the door. Her eyes fierce, her smooth face twisted.
“Bwahh!!” She shouted, with outstretched arms and claw-like
fingers. A very convincing monster.

Austen just rolled his eyes. He’d seen
that trick one too many times, I think. When he shut the door, we
were rolling, laughing until our sides ached.

“Music.” Avery insisted.

I obliged her by putting
on
Meta Morph
by
none other than Analog Controller. And turned it up until the
speakers crackled. When the first note of the song played, so began
our feast for the ears. Our heads were quaking over jerking necks.
Four hips shook, matched by thrashing feet. Now the floor was
really creaking. My sneakers slipped from my feet onto the
blanket.

When the next rotation started, we
were thirsty and nowhere near finished. That’s when Avery opened
her backpack to reveal the treat she’d brought. Her nails, colored
in with black marker, were wrapped around the neck of her favorite
drink.

“Schnapps anyone?” She
offered.

It felt like half a bottle
later when I hung up the phone with Jake. The band was auditioning
another potential new lead guitarist. Some guy from Phoenix. Jake
was convinced that he could either play the lead guitar or sing and
wanted my opinion. He didn’t need it, though. The band already
voted that a new guitarist would be an easier transition. Very few
singers had Jake’s smooth and rough tones as well as the wide vocal
range. I agreed that another guitar player was easier, but I never
liked the idea of Jake giving up anything. I wanted him to be able
to do everything he wanted. I was going to go over there, but it’d
been a while since Avery stayed over. Jake was grasping, it seemed,
because he really didn’t want that girl in the band. I took a
measure of comfort in that and ignored the two words that were
still stuck on repeat in my head.
“Not
yet.”

Once we sobered some, Avery, who’d
borrowed her mom’s car again, drove us to our looking point, a
place she and I liked to go to chill out.

There wasn’t much to do in our area so
football was kind of a big deal. Not to us, but to the rest of the
world. Avery parked at the bottom of the lonely mound that
overlooked the away side of the high schools’ stadium. We climbed
up the steep backside to our spot to look out at the empty seats.
There was no game tonight, but there were always some lights on.
Still, even dim and empty, the open arena was something to see from
our small hill.

There was one tree and a patch of
grass at the top that dried up every spring, like the rest of the
state. There was also lots of sand and a few cacti sprinkled among
stray rocks. A couple had ripening fruit. But, I didn’t think
prickly pear would mix well with cinnamon schnapps.

Hot air breezed past, tossing up my
mane, and relieving the moisture that kept it stuck to my
neck.

“That feels nice.” I combed my fingers
through my hair, pulling it up to twist in a knot.

I sat down while Avery stood, looking
on at the dark. Her palms were clasped together, fingers twisted in
knots.

“Those blank spaces . . . . Angel, how
is your memory?”

Something large and heavy lodged in my
stomach. My throat tightened. “What?”

“Forget the question, already?” She
turned to look at me over her shoulder.

I shook my head, shocked that I was
feeling so suddenly defensive. “It’s fine.”

I don’t care how well you
know your friends there are always parts of them that you don’t
question. Pools inside them that are too deep to dive into. It
might be because you never thought to ask, or maybe because you
don’t care. In this instance, it was more that Avery knew better.
She had never, and I mean
never
asked about my memory problems. She knew about
them, sure, but it was one of those things that were not up for
discussion because there was no point. She couldn’t help me solve
them. I never delved into why she was always pretending to be happy
when I could see she wasn’t, or why she sometimes acted more like a
mom than a friend, or about the obvious distrust she had for my
meek foster brother. I never asked Avery why she felt the need to
cut herself, either because she’d never tell me. So for her to up
and ask about my memory problems was weird.

“Do you remember your first foster
home?”

It was like the air around me went
cold. “I don’t know.”

She wrapped her arms around herself
and seemed to squeeze, murmuring indecipherably.

Everyone knows one person with real
shit for luck. For me, Avery was that person. My life was no bed of
roses, but it really seemed that all the bad stuff happened to her.
It also seemed that she put herself into those situations, but that
was another one of those off-limit things. I cared. I wanted to ask
all the time, but Avery wouldn’t tolerate it. She’d let me stand
beside her, hold her, even let me see her wounds, but she wouldn’t
let me heal them. She wouldn’t let anyone in—not into that part.
Only she was allowed into that black part she carried around. Her
quiet storm.

As I sat on the dry ground, watching
Avery’s lonely form in the moonlight, I wondered if this was a
precedent, if we were going to start talking about the things that
really mattered.

But that wonderment was halted when
Avery turned to look at me, clapping her hands together. “Time to
get the fuck out of here.”

+ + +

17

—
Avery

People are fake. And who needs that
bullshit?

Not me.

For a long time, though, I thought I
did. I was just one of the many lonesome people that walked among
the Normals, pretending to be one of them, even though all I really
was, was transparent.

But there was more to it than that.
When that empty part inside me opened up, it was like the second a
door shut, the moment I was by myself, that black feeling would
stretch over me and I became emptiness personified. A black hole.
My skin, the casing that was stretching. I felt the hollow growing,
pressing into me, threatening to turn me inside out or obliterate
me completely. I couldn’t stand it. It hurts to be stretched that
way.

All I wanted was relief, and the
easiest way to make it go away was to fill it. Fillers were always
temporary, though. There was nothing that could ever truly make it
stop. Drinking helped, sometimes. But I couldn’t always get
alcohol. Then, I’d have to grab onto the next best something. Or
someone. To anchor me in place, to feel them beside me so I’d know
I was still alive, because I couldn’t really be evaporating if I
felt something besides the emptiness.

+++

The first time I made the mistake of
letting Troy-Shithead-Bleecher get near me was at a party. It was
one of those nights that I snuck out, alone, seeking something more
from life. I didn’t know it was Troy’s house. To me the party house
was just another brown stucco—a suburban-type place—filled with
people I didn’t care to know. I just needed to get out of my head
and feel something.

That night, Angel had come down with a
migraine and withdrew the way she always did. There was nothing I
could do for her, so I decided that I needed to party.

Strolling in the front door, the house
was jam-packed.

I wasn’t there even a full minute
before some drunk guy—he had to have been at least ten years older
than me—staggered over and gave me a lusty look, a creepy eye-rape,
that turned my stomach. I acted like he wasn’t there, like he
didn’t ask for my name. I refused to notice him in any way, even as
he reached for my shoulder.

I broke right and walked towards a
large fish tank.

There were people everywhere. Mostly
kids from Eager High. The large living area was otherwise empty—no
furniture except for one lamp and the giant fish tank that bordered
the living and dining rooms. In the dining area, on the opposing
side the fish tank, were four jocks standing over a keg. One was
holding a stack of red cups, another was holding a bag. Music
played from unseen speakers as I recognized Jimmy Maroney and Curt
Brody. People were walking up to them, placing dollar bills into
the bag Jimmy was holding, then Curt would pass a cup to each
person. A third guy I didn’t recognize would pump the keg while a
fourth would do the pouring. Jocks turned everything into a team
effort.

The older drunk that greeted me at the
door followed me over to the fish tank. Someone passing by
addressed him as “Uncle Smiley.” He stood a few feet away with a
hand on the tanks’ glass, seeming to watch the water bubbles
gurgling from the filter.

I focused on the music. It was a new
song, one I’d never heard before, but I liked the sound. It wasn’t
grunge, but it was definitely good.

Uncle Smiley made a dumb comment about
my jeans: how tight they were and how he wondered why I bothered to
put them on when he’d heard it was so easy to get them
off.