September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (40 page)

Guards escort me back into the small
blue room. I’m put into my seat at the vinyl-wood table. Today, I’m
anxious to vomit the words. I have no intention of waiting for
anyone to prompt me. But my plan is interrupted by Darren, the
quiet man whose name reminds me of the guy on that old TV show
about the genie.

“What happened when you woke up in the
hospital?” He asks.

This throws me. “I don’t remember
exactly what was wrong with me.”

“We have the hospital records right
here, if you’d like to go over them.” Quiet Darren sets his thin
hand over one of the many manila folders on the table in front of
him.

Tara and her tight bun are sitting
beside him. She looks a little pale.

I shake my head. “Living it was
plenty.”

I don’t need to see what they saw,
too. Their truth won’t match mine on this one, anyways. It never
has; their chain of events is much more difficult than mine. I’ll
stick with my memories and touch on theirs when the time
comes.

“I was in a lot of pain. My left
shoulder was sprained, my left wrist, too. My arm was in a sling,
but I’m right handed, so . . .”

My lawyer lightly shakes his head.
Tara looks down. Darren sits back in his chair.

They must think I’m so
stupid, that I don’t realize the magnitude of what’s not being
said. I know I can’t always trust my own mind, that’s why I made
the point that this proclamation is all my
perception
. Mine. What I saw. When I saw
it.

What they don’t understand is how it
feels to be me.

Living with my problems is like trying
to negotiate a one-way maze. I can only go forward and every
passage, every choice, looks the same. All I see is the path I
think I should take. Nothing is certain—there is no logic, only
guess work. So what seems like the right place to turn can end up a
dead-end. If I could’ve only gotten some distance, some height, I
could’ve seen where I was going wrong. But I’ll never get to go
back, never start over. I look back now and see the wall of
problems for what they were. I have accepted that I made wrong
turns and am living with the dead ends.

At seventeen, I was working inside a
complex problem with limited information. I didn’t know I was
afraid of Avery’s choices. I still am. She has always tried to push
things, push people and their situations. IN her mind, she needs to
test every boundary, every person. She needs to know when they’ll
break.

When she twisted Rosa’s arm behind her
back that day in the girls’ bathroom, I knew she wanted to break
it.

Once, when she was taking a
shower, her mind just went off on some tangent, wondering
‘what would happen if I just stayed in
here?’
Because she was curious how people
might react. But mere wondering is never, ever enough. She has to
know the answers. Avery stayed inside that shower until the hot
water was gone, until she got all pruney, until she was freezing,
until someone came pounding on the door, until someone broke it
down, until they physically dragged her out of the shower and made
her get dressed.

Pushing, pushing, and pushing just to
see what might happen when a person is faced with the
unexpected.

I know Darren asked me about when I
woke up in the hospital, but that doesn’t seem so important at the
moment. “I first saw Avery on the day of my accident. Did I ever
tell you that?”

My mouth is all watery and my throat
feels a mile wide. “Her mean-streak was showing the first time I
talked to her. That was after my accident, after I got out of the
hospital.”

I have to shake my head at
my own unbelievable idiocy, the same stupidity that kept me blindly
comforted from the first. “It wasn’t like I saw what she was doing
and thought,
‘Oh, she is violent!’
It was more like I couldn’t understand and made
no judgment. I was a stupid kid.”

+++

I was placed with my first foster
family after they released me from the hospital, after the second
surgery to repair my skull. Avery happened to live in the same
apartment complex. I was upstairs and she was down.

On days when my head was hurting too
much to go to school, I would lie in my room and look out the
window at the playground behind the complex. Some days, Avery was
there. Most times, other kids in the complex were out there, too. I
thought, at first, that she was playing with them, but as I watched
I saw that she was only playing near them. It was interesting how
she didn’t seem to care that the other kids weren’t talking to her
or inviting her to play.

I have no memory of the accident
itself, only some parts that I dreamed about, but I always
remembered Avery being there. I saw her on the ground, calling to
me after I hit that tree.

One day, when Avery was out there
alone on the playground, I snuck outside.

As I walked along the path that led to
the swing set, Avery’s back was to me. She was standing in a patch
of tall grass at the end of the path, staring down at something I
couldn’t see. Then she turned aside, walked to a large planter and
removed a decorative rock. I watched her carry it back into the
grass. Once she reached her previous spot, she stopped, raised the
rock over her head, and slammed it down.

There was this odd noise and I thought
maybe she was laughing.

I inched closer.

She picked up the rock again and
slammed it back into the grass.

I didn’t identify the high-pitched cry
until it cut-off.

It was a mercy killing, she’d said.
She couldn’t find anyone to take the starving kitten and it had no
mother. She was helping it.

4
3

—Angel

All three of them are scribbling in
their note pads. I am sure they have a million questions, but I
have exhausted that subject.

Switching back to the previous
topic—the question of waking up in the hospital—I answer as if I
never veered away in the first place.

“I was sure I must have run at least a
few blocks from that motel before I got hit by that police
car.”

+++

I remember feeling relieved for half a
second when I saw the IV in my arm. I was actually glad I wasn’t
dead. Until I remembered how I got there.

I took too long to go for help. I
ruined any chance Jake might have had because I fell apart. Every
second I hesitated, with every breath I took, I betrayed
him.

I would never touch him again. I would
have to live the rest of my life without holding him, kissing his
face, resting my head on his chest to hear his heartbeat. I would
never watch his eyes crinkle when he laughed or feel his strong
arms embracing me. Never feel his breath on my ear as he whispered
my name.

My heart cursed the minutes that
carried him away, the room he was laid in, the hands that threw him
into that reposed state where I found him, and my own lap—for so
impotently bearing his weight after missing the moment when he
breathed his last. And my broken brain for not knowing what to do
about it.

All of him was taken—who he used to
be, who he would have become, the future that he was building for
himself was gone and I was left behind. Alone.

A deformed tree struck by lightning—I
was ruined.

I was on fire. Furious with myself.
With that bitch I’d called a friend.

And the doctor was out of
his mind. He strolled in, all nonchalant, and broke into some kind
of speech about how I was
lucky
.

I kept my mouth shut, too consumed
with ideas of how I was going to hang Avery when the cops came to
question me. No, I didn’t see anything, but what I saw after, and
the sounds I heard, and the way she apologized; those were the
nails in her coffin. My loyalty was to Jake and she would pay for
what she did.

The police came in as soon as the
doctor left my room. One of my nurses said they had been there
waiting for me the whole time.

The moment I laid eyes on those two
officers; it was as if the burning ache—the one that said I was
somehow betraying myself by talking to cops—had been waiting for
that sign of authority to make it all real. Their presence
solidified my allegiance; it justified my speaking to them. And I
needed that, because even though I was going to spill my guts,
there was still that innate part of me that naturally distrusted
cops.

There was the dual smack of righteous
rage and Jakes resolute absence. My anger was the tip of a
flickering flame that grew to a scorching inferno when Jakes’ name
tipped into it. Like gasoline, the two ignited.

My shame for cooperating—for the nerve
of my breath after Jakes had stopped—was buried beneath the rubble
for the moment. I sat up, watching the two cops place chairs at the
end of my bed before sitting down.

I told them everything I could think
of before they said a word. Every little detail, before they even
asked for it. The way the night didn’t go as I expected it to. How
that chick Angelica was so beautiful and awesome on her guitar,
that I was jealous when she performed alongside Jake because she
was doing something I never could. She complimented him in a way I
only dreamed about. And then Jake was mad at me and left me
hanging. It was too much stress and I got a headache.

In the fantasyland of this legal
drama, I was articulate. I told the cops everything and they
believed me. They were going to arrest Avery and I was going to be
their star witness to testify against her.

Reality was a cruel slap to the
face.

4
4

—Angel

“Why is that?” Tight Bun Tara asks.
When I stare at her, she clarifies: “What ‘reality’ felt like a
slap to the face?”

My back straightens with
decisive stubbornness. She knows damn well
what
. “They said I was
lying.”

Her eyes move from mine down to the
paper in front of her. Pen in hand, she scribbles her notes across
the page. “How did that make you feel?”

I scoff. “How do you
think?”

“Betrayed?” Her eyebrows lift over the
squared rim of her glasses.

I’m very tempted to
scream,
“DUH!”
But calmly explain, “Betrayed is an accurate
description.”

“Did they tell you what they believe
happened? What their theories were?” It’s Darren asking this
time.

I nod then look at the microphone,
remembering I’m supposed to speak. “Yes, they did.”

“And can you repeat those theories to
me?” Tight Bun Tara asks.

She’s probing.
Why?
A weight settles
between my shoulders as I ponder the question. Since the beginning
of this interview, Tight Bun Tara has seemed the nicest, or maybe
the most accessible of the three people questioning me. The
direction she’s taking right now and the way her pen keeps flying
across her notepad gives me the feeling that I have misjudged her.
Maybe her soft demeanor was meant to fool me.

And all the faith I
had—more than I ever realized, judging by the rampant
disappointment coming on like a wave, vibrating through my
chest—all that faith in her, in the belief that she would
see
me
, the
person inside; the love and dreams that I’ve lost . . . the
hope.

It’s gone.

I can feel myself shrinking, deflated
like a popped balloon. Only, I am not trying to block them out. My
legs are not curling up, my arms are not clinging to my stomach.
Still, I feel as if I am being oppressed, losing energy and I can’t
stop it. I don’t think I want to.

My breathing becomes labored. My eyes
lose focus.

+ + +

4
5

—Avery

I remember very well, the whole
pathetic scenario.

The cops had me cuffed, sitting in the
interrogation room. I was giving as much attitude as I got. From
the moment I was bulldozed into the station, the whole scenario
reeked of a bad cop show—some chick-cop set each of my fingers over
an ink pad then rolled them, one at a time, onto a page with boxes
that labeled each print with a name and corresponding digit. She
said the ink would wash right off, but my finger tips and palms
were covered in inky blotches for days after.

Then, I was strapped into a hard
plastic chair and left alone for hours inside a little room as they
attempted to bore me to death.

When the two idiot cops that arrested
me finally came in, saying stupid things like, “play time is over,”
all I could do was laugh in their faces. I mean, who they fuck did
they think they were? They didn’t know me.

I sat there as the two cops hammered
me with question after question. They were too worked up to bother
hearing anything I said, so I dropped my head, trying to reach my
cuffed, discolored fingers with my mouth. I wanted to lick them, to
see if the ink would bleed.