The Beginning of Always (24 page)

T
he crowd roared and cheered as I charged straight into Kevin. He planted his feet on the ground to take my impact, but it didn’t work. I lowered my right shoulder and crashed into him, and we both fell against the side of the school with our fists flying. I connected first with a satisfying crunch right at his cheek, and his head snapped back to bear the full brunt of our impact against the wall.

I couldn’t help but pull my lips into an expression of satisfaction. I reared back for another strike, but Kevin rammed his forehead forward and a crack rang out in my skull.

I stumbled, a moment of weakness. That was enough for him. He slugged me in the jaw and tackled me into the bicycle rack. The sound of metal pieces scraping crashed beneath me and something sharp gouged me right below my right ear. Blinding pain erupted and radiated across the side of my face, just as Kevin dragged me across the pavement, cutting my forehead open over the blacktop.

I kicked, striking Kevin’s gut, and he doubled over, eyes bulging. I flipped us over until he was under me and seized his collar, slamming his head back into the ground.

He cursed. He groaned. I sank my fists into his face in rapid succession, relishing bone-on-bone contact, feeling his struggles weaken below me.

That’ll show him to talk to me like that
. I pounded him again.

“Blair! Man, stop!” Hands sprang around me and yanked me backwards. I fought and kicked, lunging for Kevin’s slumped form. His face was covered in blood. Red blood. Rage filled me, pain spread from every possible imperfect part of me. I roared, needing to hit him again, wanting the kill.

“Let me go!” I yelled, fighting the many hands that snatched at me. I couldn’t place the voices, couldn’t place to whom the hands belonged.

All I saw was red.

A red sports car sat in the driveway next to a large station wagon. I cracked my knuckles, my heart thumping violently in my chest.

I approached the door. A summer wreath of berries hung above the door knocker.

The door was red.

The berries on the wreath were red.

I knocked twice.

The door open.

A woman with hazel eyes stepped into view. Eyes that flared with fear when mine connected with them.

She held a dishtowel in her hands.

We stared at each other and she spoke first.

“Alistair?”

I forced myself to smile.

“Hey, Mom.”

Her eyes flooded with more fear, now panic.

“Why are you here?”

She quickly glanced behind her and then back to me.

“You have to leave. Go back to Michigan,” she hissed.

“But …,” I started, but stopped once her face shifted.

Her face was cold. Her expression was stony.

My heart plummeted to my toes.

“Mom.” My voice was like a child’s. I was pleading.

She didn’t care.

“You need to leave. You can’t be here. You’re with your dad now.”

I didn’t say anything. My eyes narrowed to a glare. Anger snaked into my vein, ugly rage that sprung from that secret, terrible side of me.

It reacted to this secret, terrible moment occurring between the two of us.

“Fuck you,” I spat out.

Her eyes hardened at my words.

She snapped the dish towel between her fingers.

“It was for the best. You can’t be here. I did it for your own good.”

“Fuck you. You’re such a fucking liar.”

She took a step back, her hand already on the side of the door.

“Go away.”

Her lips were tight.

She looked away.

She closed the door.

All I saw was red.

“Cops! Run!”

Everyone screamed and the crowd broke apart like fireworks. The students scattered in record time and I fled, blood running into my eyes and pain shooting down my arm. I flew past a row of cars, ignoring the cries of people once they registered my blood-caked face. I raked a forearm across my brow and flinched at the stones embedded in my skin scratching against my face.

Sirens whirled in the distance.

I cursed and ran faster.

A fence came into view. I picked up my speed and jumped the wall, but a long nail jutting from the wood caught my jeans and tore a long gash down the side of my right calf.

“Ahhh!” I yelled through clenched teeth, flipping over and landing on my cut leg. It buckled underneath me and my hands immediately went to the wound as I rolled over a patch of grass.

Jesus, it hurt. My fingers were covered in blood. My blood. Kevin’s blood. I staggered up on my hands and tried to walk, but an intense agony shot straight to my nerves and my legs buckled underneath me.

“Alistair!” a girl’s voice rang out behind me.

Not just any girl’s voice. A voice I could pick out in a crowd of a thousand. A crowd of a million.

I didn’t answer; I didn’t acknowledge her. I forced myself up and tried to run across the field, but my traitorous leg refused to work. I stumbled, dragging the useless limb behind me before crashing to the ground again against my palms.

I gritted my teeth as my hand curled into a fist, crunching dirt against my knuckles.

I needed to run.

“Alistair! Stop!” Her voice got closer. Despite myself, I looked over my shoulder. Florence Reynolds was speeding across the leaf-strewn grass, pedaling desperately at her bicycle. Her chestnut hair flew in the wind and her face was pink with exertion.

Her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, were wide with fear.

“Alistair!” she yelled again and I snapped my attentions away from her. I tried to walk again, but pitched backwards, collapsing against the fence.

A bicycle hit the ground with a loud clatter and Florence vaulted herself over the same spot that I had damned myself on. She crouched down next to me, her face panicked, her breaths coming out fast and hard.

“Oh God, Alistair!” she cried. I was a mess. What Kevin hadn’t done to my face, I had done myself to my own body.

“Get away from me,” I growled, and I shook her hands off my elbow. I didn’t bother to gauge her reaction. I could anticipate her expression of hurt. She’d been giving me nothing but that look since I got back. I’d gone this far with avoiding her. I wasn’t about to stop the record now just because I was bleeding.

I pushed that thought away and forced myself up by balancing on the wooden fence.

“Alistair! Don’t! You’re hurt! You’re losing blood!”

I stumble on my bad leg, and right before I hit the dirt, Florence’s thin arms crashed around my chest to take the blow.

“Alistair! Stop!”

Now she was everywhere. Her hair was in my face, clinging to my rapidly thickening blood. Her arms were around my body, her fingers gripping my shirt.

Her voice was in my head, her pleas drilling into my ears, into my brain, into my wretched useless stone of a heart.

I tried to shrug her off, but her grip was strong.

“We’re closer to my house. Let’s go there, please.” Florence pulled me tighter towards her.

“Get away from me,” I seethed between my teeth.

Her smell assailed me. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t know what she did to me. She fought dirty.

I pushed at her, but she wouldn’t budge.

“Get off!”

I shoved her away from me, as hard as I could. Florence fell away and collided against the fence, crying out when a piece of uneven wood jabbed into her back.

I stilled. Time stilled. Breath stilled. Every emotion, all the anger, all the frustration and embarrassment, stilled, replaced with anxiety.

Florence was slumped over, one hand against the small of her back as she cringed in pain. Her face was tight, her expression twisted with a grimace.

Oh no. Shit. I’m sorry.

“Florence,” I said. I hobbled closer to her. Had I hurt her? Was she bleeding?

I screwed it all up.

“Florence,” I said again.

Look at me, Florence, look at me.

Please, please. Look at me.

I reached over and touched her shoulder gently.

She was breathing hard, heavy exhales puffing from between her lips.

Look at me. Please, look at me.

Florence slowly opened her eyes and raised them towards me.

Behind a glassy veil of tears rang a singular emotion—relief.

“You should take off your pants and shirt. You’re hurt pretty badly,” Florence said. She gently tugged at my torn shirtsleeve, but I stubbornly resisted.

After Florence caught her breath back at that stupid fence, she’d half-dragged, half-supported me back to her house. I had gone quietly this time. It was slow going and we hid between some blueberry bushes at one point when we heard police sirens.

They were searching for me.

Finally, we made it back to an empty house. Florence didn’t tell me where everyone was, but I knew. Her parents were in Chicago at the hospital.

She got me up the stairs to her room and now I was sitting on her bed, covered in dirt and dust and dried blood. Florence fretted about, locating towels and wetting them in her bathroom sink.

I sat there, numb. All the endorphins from the fight and flight had left me, and all that remained was a dull ache and biting pain.

“Take off your clothes,” Florence said when she came back into the room. I kept my eyes on the hardwood floor. Shame had begun sinking in.

“Hey.” Florence’s fingers gripped my blood-soaked collar and I twitched. I tried to swat her hands away, but she yanked at my shirt.

“Stop it,” she said in a firm voice.

I stopped it.

Florence worked quickly, unbuttoning my torn flannel and shedding it off my body. My left arm still had that old wound, barely scabbed over. The fight today had torn the flesh apart and it was bleeding slightly. She pulled my t-shirt over my head.

A fleeting panic flared within me. I was going to be nearly naked with Florence in an empty house.

My mind whirled; it went to inappropriate places as she unbuttoned my jeans and tugged them down over my pants. But when the denim got caught in my gash, all thought left me and I gritted my teeth in pain.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly while still working my leg out of the pants.

Florence ran wet towels over my body, cleaning the dirt and blood off my face. One side of my neck was crusty with blood where Kevin had thrown me down over the bike racks. As she swept over my ear, I hissed as she made contact with torn skin. But she soon moved on, her fingertips soothing me, and I began to breathe easier.

“You’re still bleeding here,” Florence whispered gently and she placed a cool towel against my forehead.

“Don’t tell my dad,” I answered gruffly. I didn’t need another lecture. Things had been tense as hell since I’d returned.

Florence nodded.

“Boy! What you doing out here?”

“What’s it to you?” My hood shrouded most of my face, so I doubted he could tell how young I was.

I probably shouldn’t have wandered so far east. I was in the Little Woods area, and now, a man was approaching me from down the block.

He probably wasn’t going to ask me for the time.

He came into view. He was tall, but I was taller. He was lean, almost scrawny. I had more muscle. He leered at me, placing his hands in his pockets threateningly, looming closer.

“Hey, let me see your backpack.”

He sneered, his ugly grin displaying missing teeth.

I was so ready to break someone. So ready. By the time lights flashed behind me to illuminate the dark night, and by the time hard, tough hands pulled me off him, he was barely breathing and blood was running thick and hot down my left arm.

His knife lay a couple feet away from us, thrown aside, handle and blade bloody. I wasn’t sure if the blood was mine or his. My arm hurt like a bitch … but I’d been through worse.

What really hurt didn’t bleed.

What truly hurt would never bleed.

“Can you stand?” Florence dabbed at the cut on my leg. “You should shower to get the dirt off you before I dress the wounds.”

I gave a grunt of agreement.

“Here.” Florence gripped my wrist and I allowed her to help me up on my feet. “You can use my bathroom. I’ll shower in my parents’ room.”

Her hair was matted with my blood.

I limped into her bathroom and she left me alone to my task. I quickly shed my briefs with some difficulty and stumbled into her shower. I scrubbed myself down, wincing as the soap flowed over broken skin.

I stared at the bottom of the porcelain tub, watching the water run white with suds, red with blood and then pink as the blood mixed with the water.

I was numb.

I hoped I hadn’t killed Kevin. That would suck.

Florence probably thought I was the world’s biggest loser.

I squeezed my eyes closed and leaned my forehead against the cool tile as the scalding water beat down.

A soft knock. “Are you okay in there?” Florence’s voice broke my stupor.

“Yeah,” I answered flatly. “Be out in a bit.”

Heat gathered at the tip of my nose and my entire face flushed. If water wasn’t already sluicing down my face, I could have sworn I was crying.

I was back on Florence’s bed, in my boxer briefs and nothing else. She had toweled off my hair and was now blow-drying it. She reached around me to get the back of my head and her shirt rode up past her midsection.

A pang of guilt hit me when I spotted a rectangular bandage on the small of her back. So the fence had cut her when I pushed her into it.

I hated myself more, if that was possible.

The blow-dryer clicked off and silence fell.

“You feeling okay?” Florence pressed the back of her hand against my cheek and brushed my hair off my forehead.

I nodded slightly, staring stupidly at her.

“Oh,” Florence said. “You’re still bleeding.” She picked up a small yellow towel and pressed it against the top of my forehead.

I blinked slowly, still keeping her in my eyeline. There was something stirring, something strange. It swirled within me and choked off my words.

“Let me get the first aid kit,” she said. I continued staring at her. Florence gave a small smile, then reached down and gripped my hand. She pulled it up and gently placed it against the towel.