Time Mends (16 page)

“
Have you ever noticed,”
he asked, “how hard it is to do the right thing? It’s like, you
look at all the options, decide which one is going to suck the
most, and that is what you’re supposed to do.”

“
If doing the right thing
was easy everyone would do it,” I conceded, walking up to slide my
arm into his and rest my head on his shoulder. If I was going to be
crazy I might as well enjoy it. “So what sucky thing should you be
doing?”

His head rested on mine. “What you asked me
to do. Leave you alone, let you move on.”

I knew it was time for me to make the
decision. I could either continue living this lie or cut him off
completely.

“
I can’t do this on my
own.”

“
You’re stronger than you
think.”

“
You know, people always
say that, but everyone has a breaking point, Alex.”

His arm moved around my back and tugged me
closer. “You can survive this. You have to.”

“
Why?” Giving up would be
so easy.

“
Because fulfilling your
destiny will be hard. That’s how you know it’s the right thing to
do.”

I continued going through the daily motions.
Angel decided she needed to learn to sew her own clothes after
catching a rerun of Project Runway, so we signed up for a
mother-daughter class at the community center. She was happy to add
another thing to her list of Things Scout Is Completely Incapable
Of Doing Well. Normally it would have bugged me that my shirt had
only one arm hole and two necks, but I couldn’t bring myself to
care.

The only thing to break through the fog was
our training sessions. I pushed myself and the others even more. We
were all covered in bruises, most nights limping our way up the
stairs and to bed, but no one complained.

I was able to put on a good front most of
the time. Eventually, Talley quit asking if I was okay on an hourly
basis and even seemed to dial down the suicide watch. As long as
there was someone to perform for, I could do it. It was when I was
alone the world crumbled, taking my living girl facade with it. I
would sometimes come crashing back to reality with the realization
I had been staring at a wall for countless hours, nothing to
indicate what transpired other than an overwhelming sense of grief
and abandonment.

Fortunately, between my sister, who was
going through a clingy stage, and my Pack, I was rarely left alone
for very long. That is why I panicked when faced with an entire day
to myself. Mom and Dad took Angel to St. Louis for the weekend to
visit the zoo and some museums, and everyone else had long shifts
at work. I tried to keep busy, even cleaned my bedroom. It was a
task which should have taken me hours, if not days, but since
Talley moved in, my room transformed from a haven for clutter and
disorganization to a carefully arranged and labeled monument to the
obsessively compulsed. I dusted every top and vacuumed every inch
of carpet, even using the hand-vac to get under the bed. Of course,
I learned that trick from watching Talley do the same thing two
days prior, so it was basically an exercise in futility. Thirty
minutes later, the room was beyond clean and I was facing at least
eight more hours alone.

At the mere thought of it my chest got
tight. I had to fight for breath, and the harder I fought, the
worse it got. I collapsed against the wall, my entire body
trembling.

Calm down, Scout. It’s
just a panic attack. You have to relax to breathe.

It was one of those things your brain knew
to be true but had trouble convincing your body. I worked on taking
slow, deep breaths, and eventually I was able to get a grip, but I
still felt strung out. On top of everything else, I was angry at
myself for not being able to just get over it. I wasn’t the only
person to ever face tragedy and loss, yet I seemed to be the only
one who couldn’t move forward. How did other people deal with
it?

I pulled myself off the wall and
straightened the picture I knocked aside during my little episode.
It was one Talley recently dug out of a pile of pictures Ashley
Johnson brought over after Alex’s funeral. The pictures were
Ashley’s attempt at turning P.I. She had laid her claim on Alex in
the third grade I-saw-him-first fashion and hated me with the fiery
passion she normally reserved for skin blemishes and clothes bought
at Wal-Mart. While Alex and I conducted our secret affair, Ashley
kept a photo record of our escapades. After Alex’s death, we
sorta-kinda-not-really had a reconciliation, and she turned over
the photos. I flipped through them only once, and then tossed them
into a drawer. Talley found them and fell in love with one that
showed the two of us standing chest-to-chest, staring deep into
each other’s eyes with the goofiest of smiles plastered on our
faces. She put it in a frame and hung it on the wall.

I wondered if she was torturing me on
purpose.

Looking at the picture though, I got an
idea. It was possibly the worst idea I ever had, but I had to do
something. I couldn’t just sit around and feel sorry for myself all
night long.

After I made my phone call, I started the
impossible task of getting ready. It took me forever to find the
curling iron and make-up kit Mom bought for me ages ago in the
hopes I would develop an interest in something a bit more girly
than martial arts or burying myself in books. Then there was the
issue of actually working the curling iron and the millions of
brushes and applicators whose life’s purpose I wasn’t entirely sure
of. I was just finishing up when Ashley’s new Porsche pulled into
my driveway, forty-five minutes after she said she would be
there.

“
Holy shit, Scout!” Ashley
screeched as I walked towards her car. “Is that you?”

I have to admit, even I was a little shocked
at my final results. My hair magically decided to do something
other than just hang there. I followed the step-by-step
instructions I found online for “smokey eyes” and “dramatic lips”
and was painted up like a whore, but did a good enough job I looked
expensive. The dress I borrowed from my mom’s closet helped with
the “I’ll do anything you want as long as you give me $5,000 in
cash first” vibe. It was a basic black Chanel dress, the only
designer thing she owned. On her petite frame is was elegant and
classy. It managed to stop nearly a foot above my knees.

Somehow, though, it managed to cover more
skin than the purple aluminum-tank-top-posing-as-a-dress thing
Ashley was wearing. “Damn girl, you look fine! Almost dying did
wonders for your figure. You’re so skinny!” Sadly, she meant it as
a compliment.

“
You don’t think it’s too
much?” I tugged on the bottom of my dress. “Or too
little?”

“
Are you kidding? I’m
totes jelly.”

“
And I toast and jelly
your outfit, too. It matches the… are those feathers in your
hair?”

Ashley doubled over in a fit of giggles. “Oh
my God, Scout, I forgot how funny you are.”

“
Yeah, I’m considering a
career in stand-up,” I muttered as I tried to figure out how to get
in the car and fake an abdominal injury without enlightening the
world as to the exact nature of Victoria’s secret.

“
Absolutely not. I forbid
it.” The tires on the Porsche squealed as she slung it into
reverse. “No self-respecting future model is friends with a female
comedian. Unless it’s Ellen, of course.”

The drive to McGuire's should have taken an
hour, but Ashley managed to make it in thirty-three minutes flat. I
knew this because she clocked herself with the stop-watch app on
her iPhone.

“
I’ve changed my mind. I
don’t want to do this,” I said as she slid the car into a parking
spot so quickly my seat belt came dangerously close to cutting me
in two. It was a stupid idea for a myriad of reasons, the top two
being we were nowhere close to the twenty-one minimum age
requirement, and it was not in the confines of Lake County. I could
see how the next ten minutes of my life was going to pan out: The
bouncer was going to laugh in our faces, and then Toby would show
up, take me out back, and put a bullet in my skull. This is the
sort of things that happened to girls who tried to break the rules.
I was sure of it.

“
Don’t be such a chicken.
I do this all the time.”

I might have found comfort in that if I
didn’t know that Ashley had a problem with the truth, like her
tendency to stretch and recreate it to suit her needs. “I do this
all the time” could have meant anything from “I got away with it
once” to “I do this all the time in my fantasy world.”

I reluctantly allowed her to drag me out of
the car. The first thing I noticed about the guy at the door was
that he had a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his arm with the
head of the snake curled around an apple on the back of his hand.
It was unique and strangely poetic, which was the exact same way I
would have described it’s owner, Kit Berkley.

It had been at least six years since I last
saw Kit. At the time he was one of those teenage boys who managed
to grow an entire foot over night, thereby losing anything
resembling coordination with his newly elongated limbs. He was a
shy guy who preferred books to people, a trait with which I could
definitely identify. We often debated what constituted high
literature, me arguing on the side of a mix of intelligence and
creativity while Kit was more of a beautiful language and Important
Message kind of guy. He was a really sweet boy.

The person guarding the door of the only bar
outside of Nashville a decent person would be caught dead in looked
like he might rip your tongue out for calling him sweet.

“
Ash!” He wrapped his arms
around my partner in crime, a smile of absolute delight on his
face.

“
K-Bro, how goes it?” She
was giggling as he lifted her in the air. I tried not to notice
that she was wearing a pair of blue and pink polka-dotted
panties.

He sat her back down and looked me over.
“Scout Donovan? Is that you?”

“
In the flesh.” And a
little black dress, but mostly just flesh. Lots and lots of exposed
flesh.

“
You certainly grew up
nice and pretty, not that I ever doubted that you would.” He gave
me a pat, which didn’t feel insulting coming from him. Not that I
would have done much about it if it had. He was acting like Old Kit
at the moment, but you never knew when the ‘roid rage would kick
in.

“
And you grew… Well, you
certainly grew.”

Kit laughed and patted his somewhat paunchy
belly. “Up and out.” He gave Ashley’s shoulders a squeeze. “What
are two pretty girls like you up to tonight?”

“
Scout needs a night out.”
Ashley constructed a face that so convincingly portrayed concern
even I almost believed her. “It’s time she started having fun
again.”

You know that
I feel really crappy about what happened to you
but even crappier about the fact I now have to feel all awkward
because of it
look people get after you’ve
been through something super sucky? That was the look Kit gave me.
“Oh yeah. I’m real sorry about all that stuff that happened to you.
That was rough.”

He didn’t even know half of if. “I’m getting
better,” I lied.

“
Here, you girls go on in.
Tell Bobby at the bar that your drinks are all on me tonight,
okay?”

“
Thanks, Kit.” Ashley gave
him a chaste kiss on the cheek before grabbing my hand and dragging
me through the door. “You’re the best big brother ever!”

The inside of the building was dark, and it
took me a second to adjust. It was just two days past the new moon,
so my night vision wasn’t working so well. “Big brother? His dad
was married to your mom for literally six months when we were in
middle school.”

“
That doesn’t mean he’s
not my brother anymore.”

“
I think it
does.”

“
Scout, that’s not how it
works. Once a brother, always a brother.”

“
But you dated Gabe
Riggs.”

“
So?”

“
So, his dad was married
to your mom for like two whole years.” Which was pretty much a
record for Ashley’s mom, who had married half the men in Lake
County. Well, half the men with an annual income well into the
upper ranges of six figures.

Ashley sashayed up to the bar, winking at an
old man who nearly fell of out his chair checking out the way her
micro-mini skirt clung to her butt. “That was different. Gabe and I
never bonded. Kit and I did.”

“
And Gabe couldn’t get you
into clubs and buy you free drinks.”

She gave me a quick scowl before turning to
the attractive Latino man who stood behind the bar. “Hey, Bobby.
Kit’s buying drinks for me and my friend tonight. Ain’t that nice
of him?”

“
Precious.” I liked Bobby.
It was the combo of exotic beauty and sarcasm delivered with a
shocking Southern drawl that did it.

“
I want a fuzzy navel.
Scout?”

I’ve never drank alcohol before. I know,
what normal American high school graduate hasn’t been plastered at
least once, right? But drinking never appealed to me, especially
witnessing the effect if had on Charlie’s family. But, like the
good nerd I am, I did a bit of research online before waltzing into
a bar.

“
Long Island Iced Tea,
please,” I ordered as casually as I could with my hands shaking
like they were. I just knew he was going to ask for ID.