Always, Abby: Freshman Year Read online

  I’m a little nervous about Friday. It’ll be the second time I’ve been to his house, but the first time I only went inside to use the bathroom a couple of times. This time he said he wanted to watch some movies, which means we’ll be inside the whole time. It’s sad, but I don’t really know how to act around a real family. Things we do in my house probably aren’t normal. I don’t want to feel out of place. Then again, when you’re not sure of your place to begin with, it’s hard to feel like you belong.

  Always,

  Abby

  October 4, 2003

  Dear Heart,

  I keep trying to come up with a way to explain how I feel or what I’m thinking. I’ve been staring at this blank page for an hour because I can’t put into words the messed-up images in my head.

  I’m fine. I have to keep telling myself that. I feel tainted, tarnished somehow. It’s not even that big of a deal, but it feels like one right now. I woke up one way Friday morning and then I went to bed in a completely different way. I learned things, heard things, felt things. The weird feeling of scaredness for the past month finally reared its head.

  School yesterday was perfectly normal. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The bus ride to Dawson’s house was fine. Even walking into his house to see his mom, Julie, making cookies was fine. We turned the T.V. on in his living room and started watching Titanic because Dawson actually likes it. He also thinks it’s funny that his first name is the character’s last name. He kept making jokes about how maybe he’d been Jack in a past life. He didn’t believe me when I told him that Jack and Rose were made up for the movie.

  We were still arguing about it when the timer went off for the cookies. Julie reminded us that the pizza she had ordered would be another hour or so. But then, she left. She just grabbed her purse and walked right out of the door, telling Dawson to make sure and clean up after himself.

  I had never been alone with a boy before. I watched her walk down the steps of the porch without even looking over her shoulder at us. I know that my eyes were huge because Dawson laughed at me. He told me that his mom trusted him and that she trusted whoever he was friends with. He also promised that his dad would be home soon.

  For a little while it seemed fine. We still talked a bit and we still tried to watch the movie. After about thirty minutes Dawson asked if I wanted to see his room. My stomach said no, but my mouth said yes. He grabbed my hand and started walking us to the back of the living room where a set of stairs led up to the second story.

  Their house was a split-level, and when you walked up the stairs there was a small landing with a couch and then a closed door. He had a poster of a band on the outside. I remember thinking that I had a candy bar wrapper on mine. It was one of those novelty bars that they sell around Christmas time. It was a five-pound bar that I tried to eat all at once because I thought it would be funny. I was sick for two days.

  But then he opened the door and for the first time, I was in a boyfriend’s room. It felt like I was behind enemy lines.

  Nothing really seemed strange. I guess I’d seen too many teen movies. I had pictured dirty clothes, stacks of dishes or maybe even disturbing piles of socks. His room was tidy, though. His bed was a set of bunk beds where the bottom could fold into a couch. It was unfolded when we walked in. His bedding was black. His pillows were red. He had a small T.V. on a little dresser right across from his bed. There was a guitar leaning up against the wall. A desk was shoved into a corner with a little box sitting on top.

  I wandered around for a minute, looking at the books laying on his desk. I laughed when I noticed that his bookmark was a guitar pick. There were several, and I picked up a bright purple one, and then his arms came around me.

  He turned us around and we walked to his bed. After turning the T.V. on and putting it back on the Titanic, he just leaned into me, and his lips fell to mine.

  My brain had already shut off. In my short fourteen years of life so far, I had never felt wanted. I guess I should go ahead and admit that. I had never had a boy put his arms around me like he wanted to hold me. I knew, absolutely knew, that I wasn’t ready for much more than what we were already doing. It didn’t stop me from opening for him, tasting him. He ate these little peppermint candies all the time. The pockets of his jeans always crinkled because of how many wrappers he held on to.

  I can still taste the coolness on my tongue even now.

  He pushed me back into his mattress and laid beside me. When he put his hand on my stomach, I shivered. He laughed about it and asked if I was okay. Even though I told him that I was, he slowed down with kissing me. He slid his hand inside my shirt and rubbed circles on my skin. We talked about classes and about how Homecoming was a couple weeks away.

  He made a really sweet joke about how since he’d always seen himself as Jack, then it was only fitting that I was Rose. More specifically, that I was his Rose. He said that even though he knew we were so young, and had only been together for a month, that it felt right finding me. That’s how he worded it, finding me. I didn’t know how to tell him that I was glad somebody did, because I had been trying to find myself without any luck.

  It felt like we were in this little bubble, just the two of us. It was warm and safe. He kept finding new places on my skin to touch, new shivers to feel. The butterflies in my stomach were so fierce that I felt like they could slice through me.

  I watched his face while he talked, noticing the little stubble he was growing on his chin and cheeks. I don’t know if I had ever noticed it before. His voice had deepened a little. There was a book I had found in the school’s library once. I hid in a corner and read it until the teacher came to tell me that our break was over. It wasn’t necessarily a sex scene, but there was definitely a lot of touching and kissing. The heroine of the story mentioned the voice of her partner being “thick with desire”. It made me laugh out loud for a second, and Dawson asked what was funny. I didn’t get a chance to tell him, because one of the butterflies had managed to escape.

  There was a knock on his door and our bubble was popped.

  My pulse sped up so fast, but before I could move one of his friends, Drew, came in. I’ve seen him at school, but I had only talked to him once or twice. The only things I knew about him were what Dawson told me. He used to seem nice, but right then he was staring at me like I shouldn’t have been there. His eyes, which I thought might have been brown, seemed to have darkened in seconds. He was also really tall. His frame filled the doorway. His height and now his pitch-black eyes gave off such a menacing feeling. He whispered something to Dawson who told him I could be trusted. I just laid there confused.

  Do you ever feel like you’re a spectator in a scene of your own life? I know that in reality, I sat up on the bed and just watched the two of them quietly talk for a minute. I watched as Dawson walked to his desk and opened the box that was sitting there. I watched as he took out a pill bottle and exchanged it for cash from Drew’s hand. I know that I watched all of this from my spot on the bed, but I could still see it happening like a scene from a movie, too.

  I saw the quizzical look on my own face, with the vein in my neck pulsing, and the stark whiteness take over my face while watching a drug deal. I watched how easy it was for the boys to trade their innocence for a fix and a wad of twenty-dollar bills. I watched my own hand grip the blanket on the bed at the realization that no matter how far I think I can get from the hell that’s at my house, the hounds know how to track me down and they’re always hungry.

  I saw the rest of the bubble implode. I saw the rest of it implode, splattering the illusion I had of who I thought Dawson was, covering me with the mess of who he actually is.

  Always,

  Abby

  Act

  I’m beautiful, you said one day while we were walking by the river where the fish were fighting against the current.

  You’re brilliant, you proclaimed as we made our way up the path, following the darkening sky toward the dipping tree lines.

/>   You’re all I’ve ever needed, you whispered as you tried to lay me down on the plush blankets of your declarations.

  I tried to let your words flow through my head and only had one thought from them all.

  I’m beautiful? I’m brilliant? I’m all you could ever need?

  Words can cascade down, puddling at your feet.

  Show me.

  Because actions scream. Actions leave marks. Actions leave real memories that I can gather and hold on to.

  October 6, 2003

  Dear Heart,

  I’ve been avoiding Dawson since he took me home on Friday. He knew something was wrong, but gave up when I told him I didn’t want to talk about it. I’m sure his dad could see and feel the tension too. I barely talked on the way to my house and told him to just stay in the car when we finally made it.

  I didn’t answer his call an hour later.

  I didn’t answer his call on Saturday.

  I didn’t answer his call on Sunday.

  I tried to explain some of it to Mason over the weekend. He was angry for me, but he told me that I at least needed to try to talk to him about it. I told him that I was scared because everything has been perfect up until now and I didn’t know what was going to happen.

  He was already at my locker when I got to school this morning and he wouldn’t leave me alone until I talked to him. He was so persistent. He started to almost yell at me about how I can’t go days without talking to him and that he didn’t even know if I was alive. I told him not to be dramatic. That actually made it a lot worse, and he slapped my locker closed. He saw me flinch away from him and instantly apologized. The look on his face was pure sincerity.

  It was barely seven in the morning, so I told him we’d talk at lunch. He didn’t act like he believed me, but he stopped pushing. He showed up outside of each of my classes until it was time for lunch. I could feel his heavy breathing on my back as we went through the lunch line. When I went to sit at the closest empty table, he grabbed my hand steered me out of the cafeteria.

  Our school has this outside area that we’re allowed to use if the weather is behaving. The doors get locked during the winter. He led us out to it and sat his tray at the farthest picnic table.

  I watched as he started to tap his fingers on the wood. He was barely missing a jagged piece that was sticking straight up. I started to wonder if that was how my life was supposed to be. If I was always supposed to just go up and down on the rollercoaster known as life, and just barely miss the destruction as the cars crash.

  He was staring at me, asking me to please talk to him because he was going crazy.

  He was going crazy? I live in the crazy. I told him that. He stared at me some more. I saw a couple of wrinkles surround his eyes, and I wondered if they were from laughing and smiling. I had wrinkles around my mouth from the frowning and crying and I realized that even though he and my mom had things in common, our lives were completely different.

  His drugs seemed to spark happiness and fun. The drugs at my house had only fueled a raging fire of fear and hatred.

  Just like that bubble on Friday, I exploded on him.

  I told him everything. I told him about my home, my house, my lack of a bathroom door because Dad loves to start things and never finish them; like his marriage and raising a kid. I told him about the abuse from Mom, about how sometimes I have to hide the bruises under long sleeves and funny jokes.

  And then I looked him right in his cloudy sky eyes and told him about the drug use. I told him about her prescriptions and how high she gets, sometimes forgetting she can’t really fly, or that she’d forget she already hit me once for whatever it was she thought I did, so I’d get another smack just because. I told him about how once, when I was seven or eight, she forgot that I needed to eat, so I made a mayonnaise sandwich because I didn’t know how to cook or what to do with the food that we had. I told him about the shotgun hole in the ceiling from when the paranoia kicked in because she had taken too much with a mouthful of whiskey. I told him about how sometimes she falls asleep with a cigarette in her hand and that I go to sleep some nights worried that she’s going to catch the house on fire, and the even scarier nights when I wish that she would.

  I told him everything. Everything I could think of, I poured out of me on to the table for him to see. He never took his eyes off of me or the mess that I was becoming in the middle of the day at school.

  At some point he must have grabbed my hand because when I finally felt empty enough to look around, I realized his knuckles were white from squeezing so hard.

  His face was full of pity as he moved to my side of the table. He put his arm around my shoulders and told me something that other people close to me had never said. It’s crazy sometimes how the smallest things can put a bandage on your hurts.

  It was one of the first times that I felt heard, and I could tell that he thought he meant what he said. One thing that people seem to forget is that no matter how many times you make a promise, it’s not going to mean anything unless you follow through. And, it never matters how many bandages you cover yourself with. All the bandages and saying sorry won’t take the pain away.

  He said he wouldn’t and couldn’t hurt me. He pointed out that in the time we’d been together, he’d never once done something to remind me of Mom. He told me that he understood the kind of life I have at home, but that he wanted to be my safe place. He was saying all the right things, but the betrayal I felt on Friday was still there, hiding in one of the corners of my mind. It kept reminding me that people can get really good at blending in and keeping secrets.

  He told me that the pills I saw on Friday weren’t anything like Mom’s, and that he doesn’t use them that often. He promised that him and Drew only ever smoke pot. He likes the calming feeling it gives him. He said that he always felt pressured by his parents to do better and to be better, and that the pot helps him tune it all out.

  He asked me to forgive him for seeing it. But I told him I don’t like knowing that it’s happening whether I see it or not. I told him the truth. I didn’t know how I can trust that he won’t turn into a monster like Mom. There’s not a lot I can do about home right now, but I would never put up with somebody I’m in a relationship with treating me that way.

  The bell rang when I said that. He stared at me for a second before he stood up and grabbed both of our trays, the food still untouched.

  He stacked them on top of each other and then reached for my hand saying, “I’ll never let go, Rose”.

  I reached for his hand without even thinking. There was zero hesitation. I’ll really have to think about that later. It could be that nobody has ever said they’d try before. Even Mom on her worst days never apologized or promised to do better.

  Part of me knew I was probably falling deeper into a trap that I wouldn’t be able to climb out of. There was no solution to the problem, except for him promising to prove it to me. I told him it was hard to find the trust inside of me. My body was so tired of constantly regenerating the same feelings over and over because they just kept going stale. They always ended up tasting bad or thrown into the trash. The best that I could do at that moment was tell him that I’ll wait and see.

  He gave me space for the rest of the day. He didn’t meet me at my locker, and he didn’t walk me to my bus. He called a little while ago just to tell me goodnight and not to give up on us. I had to tell him that I was never the person who gives up, it was always everybody around me.

  He did make me promise to start telling him the things that were happening and what I needed to help me.

  I just don’t know. Is it okay to hate the habit when one person does it, but not when someone else does? Can people control the demons they foster inside of their bodies as well as he says he can?

  According to the scary movies I’ve watched, it’s a gamble. Sometimes the good guys win. But sometimes the demons prevail.

  Always,

  Abby

  October 17, 2003

&
nbsp; Dear Heart,

  Today was a good day.

  I don’t get to say that too often. But today was a good day. This morning was fine. Mom slept in so I didn’t even see her before I went to school. I can’t tell you how much I love mornings that don’t start with yelling and anxiety.

  Dawson met me at my locker first thing and handed me a leaf. It was dark red and already crunchy. I smiled when I took it from him, even though I was confused. He told me that it was the first one that had fallen in his yard and that he thought of me when he saw it. I don’t think anybody has ever told me that they saw something nice that reminded them of me. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just laid it between the pages of one of my notebooks. I remembered to be careful with it and brought it home to keep you company.

  School was okay. I’m kind of sad that I’ve not had to mediate any other students so far. I like that there’s nothing happening, but I like feeling helpful. I do pretty good with classes, but I’ve never really felt like I was good at anything outside of that. I remember showing Mom a poem that I had written. I sat staring at it when it was done, going over each line to make sure it was what I wanted. I handed her the paper and she laughed after she read it. She gripped it in her fingers, her cigarette touching it. When she gave it back there was a tiny burn hole.

  I guess that’s what I feel like, though. All the things she’s told me I wasn’t good at, or the way she’d laugh at something I was proud of, left tiny holes in my willingness to try again. I’d get an idea, a spark of imagination to do something, only to have it leak onto the ground where it would ultimately get stepped on. That was around the time that I decided to just keep my creations to myself. It was one of the only ways I could protect myself, my thoughts.