"I wrote you," she said, shifting her feet.
Her voice wasn't accusing, which stirred my anger even further. I wanted to hurl myself at her—throttle her until she hurt as badly as me. I wanted to shake her until her brain was as messed up as mine.
She had to sense it and yet she reached a hand out toward me. My eyes moved to the fingers that were outstretched toward me. I could break every single one of them. The rage inside me suggested I could crush them until they were nothing but dust.
Afraid I would follow through with the rage that was taunting me, I abruptly turned on heel and strode down the shallow steps of the porch. Each step brought me some measure of control.
"Kat." Her voice was whisper soft and yet it pierced through my head. I paused in mid-step but didn't turn around. "I love you more than butter bread," I heard her say. The ground around me tilted for a moment. I wondered if Satan was finally ready to claim me. My eyes slammed closed and I gripped the railing so I wouldn't fall. She was the cruelest person in the world. Her endearment was the sharpest of knives to my chest. I could feel the blood gushing from the only functional part that still felt. She'd somehow managed to pierce the one spot that had remained intact. I moved a hand to my chest, trying to staunch the pain leaking out.
Breathing shallowly, I took another step from her, and then another, and another until I was running away from her and all her knives. I reached my car at the end of the block where I parked, gasping for breath with eyes that burned for release. Tears would not come. Those had dried up months ago. My tear ducts refused to produce even the smallest of amounts. I couldn't blame them. I cried an ocean of tears in the beginning. Silent tears that burned paths down my cheeks with no end in sight, until eventually my eyes were as dry as sand and raw to the touch.
Panting, I hurled myself into my car and threw it in gear, tearing down Mackenzie's street as if the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels waiting to devour me. As my car sped by her house my eyes caught a flash of Mackenzie on her porch with tears streaming down her cheeks. Her protector had stepped outside and was standing behind her. I slammed my foot on the gas until her house disappeared from my rearview mirror.
The buildings flew by me in a blur. I knew I should slow down. I should be afraid of the consequences if I hit something. The thought of another accident should have terrified me into obeying every traffic law set, but the thought only spurred me on. I merged onto the highway without slowing. I heard the blare of a horn behind me and saw the driver of a red BMW flash me the bird in the rearview mirror. My only response was to push the gas pedal to the floorboard of my simple—what my parents had deemed safe—Honda Accord. I was sure if they saw me driving now they'd be reassessing the safeness of the vehicle as I wove in and out of traffic as if I had a death wish. At the moment, I did. I wished it was a bike like the one I used abroad. Mom and Dad assumed it was a safe little moped. They had no idea it was one of those slick motorcycles built for speed. It had hugged the roads and curves as if it was a part of them. If I had one now I'd be able to reach the speeds I needed to help me escape.
Long before it should have, my exit loomed in front of me. The idea to stay on the highway until it ended at the Gulf Coast on the other side of the state was tempting but at the last minute I jerked the wheel to the right, cutting off a semi truck. He laid on his horn, nearly barreling into the back of me. I could see the trailer he was towing fishtailing. The sight was ironic. It was a trailer such as that which had been responsible for ripping my life to shreds.
The truck and highway were left behind as I shot off the exit, barely adjusting my speed. Only when a light turned red did I finally have to stomp on the brake. My Honda came to a shuddering stop next to a car that my grandparents would have found suitable. I could see the disapproval on the man's face in the old fart’s car next to mine as my car ground to a stop with a squeal of tires. The air smelled of burned rubber from tires that fought to find enough traction to brake.
Only as I waited for the light to change did I realize my hands were shaking. I eyed them curiously, wondering how long they'd been betraying the emotions rolling through me. I gripped the steering wheel tighter trying to still them. A horn beeped behind me. I glanced up and saw the light had changed to green. The judgy old dude was already puttering down the road. I watched his car disappear from sight as the driver behind me honked again, more impatiently this time. I could see him raging at me in the rearview mirror. I watched dispassionately as he jerked the wheel and sped around me. I was pretty sure he called me a dumb bitch along with a few other choice words as he drove by.
I sat through another light cycle before finally getting my senses back in order. Dr. Carlton would be ashamed of me. I would have to doctor up the story when I retold it. If I retold it.
The light turned green again and this time I moved. A mile later I jerked the wheel and turned into a familiar parking lot without giving conscious thought to it. The dirt lot was relatively empty—it was early in the day. The building that stood dead center in the middle of the lot looked like it had seen better days, like a decade ago. It was stout and windowless, which made it perfect. It might have looked like a hole in the wall, but by the end of the night it would draw a crowd. I liked it for its seclusion and privacy.
Climbing from my Honda, I approached the building with anticipation. In a few minutes my emotions would be dulled. Inside those walls, I would forget the events of the day. I would be able to erase the familiar house from my mind along with the tear-streaked face I didn't want to think of.
It took my shoulder and half my body strength to push the heavy door open. Light from the outside flooded the dim building, which was basically one large open space. A small office and an even smaller bathroom butted against the back corner, but that was the extent of separated space in the dank bar.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light once the heavy door swung closed behind me. Fred, the bartender and owner, nodded at me from behind the bar that ran the length of the bar. He did not call out a greeting. That's why I came here. Fred was not one for idle chitchat, and since he ran the bar himself with the exception of Jaime and Pamela, the two girls he employed on weekends, Fred ran his bar as a one-man show. His alcohol was cheap, cold, and served without fuss. Best of all, Fred didn't care about carding anyone. His bar was far enough off campus to stay off the radar of the law, though I secretly believed he had an inner connection. Not that I would ever ask. Fred and I only exchanged words when I was ordering a drink, otherwise he left me alone.
I shuffled across the wooden floor that was beaten up from years of wooden chairs and feet scraping across it. It looked as if it'd seen better days, like the exterior, but I knew Fred prided himself on having a clean bar. You wouldn't find puke in the bathrooms or foreign sticky spots on the floor. If he wasn't pouring drinks, he was cleaning up.
Maneuvering around a table, I made my way to the bar and the lone stool that sat on the side of the bar. The bar jutted out just enough to allow one stool. It was my spot. I wasn’t sure if Fred scared other people away from it, but it was always open for me. Plopping down on it, I accepted the beer Fred sat on the counter in front of me without asking. That was why I came here. Words weren't necessary.
The first beer disappeared without me even realizing it, along with the second one. It wasn't until I placed the empty bottle of my third on the counter did the events of the day begin to release their tentacles on my head. By the fourth one, I felt like I could breathe again without fear of my lungs collapsing in on themselves. The fifth and sixth beers became my favorites. They erased Mackenzie's tear-streaked face from my mind. By the time I tilted the cold lip of the seventh bottle to my lips, there was a nice level of numbness and I forgot the name of Zach's replacement.
"How about I call you a cab?" Fred said as I placed the eighth bottle, which was now empty, on the counter. A pleasant buzzing had filled my ears somewhere between beers five and six, so it took me a moment to focus on his words. His face was etched in uncharacteristic concern. I frowned up at him, realizing at that moment I was slumping on the counter. Surprised to be all but laying on his counter, I tried to use my elbows to raise my torso off the bar. My elbows had turned into spaghetti somewhere along the way. I realized the last few beers had been a mistake. My cutoff was usually four. Four normally did the job.
Fred was looking at me with concern. I opened my mouth to chastise him. He was ruining our arrangement. My tongue refused to work though. Someone had
obviously shoved wads of cotton into my mouth when I wasn't paying attention. The room tilted as I made the mistake of shaking my head to clear it.
"I got her," a deep male voice said.
"The hell you do," I slurred, pivoting around to glare at my unwelcome intruder. All air escaped my lungs as I took in the sharp, familiar features of the boy peering down at me with concern. Except he wasn't a boy anymore. When had that happened? And what the hell was he doing in Fred's? He wasn't old enough to be here. I opened my mouth to tell him just that but my stomach, which had dined on nothing but beer in the last twenty-four hours, picked that moment to rebel. The beer that had gone down so smoothly came up in a rush, soaking the bewildered familiar boy who stood in front of me—the boy I never wanted to see again.
A horrified giggle escaped me seconds before I succumbed to blissful darkness that came in to rescue me. Darkness that protected me from the features of the boy who nearly gutted me.
Three
I woke with a building sitting on my head. A building obviously under construction, considering the hammering in my head. Reaching for my extra pillow, I smothered it over my face in hopes of blocking the pounding. The pillow did little to muffle anything, though, as I tried to sort out how I'd even gotten to my bed in the first place. The last thing I remembered was being at Fred's. Everything after that was muddled as I tried to recall my time there. My brain was sore and stubborn as I tried to pull up the events that had resulted in me ending up in my bed. I remembered consuming more beers than I probably should have. It'd taken longer to erase the day's events than normal. A brief memory of Fred looking at me with concern filled my head. I frowned into the pillow pressed against my face. Fred had offered to call me a cab. I now remembered that, but I didn't remember getting into a cab. A terrible thought began to slither into my mind as the reason why I didn't get into a cab began to materialize.
I shot straight up in my bed, ignoring the stabbing in my skull as the thought began to unfurl, consuming every single crevice of my mind. My eyes skirted across my tiny bedroom, terrified of what I would find. I thought fear was no longer an emotion I was capable of feeling as my eyes jerked around my room. Only when I saw I was alone in my apartment did my lungs agree to let air pass again. I'd imagined it. Fred had called me a cab and sent me home. Plain and simple.
Climbing from my bed, I left my room and scanned the rest of my apartment, making sure everything was in its place. I didn't remember entering my apartment, which meant the cabbie most likely helped me. It was only when my eyes moved to the counter that separated the simple kitchen from the rest of the room did I spot the note written for me.
My heart was now mimicking the pounding of my head as I slowly approached the piece of paper. Without reading it, I knew I hadn't imagined the intruder at the bar from the night before. It took less than a few seconds to read the simple words scrawled across the back of a flyer for an upcoming rave.