Trashed and Scattered

“Here,” Wiley said flatly, pushing a wooden contraption into Lexi’s chest.
She studied it with confusion, her face reflecting her thoughts, “What is this?”
“It’s a birdhouse,” he told her with a sly grin. “Or it was supposed to be…Now it’s just kind of a box, I guess. I thought maybe you could paint it and make it look cool or something.”
Lexi knew her mother would never let her keep a trinket, regardless of how she’d acquired it. But any gift from Wiley was always held in high regard from the young girl; she figured she could find some place special to stash it.
“Thanks,” she replied coolly, tightening her grip on the poorly fashioned box.
They walked the long way home, taking a few minutes to stop and survey a frog in a puddle. Lexi didn’t care all that much about the amphibian but Wiley was absolutely taken with it. He insisted that Lexi stoop down to its level and make eye contact.
“You’re going to get a wart,” Lexi teased as Wiley reached out and scooped the frog into his hands.
He made a face, “That’s toads, Lex.”
“Same thing.”
He carried it proudly all the way home. Every so often, he’d split his hands apart just enough to peer inside and ensure that the small animal was still imprisoned between his palms. He was careful not to squish it; keeping his movements abnormally still.
“Your mom is not going to let you bring that thing inside,” Lexi grinned as they neared his big white house.
He shrugged, “I can sneak it in.”
She nodded, slinking into a quiet understanding as she mentally ran through a list of ways to conceal the “gift” Wiley had bestowed upon her.
“Maybe you should just let it go,” Lexi suggested, watching Wiley as he struggled to contain the hopping beast.
He frowned up at her with sorrow beading in his eyes.
She laughed, “I’m just saying.”
“Or I can keep him forever,” Wiley argued happily.
“But then he can’t meet a girl frog and have a frog wedding or frog babies,” Lexi told her friend seriously. “You’re keeping him from his happily ever after, Wiley!”
Although he was certain he could successfully smuggle the frog into the house and secure a new habitat for the thing, Lexi seemed so genuinely bothered by the missed opportunities that would mean for the frog. Wiley smiled, crouching down to release the frog back into the concrete jungle.
The friends watched it quietly as it hopped away; Lexi was convinced he was headed off to meet his future wife. As she daydreamed about the frog marriage, Wiley glanced up fondly at his brown haired buddy. She looked so pretty caught in thought like that, the sunlight streaming just behind her. His gaze snapped her back into reality and she grimaced at his stare.
“What?” she asked nervously. “Do I have frog juice on my face or something?”
He smiled softly, “Nah, you’re fine.”
“Then what’re you staring at?” she insisted impatiently.
“Nothing,” he laughed nervously. “I was just thinking about how weird looking you are.”
He patted himself on the back for his smooth recovery.
“How weird looking I am?” she countered, surprisingly amused. “You own a mirror, don’t you?
“I’m handsome,” he retorted playfully. “My mom says so.”
Lexi giggled, “No she doesn’t.”
“I’m the most handsome guy you’ve ever seen,” Wiley grinned, sidestepping from his friend onto the walkway leading up to the front door of his house. “You love my coyote face.”
Lexi shook her head, daring herself to go home. As Wiley walked backwards to his front door, he gave her one last grin before turning to grab the handle.
“Hey, Wiley?” Lexi called to him.
He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“You are, you know,” she smiled. “And I do.”
She didn’t wait for a reaction; she high-tailed it up her own walkway and slipped passed her own front door.
Unfortunately for Lexi, her act of bravery had cost her wits. She’d flown into the house with such a fury, terrified of her own true underlying feelings being made apparent, that she’d forgotten to do a preliminary scan of the house. As she burst through the door, slamming it excitedly behind her, she ran straight into the head of the beast.
Backpedaling quickly, she apologized quietly and aimed her backward movement for the stairs.
“What do you have there?” the monster hissed, reaching out to snatch the box from Lexi’s hands.
Lexi tightened her arms around it protectively, “Nothing.”
“What is it?” the monster persisted.
“It’s homework,” Lexi lied.
The demon narrowed it eyes, “Let me see it.”
Lexi hesitated, glancing hurriedly up the stairs to gage the distance. Upwards with a beast on her heels was always a gamble. She was quick but so was the rage that seemed to follow her.
“No,” Lexi breathed.
“What?” it snarled. “Peyton, let me see it.”
“No!” Lexi shrieked loudly, letting all of her fear boil up and over the surface.
She turned on her heel and took off up the stairs. The monster tore after her, grabbing at her heel as Lexi ran without thinking. Claws sank into Lexi’s ankle as it ripped the young girl’s leg backward.
Lexi, still holding the box with both hands, missed the step and came crashing down with a blood-curdling shriek. The impact split her head apart with urgency. The blood oozed down her forehead, passed her cheek, and onto the splintered wooden stair. She lay there for a second in agony, ignoring the demon hovering over top of her.
“Give it to me,” the monster insisted.
Despite her blurred vision, Lexi maintained her position. She’d never fought back; never. She’d always taken the punishment she’d been taught that she deserved, and she’d taken it in stride. But this box, as terribly crafted as it was, meant something to her. It meant everything to her.
Because it had come from Wiley’s mind; Wiley’s hands.
“No!” Lexi growled.
As the monster lunged up at her, hands flailing to tear the craft from Lexi’s grip, Lexi instinctively fought back. Her right leg wound itself, harboring all of the years of pain and torment, and all at once, it released. As Lexi’s foot flew into the bridge of her pursuer’s nose, she froze horror.
The demon relented for only a second; the sheer shock of the impact seemingly shackling its anger temporarily. But as the surprise faded, the rage grew thicker. Snarling all the while, the demon reached out and tore at Lexi’s arms with its talons. With as much as force as it could muster, it pulled Lexi up and over—letting her tumble like a ragdoll down the stairs.
Lexi used a single hand to try and brace her fall, landing at the bottom of the steps with her hand in an unnatural position beneath her weight. The pain tore up through her entire arm, screaming through her nerves as the bones bid farewell to their wholeness.
Lexi dared to look up, blinking through the tears forcing their way out from her eyes. The demon lingered over her, uncaring and unstopping. As Lexi endured the consequences of what she had done, she wondered if it would ever stop. She was growing surer and surer with every passing second that Wiley had been right all along; one day her mother would kill her.
“Allison!” Dan screeched, appalled at the brawl that had broken out just behind their front door.
He tackled his wife from atop his daughter, wrestling with her all the way to the floor. She hissed and fought and kicked and screamed. But, eventually, he got her under control. He told her to leave; threatening to stab her in her sleep if she didn’t.
As the banished wife slunk out the back door, Dan rushed to his daughter’s side. She whined insistently about her wrist; asking if it looked bad over and over again.
Dan’s eyes fell to her limp arm and he nearly vomited from the sight.
“We should go to a doctor,” he said quietly.
“No!” Lexi replied quickly, panic in her eyes. “Mom will—”
“Don’t worry about that,” he shushed her fondly. “Let’s go, Peyton.”
They returned several hours later with Peyton’s arm tucked into a cast. She’d need surgery to correct the break her mother had gifted to her. For now, she was instructed to keep her arm entirely still and to be more careful when walking down the stairs.
Dan tucked his daughter into bed that night feeling ashamed and embarrassed. She had hardly whimpered through the entire night—which he knew meant she’d grown complacent. He was worried about his daughter’s threshold for pain; it was entirely too high for someone of her youth.
He placed the wooden box that Lexi had fought so hard to protect onto her bedside table. It was a strange creation and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was supposed to be; but he assumed it held some sort of intense value to his daughter. If she thought it was worth protecting, then he figured she should have it.
She fell into an exhausted sleep without much trouble. The kind nurses had given her something for the pain and it made her feel all sorts of strange.
When she awoke, it was dark. A single light streamed into the room from the hallway, which was strange because she’d always closed the door to sleep.
“Peyton,” her dad’s voice whispered sternly.
“Huh?” she managed confusedly, searching the black room for his voice.
“You need to wake up, Sweetie,” he told her. “We have to go.”
She yawned, “Go where?”
“Just get up,” he instructed her gently. “Pack a bag.”
“Dad,” she said more seriously, using her good arm to push herself up. “Where are we going?”
He hesitated, “We’re going away for a while, Pey. Just you and me. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone…so pack what you’d like to bring.”
She knew this day would come eventually. She’d both looked forward to and thoroughly feared it. Somehow, she was still surprised.
Her dad flicked on the light to her bedroom as he creaked her door open all the way.
“Dad?” she called quietly. “Can I have five minutes? There’s something I need to do.”
“Five minutes,” he nodded before disappearing into the dim hallway.
She got to work immediately, throwing her favourite outfits into her backpack. She stuffed as much as she could fit before tossing it onto her bed. Her belongings were the least important thing to her in her small list of things to do. With great haste, she pulled up a seat at her desk and scribbled her most pressing thoughts onto a spare piece of white paper. It took a few minutes, and it was far from perfect, but she knew it would just have to do. She folded it in half and taped the ends together. She snatched the hidden pencils from beneath her floorboards and tucked the letter into the metal box. Stuffing it under her good arm, she headed out.
Moving as quickly as she could with one arm still intact, she climbed through her window and out onto the roof. She’d done the journey several times in the dark; but only once before with a cast on her arm. Her steps were careful as she moved around the bark and stepped onto the safety of Wiley’s roof.
Under the light of the moon, Lexi beat on Wiley’s window with impatience. She didn’t care if she woke up the entire neighborhood with her effort; she refused to leave without saying goodbye.
After a minute of constant rapping, a tired face appeared from behind the curtains. He looked confused and annoyed by the disturbance.
She pointed to the bottom of the window and insisted he open it up. His eyes fell to her plastered arm as he followed her point.
“What the hell happened?” he asked once the window was slid wide open and locked into its new position.
“The usual,” she replied quickly; there was no time to get into that. “Listen, Wiley. I’m leaving.”
“What?” he asked sleepily. “Leaving to go where?”
She sighed, “I don’t know…But my dad says we’re leaving...”
His forehead crinkled, "When?"
She breathed, "Now."
“What?” he demanded, instantly heartbroken.
“Can you take care of these?” she asked with a frown, trying to hold back the tears as Wiley’s face tore her insides apart.
She pushed her tin of drawing pencils toward her friend, who took them into his trembling hands with uncertainty.
“Keep them safe until I come back,” she instructed him.
Those pencils meant the world to her. They were her gateway from the hell that was her life, and since they’d come from Wiley, it seemed only right that he guard them for her in her absence. She needed a reason to come back; she needed something to pull her back.
“Okay,” he agreed quietly.
Lexi glanced over her shoulder to find her father had reappeared within the small confines of her bedroom. Her chest tightened as the realization set in.
Time to go.
“I have to go,” she pouted, forcing herself to keep it together.
Despite her best efforts, the tears began to pour.
“Lexi, don’t cry,” Wiley frowned, wiping her pain away with gentle brushes of his thumbs. “It’s okay.”
“I’m going to miss you so much,” she confessed, her heart aching.
He swallowed down his own retching ache, “I’ll miss you too.”
“I love you, Wiley,” she told him, her eyes beating into his. “I’ll call you when I get wherever I’m going.”
“Promise?”
She nodded, “Promise.”
She waved lamely before turning herself around. A hand caught her shoulder before she could step away; instinctively, she spun around in a fury to face her attacker. Wiley smiled nervously.
“What?” she asked confusedly.
“Just hold still,” he instructed her with a grin.
He moved his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck, letting his fingers tuck themselves comfortably beneath her long hair. He used every ounce of courage he possessed to pull her closer, pushing his quivering lips to hers. They stayed that way for a minute, letting destiny course through them like the love they shared.
As Wiley pulled away from his first kiss and Lexi recovered from hers, they dared to look at each other.
“Just in case,” he smirked.
She let herself smile, nodding awkwardly as she took the newfound high and converted it to strength. Wiley hung out the window long after she’d climbed back through her own window and slipped back into her bedroom. She turned around to peer out the window at him one last time, waving to him just before shutting out the light and enveloping the room in darkness.
He stayed there until Peyton’s dad’s car had backed silently from the driveway and then sped off down the street. The disturbance broke the night sky and only then did Wiley move away from the window. It didn’t feel real. He was sure she’d be back.
But what if she didn’t?
Wiley sank onto the edge of his bed, holding a tin in his hands. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, or why she’d given it back to him. She loved these pencils and she’d used them to create many cool drawings for him. He collected them and kept them hidden away, just in case she made it big one day.
He pulled the lid off, compelling to feel the pencils between his own fingers; some semblance of a last-ditched connection with his departed friend.
He was surprised to find a folded piece of white paper tucked into the box. Curiosity got the better of him as he pulled it from captivity and cautiously pulled the tape apart. Catching sight of his name at the top, he braced himself.
If she’d had the forethought to write him a letter, he knew she’d be gone for a while. His fingers shook as he brought the letter closer to his eyes for proper inspection.

Wiley,
I’m writing this as fast as I can…so I’m sorry if it doesn’t say everything that it should. I have exactly five minutes before I have to go…
I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I think sometimes that it’s more than a best friend love, but I know it’s that too. You’re the only person in this world that I can trust with my secrets…and I think that if we were older, I’d probably marry you.
You’re probably making that coyote face at the thought of it.

He was, in fact, making the “coyote” face. Though, it wasn’t because the idea repulsed him; but rather because he felt immediate, all-consuming regret. As she slipped away from Huntington, she slipped away from him too. He was already reeling from the loss.
It was then that he knew; if they were older, he figured he’d probably marry her too.

I’m going to really, really miss that stupid face. And watching scary movies in your bedroom…I still don’t know why you like Jacob’s Ladder so much. It’s weird and it’s scary and there’s way too much blood at the end. Anyway, I’m going to miss walking to school with you and listening to your bad jokes and getting mad when you don’t laugh at mine…I’m going to miss everything about you, Wiley. I don’t know how to live without my best friend…
When I come back, maybe we can pretend I never left. Maybe it’ll be like it was. We might be a little older but…I know I’ll still love you just the same.
Thanks for being my protector…Life is better with you in it. This world is better.
Until I see you again…I’ll think of you every day. Don’t stop loving me while I’m gone, okay? I love you, James Owen Sullivan.
Your best friend,

Peyton Alexis Winchester

Notes

Way to go, Team Jimmy! Way to call out the identity.

Guess I wasn't so mysterious after all!! :P

xx