Trashed and Scattered

“Another slice?” he grinned, pushing the piping hot metal platter closer to his anxious friend.
She shook her head, “I can’t fit anything else in here.”
“Sure you can,” he insisted, grabbing an extra slice of meat lover’s by the crust and flopping it down onto her plate.
To celebrate the last day of school, Lexi and her pal had ventured downtown for the world’s best pizza. The place was brightly lit, a concept foreign to Lexi’s brain. Her house was constantly cast in shadow, the corners soaked in darkness. Each window had been sealed up with black-out curtains dyed to match their intent. Every morning when she’d step into the street, she’d regale in the warmth of the sun and let her skin soak up each and every ray. It felt a lot like she’d assumed vampires would feel if they’d ever had the chance to join the world without burning down to dust.
They’d cut through the alleys to save time. Lexi’s stomach growled with a fury demanding to be heard. Another day without a lunch; her mother hadn’t been home to pack it, and in the morning rush, Lexi had forgotten to grab herself a snack. Her mother didn’t typically send her daughter into the world without something to eat—even if it was a piece of plain, usually stale, bread.
It didn’t take much convincing when Wiley suggested they order a large instead of their usual medium.
Neither one had wasted any time diving straight into the cheesy goodness that they’d paid for out of Wiley’s allowance. He never let her pay for anything; partly because she never had any money, but also because he liked to take care of her. He figured no one else was doing it, so it might as well have been him.
“You look cool with that scar,” he mentioned with a mouthful of pepperoni. “Like Scarface.”
She scrunched her face in recoil, “I look nothing like Al Pacino.”
“Not Al Pacino,” he groaned. “Scarface!”
“Right…”
He laughed happily, letting his slice fall back down to the glass plate, “You look cool.”
“I’m so happy to hear that,” she mumbled softly.
It had taken three stitches to seal up the wound her mother had so pleasantly gifted her with. Wiley’s mom didn’t ask questions, she’d simply accepted the story that had been fed to her by the two liars she adored. But she knew. Deep down, she knew the truth. She kept a watchful eye over little Lexi, inviting her around whenever she could—ignoring the chatter coming from her son’s bedroom at an hour far past reasonable for two eleven year olds to be in cahoots. It brought her a bittersweet pride to see the way her son doted on his friend.
“Things have been quieter lately though,” he thought aloud, a tinge of guilt squeezing his veins for so casually mentioning her trauma.
She nodded absently, her mind someplace else.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked, his eyes narrowed to focus on her more clearly.
“Will you hate me if I leave?” she heaved.
He tilted his head slightly, as if the new angle might help him to better understand her, “Like, right now?”
“No,” she half-laughed, the sound surprising her as it crept from her chest. “Like…Left Huntington. Left my house.”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
She wasn’t sure how to tell him.
The night before, she’d sneaked downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night. It was risky business, leaving her bed after she’d been shunned away. But she’d woken with a terrible desert storming in her throat. So, after much internal debate, she’d tip-toed across her hardwood and creaked her bedroom door open. She winced as it purred into the still night. Pausing in anticipation, she glanced around the darkened hallway. When nothing came, she made like a mouse down the steps.
The house had been blanketed in nightfall and it was eerily quiet. The silence unnerved Lexi more than the screams of banshees ever could. Once she’d made it into the sanctuary of the kitchen, she used the bulb of the refrigerator to guide her sneaky steps. It took more patience to sneak around, but the end result was always the same. With the tap on its lowest setting, hardly more than a drip, she held the stained glass beneath its pour.
“Yes, I know,” cut through the deadened night.
Lexi’s hand flew to the tap, slamming it down as she skidded against the furthest wall. She held an arm against the pink paper as she tried her hardest to fade into the pattern.
A stream of dim light flooded into the kitchen’s open doorway from the adjoining living room. Lexi held her breath, counting backwards from ten to soothe her anxiety.
“I just need a few grand,” a voice she recognized as her father’s whispered sternly. “She can have the house. I don’t care about that.”
Peyton dared herself closer to her father’s noise, curious as any child would be. The glass in her hand trembled, the tiny ripples sounding more like the crashing of waves as she tried her best to be still in her movements.
“No, I don’t care about that,” he hissed quietly.
She cautiously peeked around the corner to find her father pacing back and forth, one hand on the telephone that sat behind the couch, the other running through his hair maniacally.
“Listen to me,” he seethed. “It’s too late for that. We’re far past that…I need to get my daughter out of here, Jacob.”
Jacob. Uncle Jake was Lexi’s favourite of all of the family. He brought chocolate with him any time he’d visit, which was far more seldom than she liked. He was tall and he wore the funniest looking glasses. He looked so much like her father that she’d always found it almost creepy. They were six years apart, Jacob was the senior. He’d moved to New Haven just after Lexi’s third birthday.
Her father paused, listening. He nodded to himself, his eyes glum as they hit the floor. Lexi stepped back, worried she might be spotted. She didn’t necessarily fear her father, but she always thought it wise to maintain the same rules her mother had set out for her.
“It’s getting bad, Jake,” he finally sighed. “I’m worried…If I don’t do something soon, I’m afraid it’ll be too late.”
Lexi’s mind slipped away as her friend’s worries were realized her father’s own words. She tried to find logic within all the madness. She wracked her brain for a single happy memory that she and her mother had shared. All she needed was a glimmer of hope to reassure herself that her mother wouldn’t eventually snap and take things too far…If her mother loved her even a little, then Lexi knew she’d be safe.
Tears built fortresses in her light eyes as she came up short. She was plagued with pain, the only constancy her mother had ever provided her with.
Creaking floorboards above her head brought her back to reality. Fear has a way of grounding the afraid. Dan froze in the living room, his voice falling into hush.
“Jake, I gotta go,” he rushed. “I’ll call you tomorrow from the office.”
As he hung the phone up, distinct footsteps came barreling down the stairs. They were loud and clunky, just like the woman they belonged to. Lexi’s eyes frantically searched the kitchen for a place to hide. She headed for the broom closet, forcing her way between handles as she struggled to get the door closed.
It was open just a crack as the kitchen light bore witness to her panic. She held her breath and pursed her eyes shut tight, praying that they’d leave before they noticed the closet door ajar.
“Allison?” her father croaked. “What are you doing up?”
“Thirsty,” she replied callously.
She stepped around her husband and pulled a glass from the cupboard. As she held it beneath the sink, she could feel Dan’s eyes boring into her back. She bit down on the irritation, trying to reign it into place.
“What are you doing up?” she challenged him, spinning around to lean against the counter as she sipped her water. “Making secret phone calls in the middle of the night again?”
Dan flinched, his heart missing a beat as his wife’s deadened stare caught his gaze, “I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied in disbelief. “Who do you call at night, Danny? Did you find another lover? Your wife’s not doing it for you anymore?”
“No, Allison,” he replied flatly. “I didn’t call anyone.”
“Liar!” she screeched at the top of her lungs, pitching the glass at his betraying face.
He stepped to the side, letting it hit the wall above the stove and shatter into a billion tiny shards.
Lexi stiffened from within her hiding place. The aggression she could handle; she’d become used to it somehow. It was the noise…The endless noise worked its way under her skin, crawling and writhing until there was nothing human left.
“Allison,” he scolded loudly. “You’ll wake up Peyton!”
“Fuck Peyton!” she sneered. “I don’t give a shit about Peyton! Why should I have to be quiet so that little bitch can sleep? I never sleep!”
Dan stepped toward his wife as she began to rant and wail her arms around.
“Why do you love her more than you love me, Dan?” she asked him angrily. “Why did you make me have her?”
“Stop it,” he instructed her. “You’re behaving like a fucking lunatic, Allison.”
She hissed, “You made me this way.”
“I know that you think that,” he said coolly, edging closer to his wife. “But it isn’t true.”
“You love her more than me,” she whined like a petulant child.
Dan snarled, “She’s our daughter, Allison.”
“I have no daughter,” she informed him.
“You know, what?” Dan replied, his voice shaking with impatience. “If you don’t get your shit together in a hurry here, Allison, one day you’re going to wake up all alone.”
She smirked, “All alone, huh?”
“I’ll take Peyton and we’ll fucking leave you,” he told her sternly. “I swear to god I’ll fucking leave you.”
“No you won’t,” she smiled crookedly. “You’re far too weak of a man to do a thing like that. That’s why I married you, isn’t it? Because you’re weak?”
“You’re going back to treatment,” he told her. “I mean it.”
“Fuck you, I am,” she retorted with a smug laugh.
“If you don’t,” he warned her lowly. “I’m gone.”
She cackled, “If you were going to leave, you would have done it by now. But you haven’t. And you won’t. You know why, Danny? Because you’re weak.”
He fell into silence.
“Let me show you just how easy it is,” she offered, pushing past him and snatching the keys from the hook by the back door. “And do you know why it’s easy, Danny? Because I’m strong.”
“No, you’re not,” he informed her blankly.
She disappeared into the night, the engine to Dan’s car roaring to life as she sped away down the street. There was no use going after her; it never did any good. He stood quietly for a minute, running options over in his mind.
Decidedly too heavy, Dan abandoned his internal struggle and retired back to bed.
Lexi didn’t dare to venture back to her bed until the house had fallen back into eerie silence. Once the floorboards had settled and the thickness in the kitchen had subsided, she sprinted back to the comfort of her bed. She glanced through the window, hoping for a light to be on in her friend’s bedroom. When she found it shrouded in darkness, she fell into tears. Her soft sobs acting as the only break in the otherwise silent evening.
“I’m just wondering,” Lexi finally offered up to her nervous friend. “Just…in case.”
Wiley frowned, watching as his counterpart took a big bite of the slice he’d forced on her, “I could never hate you, Lex.”
“Good,” she smiled fondly.
While he’d understand if the time ever came…he selfishly hoped that it wouldn’t. He was ready to give her up yet; who would protect her if he couldn’t be around?
Resistant to let their time together pass too quickly, he rose from the table, “We need a second pizza.”

Notes

xx