Chapter 18
Shaw: Eleven Years Old
“You-you’re what?”
“We’re moving to The Hill,” Casey said, her eyes on her lap. She spoke so softly I could barely hear her, and even though she repeated herself, I still couldn’t believe I was hearing her right.
“You’re leaving Harley,” Vail said, his voice flat as he watched her closely. Vail, Lee, and I were sitting on the grass in her backyard, facing her as she sat across from us, looking like her world was ending.
It felt like my fucking world was ending.
I didn’t want to believe this. It couldn’t be true.
I could feel that familiar numb tingle flowing through me, rising up from my chest to my face, out to the tips of my fingers.
I hunched over where I sat, trying to focus on my breathing.
If I kept breathing, then that meant I was alive.
And if I was alive, then that meant he didn’t win.
He didn’t get to me. Wish I’d pulled a Vail and just killed the fucker when I had the chance.
Vail had come home to find his dad beating on his mother in the kitchen with a rolling pin.
Don’t know why, it was just what he did.
Vail grabbed the mallet she’d been using to flatten the dough, walked up behind him, and swung.
He told me his dad hadn’t fallen, that he only had stumbled away from his mother, which was what he wanted.
As soon as he left her alone, Vail went to work, smashing his dad’s face and head with the mallet, again and again, his mother screaming at him to stop.
It was deemed self-defense, and while Vail went through a psychological evaluation after, he was seen as a hero child, protecting his mother from the abusive asshole she had been trapped with.
Little did they know that Vail had been waiting for an opportunity to do that to his old man for a while.
Then there was me… the little chickenshit…
the one who had trembled in his father’s presence, who just laid there like a fucking frozen statue, trying not to cry out in fear at night when the door opened, and the bed shifted when he’d climb in behind me.
I was weak. I was pathetic. It was because of my father that I couldn’t allow people to touch me.
It made me sick. To physically be touched by someone actually hurt, and I cringed away every time.
Only Casey…
She’s the only one who didn’t scare me. She’s the one who I trusted with every fibre of my soul, whose touch was nothing but warm and good.
And now, she was telling me that she was leaving.
“When?” Lee asked, his playful smile completely gone. I could hear it in their voices. They were as devastated as I was.
“November first,” she mumbles, picking at the dead grass.
I could hear the rushing of my heart in my ears, and I dropped my head, clutching at my hair as I tried not to scream. I could feel a few strands rip free from my skull, but I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t want anything but her, and she was leaving.
“We’ll stay in touch, right?” she whispered, and I could hear the break in her voice. No, Casey never cried. If she did, I wouldn’t be able to take it.
“Of course,” Vail said, sounding as strong as he always did. “We’ll call all the time.”
“And you guys will visit me at my new house?” she asked, the hope evident in her voice.
“Any time you want us.” I could practically hear the smile I was sure had been plastered across his face. The Hill? Yeah fucking right… the rich snobs of Ashland would have heart attacks if the three of us appeared in their community.
“I can come visit, too,” she said, sounding more like herself. “For our Saturday night sleepovers.”
“Sure, we can have them at my place,” Lee offered, knowing full well that the last people who would be fit to have the four of us over were my aunt and uncle and Vail’s mother.
My aunt was a gambling addict and was always gone, hanging out at the casino on the North-End of town.
Meanwhile, my actual blood relative, my uncle, was a hardass and lacked any sort of nurturing instincts.
I had to fend for myself in their shithole of a house.
I scrounged for food when I knew they’d done the shopping, grabbing what I could from the pantry to hide beneath my floorboards to save for when they both went on benders or disappeared for too long.
I needed to know I had that reserve. And Vail’s mom?
She was a fucking ghost. He might as well be living in that bungalow on his own for all she did to support him.
“That sounds great,” Casey said, her fingers playing with a dead flower from her mother’s garden, a hellebore.
“Yeah, it’ll be like it always was.” I heard the fake optimism in her voice like she’d been trying to convince herself and not us.
“We’ll still talk and hang out. I mean, it’ll be hard during the week being at a new school, but at least I can call you guys and give you new names to add to our list of people to kick the shit out of.
” Her little laugh faltered and broke. When my gaze sharply cut to hers, I saw how even though she was smiling, her brows were pulled tight, and her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.
“And yeah, I’ll be lonely without you three at recess, but I’ll just…
I dunno… make up some new games we can play when we get together on weekends, right?
Right?” Her voice cracked on the last word, and I couldn’t fucking take it anymore.
I reacted without thinking, my body taking over like it started doing in the later years before my father was finally put behind bars for all the hell and pain he had put me through. My mind checked out, going along for the ride, while my whole system went into fight or flight mode.
And right now? It was flight mode.
I didn’t remember running. I didn’t remember hearing anyone calling my name or the feel of the branches of trees as they whipped across my cheeks, cutting the skin while I raced through the grey, dead forest, my feet hard and heavy on the ground that was littered with fallen leaves and twigs.
“Shaw!”
I shook my head, not stopping. If I stopped, then I’d have to face what was happening…
that the only good fucking thing in my life, my brothers, Casey, our little family…
was being torn apart. My heart was being torn apart.
I could feel it pounding in my chest, but it hurt.
It always fucking hurt. Except for those nights when I had Casey at my side with Vail and Lee close by.
Those were the only times I felt safe and loved.
Not anymore… a voice whispered to me.
“Nooooo!” I screamed, my voice ripping out of my throat.
Something in my arms whimpered, and I blinked hard, trying to focus.
Since when was I carrying something? I looked down to see Casey crushed to my front, my arms wrapped around her so tight, she was practically forced into a little ball at my chest. “No,” I rasped, stopping to collapse on the carpet of crinkly, dead leaves, and loosened my grip.
“No, Casey, I’m sorry!” I croaked. She stirred in my arms, looking up at me with her beautiful, dark, doe-like eyes, and slowly, she reached up and placed a cold hand on my cheek and wiped a tear away. Huh, I didn’t realize I was crying.
But I was.
I was fucking sobbing, heaving gut-wrenching wails, which felt like they were bursting out of me, having been held back for so long, like a dam that was breaking.
I wouldn’t cry in front of my father when he raped me or beat me down, my back a myriad of spider-webbing scars, evidence of his handiwork.
I didn’t cry when they finally took me away from him and my sad excuse of a mother.
And I sure as fuck didn’t cry when my new “home” proved to be as neglectful and unloving as the first. It was because I always had them .
My real family. And it was falling apart.
I desperately clung to her, sobbing into her dark hair. “Casey… no-oooo…” I moaned, feeling like I was going to be sick. “Please no… don’t leave me here. Don’t…”
“Shaw,” she whispered, her hands coming up to stroke my back.
She never asked me about the scars she felt beneath my shirt.
She wasn’t like other people, who looked at them with pity and disgust. Other kids were grossed out by the marks my father’s belt had left behind, a forever reminder of a taste of the pain he put me through.
But Casey, she touched them lovingly, never flinching away, and never looked at me like I was something vile.
In her eyes, I was worthy. And she was leaving me.
“Casey, please…” I choked out past my sobs as the sounds of approaching footsteps crunched over the leaves and twigs, signalling Vail and Lee’s arrival.
“It’ll be okay, Shaw. I’ll call you, alright? I promise,” she said as the other two sat on the forest floor close beside us. “We’ll see each other all the time. It will be as it always was.”
But that wasn’t true. How could it be? She would be on the opposite side of the city in Snob-Central. They would have her every day, and I knew those pricks there wouldn’t appreciate the gift they were given. Not like me, or Vail or Lee.
Vail shifted a little, and when I met his eyes over Casey’s head, I saw the way his eyes were shining as he held back his own tears, but I didn’t like the look on his face.
It was too… controlled. And the way Lee was shaking, his head bowed over his lap, I knew that they had been talking in our absence. I wasn’t going to like this.
“Right, guys?” Casey whispered, pulling back a bit to see them.
As soon as she did, they both plastered fake smiles onto their faces, just as we heard Liza call her name in the distance, demanding she returns home for supper.
As much as I appreciated Liza and everything she did for me, I hated her at this moment.