Chapter 4 Sober
?Azalea?
"Do you think I'll ever see him again, Mr. Terrip?" I question which honestly makes me want to throw myself off a bridge.
It's been a week and a half. A week and a half of me wondering about him. A week and a half of me trying to tell me to stop thinking about him and to forget about his terrible manners and rude attitude.
"Who?" Mr. Terrip asks and I feel like throwing a book at his head.
"Albuquerque the turkey, " I deadpan and he laughs.
"Forget I said anything, I think I'm going crazy," I shake my head.
"I think you've been crazy for a while," Mr. Terrip teases and I point a threatening finger at his face.
"On that note, I'm leaving," I pick up my book for the night.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Azalea," he tells me goodbye as we walk out. I stay beside him as he locks up and once he's done, we go our separate ways.
"Where's your car?" he calls out and I wince.
"I walked," I smile.
"I told you not to do that," he scolds and I sigh.
"Goodbye!" I call over my shoulder and I can just see him shaking his head in disappointment.
I swear, he acts like I live an hour away or something.
This morning I just woke up with a little extra energy so I walked. I've grown to like walking better than driving anyway.
Although, I haven't walked to the bookstore since before the accident.
Maybe that's why my knee is slightly pounding.
I make it home and take notice that both parents are home.
God, please give me a good day here.
I open the front door and keep my head down as I walk through the living room. I catch sight of a couple of Jack Daniels bottles on the coffee table and I close my eyes in an attempt to picture the table the way it used to be before the wreck.
Fresh flowers in a clear vase. Maybe even a couple of 'Good Living' magazines.
I should've stopped walking when I closed my eyes. But I didn't.
For a kid, a father's arms should feel like the safest place in the world. Not the scariest.
The smell of alcohol on him was what hit my senses first, then I felt the tight grip of his hand on the back of my shirt.
He pulls me away from him like I'm on fire and the neckline of my tightens until it is choking me.
"I-I'm sorry," I struggle, trying to swallow. He lets go of my shirt, shoving me away from him. My knee gives out and I fall, landing on the coffee table.
I just catch sight of the Jack Daniels bottle right before it rolls off the table and falls to the ground, breaking on impact with the floor.
Fear encases me and my heart sinks to my feet as the dark liquid flows on the hardwood floor.
The sound of his belt unbuckling causes my eyes to well up with tears.
"Look at me," the sound of his belt stops. I hesitantly raise my eyes to his. He hooks his belt back and I silently thank God.
"You took him away from us," he slurs and I bite my lip to hold back a gut-wrenching sob that is begging to be let out.
"I know," I cry out softly, "I know I did."
Does he think I don't already know that?
"You were the last face he ever saw," he continues and I cry harder, "the person who did this to him was the last thing he ever saw."
The dark and empty void in my chest only grows as my father tells me things I already tell myself.
"Go upstairs," his voice turns dark. He grasps my arm in a tight hold and he drags me to the stairs.
Panic fills my chest as he drags me past my room. He stops in front of Jake's door.
"Please daddy," I sob, "Please don't."
He opens the door to the room I haven't been in since the crash. I don't hold back the cries that escape my lips as he forces me into the room.
"You're the reason he's not in here," he slurs angrily in my ear.
"Please, take me out," I sob, trying to escape his hold.
It hurts so bad.
"Think about what you did," he roughly shoves my arm away from him, and I nearly nosedive to the floor.
"You ruined this family, I hope you know that," he closes the door behind him. I hear the sound of a click and I panic again.
I shoot up from my position on the floor and grab the door handle. I wiggle it and try to open it but it's locked.
The guilt from everything overwhelms me and I fall to the floor in a heap, crying every tear in my ducts.
This is worse than any kind of physical harm my father could have done to me, so much worse.
I lean my back against the door and for the first time, I peek out from behind my hair at the room.
It's the same as the day I last saw it.
Except for the silence in it now.
A silence so painful sticks to the room and it rings in my ears.
The trophies, sports awards, and jerseys stare back at me, only reminding me of how talented and gifted my brother was.
And I took him away from the world.
He flourished in all he did.
He was loved by everyone.
He was going to college, he had a scholarship to play the sport he loved and I took it all away.
God, it should have been me. Why didn't you take me instead?
~~~
The sound of the door jiggling wakes me up in the morning.
I gasp and sit up, scared the death that my father is going to come back in here and maybe find something that was worse than spending the night in my brother's room to do to me.
The door opens and my mother steps into the room, her work clothes on her body.
She's sober.
A breath of relief leaves my lips as tears cloud my eyes.
"Azalea, oh honey," her eyes fill with concern and I silently thank God that she's sober and not my father.
She falls to the floor beside me and pulls me into her arms. I cry into her shoulder and her hand rubs my back soothingly.
"What happened?" she questions softly, pulling away and wiping my blonde hair from my damp face.
"He locked me in here," I put my face back into her shoulder.
"What the hell are you two doing in here? I thought we all agreed to not go in here," my father's sober voice fills the doorway and my heart pounds with fear.
I haven't heard him sober in quite a while.
Usually, before I get to see them in the morning, I'm already out and at the bookstore.
Surprisingly enough, they haven't lost their jobs. I know they have to be hungover but I guess all the bottles of medicine in the cabinets downstairs helps them with that.
"Jack, what the hell?" my mother curses him, surprising me.
I've always been too scared to see them sober, afraid that the reality will be that they're the same person sober as they are when drunk. Maybe, at least my mother isn't.
"What?" he questions and my mother pulls away from me, turning to him. His eyes focus in on me, I can feel his gaze on me but I keep my eyes on the floor.
"You put her in here," she scolds harshly and he remains quiet.
"I don't remember doing that," is the only thing that he can say.
"Maybe because you were drunk," I surprise myself by getting a small amount of courage after all this time.
"Excuse me?" he narrows his eyes at me, still slightly scaring me.
"You dragged me up here, you put me in here," a tear rolls down my cheek, "you left me in here."
"Azalea, you're delusional, I didn't do that," he says and I stay quiet. There's no sympathy for spending the night in my dead brother's room. There's nothing in his eyes. I'm delusional.
"Okay, Azalea, I think Jake's passing is really just getting to you right now," my mother runs her hand up and down my back.
I look between the both of them. I can almost feel my broken heart chipping away and falling into a bottomless pit.
I push past both of them and walk straight into my room.
I take a shower and think about everything that just happened. If I could cry more, I would. My head just hurts too bad from doing it so much already.
I look at myself in my full-length mirror in my room.
The scar above my eyebrow. The huge scar along my shin. The scars on my knee. The terrible scar on my rib.
Half of me is made of metal now. Three of the four ribs I broke had to be fixed with metal plates. A tube had to be inserted into my chest cavity to reinflate my lung after it collapsed when the ribs broke and poked my lung.
My knee basically had to be reconstructed after I shattered the entire patella, not to mention the ACL tear which caused a whole other surgery on its own.
My shin bone, both my tibia and fibula had to have metal plates and screws inserted.
All on the right side of my body.
My shoulder and head were the only other things that were completely screwed up, literally. My shoulder was dislocated and scarred all up and I got a grade three concussion.
I lost memory of the accident until about two weeks after it happened.
The day I woke up and finally remembered what happened, it was the worst day of my life and it always will be.
No one knows exactly what happened.
Mr. Terrip knows the just of it; My brother and I were in a wreck almost two years ago. He passed away, I didn't.
I pull on a flowy pale yellow sundress. I decide against a sweater to go over top of it but I'll probably regret it, but Mr. Terrip always keeps the store at 58 degrees Fahrenheit.
He gets hot easily and it blows my mind.
To be frank, I think he keeps it cold on purpose to get on my nerves because he knows I get cold easily.
~~~
"You're quite late today, Azalea," Mr. Terrip chides without realizing I've been in the store for over thirty minutes.
"I'm flattered that you've noticed my missing presence," I smile at him softly.
"I've been over here figuring you out," he narrows his eyes at my form.
"Figuring me out, huh?" I giggle, shaking my head at him.
"You don't seem normal," he observes and I snort.
"I don't think I am normal Mr. Terrip," I give him a smile before continuing while I have his attention.
"You see, I have this problem, bear with me here Mr. Terrip, and this problem is truly unfixable if you ask me," I peek down at him to see that he's already not listening with his nose buried in his newspaper.
I give myself a mental high five for dodging Mr. Terrip's questions about why I don't seem normal today.