29. Misely
twenty-nine
Misely
I t’d been a long time since I’d said her name and when I did, it came out a little hoarse. Grief, fresh as the day I’d gotten the news, overwhelmed my senses. The only person I’d ever known in my personal life to understand this kind of pain was Birdie and I’d still never had the courage to confide in her.
I must’ve gone quiet because Talon urged me to continue. “What happened with Cara?”
Hearing her name on someone else’s tongue burned just as deeply, a selfish part of me wanting to rip it out of his mouth and demand he never speak it again. My memories of Cara were mine and mine alone.
I shuddered a sigh. “We met when we were ten. She’d just moved to town, and nobody else was really making a move to befriend her. After a few weeks, I built up the courage to introduce myself and we became thick as thieves right away.
“Every time we had a sleepover, my brothers and sisters made it their mission to sabotage them. But Cara wasn't scared off and insisted it'd be better to have our sleepovers at my house. I didn’t mind, and my parents certainly didn’t care either. They were so wrapped up in themselves and in each other, I don’t think they ever really realized that there had been another child in the house.
“Finally, when we were about…” I paused to think about it, the memories muddling together. “Fourteen, I want to say, I convinced her to let me come to her house. It had been years at that point and I wanted to see where she lived and meet her family. I guess I should’ve caught on when she said she hoped they weren’t home.”
Talon heard something in my tone, because he stood and came to me, resting a gentle arm on my shoulder and directing me to the bed. I accepted his embrace, leaning into his chest with my legs tucked up to my own. The feel of his calloused palms running down my arms centered me, giving me the comfort I needed to keep going.
“The house was completely dilapidated. Just totally neglected. And it looked like her parents might’ve been hoarders. She didn’t let me look around much, just dragged me back to her bedroom. It was tiny, and I don’t mean that in a, ‘ my room is huge so anything smaller than that seems tiny ’ way, I mean in a truly tiny way. Like—‘ how does anybody live in here?’ way.
“At dinner time, she brought me a cup of microwave noodles and apologized, saying it was all they had. It would’ve been fine, I didn't mind, except a few minutes later we heard crashing in the kitchen. Someone was throwing things—pots and pans, glass dishes shattering. And then the screaming started.”
I could still hear it so clearly in my head, the moment etched there for eternity. ‘ Cara, you stupid bitch! You stupid, greedy little bitch!’ Wincing as it replayed in my thoughts, I squared my shoulders.
“Someone was stomping outside her door and suddenly Cara was pushing me toward the closet, begging me to get inside and stay quiet. I didn’t know what else to do, so I listened and watched through the crack in the door. Her mother came into the room just frothing at the mouth pissed, and grabbed Cara by her hair.
“She yanked her head back and got so close to her face that their noses were touching. I had never seen an adult treat a kid that way, I remember my lungs were burning from breathing so hard. ‘ You took the last cup of noodles, didn’t you? You selfish little bitch. You think you’re the only one in this house that’s gotta eat? I shoulda aborted you when your daddy told me to. I wish I had.’ And there was more, so much more. She just kept on saying the most vile, disgusting things to her. To Cara, her daughter , for fuck's sake. And Cara was the sweetest, kindest person I’d ever met in my life.
“I wanted to jump out of the closet right then and stop her, tell her to get her hands off my friend, to call the police, to do something. But Cara told me to hide and not come out and I was terrified. So, I sat there and I watched while her mother punched her so hard in the face it knocked her out, then walked back out of her room like nothing had ever happened. And it was all over ramen fucking noodles that were fifteen cents at the gas station on the corner.”
Talon sucked in a breath behind me. By some miracle, I was holding my composure.
“You can’t blame yourself for—” Talon started, but I cut him off.
“That’s not all of it. That’s barely the beginning.” I pressed into him tighter, taking all of the comfort he had to give.
“Cara never let me come over to her house again, but now that I knew there was something awful going on there, I was paying closer attention. Bruises, cuts, burns …I saw them all. She never wanted to talk about it, and she refused to go to the police. When I saw the cuts on her arms, the ones she did herself…I—I went to my parents.” A breathy laugh left me that held no humor.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, but I wanted to help her. I begged them to do something. We had the means, surely we could do something . If they could buy cars and designer bags and their big ass house, they could give up some of their time to help a little girl who was being abused, right?
“But they brushed me off. They told me, and I quote, ‘Rule Number One of Parenting says that when it comes to how someone else parents their children—you mind your business.’ Any time I went to them after that, it was like talking to a wall. ‘I’m sure she’s fine, Misely, you’re just being dramatic.’ ‘You must learn to mind your own, Misely.’ ‘She’s just looking for attention, Misely.’
“I went to our school counselor, but they just said they were already aware of the situation and it was ‘being handled.’ It wasn’t though.”
What was coming next had my throat closing, my body tightening up painfully. Talon felt it, his hand moving up to comb through my hair, lips pressing to the top of my head.
“I was fifteen when I went to school and was pulled into the office by a resource officer and the counselor. They sat me down, offered me a box of tissues, and told me that, unfortunately, my best friend had taken her own life in her parents’ garage.” His body behind mine went stiff. I couldn’t see his face from where I sat, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
I’d never told anybody Cara’s story, instead choosing to keep it close to my heart. We had been kids, so of course it felt like a lifelong connection had been forged. I suppose in a lot of ways it had. She had me until the day she died and I, too, would take Cara’s memory with me until my grave. For so long, she had been my best friend. The truest friend I’d had until I met Birdie. And even though I wasn’t totally sure where I stood on the whole ‘way of the universe’ thing, part of me liked to believe that maybe Birdie had been a gift from her in some strange way.
“ That’s why I do it. That’s why I chose this career. Because I couldn’t stand the idea that another child like Cara would be out there in the world, waiting for someone to save them and failing to get to them in time. Cara couldn’t take it anymore. Her parents beat her, degraded her, starved her. Every other adult failed her and I was too young to do anything real about it. I can’t let that happen to anyone else. Not if I can do something about it.”