Chapter 6 April 2003 #6
I fell to my knees, staring out the window and into the sky. “Please,” I pleaded with Him. “Please, don’t let them hurt him. I won’t touch him again. I won’t love him anymore if that’s what it takes—you just gotta help him. I won’t ever talk to him again, but please, just let him be okay.”
Time ran on its own wavelength for a while. Seconds morphed to days which were divided into minutes and months. Alone in my bedroom without the familiarity of God, without Kent’s hopeful heart, was torture. Images flashed in my mind of the things they might be doing to him.
I could try to wake Momma again, but when she took her sleeping pill it took an act of God to get her to stir.
And even then, sometimes that wasn’t enough.
A couple of years before we moved to Texas, a twister tore through Little Rock.
It touched down a few miles from us. Trevor tried to shake her awake, but she slept right through it.
Even when he dragged her from her bed to the bathroom and laid her in the bathtub.
Daddy had been at work, and it had just been the three of us there.
While Trevor hauled my mattress into the bathroom, I stood frozen in place, unable to move.
I watched through the living room window as swing sets and lawn mowers took flight.
It was like watching that Wizard of Oz movie.
I watched as it ripped my friend Carrie’s bicycle up out of her lawn and into its vortex.
It’s funny, the places your mind goes when the reality is too terrifying to process.
As her pink bike was pulled from the ground, I imagined what it must be like to ride the bike into the eye of the storm.
Would it hurt, peddling your way through a cyclone?
Would the sheer force of it all tear the breath from your body?
Cause that’s how this felt. Sitting alone in a room that seemed so full of promise half an hour back, that’s exactly what it felt like.
They’d torn Kent away from me. Jerked the future I’d planned out of reality with that first punch to his gut.
The second they came into my bedroom, I knew we were over.
Trevor would never let me be happy. The rage in his eyes, and then the strength of his push, had brought me to my knees.
The front door opened and closed. I tucked myself into a ball in my closet, praying it was Kent coming to find me. In my prayer, he’d tell me he fought them off one by one before talking them down. He’d say he’d made them see the light.
“You can’t see him again. You get that, right?”
With my head buried in the crook of my elbow, I hadn’t even heard him approach. Hadn’t heard the door open or his heavy footsteps against the wooden floorboards.
“Is he okay?” It was the only question that mattered. The only prayer I needed to have been answered.
“He’s alive,” he said before kneeling in front of me. “I let him live because you begged me to. The things he was doing to you, Grayson … Jesus. It’s fucked. It ain’t natural. All of that, every bit of this filth, it ends tonight. Do you understand me?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t make my mouth work. Instead, I sat there, my entire body shaking, sobbing as Trevor explained that the dream I’d dreamt of me and Kent side by side for the rest of our lives was gone. Beaten out of possibility with every punch they threw.
“You so much as look at him, and I’ll drag his ass back out to the lake and finish it.”
I gasped.
The lake. Our lake. The one I found just for us.
That hurt almost as much as losing him. The lake was ours.
Our hidden oasis where we could simply exist. No cruelty.
No judgment. Not a single bit of shame sent our way by people who didn’t understand the depth of our friendship.
The lingering hugs. The endless affection.
That lake was ours, and in less than an hour, Trevor took that from us. He’d taken it from him.
Trevor was at my bedroom door when I finally managed to make my voice work. “What did you do to him?”
Trevor snickered. It felt like he was getting off on this. Like him using my fear as some sort of war tactic to guarantee his victory.
“Poured gas on him and struck a few matches to scare him.”
I shoved my face into my arms and wailed. Vicious, broken, choppy sounds that echoed across the walls. I cried for many things at that moment. For the loss of Kent. The loss of our future. The fear he must have felt every time Trevor struck a match. Mainly, I cried to God.
“I hate you. I hate you with everything I’ve got in me.”
His breath was hot against my skin. I hadn’t even noticed when he knelt beside me.
“Hate me all you want. If that’s what it takes to keep you out of Hell, I’ll take it.
I know it hurts, but I’m doing this for you.
Everything I did tonight was for you. Hate me all you want. I love you enough to let you.”
“Screw you.” I pressed my face into my knees and whimpered; tiny, pathetic little sounds. “Screw you, screw you, screw you!”
“You know I’m right. That’s why you’re fighting it so hard. You know what the Bible says about it, Gray. You know.”
“I’ll tell Daddy,” I threatened, still unable to look him in the eyes.
He clutched my chin in his hand and jerked my face toward him until our eyes met.
“I wasn’t playing. One word. To Momma, to Daddy, to anyone.
I’ll kill him. It ends tonight. When you go to school Monday, you’re moving desks.
Right beside Sister Thorpe. Lunch time, you sit at your desk.
You can forget about breaks too. Unless you have to piss, you keep your ass in that damn chair, and you do your schoolwork.
I’ll come by to check. Kyle and Tommy will keep tabs.
If you so much as look at him, I’ll do it. I swear to God, I will.”
He would. As I stared into the dark, demonic eyes glaring back at me, I didn’t have a shred of doubt that he’d kill Kent.
“I hate you.”
“Like I said, I’ll take that. For now, I want you to get your ass in that bed and go to sleep. You don’t leave this room until I’m awake. Understood?”
“Screw you.”
He pulled his arm back and slapped me across the face. “Understood?”
“Y—yeah. Yeah, I get it. Just go.”