twenty-four
1 YEAR LATER
Gloria Walton
“I remember the day Gloria walked in the door,” Ruth says, holding up a cup of white grape juice. “I thought, this one’s going to be trouble.”
A couple people whoop, and someone calls out, “You were right!”
I laugh, only a little embarrassed.
Ruth grins. “We’ve seen you come so far in the past year. I have no doubt you’ll go further than anyone here can imagine.”
“Do I have to?” I ask.
Everyone laughs and raises a glass, and I laugh along, even though I’m not joking. I glance at the door, wishing more than anything that Colt would walk through it. But it stays closed, and I try to focus on the moment at hand, the friends I’ve made while I was here. Most of them came and went in a month or two or three. I’m a veteran of the place, which is why the staff is throwing me a goodbye party.
“Remember, you can always call me if you need anything,” Dr. Delacroix says, snagging a pecan sandy from the tray on the table beside me.
“Are you sure I’m ready?” I watch the door, willing someone, anyone, to walk in. Harper comes to visit every time she’s in town on a holiday break, but she’s already back in New York getting ready for her sophomore year at Syracuse with Royal.
“You’re ready,” Dr. Delacroix promises with an encouraging smile.
“But I’m not healed,” I point out.
“We’ve talked about this,” she reminds me.
“I know,” I admit. “Healing is a journey, not a destination.”
She winces. “It’s a process. A practice. It doesn’t end just because you’re leaving.”
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s not a race. It’s not about finishing. I have to keep doing the work. Which means it doesn’t matter where I am. I could stay here a few more months. I can work for my room and board if I need to. I mean, I know the place inside and out. I’ve been here longer than some of the staff.”
“Don’t tell me you’re dragging your feet about leaving,” Ruth says, descending to grab a cookie.
“More like desperately begging,” I say. “I’m a hard worker. I could scrub the toilets.”
She laughs and bites into the crumbly cookie. “And put Marlon out of a job?”
“It’s natural to be afraid of the unknown,” Dr. Delacroix says. “There’s a whole big world out there waiting for you.”
“A whole world of people I might run over,” I mutter. “If they don’t run me over first.”
“If I thought there was any danger of that, I wouldn’t sign your release papers.”
I linger, taking one more cookie, drinking a little more juice, chatting with a cheerleader from Louisiana who’s getting treatment for an eating disorder. People come here from all over the country, sometimes even the world. Amy Bedgood even came in for a month in the middle of my stay. I guess the outskirts of a small city in the middle of Arkansas is about as far from the spotlight as a celebrity can get.
Finally, Ruth tells me it’s time to go, that they have to clean up for dinner. In the modern, tastefully decorated foyer, I hug her hard, both of us sniffling, before I turn to the double glass doors. Evening is falling, the long shafts of summer sun glaring over the parking lot. I grip the handle of my one bag, then pause. I want to run back to my white room, to burrow under the covers and hide from the world another day. But I’m not a celebrity, and there’s nowhere to go but out.
I take a step toward the door. Towards the whole wide world out there waiting, a world that will test me and break me into pieces, that will ignite my rage but not let me express it. I have no family, no money, no Yale. I don’t even have June Bug.
But I have one thing. Something I’ve always wanted. I’m free. I have options. Choices.
I could go to community college, one of the options I talked over with Cedar Crest, which likes to help residents plan for their future when they walk out. I could work for Scarlet again—she told me as much when she showed up on visiting day last fall. She’s come once a month since then, becoming a weird sort of mother figure for me, though with her scarred faced, she’s probably one that the bitchy cheerleaders would have laughed at back when I was one of them. Not like I know anything about good mothers. I didn’t have one, and I didn’t become one.
Of course I didn’t keep the baby. I couldn’t. I was a criminal with no home when I got out, nowhere to go. And worse, I knew I’d never be able to look at it and not relive that last year and how it came to be. I didn’t even want to know the sex, didn’t want to name it or keep in touch with the parents. All I wanted was to know it was safe and had a chance in life.
I chose a couple who seemed happy and middle class, and I hoped that it would be enough, that they would love the baby in a way I couldn’t, not knowing where it came from. I hoped they would give it a good life, that it wouldn’t have to struggle in poverty or be corrupted by wealth. I signed the papers, and then I cried for three months straight.
I don’t remember much of that time. I never left my bed except when I was forced to go to therapy or meals, and they had to heavily medicate me and put me on suicide watch when my mental health deteriorated. With a lot of adjustments of meds, a lot of therapy, and a lot more hard work, I crawled out of that place to reach the one I’m in now. I’m proud of that, even if it’s not much for a former prom queen with a scholarship to Yale.
I step out the doors and onto the curb, then stand in the stifling heat, breathing it in like I don’t walk the gardens every day. It tastes different out here, where it’s free. It smells like hot asphalt and exhaust, perfume, and possibilities.
“Gloria,” a voice calls, and I turn, locating the source of the perfume. Two pretty faces smile at me, both girls jostling each other as they hurry over, shoulder to shoulder, an impenetrable wall of togetherness and twinship bonds.
“Are you here to throw a bubble tea in my face and tell me I’m a disgrace to the family?” I ask, gripping my suitcase harder.
“No,” Everleigh says, looking wounded. She’s cut her hair to her shoulders, while Eleanor’s has grown out in the past year.
“We wanted a chance to say goodbye before we leave for college,” Eleanor says.
“Okay,” I say with a shrug. “Bye.”
“That’s it?” she asks, her eyes widening in disbelief.
“Hey, you both got into college. Good job,” I offer. “Glad that worked out for you.”
“It’s not our fault you ruined your future by running over a celebrity,” Eleanor says.
I snort. “Celebrity? Please.”
“She’s famous now,” Everleigh says. “She went on tour with that band Rylan formed with the other kids at that teen challenge ranch Mr. Montgomery sent him to. She made a whole blog about it, about the struggles of a new band trying to break out in the digital age.”
“I heard they were, y’know. Together for a while,” Eleanor says, giving me a meaningful look, as if I’m supposed to care where Rylan sticks his dick.
“Good for her.”
“She’s like a real journalist now,” Eleanor says. “She even texted us for a few months after she went on the road, until she got so busy…”
“After the blog did so well, she got hired to help do the publicity for Bathtub Burnouts’ comeback tour,” Everleigh explains.
“I heard,” I say. “Sounds like Dixie. Always chasing that fame.”
Eleanor giggles and glances at the building behind me. “I wasn’t sure if you knew. Did you get, like, internet and stuff in here?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Eleanor. Even prisons have internet access.”
“Well, Bathtub Burnouts is a legit band, so she’s at least semi-famous. Can you believe we know a famous person?”
“I’m happy for you.”
“What was it like in there?” Eleanor whispers excitedly, like we’re gossiping about some rich person’s house and not a court-appointed treatment facility. “Did you see anyone famous?”
I shrug. “If you really wanted to know, you would have visited while I was there.”
“We had school and cheer and everything,” Everleigh protests. “It’s not that easy to get away on a Saturday.”
“And yet, Harper lives in New York, and she managed to visit multiple times last summer, on fall break, winter break, spring break, and again this summer,” I say, counting off on my fingers. “Almost as if making time to see people you care about is a normal thing to do.”
“Everyone thought you went crazy,” Eleanor explains. “At the trial, all that stuff they said about you…”
“Including you,” I say, my voice hard. “You didn’t just align yourself with Dixie at school when all that shit went down. You testified on her behalf, against your own sister.”
“Because we had to,” Eleanor says. “Everyone was on her side!”
“Would’ve been nice if it wasn’t everyone ,” I mutter.
“If we visited, someone at school might have found out,” Everleigh adds. “We had to distance ourselves so people wouldn’t think we were like you. You know how it is.”
I look from one of them to the other, then shake my head. “I do know,” I agree. “But I also know the Dolces and their friends were all gone for your senior year, so the only real consequence of being associated with me was a hit to your reputation.”
“That’s important,” Eleanor cries.
“I say this in the gentlest way possible: You should really get therapy.”
A beautiful sound fills the air seconds before a shimmering, custom green ’69 Boss Mustang turns into the lot, and my heart stops beating. For one terrible second, I’m sure this is why my sisters are here, to stall me, to make me witness whatever torment they’ve concocted for me next. It will never be over.
June Bug glides to a stop at the curb in front of us, and the driver’s side door swings open. We all wait, not breathing, until the driver steps out.
“Colt,” I gasp, nearly choking on the word.
“Let’s go, Butterfly,” he says, cracking a grin.
“How—you said—”
“I said she went to auction,” he says, tapping his knuckles gently on the roof. “Didn’t say who bought her.”
“You bought my car?” I ask, my eyes swimming with tears. Of all the things he’s done for me in the past year, visiting every week, bringing me coffee and bubble tea and root beer floats, walking with me in the gardens, he never told me he did this.
“Surprise,” he says, looking all smug and proud of himself.
I laugh and wipe at the tears blurring my vision, wanting to see her clearly in all her glory, the dent in the hood gone, her whole sleek, sexy shape as good as new. Then I turn to my sisters. “So this is why you’re here? To make amends, because you heard I landed a Darling?”
“No,” Eleanor protests, her cheeks reddening as she glances desperately at her twin for help.
“We’re sorry, you know,” Everleigh says. “I don’t even know why we were fighting. It was all so high school, wasn’t it?”
“Totally,” Eleanor says with a nervous giggle.
“Right?” I ask, drawing the word out and mimicking their tone. “Like, how totally lame. Remember that time my own sisters fucked my boyfriend for clout, turned their backs on me when our brother died, and laughed in my face when I was forced to sit on the floor like a dog and eat lunch out of the hands of our rapists? What a silly goofy family we were!”
“That’s not fair! We had—”
I slide into the passenger seat and close the door on her words. Harper says that we should forgive for ourselves, not the person who hurt us, so we don’t have to carry the burden of our anger for the rest of our lives. I say if I’m going to do the work to forgive someone, they need to be worth the effort. And some people just aren’t.
Colt slides into the driver’s seat and shifts into gear, and we pull out of the lot and away from Cedar Crest, leaving my sisters behind. I’m ready to leave behind the last year too, and all the ones before it.
Right after the baby came, Harper flew back from college and came to see me over Labor Day. She sat beside the bed and held my hand while Colt slept wedged into the hospital bed behind me.
“Did you see the baby?” she asked.
I cried harder, and she didn’t press the issue.
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d seen it, that I had to know, so I asked Colt to wheel me down and look through the glass into the nursery. I prayed it would have a dark complexion, but not olive, and maybe there would be hope for it. I stared through the glass at it for a long time. It seemed impossible that a whole person with fingernails and eyelashes could have come from my body. I knew which one it was despite the name on the basinet that didn’t belong to me.
Colt said nothing, asked nothing, offered nothing. I was grateful. I didn’t have it in me to answer questions or even to fall apart. I knew then that I’d made the right choice because I felt nothing but horror when I looked at that foreign creature, a terrible potential lurking inside a tiny, vulnerable body, ready to break out and unleash its evil upon the world. I left it with a prayer that it wouldn’t become a monster like its father.
Sometimes, I still feel guilty for not warning the nice, unsuspecting couple.
“Where to, Butterfly?” Colt asks, snapping me out of my memories.
“Anywhere but here,” I say, twisting the dial on the radio.
“I owe you a night under the stars,” he says. “How about we grab a couple root beer floats and head up to the quarry?”
“Not far enough.”
“How far are we talking here?” he asks, turning onto the ramp to the highway. The sky glows a soupy, hazy orange to the west as it begins its nightly descent.
“How much time you got?” I ask.
“I got all the time in the world, sweetheart,” he says with a lazy grin, shifting before laying his hand on my knee.
“You finally found a reason that’s not cash,” I say lightly. “I’ve got nothing tying me to Faulkner but you. I’ve always wanted to just get in the car and drive until the road ends.”
“That’s a long drive,” he says, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.
“You said you had nothing but time.”
“True,” he says, tapping the steering wheel while he stares out the windshield, lost in thought. “And when we reach the end, do we come back?”
“If we want,” I say. “I think we get to choose our future now. Together or separate.”
“You’re my future, Lo,” he says. “I told you, I’ll always choose you.”
“And I choose you,” I say. “Every single day. But if someday we decide differently…”
“Then we have that choice,” he says, nodding.
I smile to myself, my heart soaring at the thought of so much freedom at my fingertips. At last. I treasure it too much to promise it away just yet. Maybe someday, we’ll choose forever. But right now, we choose today, and right now, that’s even better. Being together is a choice we get to make every day. There are no promises, no rings to bind us, no outside forces pulling the strings. The freedom to make a different choice keeps it exciting. Anything is possible.
“There is one stop I’d like to make before we take off for the edge of the world,” I say.
“Let me guess,” he says. “This is your way of conning me into letting you drive?”
“Can you blame me?” I ask. “It’s been a year since I was behind the wheel.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “Though you might have to relinquish control every few hours. I don’t need to be behind the wheel all the time, but this baby drives like a daydream.”
“I know,” I say smugly.
He glances at me again, his hand sliding a few inches up my thigh. “Okay, so one stop before we drive off into the sunset. Let’s make it somewhere fun.”
“By fun, do you mean pulling off at the seediest motel you can find and making me beg to touch you like you’re a god and I’m some pathetic, dick-whipped nympho?”
“Obviously,” he says, his grin widening. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you swallow—after you crawl on the dirty carpet until your knees turn black and beg me to fuck you until you scream so loud they think there’s a murder going on.”
“God, why does that make me so wet?” I say, squirming in my seat. “Shouldn’t therapy have cured me of that?”
“Unless your therapist is bending you over his desk and fucking it out of you, I don’t think it works that way.”
“Unfortunately, my shrink is female, and I’m not attracted to women,” I say. “Otherwise I might have asked for that treatment by now. It’s been six months.”
Unlike the jail, Cedar Crest allows anyone to come on visiting days, not just family. Colt’s been in almost every week, even when I was in no condition to visit. He also came back in for a couple weeks when he relapsed this spring, and even though we weren’t supposed to be out of our rooms, he snuck into my bed a few nights and reminded me what was waiting on the other side of my sentence.
“For me too,” he says. “Which is why I brought this as a special treat, just for the occasion.”
He reaches under the seat and pulls out a black leather collar with a leash already clipped into the ring. My pulse pounds in my throat and my clit at the same time, and I reach out and take it, laying it across my lap. I swallow hard before asking, “Have you used this with someone else?”
“Of course,” he says. “Now put it on.”
My face burns at the thought. “You’re going to make me wear a used sex toy?”
“I’m not making you do anything,” he says. “I’m allowing you the privilege.”
I grit my teeth and I glare at him, but he only answers with an arrogant arch of a brow.
“Are you going to lead me to the front desk of the motel wearing a collar and leash? So everyone thinks we’re freaks, and that you own me?”
“Everyone already knows that.”
Heat throbs between my legs when I reach up and wrap it around my neck, my face flushed with humiliation and arousal.
Colt smirks like he knows how wet this is making me, and how mad it makes me that it does. Then he pats my knee in the most infuriating, condescending way. “Atta girl.”
This concludes Colt & Lo’s story.