Rose
His name is Abel Cartagena and he doesn’t belong here. He’s been here a few days, and these are the things I know: he is firmly rooted in his reality and when he smiles, he isn’t tormented. He smiles often when I’m around. When he doesn’t know I’m looking, his lips are in that resting line, like he’s thinking about things that are boring to him but the line between his eyebrows indicate these thoughts could be troublesome to others.
I’m likely reaching because I have nothing but time to ponder all the things he could be thinking of.
He has tattoos scrawled across his tan skin, covering his neck, hands, and the bit of his arms I can see from where his sleeves stop. I’m curious to see how much of his body is adorned but I don’t ask. That seems inappropriate.
He is already an array of colors on the blandness that has become my life here.
We’re waiting in line for breakfast and I try not to stare at him. His hair is disheveled, but it doesn’t make him any less attractive to me. It’s a little unfair, how sharp his jaw is and how white the whites of his eyes are. Near pristine against dark brown eyes that drag me in.
I want to laugh at myself. The same girl—woman now—who didn’t care to know anything about anyone else in here is filling her head with questions to fire at this person as soon as we sit.
That’s our routine now, I think.
We sit to eat, and I ask him all the questions I can think of. My questions don’t bother him, if his smile is any indication. He doesn’t look away, he doesn’t hide himself from me. He doesn’t fear me.
A few days ago he bumped me with his shoulder, a grin at the ready as he attempted to bait me. Had it been anyone else, I would’ve reacted differently.
Very differently, I correct myself as he reaches for his plastic spoon and starts eating.
I ask him these questions because I’m trying to figure out what makes him safe from me. “Your eyes. Did you get them from your mother or father?”
He swallows a spoonful of his own watery oatmeal and chuckles a little, like he’s privy to a joke that I’m unaware of.
An agitated curiosity unfurls deep in my belly. I crave that knowledge, to know what causes his dry pleasure to escape from his body in such a thoughtless way.
“Definitely mami ,” he says around his food, jutting his chin forward as he finally responds.
“Why the laugh?” I haven’t even touched my own oatmeal yet and I ignore everyone else around us as I await his next answer.
“She hated that I didn’t get my dad’s hazel eyes. Anything to have tied me to him so he couldn’t call her a puta and tell her I wasn’t his. She used to beat my ass if I stared at her for too long.”
Words said so casually lance through this heart that I always thought would never work that way. I squeeze my fists so hard in my lap that I can feel my nails digging into my palm. If this woman was in front of me, I’d tear her apart with my bare hands. “But she did sleep with your hazel-eyed father to create you, yes?” I ask after a moment, trying to sound merely curious. No Mr. Hyde in sight. I am Dr. Jekyll for this man; the best Bruce Banner there ever was.
“Yeah, but she was poor and he was the pastor’s son. He couldn’t get caught up with a girl who let him fuck her before requiring a ring. Not that he would’ve given her one.” He shrugs before taking another bite.
“So you weren’t raised with your father?”
He licks the corners of his lips. “He came around a few times, promising her shit he’d never deliver on before fucking her and then going home to his wife. The last time he did, he beat her up pretty bad before turning his fists on me for…existing, I guess. I was seven. Maybe that’s why mami had such a hard time loving me, you know? She wanted him so badly but he only used her. And then left us both for dead.”
He talks about her in past tense, as if she somehow stopped existing; only residing in his memories. “How did she die?” I ask.
He shrugs again but opens his mouth to speak.
Did her death make him sad? Did he cry?
“One night she got shitfaced and didn’t wake up. The common death of una borracha .”
I pause as he enunciates, loving the way he rolls his r’s.
“How old were you?”
He shifts in his seat, but the way his body is facing me with his eyes focused on me, clear as they are deep, I don’t get the feeling that he’s uncomfortable.
“Sixteen.”
I push my oatmeal around the bowl. I was still free when I was fourteen. I hadn’t yet become a prisoner. Sometimes I wish I could go back and change some things; change how trusting and na?ve and carefree I was.
Then I remember that I can’t do that and even if I could, some people deserve to hurt the way I’d delivered it. Some people deserve to bleed and cry and even die. Some people still do.
But not Abel.
Abel deserves more.
He does not belong here.
“What’s your favorite part about being here, ?”
I lift a brow and tilt my head a little. As soon as he sees my reaction, he smiles. I want to reach out and put it in my pocket for the days I’m in solitary and counting.
It would make me forget to count.
He has no fat on his face to soften his features. When he smiles, what might’ve been dimples are just lines framing his lips. The action looks like he’s thinking ominous thoughts as opposed to pleasurable ones. Maybe, for him, it’s one and the same. But one glance at the warmth in his eyes tells me he’s kind. His dark curls flop over his forehead and he pushes it back like he isn’t used to the length of the tendrils.
“I’m serious,” he says, insisting I answer with a light nudge against my finger with his knuckles and it feels searing, but it’s in my head. “We’re already fucking here. May as well talk about the things we like.”
I shove my tray away from me and he picks up my spoon and starts eating my breakfast. I press my palms together to keep my hands from reaching to touch him in a way no one here would recognize. Certainly not from me, anyway. “Well, I suppose I’m happy that I don’t have to brush my hair.”
“I’m happy I don’t have to worry about where I’ll find my next meal,” he says and it’s then that I realize maybe his lack of body fat may be due to hunger.
That thought makes me pause but because this is a game, I don’t dwell too much on his answer, even if it makes me hurt for him. The kind I’d have to hurt the whole world to fix. “I’m happy I don’t have to attend my mother’s terrible luncheons.” I can still feel the hot curling wand as I sat unmoving to have my hair neat and styled to perfection.
“I’m happy…that I…” he taps his finger to his full lower lip and I eye the greened ink etched into his skin, “don’t have to watch the news and hear about how terrible the world is.”
“I’m happy people don’t bother me.” That one feels like a truth I likely wouldn’t have said aloud to anyone else.
“Even if it’s out of fear?” he questions.
I press my lips together for a moment to keep from telling him that I’d bitten a nurse. I prefer fear to any other mockery of respect. “They should be afraid of me.”
Something else sits on my tongue and he looks at me like he can taste the possibility of the nectar in what I’m wanting to say next.
And so, because I decide nerves are for the weak, I give him something I didn’t know I had. Softness. “I think, perhaps, you’re the only person who shouldn’t be.”
His smile is so wide and open, looking strange on that face that’s entirely too harsh for his spirit. “And why is that?”
Because hurting you might hurt me, too. You’ve become my only friend.
I want to shake the impossible thought away, but I acknowledge the truth to it instead. It’s entirely too obvious to me.
What’s obvious to you may be foreign to someone else, I remind myself. Joe told me a variation of that during our last session and I ignored it until this moment.
“Because I’d miss your company too much if I killed you,” I confess. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me and I don’t want to be afraid of my anger when I’m with you.”
He puffs his lips out, making them look fuller than they already are, his cheeks hollowing for a moment as he nods. “Sounds good.”
That’s all it takes for me to relax. “How are you liking Joe?” I ask Abel and his energy shifts, his smile evaporating the more he absorbs my question, like remembering where we are takes away what momentary distractions we allow ourselves.
He runs his fingers through his hair, scissoring the strands as if their existence annoys him. “Something about him bothers the shit out of me.”
My mother would hate the way he expresses himself, dismissing him as unintelligent because he chooses to swear. My mother is no genius. I know better. “He’s a ghost of a man,” I say clearly, for anyone to overhear. “Or under a ventriloquist’s control.”
“It’s more than that.” He leans forward. “He just gives off such a weird vibe.”
“I don’t see any radioactive spiders hanging around, Peter Parker,” I tell him, and he snorts out a laugh, snagging the attention of several other members of the cattle.
Do I joke like this? Is this something I do now?
He shakes his head and I continue.
“You’ll get used to him.”
“I think that’s what freaks me out. I don’t wanna get used to him. I wanna go home.” He glances down at this hands and I wish I could make that dream of his come true. I wish I could get the both of us out of here.
For once, I’m at a loss for words.
I’ve nearly run out of hope for a future like one Abel hints at. Joe smothers it with every reminder.
I don’t own you. You own yourself. Your actions are to blame for the life you’re now living .
I hate the smugness that constantly coats his easygoing smile.
Abel, however, is still coming to terms with his punishment.
My obsession with retaliation is forcing the question from my thoughts and into the air through my lips. “Why are you here?” It’s the question I’ve wanted to ask since the day I saw him falling asleep in his chair. I saved that question just for him. He’s the only one whose history I want to know.
He isn’t like anyone here. Unlike anyone I’d ever met before coming here, even.
He is the sun peeking between the dreary clouds and I am the girl wanting to sing. You are my sunshine…
Abel makes me a giddy fool.
“I…I don’t remember it all.”
I don’t know this Abel; timid and unsure. He reaches under the table to wipe his palms on his shapeless blue pants and I take the one closest to me in mine, hidden from the nurses’ line of sight.
Those dark eyes flicker to me, a question in them.
The genius in me draws a blank.
Perhaps …can I trust you? What will you think of me?
The seconds crawl on as I await his answer, trying to digest the silence between us but not knowing what it means.
Tell him why you’re here, I tell myself, thinking it’ll help him open up. But he speaks again before I can offer to ruin his image of me with only a few words.
“I tried to jump off the twenty-second story of a building. At first, no one noticed. I’d been there for hours and, I don’t know why, . I don’t know what happened. It’s like I was fucking dreaming.”
One shaky inhale, one hand squeezing mine, and he continues.
“It’s so fucking real to be reminded that no one cares. Because I’m nobody.”
He doesn’t pick his head back up until the last few words fall out and they punch me in the chest.
Because I’m nobody.
I’ve always felt like the center of the world, even in here.
“You don’t remember wanting to jump?”
He’s shaking his head. His hands rub over the facial hair coating his jaw and then his lips. “Homeless, living out of my car, working whatever odd job I could find, my life was already fucked up. I had every reason to want to jump. But, it’s not something I could ever see myself doing. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Not until I was being helped down and saw myself on the goddamn news.”
Homeless.
Something else I wouldn’t know about. My parents had entirely too much money to know what to do with, sending me to the best private schools and even buying my sister her own horse. We had vacation homes and nice, shiny cars.
Even now, I’m being taken care of. Even if it’s of little to no service, unlike the lifestyle I’m used to.
Money is not begot by some sort of god. No one is lined up based on their level of special and handed a thick wad of cash to rule the world with. Any one person can have a large amount of money—even the utterly vile.
Money can only mask the truth.
The truth is, we’re all a little unstable. We all have that bit of monster in us, a Mr. Hyde. Most relate this to the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.
I don’t because if I did, there’d only be one and the devil would be so large, I’d need to have him hooked to a leash instead of perched on my shoulder.
He’d have murdered the angel by now.
I let go of Abel’s hand and set it on the table, but he follows my movement and grips my fingers before they have the chance to hit the tabletop, like we aren’t being watched.
From the nurses’ station, I hear someone shout, “No touching!”
He jerks his hand away and I want to find the person that said that and squeeze their neck until they stop talking and—by default—breathing.
“You’re a good friend, ,” he whispers with a small smile. The smile he usually wears is sweeter and surer than the one he offers now.
Still, I bask under it, like sunshine on my pale skin.
You are my sunshine...
Then he’s looking down at his fingernails and the moment is gone. I look over at the nurses’ station and glare at them.
“Don’t,” Abel says, catching my antics.
And I flinch before facing him again.
“I shouldn’t touch you,” he murmurs, now looking down at the table.
“You shouldn’t?” I ask, because I don’t know that I’ll ever be fluent in Abel Cartagena. My genius doesn’t work with him.
He’s shaking his head when he looks up at me again. “Maybe if we weren’t in this shit hole…”
“Do you think we’d be friends if we weren’t here?” He doesn’t make me feel stupid for not knowing who he is. He often looks at me like I surprise him but he’s a shock to what I find “normal” since coming to Silverwing.
“You wouldn’t look twice at someone like me. So, no.”
I push my hair from my face and my chair screeches a little as I turn to face him completely. “I’m a few things. Self-centered, abrasive, violent, impossible to tame, quite possibly abnormal. If you ask Joe, he’d be more than willing to add to it, but I know ‘snob’ isn’t on that list, even if I was raised by one.” I would look once, twice, a hundred times. He’s a walking contradiction: a man that looks like he’s capable of hurting the world but only offering me friendship while sharing peaceful silence with everyone else. The only reason everyone avoids him is because he’s with me the majority of the time. “I know I belong here. But you don’t.”
He smiles and my gaze snags on the tattoos crawling out from under his drab clothes. When I meet his eyes again, his smile widens.
This one makes me bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling in return. I don’t want anyone else to see it.
“You definitely don’t belong here,” he says. “You belong in a penthouse with a rich boyfriend.”
“You can’t wish that boring life on me, Abel.” I nearly shudder at the picture he paints. I’ve done the rich boys. They’re all small penises, big wallets, and boring conversation. Something tells me Abel isn’t anything like them.
My parents were part of that “perfect life” Abel envisions. They spent more time fighting—with their fists and words—and then smiling perfectly in their pictures than being happy.
“Then tell me, where would you be?”
I take a moment because I want to make sure I say this right, if I bother to say it at all. “Today, my answer is anywhere with you.” It’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever said to a person and it drips from my tongue easily the way the truth often does.
“Yeah?” He clasps his hands together.
If I could read him, maybe I’d know if it’s because he’s trying hard to keep his hands to himself.
“Definitely. Everyone else treats me like I’m a wild animal.”
I am wild and I am violent but I am falling at your feet, wanting to show you my affections in blood.
I’ve known him for as long as it takes some food to expire. Still, I offer my rounded out edges to him almost thoughtlessly, leaving my jagged ones for everyone else.
“Nah. Just a rose with a few thorns.” He leans back in his chair, his hands in his lap. “Fuck ‘em.”
I smile and it’s the first time I’ve smiled all day. And oddly, I don’t care who sees it.
He doesn’t belong here but while he is, I will pretend he’s mine.