Chapter 32
Quill
Twelve years old
“You’re the reason she abandoned us. She abandoned me.”
THUMP.
“You scared her, you fucking freak. What kind of six-year-old scares his mom? Psycho.”
THUMP. KICK. CRACK.
“Bet you’d love her to come save you, wouldn’t you? Don’t you think I hear what you cry out when you talk in your sleep? Well, you’re the reason she’s gone. She abandoned you. She’s not coming to save you now. No one is. You. Fucking. Psychopath.”
Each of those last words is punctuated by a kick to my sides.
I’m lying on the ground, helplessly taking Dad’s beating. I wish I weren’t so weak. But he towers over me, and the words pouring out of his mouth are a lot worse than the kicks.
She abandoned me. I’m the reason she abandoned me.
“And what’s this I hear about you hanging around the public middle school? You don’t even go there! Are you a fucking pervert, on top of the rest? Am I raising a psychotic pervert?”
Well, I’d hardly call it raising, but I don’t answer.
I just let the storm blow over, like I always do, sinking into myself to keep from getting hurt too much.
Sinking into myself, while repeating the secret words I’ve been using since first grade like a shield.
Ever since I started getting the shit beaten out of me after Mom left.
When I’m big enough, you’ll see. When I’m big enough, you’ll see. When I’m big enough, you’ll see.
I say everything in threes when I’m stressed, and even the thoughts in my head are repeated three times. The only thing I don’t repeat are the last words.
I’ll fucking kill you.
_
By the time Dad has let up on the beating and I manage to hobble upstairs to my room, I’m a mess. Aching all over, and I’m sure that by tomorrow a pattern of bruises will form, over the ones that are still fading from the last beating.
But the injuries are never permanent.
Over the years, after one hospital visit too many, Dad has learned how to beat me in such a way that he doesn’t break anything or leave any other long-lasting damage.
It’s not because he’s worried about CPS being called.
In this town, everything revolves around Devil, and since Dad is high-ranking over there, no one will bother him.
But I guess he doesn’t feel like paying the hospital bills.
Maybe he also felt passingly guilty about breaking his son’s bones.
Sometimes, when I don’t dream of Mom saving me, I think of what the Devil founders would do if they found out one of their top-ranking members was regularly beating the shit out of his son.
Not a thing, is the likely answer. They don’t look like the type to shy away from violence themselves.
But I guess it’s human nature to latch onto hope, no matter how helpless a situation feels like.
And I share enough of human nature to latch onto hopes, absurd as they are.
Save me, Mom. Save me, Devil. Save me, Piper.
That last thought is the most absurd of all.
Half of my energy is spent on thinking of ways to kill her.
Especially in these moments of getting beaten up so viciously by Dad.
I guess there’s something soothing about imagining myself hurting someone weaker than me.
Someone looking to me for protection, whose naive, innate trust I could violate in the cruelest way possible.
Only, I’m not a monster. Not that kind of monster. I’m not Dad.
I’m aware my urge is a mirror to his. Maybe that’s why I’m so deadset on not giving into it.
That’s why the other half of my energy is spent on fighting my need to kill her.
But there’s a tiny sliver of something else, squashed between the two overwhelming halves of my energy. Something that makes me attach absurd hopes onto her.
I wonder sometimes if the words I speak in my sleep, that Dad mockingly repeats to me, are directed at her, just as much as at Mom.
Ridiculous.
Regardless, after a beating like the one I’ve just received, the only thing I can think of is going to her school and watching her from afar.
Somehow, it makes my chest hurt just a little less.
I can focus all my emotions on her. All my…
hatred. That’s what it is, isn’t it? The seething bubble of intensity that makes my chest so tight it hurts.
Wincing in pain, I grab my hoodie, then walk back down the stairs. Dad is sitting in the living room, and he watches me head out silently. He doesn’t try to call me back. I always wonder if he feels a little guilty after these sessions. Another absurd hope to cling to.
If he’s feeling guilty, maybe he won’t beat me anymore.
Bullshit. It’s going to happen again in a few days, as soon as these bruises have started to heal. And I’m going to go right back to planning to kill him.
An urge that isn’t tempered by any resolve not to. Unlike the way it is with the insect. With Dad, the only thing stopping me is that I’m far too weak.
But kids grow up. I won’t be the weaker one forever.
It’s pouring rain outside, but I don’t mind.
The cold wetness soothes my burning skin.
I hop on my bicycle, imagining the moment I’ll be old enough to get myself a motorcycle.
Everything about Dad is cruel, but at least, he’s not stingy.
I’ve always been able to buy what I wanted.
Maybe he figures that makes up for the rest.
I begin to peddle toward the middle school, thankful that my charter school ends so much earlier. Ten minutes later, I’m stopping at the corner of the building, and then I wait.
I smile to myself as I remember Dad’s words. Pervert. Psychopath. If only he knew just how fucked up his son really is.
I don’t honestly give a shit about whoever’s been telling him what I’m up to. I’m not up to anything. Just standing at the corner of the street, with my hoodie pulled over low, and I guess to the teachers there, it must look like I’m ogling all the girls coming out of the building.
I’m only ogling her, though.
They can’t do a thing, anyway. I’m on the opposite side of the street. It’s a free country, so who the fuck is going to stop me from following a girl as she walks home, keeping a block behind her at all times?
That block wouldn’t be enough to keep most people from realizing, after a while, that someone was following them home every single day after school. But Piper Day is the most distracted person I’ve ever met.
If she really was in danger, she wouldn’t even know it before it hit her on the head.
Maybe I am protecting her, after all, riding behind her on the safe, suburban streets that make up the outer parts of Astley. The thought makes me smile from its sheer ridiculousness.
Though I guess, if anyone bothered her, they’d have me to deal with. I feel a weird sense of proprietorship over her.
Today, with the pouring rain, it’s not easy to see her in the mass of kids walking outside the building.
But after a while, the groups begin to thread out, each kid walking toward their ride.
Before long, Piper is alone, standing against the school, holding her bag to her chest and watching the rain uncertainly.
I guess she’s not exactly feeling up to walking home in this rain. It looks like she’s waiting for someone, but whoever that person is has bailed on her.
At last she peels away from the school wall, sighing as though trying to make up her mind to walk home. She begins to cross the muddy grass that leads to the sidewalk.
I wish I had the strength to go against this crazy urge. The sudden urge to see her up close. To feel her body between my arms, without crushing her inside them.
I don’t take the time to process that before my hand juts out to ring my bicycle bell.
It takes a while for the tinkling sound to pierce through her thoughts. Then she jumps, startled, and looks around.
Another tinkling, and she notices me.
She probably doesn’t recognize me, with her glasses covered in raindrops and the darkness falling early because of the incoming storm. She hesitantly walks forward, as if she’s not sure the bell is meant for her. I tinkle it a third time insistently.
She crosses the street, heading my way.
“Quill!”
She seems very surprised and nervous to see me. I like the little glint of fear I can see in her eyes, despite the foggy glasses mostly hiding them.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, stopping in front of me.
I shrug. “Figured you needed a ride.”
“Uh… well, I do.”
“Then get on.”
She doesn’t get on, merely staring at me in confusion.
I click my tongue impatiently, hating that I have to insist and risk betraying I need her to accept the ride far more than she probably needs the ride itself.
“Go on. I don’t want to wait around for you. I’m wet enough as it is.”
She swallows. “Okay. Where should I get on?”
Thank fucking God.
I pat the top tube in front of me, and even with the rain and coldness making her weirdly splotchy, I can tell the color in her face has deepened as she struggles in a very ungraceful way to wedge herself over the metal bar.
She’s definitely not going to have a career as a ballerina, but something about her clumsiness only further eases the weird tightness in my chest. I kind of want to hug her, and that desire is so sudden and strange that I don’t know what to do with it.
I put my arms on either side of her, holding the handlebars a little closer to the center than necessary, so that my arms squeeze against her. I breathe in her citrusy scent, a cheap shampoo odor made irresistible by her own natural fragrance underneath. And all of it heightened by the rain.
She wriggles around, and I smirk as I imagine the bar digging into her butt. I can’t understand how it’s possible for the urge to hurt her to coexist so peacefully with the urge to… well, protect her.
I spend a lot of time denying it to myself, but right now, my body is in too much pain for me to muster up the energy for yet more denial.
“Comfortable?” I ask, knowing she very much isn’t.
“Yeah.”
My smirk deepens as I begin to peddle. It’s a climb almost all the way to her house, but I don’t mind, because that means it’ll take more time. And the burn in my thighs makes the rest of the burn fade. The bruises, and the muddle of emotions that torture my chest.
Yet, after a while, it no longer soothes me to feel her frail, helpless body between my arms. I start to spiral.
When we get to her house, I can’t decide if I’m relieved or in the pits of despair. Both. Definitely, incomprehensibly, both.
“Bye, Quill,” she squeaks out, trying and failing a few times to pull herself free of the bike. I watch in amusement as she squirms, managing at last to lift her leg over the bar, then having to duck under the arms that I haven’t tried moved an inch.
Both because it’s fun to watch her struggle, and because I’m scared of what those arms might do if I unclench my hands from the handlebars.
“Thank you,” she adds, waiting a moment for me to say something. I don’t, so she awkwardly turns and hurries inside.
I wait until she’s disappeared behind the front door before peddling out onto the main road, heading slowly back to my house.
Her absence makes the pain from the bruises come crashing back, but that’s not the reason I suddenly start to cry, loud, embarrassing hiccups drowned under the boom of the incoming thunderstorm, while my tears mingle with the sheets of rain.
The truth is, I don’t know the reason.