Chapter Fifteen
Scarlett
Fifteen Years Ago
It was my first day of ninth grade.
Everybody’s fresh meat, that’s what Sinead told me before I walked out the door. Ryden was waiting for me at my front steps. He was starting his sophomore year.
“Why can’t you be in the same grade as me?” I’d asked, stomping over melted ice. We got hit with a pretty nasty storm a few days ago. Flack made me shovel the driveway. Would’ve made me shovel all of Slater Street just to teach me a lesson.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
He just hated me.
I peered into the living room when I was putting my boots on. There was a needle sticking out of his arm, Sinead’s too. Maybe he was sick, I don’t know. He never responded to me when he was out of it.
So, Ryden helped me.
Ryden always helped me.
Except today.
When I needed him to be one year younger.
“I can’t just turn back time,” he said, nudging my shoulder.
In the last year, he had a major growth spurt. Sort of looked like a bean pole with abnormally long limbs. I was still short. I was convinced a giant stomped on my head when I was child.
If the giant’s name was Sinead, short form, Flack.
“I won’t make any friends,” I pouted.
“You’ve got to be open minded, Dove.” He called me that often now. Like it was our own secret, a hidden treasure in the cove of our little world. I liked it.
I liked him.
“You never know what life has in store.” He said it with so much confidence that I almost believed it. For the first time in eons, I grounded my roots in healthy soil.
Ryden was the sun that kept me in bloom.
So I chose to believe that he was right.
I chose to trust him.
And when I walked into class that day, taking my seat in the back away from all the people I knew I’d hate, in walked a rainbow.
In walked Emory Maria Williams.
***
“Hi,” she smiled. She had big brown eyes, freckles all over her face.
I was cautious. Curious, but cautious.
“Hello?” she repeated, sitting next to me.
“There are plenty of chairs.”
“I want this one.”
“Whatever.” I don’t know why I was rude. I don’t know why she put up with it.
She stared at me all of class. I couldn’t focus on a thing our teacher was saying.
“Want to be partners?” she asked, eyes bright.
I zoned out the whole time, playing with the guitar pick Ryden got me. “Partners?”
“Yeah,” she tucked her feet under her chair. “Me and you.”
“Who are you?”
She extended a hand, bangles clanging together like cymbals. “I’m Emory.”
I shook it wearily. “Vi – Scar,” I cleared my throat. “I’m Scarlett Blake.”
The skin around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “Do you always introduce yourself as your full name?”
I frowned, confused. “Should I not have?”
“It’s not customary,” she said, then shrugged. “I like your hair.”
“Customary,” I repeated the word like it was honey on my tongue. “Customary.”
She yanked my chair closer to her. Strong thing, even with little arms.
I noticed, then.
I froze.
She rolled down her sleeve, batting her eyelashes like she had pepper in her eyes.
“Um,” she whispered, “Um,” again, panicking. She picked at papers, this Emory girl, turning sheets over, reading nothing. She pretended to occupy herself.
I wouldn’t let her.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be partners,” she whispered, hiding behind the curls of her hair.
But before she could go, I grabbed her fingers and squeezed tightly. “Can I see?”
We were thirteen, ninth graders, and we’d already mutilated our bodies because the world was unkind.
We talked about it at lunch, tucked away beneath a willow tree. We didn’t make it to third or fourth period.
“I was in foster care up until I was eight.” She was fidgeting with her fingers. I placed my hand over hers to stop the shaking.
“I don’t know my parents. I don’t know if I want to know them. I just know – I just want to know why they gave me up.”
“Having kids is expensive apparently,” I tried. Flack grumbled about it all the time. ‘When’d we even have her, eh Sin? Feels like a lifetime ago and a lifetime longer. Bills, bills, bills.’
She looked up at me with pained eyes, void of contentment. I recognized it all too well. “Then why have one?”
“What?” I was in my head.
“Why have a kid if you can’t afford one?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. For company, maybe.”
“Then get a dog,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “I’m a person. I shouldn’t –” she paused, sniffing. “I shouldn’t have been thrown away.”
I stared at her. “Was it really that bad?”
Her head shot up. “Are you serious?”
My words lodged in my throat. “I mean… you were surrounded by people. You weren’t alone.”
She was crying now, forearms flying up to show her scars – how deep the cuts were buried in her skin.
“I’m not from here, that’s all I know! On paper, I’m Filipino and Venezuelan.
Who was who? My mom, my dad? What were they like?
How far away from home am I? How did they get here? How did I get here?”
“Emory –”
“Do you know what people called me in there? Do you know how badly I was bullied, shunned, all because of how I look?”
“What?” I veered back. “What’s wrong with how you look?”
“Nothing! Nothing I just – I’m just,” she bit her lip, chewed her nail, “different, I guess.”
I chained my gaze to hers, felt the compulsion to pull her in for a hug, felt like she needed it. I hated hugs. But I… I liked her.
I wanted her to like me.
“I’m sorry, Emory.”
She wiped her eyes. “For what?”
I took a breath, shutting down. “I don’t know what it’s like to be surrounded by people because I’m always alone. I didn’t know that you could be crowded and empty at the same time.”
“Your parents…” she spoke slowly.
“Sinead and Flack,” I corrected.
“They don’t love you?”
It was such a pointed question that I was taken aback. For once, I didn’t know what to say – how to respond to something I…
To a question I didn’t know.
And could that not be the answer, then?
That my parents didn’t love me?
What even was love?
I knew it wasn’t lifting Sinead off the carpet, glass embedded in her foot, her hands.
I knew it wasn’t switching the stained yellow bedding from their room every night because there was vomit and tablets sewn into the duvet.
I… I did those things for them because they couldn’t do it themselves.
But maybe they could? Maybe they just asked me to because they knew I was more reliant? More mature?
Maybe they did love me?
[Maybe I loved them more.]
“Scarlett?” Emory whispered, nudging my shoulder.
Now it was me holding back the tears, pushing them away violently as they fell. “They have to love me.”
They have to.
It was an obligation. They had me.
They wanted me.
It wasn’t –
They have to.
Maybe Emory knew I was lying to myself. But she didn’t say anything.
I had to change the subject. “Who are you staying with now?”
She took my hand, without needing to express her pity. I didn’t want it. It’s as if she knew that. And she carried on.
I liked her.
“A nice family took me in a few years ago.” Her complexion brightened a little talking to me about them. She took their last name; before it was Diaz. The dad was a banker, the mom a nurse. And who would’ve thought? The mom was actually Filipino as well.
“No way!” I said, giggling. “What a coincidence.”
“Gosh, Scarlett. Alma makes the best chicken adobo,” she smiled.
“I’ve never had it,” I replied. I’d never even heard of it. But she described it so deliciously, I craved something I didn’t even knew existed.
“It’s better now, it is,” her smile was weak, “but sometimes I think about my time at foster care, think about who my real parents are – what we could have been and it makes me sad. It really,” she sighed, “it just sucks.”
I grabbed her hand. “Life sucks.”
“It does.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, having a feeling not many people had ever thought to.
A tear fell from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know.”
It was weird seeing someone else on the brink of sadness. I normally just looked in the mirror.
“I guess,” she slouched, “I’m just tired of feeling like an outcast.”
“Outcast?” I stood up, fists clenched. “You’re not a fucking outcast!”
My hands flew to my mouth.
Emory stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, “I – I’ve never said that word before.”
She giggled, patting the rock next to her. “Fuck.”
“Oh my God,” I plugged my ears. “Sinead and Flack say it all the time, I just –” I paused. “I don’t want to be like them.”
“From what you told me, Scarlett Blake,” she scooted closer, “You’re never going to be like them.”
“How do you know?”
“I’d like to think I know you.”
“But we just met, like, four hours ago.”
She smiled, lifting up my sleeve. My scars, white as bone, were flayed across my forearms like tape.
“I think you know me, too,” she whispered, placing her hand over mine.
And I stared, assessing this… this, rainbow.
The reds of her cheeks.
The green flecks in her eyes.
The yellow aura radiating around her like a halo.
Blue nail polish, chipped.
And orange caution tape, wrapped around her like lace, a plane I was scared to board because I knew – deep in my heart – that I would care about this girl.
That she saw me.
Our struggles were different, our lives more so.
But we were no longer alone.
We could be each other’s sunflowers.
Me, Emory and Ryden.
The golden coins at the bottom of the ocean…
Destined to rise.
***
I wanted to introduce Ryden to Emory as soon as possible. Ashamed to admit it, but she was like a golden compass in a raging tide. A foundation I needed to hold, to cherish.
And Ryden was my ship.
It was me who showed up at Ryden’s front door, giddy with excitement despite Sinead’s freak out this morning. She lost her ‘special box.’ Whatever that means.
Ryden didn’t come right away. I knocked a whole lot until he did.
And then the door opened.
And my mouth closed.
His backpack was slung over his shoulder, hoodie hanging off his body like a discarded banana peel. And his face… his eye –
It was black and purple.
“Ryden…” Instinctively, I went to touch him and he grabbed my wrist, gently, but authoritative.
“Let’s go,” was all he said.
I stared at him the entire walk to school. I wanted him to tell me something, but I knew he’d lie to me –
Lie and say he was fine, that he fell off his bed or something dumb like that.
But he had one working eye, one that his mother probably tended to.
The other belonged to the monster who hated him.
[If that were my house, I’d have two black eyes.]
“We need to go to the infirmary,” I pleaded, taking hold of his hand in my mitted one. “You’re going to die.”
“I’m not going to die, Scar,” he let out a strained chuckle.
“Good energy!” I stomped, dragging his body to the best of my abilities. “Now, chop-chop!”
“Scar,” he said.
I ignored him.
“Scarlett.”
Trudge on, trudge on –
“DOVE, STOP!”
I froze in my tracks. He never, ever yelled at me before. I didn’t want to see the other side of his anger. I didn’t think it existed.
Turning around slowly, I hid beneath the fold of my hood. “You’re hurt,” I whispered.
He stepped towards me, tentatively placing two hands on my shoulders. We stood like that, underneath a flagpole, for a really long time. Just… staring.
Finally, he spoke low. “If I report this, he’s going to take it out on my mom.”
I thrashed out of his grasp. “He can’t! He’ll be in jail!”
“That’s not how these things work, Scar.”
“It should! It fucking should!”
“Hey!” He yanked me close, holding my head against his chest. That rush of warmth returned, a burning fire building up underneath my coat, my skin – my bones.
“Hey,” he said, softer now. “Is everything okay? I’ve never…” he paused. “I’ve never heard you swear before.”
I looked down, pulling out hanging threads from my sweater. “You’re asking me if I’m okay when you were punched in the face.”
He laughed, but there was pain. Lots of it. “Take it like a man, right?”
“You are a man.” I felt something watery gloss over my vision. Snow maybe, uh. Flurries. “You’re more of a man than whoever lives in your house.”
He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “And I’ll continue to be that man for my mom. But I can’t if I’m on a stretcher with something far worse than a black eye.”
“I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” I meant it. It was a tattoo across my heart, forged in fire.
His eyes, green like emeralds shimmered with water… the same sheath that blanketed my sight.
He was crying.
I was crying.
And we hid away in soft murmurs until the real snow started to fall.