Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Dean
W e’re in the gym, all decked out with streamers and a mirror ball and flashing lights.
Callie is beautiful, god, I almost forgot how beautiful, in her pink Prom dress.
Pretty in pink for the eighties theme. And her hair is curly and her hands are covered in black lace fingerless gloves like Madonna, and the corsage I gave her is still on her wrist. She’s putting her plastic cup of that disgusting punch down, and I know what’s going to happen next, I know it in my bones, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Huey Lewis and the News sing about the power of love being a curious thing, and I know he’s already here but I don’t know where, I cast frantically around the room, but I can’t see him… Just a flash of pink hair that I know doesn’t belong, but it’s gone before I can focus on it, like eye floaters.
It’s torture. It’s like being unable to turn away from a horror movie, not wanting to watch it but being held forcibly in place like in A Clockwork Orange, with metal holding your eyelids apart.
My Callie barely even has the chance to frown at the sound of the first gunshots before her head is shot apart, her blood and brains drenching my shirt, out of the clean blue fucking nowhere into dirty red-soaked reality.
She was laughing with me, and a split second later she was gone forever without warning…
Now I’m cradling her mangled body under the table, where I scrambled in a blind panic, blank and terrified and trying not to taste the blood that splashed into my mouth.
Now I’m running through the hall, and I desperately want to go to a different room, any other room except for the one with the pregnant woman who died, along with her unborn baby, because I was stupid enough to lead a psychopathic gunman straight to them…
But I’m drawn to it like a magnet, no matter how much I struggle, no matter how much I try to force my feet to go a different direction or reach for a different door handle, because you can’t change the past. You can’t cheat cruel fate, and I am doomed to relive this over and over as punishment for the lives I destroyed.
And trying to escape that, any path to self-forgiveness, is disloyal to them, something to be ashamed of wanting.
Another flash of pink hair.
Who IS that?
There’s a woman with long pink hair, and her back is to me, and she’s walking away just beyond the burning exit. She’s safely outside, in the sunshine, even though Prom happened at night.
This is not right. She wasn’t there, whoever she was, and it’s an image that does not and will never belong in the scene. Why is this nightmare taking a detour after all these years? It’s never happened before, and I feel like I’m going to lose my shit.
Pain rips through my arm as a bullet grazes through my flesh, and I remember what the scar looks like, and it burns in that exact shape like a brand, it burns, and I want my mom…
I jolt awake, trying to shout out all my terror, but, as always, there’s only silence. Just an ache of effort in my throat. I wonder if the instinct to scream will ever leave me, if my brain will ever get the message that it’s futile to try.
Thank fuck it ended before I got to the really fucking terrible part.
Minutes later, I’m still pouring with sweat and shuddering.
My heart jumps with extra beats in a way that makes me breathless.
My eyes roll with terror. I’m going to be stuck like this for a while, and then I might throw up.
I don’t always, but the way my stomach is roiling at the moment, I’d give myself a fifty fifty shot.
It takes what feels like forever, but eventually my body settles down again. I’m a lead weight sinking into my sweat drenched sheets, but I feel like I might get away without puking this time, which is something.
Damnit. Normally I avoid falling asleep for as long as possible, until the early notes of dawn if I can manage it, so the nightmares don’t have long enough to play out all the way. I must have been really exhausted to have lost focus and slipped up like this.
I turn my head to check my clock. Just past one a.m.
Shit. I was hoping it was at least four.
I’m still having palpitations, and I can’t stand lying here any longer.
I get up and pull all the sheets off my bed so I can change them, even though I’m damn sure not going anywhere near my bed again tonight.
I can’t tolerate even being in this room, where the nightmares sit and wait to pounce on me every single night unless I can stay alert and dodge them.
Grabbing yesterday’s clothes and pulling them on, I find myself pacing up and down, wearing out the carpet in my living room, creaking the floorboards in the kitchen with my feet, and then back again.
I don’t remember coming out here, but here I am.
I don’t know what to do with myself. My hands are shaking.
This immense feeling of rage and frustration is like a boulder in my chest, crushing me until I can hardly breathe. I’m escalating, fast.
Got to stop it.
Can’t.
I could Skype my mom, she’ll still be awake in Louisiana.
No.
She’ll want to know what triggered me this time, and I can’t…I’m not up for…
Fuuuuuuuuuck , my mind is racing. I shake my head hard, trying to clear it. Not happening.
Cell phone.Distraction. Anything .
Facebook message request .
From Mercury Time Productions.
No no no NO. FUCK.
I throw my phone as far as I can, and it lands on the sofa and bounces to the floor.
I hear a crack noise, but I don’t care. I don’t care.
My vision is blurring at the edges. Why can’t sleazy misery mining shitheads like Mercury Whatever Productions leave me alone and stop asking me to take part in their horrible documentaries to entertain the masses with the finer details of my trauma, the worst thing that ever happened to me?
FUCK OFF . I pull the hair at my temples.
How many more of them do I have to block?
They’re like a goddamn hydra. Or a hail of bullets, always more and more…
Mrs Oberman wailing, and then…
I’m dimly aware of my ass smacking on the floor, and wrapping my arms around my knees, and smacking the back of my head against the wall, again, and again, and again… Knock everything out of my head. All of it. Please. It hurts, but I don’t give a fuck.
There’s a key in the lock noise. A door opening. Steps. Someone sitting next to me on the floor, gently placing a hand between my head and the wall to stop me doing it anymore.
Eli.
We have keys to each other’s apartments.
He must have heard me pacing above him. He and Em live in the flat downstairs, and I feel so bad for disturbing him, but selfishly I’m also relieved he’s here now.
I honestly don’t know what I’m gonna do if he and Em move out.
Lord knows I’m not their responsibility, and I wouldn’t blame them for wanting to get away and have their own lives without me and my neverending problems, but… please not yet.
“ frère. Where y’at?” he asks, our standard hometown Big Easy greeting.
I can’t respond right away, but he just sits patiently in his t-shirt and sweats, letting me go through the shakes and out the other side. He knows I’ll tell him what’s up when I’m ready. And besides, it’s hard to sign with the tremors.
I’m having a freak out , I tell him eventually, being what Leo would call ‘Captain Obvious’ .
He stands and heads to my kitchen cupboards, starting to make cocoa.
It’s part of our routine: Dean has a meltdown, and Eli fucking parents him because Dean can’t handle his shit like a normal man.
I love my cousin for his constant, unwavering, twenty four seven support, and I hate myself for needing him in the middle of the goddamn night when he’s fast asleep after a hard day’s work.
You should have died, fucko. The old intrusive thought is always too eager to be heard. You should have run out of that classroom and gotten shot and killed, and given Mrs Oberman a fighting chance, and let Eli live his life without you as his constant burden.
He’s so calm. Just him being here, whisking cocoa powder into milk with a fork, is bringing my stress levels down.
If the trauma does overtake my ability to control it tonight, I know he’ll make sure I stay safe and that nothing bad happens to me.
But I keep coming back to the thought that, if I had died that night, he’d have been better off.
He’d have grieved, sure, but eventually he’d have moved on, and at least he wouldn’t have to build his adult life around caring for his car crash clusterfuck of a cousin.
He could live where he chose, enjoy his wedding without having to keep one eye on me… Shit .
“Tell me what it is,” he rumbles, the Cajun accent we used to share sounding stronger because he’s tired.
I lean my head back against the wall again. I can’t stop thinking about Callie , I admit.
Understanding dawns in his eyes. “Nightmares?”
I nod. Nightmares. Mental flashes. A flood of memories. She’s always smiling at me.
He checks his smart watch.
No, it’s not an anniversary or anything . I pinch the bridge of my nose, exhausted and wired and desperate for the sleep I dread.
Eli places the mugs of cocoa in the microwave. It’s not the best cocoa in existence, but it does what it needs to do. I miss my mom’s. She always added piles of mini marshmallows, and sometimes even made Oreo whipped cream for the top.
“Why do you think it’s bad right now if it’s not an anniversary or anything? ”
I sigh. frère, that’s a good question.
He says nothing, giving me the space and time to think about it and come to my own conclusions, the way one of my previous therapists taught him to. Drives me nuts, because I’d rather be distracted with talk about literally anything else, but I have to admit it always ends up working.