Cy discovers Lizzy’s secret, but has no idea what to do next. The fast-paced story and addictive characters combined with dark humor create a unique presentation of teen dating violence.
Excerpt
Prologue:
Poor Insulation
I shook my head as I slammed the apartment door open and turned to take the stairs three at a time. I was breaking the cardinal rule as a habitual hermit, but knew that I just wouldn’t be able to stand it if I didn’t make sure that what I was imagining had just occurred upstairs - was wrong. Something about the noises that had come from the apartment above had made it impossible to dissuade myself that it had been anything other than a piece of furniture falling on top of a person. A girl.
I swear I even heard her whispered, “Please.” That part I could have imagined. Probably imagined; I don’t know if I could really hear something like that through all the insulation there had to be between the two apartments. I’d never heard any noise from the apartment upstairs before. I didn’t even know who lived there. One result of being a hermit, I guess. You don’t get to know the neighbors. I pushed the hair out of my eyes and turned to go back to my apartment. What was I doing?
Before I’d taken one step back down towards the door I’d left open, I turned and set off back up the stairs again. For some reason, I just had to make sure. I knew I must be wrong, but I had to check it out. I couldn’t stop muttering bitterly to myself. This was insane. I knocked on the door. At this point, I didn’t believe my own theories and was positive that I was just knocking on the neighbor’s door to embarrass myself.
My frustration at having missed the final scene of Law & Order may have been behind the fact that my knock was a little more aggressive than it would have been otherwise. Alright, I was pounding. Just when I was about to stalk back down the stairs, (hopefully I could still see the lying, scheming kid’s jury verdict,) the door swung back so suddenly that I stumbled through the doorway on the momentum of my pounding fist that failed to make contact with the hard surface of the door.
There was not a thought in my head. I couldn’t even describe to myself afterwards what the apartment looked like. I could feel the thickness of the carpet under my bare feet as they sank in and oddly registered that it was expensive and clean and not the type of carpet you’d expect to have the body of a girl strewn across who, apparently, had just had an entertainment center pulled off of her.
She was practically crumpled on the floor in front of it. It was obvious that she had lain underneath the unit as it came crashing down on top of her. The TV was smashed and lay beside the DVD player and random pieces of stereo equipment that would have usually occupied the spaces that were now empty, gaping holes with wires stretching out and down to the scattered equipment on the floor.
I didn’t realize I had been staring at her in silence until she turned her face away and huddled into the massive piece of furniture that had minutes previously been crushing her to the floor. Her hair hung over her face and her shoulders shook. She was probably in shock. I couldn’t believe she was okay.
I didn’t even know I was moving until a large, beefy hand slammed into my chest. “What do you want?” The belligerent voice matched the face it had come out of perfectly. I felt like I was in a really bad sci-fi movie or a foreign film with inaccurate subtitles. I hadn’t seen the guy’s mouth move. Had he asked me a question? Yup, he had. This realization came as the face became even angrier and repeated said question a second time.
“Is she okay?” I gestured vaguely to the girl on the floor. She still hadn’t moved, unless you counted the sporadic shaking of her shoulders.
“What’s it to you? Who are you? I thought you were somebody else. Get out.” I dragged my eyes from the disturbing figure of the girl on the floor and actually looked at the face that the words were coming from. Light hair, blue eyes, no taller than me, but probably 20 pounds heavier; focusing in, I had a vague sense of recognition, but couldn’t place the features enough to connect them with a time or place.
The once over wasn’t appreciated because the big, beefy hand that I hadn’t even realized had been holding me back now began pushing me (forcefully) back out the door. I shoved the hand off my chest automatically, and then turned to walk out, but a muffled sob made me think that the girl had been a little more aware of the situation than I had thought. I somehow felt more responsible for my actions because of it. Turning back, I said, “Do you live here?”
For the first time, the belligerent look fell from the face of Beef Man, as I was beginning to think of him, and I couldn’t place the odd look that replaced it. Beef man waved nonchalantly behind him in the direction of the girl and said, “She does.”
“Well . . . then - are your parents home?” The question was obviously directed at the girl since she lived there. How I got the balls to say it I don’t know, since Beef Man’s jaw was about to shatter from the effort he was putting into grinding his teeth as he walked toward me with clenched fists. Standing my ground, the thought crossed my mind that not only had I decided to end my hermit lifestyle tonight, but I had now crossed over into the territory of actual loss of life in general.
My head was screaming, ˜Forget it! Get out,’ but my feet were now apparently glued to the carpet. My eyes felt like they were going to pop right out of my head and I hadn’t looked at the girl at all since I’d asked for her parents. Beef Man must have thought I meant to stay and push the issue because he stopped mid-stride like his scare method wasn’t working and turned to glare at the girl. Little did he know he had just scared me motionless.
And since he didn’t know that…he had obviously thought better of his plan to rough me up, which I’m sure had been his intention for a full 15 seconds (they were the scariest 15 seconds of my life up until that point). He turned instead toward the girl now sitting on the floor. He took several steps toward her and I was horrified to find myself shadowing his footsteps. I had a morbid sense of doom at this point, but somehow couldn’t come to grips with the method of my own salvation (running) without knowing what was going on first.
“Liz.” The name did not come out sounding like an endearment. The guy was scary. I wondered how old she was. The girl apparently didn’t hear him. “Liz.” I was a little nervous about what might happen if she ignored him again. What the hell was I doing? Beef Man leaned over really slowly and flicked the girl’s forehead with his middle sausage finger hard enough to make her head fall back. Neither of them took notice of my surprise because they were obviously involved in their own little, morbid, psycho world that I didn’t understand. The girl glared for a full second, but her glare wasn’t near as effective as Beef Man’s because tears were leaking out the sides of her eyes in a steady stream.
“My parents aren’t home.” Liz, as Beef Man called her, recited a mantra that she seemed to be receiving by osmosis from Beef Man who was now leaning so close to her face that their eyelashes were probably touching. That could possibly be the point at which the trade of information was occurring, I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that the words coming out of her mouth weren’t hers. A few seconds of silence provided her with further info and she related it in a hollow voice, “I’m fine. I was messing around and I knocked over the entertainment center.”
I don’t know where the snort came from, I swear. Yes, she was obviously lying, but you’d think I would have thought more of my physical health than whether or not these strangers thought I was idiot enough to believe their crap. In any event, both of them immediately swung around to look at me.
“Really…I. . .” It must have shocked the girl to actually look at me because she couldn’t seem to get her futile words out. There was no way her story could wash. I had heard the entire scenario. Granted, I’d been watching Law & Order in the background, but I don’t really have that active of an imagination. I don’t portray TV shows into my everyday life. At least I never had before.
“I live in the apartment below. I heard.” At this point, Beef Man’s threatening motions alone were all the encouragement I needed to leap off the balcony, but the girl interrupted my dramatic exit and demise.
“Really…please…really…” She was crying again and shaking her head and I knew that this time it was me that made her cry. What was I supposed to do? I’m not all-knowing. I’m only seventeen. I left. Through the front door.
Chapter One:
Some Necessary Introductions
Winter break is over. It hardly felt like winter break, anyway. I got the traditional pile of clothes, movies, gift certificates and other holiday crap left on the couch in the living room. I’m so glad Santa made it. I got Dad a tie. Mailed it to his personal assistant. I made sure it was one he would absolutely hate. It was bright orange with the words I’M A SERIAL KILLER written obnoxious and huge across the front in red block letters. Merry Christmas, Dad.
Even if he did come home for Christmas and we got a tree and all the normal crap, it still wouldn’t feel like Christmas here. Arizona; you’d think I’d be used to it since I grew up here, but it never snows. It hardly even gets cold enough to require a jacket. I might get to see my breath once or twice in a year. And that’s just sad.
I guess I’ve seen the old, cheesy, but traditional Christmas movies one too many times. You know the movies that provide you with a standard Christmas to which you can compare your’s and find it absolutely lacking? “Christmas Story” and “It’s Christmas Time, Charlie Brown”; those are the two I always end up watching over and over every winter break. At least it feels like it. They’re on TV constantly. I think they start on Thanksgiving Day.
I guess I need to start watching less TV. I should get a gym membership, or something. But that would be a bit idiotic. My apartment building has a small gym and I’ve never used it, so I guess that means I’m not really into working out. No use wasting my allowance, right?
Winter break was lame, but heading back to school wasn’t any better. The parking lot was filled with chatter and squeals. You’d think these people were long lost cousins that had been searching for each other for years, or something. It had only been a couple of weeks. They couldn’t have missed each other that much. I wasn’t excited to get back to school, and I definitely wasn’t excited to get back to class (I’ve never been described as a dedicated student), but it was good to start the Spring semester if only because I knew it was the last semester of school I would ever attend.
Dad would be ecstatic if I went to college, so I wasn’t going to. One thing I was going to do was get out of Arizona. Who lived here by choice? Yeah, the winters were technically nice, but didn’t anyone ever wish for cold and snow? The utter mildness of the winters was almost wrong to me. What was the use of calling it Winter, if there was no difference from Fall? We should just rename the winters in the Valley, Fall II or Post Fall or something. And then we jumped straight from Early Spring to Utter Hell. Summer vacation was all but wasted every year because who can find the energy to do anything when to step outside your front door means existing within an endless sauna with a minimum temperature of 110 degrees?
I once walked to the pool without my flip flops on when I was 13 or 14. I know, old enough to know better, but I couldn’t find them and I thought I could tough it out. I got halfway there and that was only by desperately jumping into any and all bushes that lined the sidewalks sporadically. And these aren’t sweet flowery bushes. (I think “bushes” in Arizona landscaping might be translated into “weeds” or “killer thorn bushes” anywhere else.) Think of what non-plant would thrive in 110 degree weather, and that’s what you get in the Valley.
So, needless to say, it wasn’t pleasant when I ended up sitting down in one of the bushes for a few minutes to let my feet cool off. I ran as fast as I could all the way back to my apartment. I had blisters for a month. Not just uncomfortable, I wore new shoes without socks blisters, but pussy, swollen, red, tender to the touch, third degree burn type blisters. That may have been when I decided that I would not be living here after graduation.
I saw Randall getting out of his car down the row and smiled when he immediately and dramatically rolled his eyes at the small crowds and groups randomly dispersed throughout the parking lot. I thought he might yell out, “GET TO CLASS OR GO HOME, IDIOTS!” Because that would be like him, but instead he came running around the back end of his car, dropped his books, threw his hands in the air and cried out in a sickening, falsetto voice, “Cy! My life meant nothing without you. I haven’t seen you for what seems like weeks, months, years, decades…no CENTURIES!”
By the end of his dramatic performance he was draped across me and hanging from my neck. I was fumbling to get my arm out from the strap of by backpack where it was trapped while he continued to carry on and fake sob until the parking lot had become noticeably quieter.
He finally, and abruptly, threw himself away from me, got a disgusted look on his face and finished off his own personal soap opera with a dramatic, “You TRICKED me. It’s only been a couple weeks; basically several days and besides that…I hardly KNOW you! Get away from me. Don’t touch me! That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got to get out of here.”
In a whisper for me alone he muttered, “Want to come?” with a quick wiggle of his eyebrows. I was bugged enough to go to class rather than participate in whatever new scheme Randall had come up with to replace classes for the day so I said no. I’d never been one for dramatic scenes; although you wouldn’t guess it from the getup I strutted around in.
He immediately turned to ram his books into a sloppy pile on the ground next to where he had thrown them earlier and then tossed them through the back window of his 4 door car. (I hadn’t yet been able to classify it further than “car.” I couldn’t tell what make or model it was and the color was more an opinion than fact). I shook my head as he backed out of the spot. Randall blithely ignored the others who were just now realizing that he had been making fun of them for their exuberance upon returning to school.
I waited until Randall had safely maneuvered his way out of the school parking lot, and then allowed myself to wish for just a couple seconds that I had gone ahead and left with him instead of purposefully ditching him. Then I took that first step that meant I was going to head in to my first class of the day.
The senior year should only be one semester. Looking around, I could only count about 6 people in my history class that were taking notes. Of those not taking notes, only 4 were pretending to take notes. The rest of us were blatantly disregarding the fact that any of the material in today’s class could appear on our exam.
Even the teacher seemed a bit complacent about it all. He was reading a lot: from the textbook, from the overhead, from his notes. He usually didn’t appear to be reading at all. But maybe he always did and I didn’t notice because I was taking notes, I don’t know. But it was obvious that hardly anyone was willing to give the last semester a go. Everyone was finished and, sadly, we still had several months to go. It was only January. Graduation wasn’t until May. The stretch seemed too long.
I don’t remember what day it was that first week back when I actually recognized the characters in my botched attempt at search and rescue. I think, somehow, I knew from the beginning. Beef Man I had immediately, if subconsciously, recognized as the ultimate asshole of Midline High. (Midline had to be the most screwed up high school in the very screwed up town of Scottsdale, Arizona). He would have been the idiot of the school if he hadn’t been good at everything, outrageously popular with the ladies, and ridiculously rich.
To top it off, he drove my dream car. He had a Spyder with the most beautiful custom paint job I had ever laid eyes on, and that’s counting magazine pictures in case you were downplaying the status of my claim. I don’t blame you, his is the only actual Spyder I’ve ever seen in person, but I’m telling you, this car was off the charts hot. It was like an abnormally fast, gorgeous cat laid low to the ground, but just raising its back end to pounce on its prey. I absolutely hated that it was his. It pissed me off just to see him walk towards it.
Knowing that, you’ll understand my utter shock the day I realized that the idiot of Midline High was actually Beef Man and the girl he had just deposited into the passenger seat was “the girl.”
“The girl” was Eliza; apparently “Liz” to her close friends. That gave me a shiver just because she obviously counted Beef Man among them. (From that point on, the idiot of Midline High became Beef Man in my head, the name just seemed more appropriate somehow.)
Eliza was . . . everything. I mean, she was what other girls seemed to wish they could be; or at least be like. She had long dark hair that almost reached her waist when she wore it down. She was short and small and always seemed to be “ready”. Not the type to appear at school with yesterday’s hairdo and only half her makeup because she woke up late. She was perfect at all times: the Princess of Midline High. Her entire life was apparently dedicated to being popular. And she was good at it. She was so popular that I had never spoken one word to her (except the night I mistakenly witnessed the psycho scene she was a major part of).
My name is Cy McIntyre. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that I’m an absolute freak. By choice, actually, but we’ll get to that a little later. Anyways, I’m such a freak that there was no way Beef Man or Eliza would ever recognize me as the guy they saw that night. You see, I had just taken a shower and washed off my “freak” disguise.
Before you decide that I’m totally crazy, let me tell you about my Dad. He is practically non-existent. The only thing I’ve ever done to be able to get his attention for more than .5 seconds is totally embarrass the jerk. My mom died when I was really little. I don’t even know what she looked like. We don’t talk about it. I stopped asking questions about her when I was probably six years old. Even a six year old will get the hint if every question they ever ask even remotely related to a certain person is answered with, “I don’t know” or a vacant expression and the swift departure of the person being questioned.
That was my Dad. He somehow felt no need for communication. He works for a huge law firm that specializes in patents and spends a lot of time zooming around the country visiting current and prospective clients. Who knew there were that many inventors in the world, right? Well, I can attest that there are bucket loads. My dad is never home for more than 3 hours at a time, and that includes sleeping.
You’d think that I’d just give up and ignore him back. I mean, he takes care of all the necessities. I’ve got my own household account complete with weekly deposits and bonuses if I blow through it outrageously. My own car (although a Honda just doesn’t cut it when you really want a Spyder), and anything else I want…I get. As long it doesn’t involve him personally.
His personal assistant is the closest I’ve ever come to having a parent and that just strikes me as frightening because she’s the literal embodiment of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. I’m serious. If we had a working stove in our apartment, I wouldn’t step foot near it when she was in the room for fear she might toss me in with a cackle.
Anyway, the current plan of action regarding this problem with my Dad, (and this current POA has been ongoing for several years now,) is to embarrass him by being a total freak. I’m not exaggerating, that’s even what they call me at school. I don’t blame them. That is the disguise I wear. I wake up practically before the sun just so that I’ll have time to put the grease in my hair to make it all sick and dread-locky before I leave for school at 7:15. You’d think that wasn’t a big deal, but I’ve got it down to an artform.
There hasn’t been one person who’s seen me in my disguise for 3 years who has doubted that I don’t wash my hair . . . ever. On top of the sick hair bit I wear knee high black boots with black nylon pants tucked in (I’ve got a few pairs and a pair of black jeans that I wear if the need arises). I also wear what I think might be an old chauffeur jacket. It buttons all up the front, with like a million buttons, all the way up to the neck and has long, kind of tight sleeves. It’s hot. But then it’s so hot here that nobody expects you to hang around outside for long and the buildings are kept near seventy degrees. So I’m usually fairly comfortable.
If you ever want to be accepted as a total freak I give you permission to emulate my wardrobe because there is evidence that it is absolutely effective. I don’t think I could remove myself from freak status now if I tried.
You might think that seeing me turn into a total freak would make my Dad up and deny his claim to me considering the bond was fairly loose to begin with, but my Dad’s nothing if not entirely successful at everything he does. (He’s like Beef Man in this aspect . . . sick). He can’t admit defeat. So, by continuing my existence as a complete and utter freak, I continue to receive a minuscule amount of my father’s thought due to the fact that he has to figure out how in the hell he is going to make a success out of me.
Notice I didn’t say make me a success . . . it’s definitely make a success out of me. He wouldn’t do it in order to make me happy or guarantee that I’ll do well in life, or anything like that. It’s like he has to succeed in his minimal “being a father” efforts and then he can leave me to my own devices.
So, I’m making sure to drag out the effects of freakdom until it is totally obvious that it’s a ploy. I’m beginning to wonder if I can hold out, though. It’s massively annoying to play the part when you don’t feel it. Luckily, part of my Dad’s plan to make a success out of me includes having his personal assistant sneak in while I’m gone (this is the only way in which she can have done it, I’ve thought about it long and hard) and check my clothes for current sizes. One day when I got home my closet was filled with normal clothes that fit me. So at least I have blue jeans and T-shirts to lie around the house in.
So, long story short, Beef Man and Eliza saw me that night, but they didn’t see me.
Copyright 2008 SarahBeth Carter. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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