Pretty Little Bones

Should Have Known Right from the Start You Can't Predict the End

Should Have Known Right from the Start You Can't Predict the End

Ava always said being with me made her happy. And I believe she sincerely meant it, because she always came back. No matter what, every day, Ava always came back.

Something about the way I treated her normally, she said. Something about how I refused to believe there was something wrong with her. The way I knew everything no one else did and yet it felt like I didn't. 

She liked that I never told anyone what her aunt's husband made her do when she was a kid. She liked that I could have saved her had I spoken up and been honest. But instead, I'd stayed quiet and refused to tell anyone about the things he made her do behind closed doors.

I did it because I loved her. I loved her so much that I didn't try to save her. And in a twisted way, she loved that I let her be destroyed like that. She didn't need a hero. She needed someone she could trust.

I was always that person for her, because no one else listened to her. No one else noticed the little white space. Not even when the whitespace constantly slapped the bands against her wrist.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

We would lay out in the front yard of my dad's house on summer evenings when no one else was home and stare at the sky. Out there all those secrets didn't matter. She'd always take my hand and twist her long fingers through my own. She'd grind my knuckles together and trace the lines in my palm.

Then she'd let her pale lips spread into a smile and she'd giggle as she'd say "You have the biggest hands, Carter. You don't notice it so much to just look at you, but they're huge." She'd put the back of one to her pale lips and kiss. "I like them," she'd say, her gray eyes sparkling like the first stars peeking out of the smoldering sky.

Sometimes I wondered why they didn't make her feel like a little kid. Her aunt's husband had small hands. I knew that. I remember that from when we were kids. And back then she'd been so small. She still was. But surely they felt big to her. Surely they felt something like mine.

Well, if they did she never showed it. The way she'd slowly close her gray eyes and smash her blonde waves into the grass as she ran her hands over the veins in my arm said something very, very different to me.

Apparently our hands felt completely different pressed between her thighs. That or she just didn't remember his hands like that.

Surely she was a different person when her aunt's husband would do that. Just like she was a different person when I'd do that. Slowly, she'd undo the button of her already loose jeans and grin at me as if to say C'mon, Carter. Teach me to be bad. And I did. I always taught her to be bad because it felt so good. The way she moaned. The way she kissed. The way she laughed.

Why wouldn't I teach her to be bad?

Even if sometimes it felt like the girl asking for the soft touches was someone different. Someone not completely Ava. But then again, I wasn't sure there was a complete Ava. She was a different person to everyone she met and every situation she found herself in.

Mostly Ava was quiet around people she didn't know. And she was caring to people she knew well. She spoke in sarcasm to her brother and poetry to her parents. She gave wispy lines of adoration to the girlfriends she'd known most of her life. Innocence and optimism blinded every conversation she had with friends. Ava had a personality to fit every relationship and she tried her hardest to keep them constant. Every day she blended in and out of characters as though she were an actress trying to keep her roles straight and become the scene.

I always liked to believe that she was the real Ava with me. And I'm sure one of the many identities she showed me--I was the only one she showed multiple sides to--when we were together had to be more genuine than the rest. But I'll be damned if I knew which one it actually was.

When we sat in the kitchen she was vulnerable. Her gray eyes would be dark and her laughs would come in extremes of either free or forced. When we were in her bedroom she was a princess, always polite and proper. When we were at school she played along with the quick jabs and flighty witticism of a punk. At my house she was kind when people were around and excitable when they left.

And in the front yard she was bad. All for me.

It was always a nice change of pace, but it scared me. Such drastic changes in personality all day every day were bound to be dangerous, but she didn't seem to be in any trouble. Usually she wasn't trouble at all. I was always able to talk her into and out of anything, but in the yard, she was the one doing the talking. Even if she didn't use words, Ava always got her message across.

The way she would run her fingers down my chest, tracing my sternum and tickling my stomach before playing with the hem of my shirt was a mixed message. On the surface, watching the rings glint on her fingers in the dying sunlight, it felt like she was doing it for me. To make me feel good.

But she was doing it for herself. To get what she wanted. In the yard was the only time Ava was selfish. She'd grin as I watched her fingers intently, waiting for her to make the first move. She'd laugh freely and run a hand through her blonde waves. Then, she'd pluck a few blades of grass from the ground, hold them above her chest and slowly let them flitter down to land on her shirt. And I couldn't help staring.

I'm sure I looked nothing short of a fool watching the way the blades of grass would lay on top of her chest the way I wanted to. The way they almost bounced over her veins. The way the dirtied that pretty little girl.

And when she knew that I was as gone as I could be, she'd undo that top button and say it again. "You have big hands, Carter. I love them."

Sometimes I wonder if she was walking through herself when she traced the veins in my arm and sighed. But I was sure she wasn't. Maybe she had been with her aunt's husband, but not with me. With me, she was never more present. 

She loved me. And I loved her.

No matter which personality she showed me.