Behind The Mask

Chapter 22

A/N: Usually I don't dedicate chapters anymore. But tonight I feel the need to do so as I sit again with tears, wishing that time will speed by and heal all the wounds. My grandmother died exactly two years ago today, and I still reach for the phone to call her. I still say "gran will say" instead of "grand would have said". This one is for you Ouma Ina. I didn't want to write today, but you were always so proud of everything I wrote, always asking me how many votes I was standing on here on Wattpad, always smiling and keeping count how many new votes and reads I got each week. I love you Ouma. I'm sure we will see each other soon enough.

I look out the back window of the moving RV, trying my best to count as many of the thousands of trees speeding by me, but I need to stop. I know I need to stop before I puke my guts out, but I can't. I can't help but wondering if my mother ever sat under one of these trees. Maybe somewhere between all of them there might be one where she carved her name on the trunk like so many other teenagers before her did, and so many will still do. I can't help but wonder if it would mean anything to E.J. if I were to beg Cameron to stop the RV right here and now and climb out to immortalize my name next to E.J. on the trunk of a tree at this very moment. Give the two of us somewhere where we will always be together.

Sure, I am pretty sure, given a few days I will never find the tree again, but trees are also strange that way. I might in time forget. E.J. might even forget in time, but the tree will never forget. He will never forget the names carved out on him, and I guess in a way humans are very much the same. We tend to only remember what hurt us. I'm pretty sure if trees could talk, they would not be telling me about their wonderful days of sun and when the last rain was falling. Oh no... They would rather be telling me about the horrible day when two horny teenagers thought it would be good to carve their names into it. I'm the same. Ask me what I was doing the day that I graduated from school. I don't have an idea. I guess the memory just wasn't good enough. I know I was living with another foster family, but even that's a blur. It could have been the douch that asked me to wear a mask. It might have been the lady with the fourteen cats. I just can't remember anymore, because somehow it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I did finish school at all. I'm not gonna need that type of knowledge where I am going in any case.

Now ask me however what I was doing the day my face got melted away and I can give you every single detail. I can tell you about the Rice Crispies I had for breakfast, and how the chain slipped off my bicycle on the way to school. Miss Granger, the Social Science teacher had a little bit of a fit about my hair hanging in my face, asking me to push it back behind my ears, which is something she frequently did, along with making a sour face about my nails being too long, my jean being ripped, and all over finding fault with everything I did. Weirdly she was the first of my teachers to send me a basket of goodies when I landed up in the hospital. She must have felt guilty. I can recall the ride home. I decided to take a different route than usual so that I could pedal by Jamie's house, hoping that I would see her outside, but she wasn't there, making me think that maybe I should walk that route to school the next morning and offer to carry her backpack, although that never happened since I ended up in the hospital. I can remember the stench as I walked in the door, how I could smell the sour of the alcohol in the air as if it was busy consuming me. I can still recall his slurring when he called me into the living room. I got angry because he was working on a car engine on the living room carpet that my mom picked out with so much care. There was porn on the television. It happened so fast that I didn't even know what was happening until I was on the floor, on my knees, his dick inches away from my face... Then everything went in slow motion... That thing coming closer and closer to my mouth... His fingers twisted in my face... Him calling me his little cum bucket... The split second decision to open my mouth and then to bite... Hard! The screams. My laughter filling the room. His cursing. Then the pain. Blinding pain. Feeling my face burning. My eye blurring until it had lost all vision. The smell of cinging hair. Then finally the moment when I embraced darkness, thinking for one second before that, that when I open my eyes I will be seeing my mom again. Maybe in heaven. Maybe in hell. Maybe just in a new life far away from the piece of shit that called himself my stepfather. I didn't care, as long as the pain stopped.