Captive - FourTris

Seven

And then before we can get lost in our walk, like we usually do, I see him, and my heart leaps into my throat and I can't breathe.

Everything around him fades and all I see is him, and I know he sees us, because he is just standing next to his car, frozen, one hand still on the door. He stares straight at me, as if he's caught in headlights. As if we won't see him if only he doesn't move.

He knows what will happen if Tobias sees him. Just as I know.

How did I not notice that we'd drifted into his neighborhood? How could I be so stupid as to bring Tobias here?

"Let's, um, let's go this way," I say, tugging on Tobias's arm. He can't see him. Not tonight. Not when everything is going so well and I just want to be with him and I just want the drama to stop and I just want to forget that everything is so fucked up. I just want to walk in the darkness and forget all this and now I can't.

Because Tobias sees Al. He sees him and he's letting go of my hand and walking straight at him. I recognize his posture. It's gone rigid. His shoulders are square, his hands are in fists. His strides are long and purposeful. I know every muscle in his body is tense. Ready.

And I know what's coming.

It's Tobias who takes the first swing. Al goes down, sprawling across the concrete that I'd thought looked so pretty with fresh rain just moments before.

But it's not rain on the road anymore. It's blood.

I fall to my knees, just as Al has. All these months of protecting him. All this time playing peacekeeper and martyr and smoothing out the edges of the conversations and downplaying everything and avoiding Al and never once mentioning his name.

And it's over, and they're fighting.

But Al doesn't go down that easily. He gets back up and I hear the crack his fist makes as it connects with Tobias's chin. I see him in a way I've never seen him. Angry. And I know it's because of me. I know all these months that Al's wanted this, he's wanted to take Tobias and shake him and scream at him and make him see what he's done to me.

All those times I stood in front of him, those words swam in his eyes, but none of them were spoken. And now it has come to this. This is what I've caused.

A porch light flicks on and someone's door creaks open. A man's voice shouts out.
A car alarm goes off when Tobias backs up and falls half onto the hood. He kicks Al in the leg and Al grunts with the pain, keeling over, gripping his shin. Shadows dance under the streetlight as they spar.

I crawl to the stop sign beside me and use it to drag myself off the street.
And then I run. I turn away from them both, away from the sounds. My feet pound on the concrete. There is no air in my lungs to run like this, but my legs don't want to stop.

My years of cross country and track have developed muscles that yearn to race like they once did, so I don't stop. Tobias's jacket flies out behind me like a cape, the zipper rattling in the wind.

I don't go back to our apartment. I run straight past it and keep going, away from town, toward the country roads. I run past the elementary school and its swing sets and slides.
I run alongside ditches filled with trash and cattails.
I run until I collapse in front of my mom's house.

But I haven't outrun anything. It will catch me. There is no escaping who I am now.
I sit on the front lawn, my legs crossed, staring at the dark house. My mom's bedroom window faces this lawn, but I know she's not awake. It's well past midnight, now. I must have run for over an hour.

I wonder what she would think if she knew I was here. If she could see how broken I am inside. If she could see the faded bruises on my shoulders where he grabbed me last. If she knew the haunted world I live in, she would lock me away and never let me see him again, even if that meant I hated her forever.

That house is not home anymore, but I ache for it anyway. I want to open the door and ascend the stairs and fall into a bed where nothing can get me, where I will sleep for hours and not dream. My chest throbs with the desire to do it—to cross the lawn and pick up the hidden key and slip inside the door and lock it behind me, and never answer it again.

I want to wake up and eat pancakes and talk about going to the mall and my next cross-country meet. I want my mom to tell me the last crazy thing Grandma said, and I want to laugh at it.

I want to sit in her kitchen and bathe in the light. I want to help her plant flowers in the spring and bulbs in the fall. I want to watch one of her horrible black and white movies and whine the whole time about how boring it is until she hands me the remote and I make her watch America's Next Top Model instead.

I want my dad to come back and make everything okay again, like he did when I was little. He'd swoop in and fix my Barbies and my flat bicycle tires. He could fix anything.

I wonder if he could fix this.

The shadows of the trees dance in a breeze. I try to remember who I was the last time I was in that house, but I can't. I can remember the things, but I can't remember me. I don't know the old me anymore. She was smiley and bubbly and outgoing. She had everything; the world was at her feet.

I wish I could have it both ways. I wish I could be there for him and help him and be the one he needs me to be, and still be that other person, too. But I can't, and I can't live without him, either.

And he would drown in himself if I left him.

I know he's waiting. I know that his face is probably swollen, and that he will need me. I know I will have to call in sick for him tomorrow and help him ice his new black eye, and we will have to come up with a way of explaining it.

I don't know when it stopped being what it was, when it became something else. When it became this. It wasn't this way in the beginning. It was beautiful and passionate and filled with things I've never felt before. Things I want back so desperately I can taste it.

I don't want this anymore; I don't want this horrible whirlpool of constant emotion, churning and bubbling at every turn. And yet I feel as if I don't know any other life— like the other seventeen years never existed. I feel like I was born into this.

I get up and walk away from the house. It is too big for me; it stands over me, leaving me in the shadows, and I can't sit here anymore.

I turn toward the street and begin the descent back toward town, toward Tobias and his apartment. In the distance, the ocean sparkles under the full moon, until the clouds shift and blot out the light.

I glance back one more time as my house disappears behind me. The house I grew up in, the house full of so much laughter.

I don't know what happiness feels like anymore. I am dead to it.