Chapter Six: Crisp Autumn Air
Sophia Crawford
I wish I could forget the sounds from that night.
I wish I could forget the gut-wrenching sound of metal crashing against metal and Daniel’s groans when our car collided with the other one head-on, but it’s a sound that will haunt me for the rest of my days.
I still hear the sounds of the accident when everything goes completely quiet around me, and I’m alone with my thoughts. My ears still ring like when it did at the accident before everything went dark for me.
I still feel how it felt like when the car collided with ours; it felt as if my breath was knocked from my lungs when the seatbelt dug into my stomach.
And that wasn’t even the worst part, the worst part was that I had a seatbelt on but I still managed to damage my face and head through the windscreen.
That’s how I managed to get this nasty scar across my cheek.
Well, that’s what the doctor told me, at least.
The doctor said I should be grateful that I didn’t lose an eye in the accident. And I was, but I think, personally, that I would have preferred to lose an eye over losing Daniel.
Every time I looked in the mirror, at the scar, I was reminded of that night. I see the accident happening right in front of me, even though it was more than five months ago. I still remember as if it happened yesterday.
My leg was pretty busted up too, it broke in, and I say again—if I can remember correctly—three places. I have a purple-ish scar that goes from just above my thigh to below my knee. I didn’t mind the scar I had on my leg, but what bothered me was the scar I had across my cheek because I couldn’t hide that one from the world like I could hide the scar on my leg.
Sometimes I wouldn’t look at myself in the mirror at all because I was ashamed of the girl I saw looking back at me, but then sometimes I deliberately looked in the mirror so that I can remind myself of what I did and that I deserve to feel this way about myself—embarrassed and ashamed.
My grandmother says that it doesn’t matter that I have a few scars on my face and body and that someone would come into my life and appreciate the scars nonetheless. She also says that my scars don’t make me less of a person just because I look slightly different than the rest of the population.
But I tell her differently.
No one wants a damaged girl in their lives. No one wants a girl who blames herself for the accident that took her boyfriend’s life. No one wants a girl who still cries over her boyfriend who died over a few months ago, either.
No one wants damaged goods.
And that is what I was: damaged goods. I was damaged physically and mentally, and it’s a damage that I don’t think I could easily recover from.
It’s not that I am talking down on myself, but because it’s the sad truth.
I was brushing through my brown hair with a hairbrush now before tying it into a tight but messy bun at the back of my head.
I was already the talk of the town last week about having a huge scar across my cheek, and trying to hide the scar now won’t matter—everyone already saw and gossiped about it. It will be useless trying to hide the scars now.
“Sophia?”
I turn to the doorway and look at my grandmother. “Yes?”
“Are you doing okay?” She asks me.
I think about her question for a few seconds and then finally nod. “I think I am.” I then force a smile and place my hairbrush on my desk again. “Last week passed in a blur. Who said it won’t be the same with this week?”
I wore a cosy light blue hoody today with a plain tee-shirt underneath. The pair of black fitted jeans matched perfectly with my white slip-on sneakers.
My grandmother nods at me. “Well, you look really nice.” She comments.
“Thank you, Grandma.”
“Don’t be too long. Breakfast is ready downstairs. And your cup of coffee.”
I smile at her. “I won’t. I just want to grab my things and then I’ll head downstairs in a few minutes.”
My grandmother leaves my room and closes the door behind her.
I make sure to grab everything I’d need for school and then pack it neatly into my school bag.
Once I was ready to go, I join my grandmother in the kitchen.
Her plate was already in the sink and she had her cup of coffee in one hand.
She smiles at me when I sit down at the kitchen counter. “Are you ready to take on today?” She asks me, taking a sip of her coffee. “You seem ready.”
I nod, chewing my food completely and swallowing it down.
“I told you that you were going to be just fine.” She smiles.
I return the smile and look at my grandmother wondering what I did to deserve her. Everyone else in my life has left me, stopped talking to me, and ignored me, but my grandmother…she was supportive since the second I came here with my packed bags. She enrolled me in a new school because she knew I’d be strong enough to go through with it, and she supports me.
She loves me.
I wish I could say the same for parents.
My grandmother has done more for me in a few months than my parents have ever done in eighteen years.
My parents are nothing but abandoners.
The one thing they are, though, is shitty parents.
They never supported me and they never even contacted me once since I’ve been staying here. A few months have passed and I still haven’t heard from any of my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect them to ask how I am doing, but still, they’re my parents and they’re are supposed to be there for me when I need them, like Bianca said last week in support group.
I think they’re too busy living their own lives to even care about their daughter who suffered immensely the past few months. They never cared about me before the accident, so I shouldn’t expect them to care now.
“Why are you looking at me like that, sweetie?” My grandmother asks me, pulling me from my train of thoughts.
I smile at her. “I’m just thinking about how lucky I am to have you.”
My grandmother wasn’t very old. She was in her early sixties and she still thrived every single day and living her life to the fullest. Her hair wasn’t even grey yet. She could easily pass for forty if she wore make-up, but she was beautiful, with or without a face full of make-up. And she had the kindest smile, one that made you feel welcome in every possible way.
Now that I think of it, her smile reminded me of Ana.
Ana also has this kind smile that made you feel at ease almost immediately.
“I’m the lucky one here.” She says. “I’ve been lonely.” My grandmother turns around to place her empty cup into the sink. “I don’t really go out and socialise with other people, but now that you’re here, I have you to hang out with and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I love having you around.”
“The office lady said that you were good friends.” I tell her. “Why don’t you invite her over for dinner someday?”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I realised too late that the kind office lady was related to River Jenkins—the rude boy with a chip on his shoulder.
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” my grandmother says, “maybe I should invite her and her nephew over for dinner someday. It would be nice to catch up with her again. And you can get to know River while they’re here.” She adds.
That idea sounded absolutely and completely horrid to me, and I shouldn’t even have brought it up in the first place, but I faked a smile nodded at her.
I also made a mental note not to mention River’s aunt or River in front of her ever again—my grandmother might forget that she wanted to invite them over for dinner in the future.
I don’t want to sit through an awkward dinner trying to avoid River’s death glares and sarcasm and act like everything is fine between the two of us.
Because things were definitely not fine between us.
• • •
Ana squeals when she sees me in the hallway that morning.
She pulls me into a hug and hooks her arm in mine.
“Hi girl.” She says happily as she led me toward my locker with her arm hooked in mine tightly.
With the way she had a hopeful look in her eyes, I immediately know that there was something she wanted to ask me—something I might say no to.
“Hi.” I greet her a little sceptically.
“I want to ask you something.”
I was right after all.
“What is it?” I ask with a frown settled between my eyebrows.
“We’re hosting a party next week Friday.” She claps her hands together happily “Cole and I.”
She unhooks her arm from mine and leans against the locker beside mine.
“Okay?”
“We were wondering if you wanted to come.”
Although a party sounded really fun to go to, especially with my new friends, my grandmother won’t let me go to one. She might be a fun guardian but she strongly believed that parties are unsafe and that they’re just an excuse for younger kids like me to get drunk and do reckless things.
“I don’t know…” I release a deep breath, slowly shaking my head at her.
“Oh come on!” Ana pleads, squeezing my arm. “It would be so much fun.”
I sigh loudly, looking at the puppy dog eyes she was giving me. “I’ll think about it.” I tell her and she squeals in excitement yet again, earning a few frowns coming from the students around us.
“I said I’ll think about it.” I say to her with my one eyebrow raised sternly. “I didn’t agree yet so you can stop squealing.” I laugh.
“Okay, okay!” She throws her hands up in surrender. “I’ll stop squealing.”
“Good.” I chuckle at her. “Because we’re getting a few dirty looks here.”
Ana tsks, shaking her head. “Anyways, have you seen River’s face?” She asks. “It looks terrible.” She says, shuddering.
I look at her questioningly, holding my school bag in my hand. “What do you mean?”
She jerks her chin and I turn around to see what she was referring to.
River was leaned against his locker, talking to a blonde girl who looked like she was seconds away from devouring him whole with the way she trailed her talons across his bare arm and licking her lips every few seconds.
I ignore the scene and look at River. His face was completely beaten up and bruised—there was a cut on his eyebrow, his lip was busted and his eye was nearly closed from the swelling, and the area around his eye was purple.
“I wonder what happened,” Ana says, “because he definitely didn’t look like that last week.” She says and I turn to look at her again before he catches me staring at him. “He probably got into a fight this weekend.”
I lift my shoulder in a shrug. “He might have gotten into a fight.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. He has gotten into a fight. An illegal one, that is.
But last time I checked, River was winning.
He beat that Kane guy to a pulp.
Maybe River has fought against another opponent, a much guy bigger than that Kane guy, because I don’t think Kane could have gotten up himself, so it definitely must have been another opponent that bruised River like that.
I turn toward Ana. “River looks like the type of person who likes to get into fights.” I tell her and I open my locker to fish my books from out of it.
Ana leans into me and starts to whisper. “Don’t look right now but he’s staring at you.” She says to me. “He’s like actually staring at you, Sophia.”
I shrug, ignoring the fact that my heart started to beat faster at her words. Now that she mentioned that he was staring at me, I felt his piercing gaze.
A shiver descends down my spine.
I lick my lower lip when I look at Ana. “River can stare all he wants.”
I close my locker after I grabbed the books I needed for today’s classes.
I turn around, quickly look toward River’s direction, and release a relieved breath to see that River wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking at the girl who wanted to devour him, but even as he was looking at her, it didn’t seem like he was paying her any attention at all.
“He was like actually staring directly at you.” Ana says.
I don’t know why he was looking at me in the first place.
I kept his secret this entire time, so he doesn’t need to worry about me saying anything to Ana or even Cole.
Like I said before, what happened to him in the bathroom last week was his business and what he did in his free time at the barn was also his business.
“Did he… glare at me?” I ask.
Ana shakes her head. “No. He didn’t glare. He just looked at you.”
I nod, clutching my school bag’s strap tighter in my right hand.
“But this is the weird part,” she leans in closer to me, “he was looking at you like you were the only person in the entire hallway. Literally.”
“I doubt that.” I chuckle, positioning my bag’s strap over my shoulder.
“River never looks at anyone without glaring at them.” Ana explains.
“To be fair, he isn’t glaring at the blonde girl in front of him now.”
“No,” she agrees, “but to be fair, he doesn’t pay her any attention.”
“True…”
“Sophia… he had this strange look in his eyes when he looked at you.”
“A strange look?” I ask her. “What do you mean with that?”
“I don’t know if it’s the right word, but he was looking at you with longing.” She says. “He ignored Mackenzie flat out when she tried to capture his attention because he was too busy looking at you, Sophia. With longing.”
“With longing?” The question came out soft. Too soft for my liking.
I couldn’t help but feel confused.
Last week he looked at me with glares and icy stares, and today he was looking at me with longing?
What. The. Actual. Hell.
“River isn’t so bad, but I still don’t like him.” Ana says, briefly looking at him before she turned back toward me. “He changed a lot, and not in a good way, either.”
“Changed?” I ask with a frown. “What do you mean?”
Was he nice before?
I highly doubt that.
“Where do I even begin...,” Ana trails off, “he had it all… friends, popularity, he was even the captain of the football team… but something happened that completely changed him. He went from the popular guy to the don’t-bother-me-guy. He blew everyone off, including his family, without a reason. He quit the team and he started to get into a lot of fights… He started failing classes…He became unrecognisable in a matter of days.”
I nod as she explained.
“But what happened to him?” I ask her when she was done explaining. “Doesn’t anyone know what happened to him to make him like this?”
She lifts her shoulder in a half-shrug. “No one really knows what happened to him. He’s just very private and secluded now. He keeps to himself. Cole tried to talk to him but he just dismissed him and went his own way.” She sighs. “Don’t try to figure it out, either, though. He started a fight with someone from the team just because the guy asked why he left the team. River doesn’t like it when people ask questions about his new character.”
“If River doesn’t talk to me, there won’t be reason for me to talk to him.”
• • •
River Jenkins
I enter Mr Yuri’s classroom a little earlier than I had intended, but I was tired of being in Mackenzie’s company. She did nothing but graze her fingernail up my arm and kept looking at me like she wanted to eat me.
I pass the rows of desks and feel her eyes on me as I make my way to my desk at the back of the classroom. I didn’t even have to look to confirm it because it’s like a part of me knew that she was staring at me. I felt it, too.
I plop down into my seat, throwing my bag beside my chair.
I take out my notebook along with a black pen from my school bag, ignoring Mr Yuri when started today’s lesson.
I drown the world out when I place the pen against the notebook.
And then I start to draw.
But when the pen started to shake violently between my fingertips, I gave up. My knuckles were covered in Band-Aids, and whenever I applied pressure onto the page with the pen, my hand started to shake even more.
I guess it wasn’t such a good idea to fight yesterday, reopening the cuts I have inflicted onto my own knuckles when I punched that mirror last week.
But I needed the pain I felt when I punched the mirror.
I shake my head and tried to draw something else.
I was so lost in thought when the entire class went silent—so silent that you could hear the cheering and shouting from Gym class on the first floor.
I lift my head and notice that everyone’s eyes were on me. Mr Yuri’s, too.
Mr Yuri made his way through the desks to get to mine.
He stops in front of my desk and looks down at my notebook lying open in front of him, as well as the doodles I tried to draw, but failed miserably.
I close my notebook, but he has already seen the poem written on the left side of the page, beside my doodles. “Care to share some of your poems with the rest of class, Mr Jenkins?” He asks, jerking his head towards my notebook, towards his poems right beside the sloppy doodle drawings on the next page.
I close the notebook without looking away from him. “No. I’m good, thanks.” I tell him, clenching the pen tightly in between my fingers. “And I thought this was Math class? Why do you want to read my poems?”
Mr Yuri’s lip tightens into a firm line. “You’re not focusing in my class, Mr Jenkins, and it’s all because of this notebook.” He says. “Every time I look, you’re either looking out my window or drawing in this notebook. So I have to ask you to give me the notebook. You can get it after school.”
I look at him, clenching the black pen harder between my two fingers.
“Mr Jenkins, I will not ask again. Give me the notebook.” Mr Yuri warns. He sighs loudly when I didn’t budge and reaches his hand out to take the notebook from my table.
I jerk the notebook away before his fingers had a chance to graze the cover. I glare at him. “Don’t touch my fucking stuff.” I say through clenched teeth.
The entire class gasps at my language and Mr Yuri’s eyes widens in shock. He probably didn’t expect me to talk to him like that, not in front of everyone, at least.
“Office, Mr Jenkins. Right now.” Mr Yuri says angrily. I swear the thick vein in his forehead was a few seconds away from bursting.
I nod at him as I prop my notebook back into my school bag. I get up from my desk and smirk at him. “Gladly. This class fucking sucks anyways.” I tell him before I saunter out of his classroom.
I didn’t go to the office.
I walk out of the building instead.
I needed to get out of this hellhole.
• • •
I inhale deeply when the brisk and clean fresh air around me fills my lungs.
Ever since we were little, my younger brother Beck and I used to love the outdoors, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we wanted to be away from the house.
There was just something about nature and everything about it that really intrigued us, well, Beck specifically.
Beck also absolutely adored animals.
Stray ones.
Whenever he saw a stray dog or cat strolling around on the sidewalks, he always wanted to take them home, but whenever he went home with a stray dog or cat, my father always forced him to take them away, to set the stray dogs or cats free again, preferably away from my father’s house, because, in his words and I quote my father’s words exactly: ‘I don’t want no animal droppings on my lawn’, and even though Beck begged him to keep this one dog—a beautiful brown Labrador—my father forced him to take it away.
Did Beck, though?
No. Beck didn’t set the dog free like my father had forced him to. He kept the Labrador dog. He swore he was going to keep the dog, and so he did.
We had a tool-shed at the back of our house that Beck cleaned up for the dog to live in. He used old blankets and pillows to make some sort of bed for the dog, and snuck in food for the dog to eat.
How did Beck manage to keep the dog quiet, you ask? He didn’t. Whenever the dog barked and my father asked what the noise was, Beck told him that it was our neighbour’s new dog. And sure enough, when my father went next door to lay a complaint about the barking dog, there was a new dog.
I would definitely call it luck. There are no other words to describe it.
But that luck didn’t last very long. A few days later, Beck’s dog disappeared. Into thin air. He wanted to feed the dog, only to come home to an empty tool-shed. Any signs of the dog were wiped clean.
There were no pillows. There were no blankets.
Poof.
Gone was the dog, into thin air.
It absolutely shattered Beck’s heart, and deep down he knew my father had something to do with his new pet’s disappearance.
He just couldn’t say a damn thing about it. And he never really did.
He had a very big heart, and whenever he saw a stray animal, he felt compelled to take them home. “Every animal deserves a home.” He said.
I, even though he was younger than me, looked up to my brother.
I absolutely adored my brother. I loved him with every fibre of my being. He was everything I wished to be, but circumstances beyond my control prevented me from being the person he wanted me to become.
If he would see me now, he would be disappointed in me. There’s no doubt about that. I was the opposite of what he’s used to all those years ago.
I wasn’t the older brother he remembered, but like I said, circumstances beyond my control caused me to become this person. It wasn’t my fault.
Sometimes I think it’s a good thing he wasn’t here to witness the change in my personality—I don’t want to disappoint him more than I already did.
But I missed him. I missed him more than anything in the entire world.
He would be here right now, sitting beside me, and staring up at the ocean blue sky, and even though he wasn’t here right now, I still felt his presence as if he was sitting beside me. I always felt his presence when I was outside.
Being lovers of nature is something we had in common—it is something we shared. Some brothers play football in their yards, play hide and seek and video games and fight over the silliest things, but not Beck and I.
We were always outside, admiring nature and everything it had to offer.
And that is what brought me to my current destination.
I was on a hilltop just outside town.
It was more a mountain than a hilltop, really, and it overlooked the entire town. You could see absolutely everything from up here. It was very high up and the fall would immediately kill me if I decided to jump—there were a lot of sharp boulders, and the mountain was quite steep—but the view was breathtakingly beautiful despite the dangers of being up here alone where no one can see or hear me.
Crisp autumn wind whips past my bare arms, sending shivers cascading down my back at the sudden breeze, but it was better than being in a classroom where there was little to no air conditioning, therefore I endured the coldness of the air around me and welcomed it with open arms.
I was also alone where there wasn’t anyone who could bother me. There were, however, people walking on the sidewalks below. They looked like tiny ants from where I was sitting.
I take out a cigarette and a lighter from my pocket and light it.
This is also why Beck would be disappointed. He didn’t like the smell of smoke, but he always found himself asking for a drag from my cigarette. My mother was the same. She didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke, but she was a smoker herself. I don’t know how that made sense, but to them it did.
I inhale the smoke for a good few seconds and exhale it when a breeze slips past me. I watch how the smoke moves with the wind before it disappeared.
I hear wind sailing between the trees, rustling the brownish leaves.
The smell of dirt, decaying leaves and wet stone reminded me why I loved this place so much. It was peaceful and quiet except for the constant hum of insects and the branches’ creak whenever a breeze would slip past them. You can hear cars honking and sirens wailing far away in the distance, too.
I could draw here for hours. And sometimes, I did. I sat here for hours one day and I drew from sunrise until the sun started to set again. My aunt was not happy with me at all, but she was relieved I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere, or I think she was just surprised that she didn’t see me with bruises and dried blood all over my body from fighting.
I was painfully aware of the fact that there might be animals lurking on the mountain I was sitting on, but I was too busy thinking about Beck to care.
I take my notebook out from my schoolbag and trace the tip of my finger over the words written on the cover: Beck’s Property. Do not open unless you want me to cut your finger off. I sigh and trace my finger over the words again.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.” I whisper, looking at his handwriting on the cover. “I would’ve been there to protect you if I knew what was happening.”
I clutch his notebook tightly, trying to compose myself, but anger washes through me faster than I could prevent it. It takes over completely like it always did when I would think about them and what happened to them.
They didn’t deserve what happened to them.
I shake my head and prop the notebook in my bag again.
Being angry isn’t going to bring them back.
They’re never coming back.
That was the sad realisation I have come to.
Death is permanent and there is absolutely no turning back from that.