I've Never Lit a Match with Intent to Start a Fire
My dad always said you look for what you know and all Ava knew was people taking her for granted. Everyone just used her and that seemed to be the way she liked it.
The scariest part about really knowing her was knowing that every time she walked out the door she might not ever come back. She left little pieces of herself with everyone and someday she was going to run out. And I knew it was going to happen, I just didn't know when.
It was like playing a game of Russian Roulette with a full cylinder. No matter what, we were going to lose. The only salvation was waiting to pull the hammer back and squeeze the trigger.
That's what made me resent him—the guy she started dating. The one who wanted to have sex with her until he found himself a new girlfriend who rolled over for him and spread her legs. He wasn't so bad the first time around, but when she took him back after the stunt he pulled, it became more apparent who he really was.
That's why I thought I was the one who had changed. I didn't have rehab to occupy my time; Ava was my one distraction. It was hard not to notice how bad he was to her when she was the one thing I had to keep my fingers from making mistakes.
It wasn't that he'd left her like everyone else had or that he sauntered back into her life fully expecting to be forgiven; I disliked him because he took cheap shots at Ava all the time. He was wasting bullets on a girl that didn't even try to get out of his line of fire. She cared too much to let people disappoint themselves.
When he started hanging around her again he said the only reason he'd left before was because she hadn't appreciated him enough. He deserved someone that worshipped at his alter of sin. And she was so desperate for affection that she attended his services without question, following his word blindly. Just like a goddamn self-righteous Sunday morning saint. The ones she hated with their Christian speeches and satanic attitudes.
The one that made little girls take their clothes off and busted their faces open when they fought back.
He was so bad to her. That boy was evil. Had I known how much poison he was slipping into the communion wine I might have stepped in sooner. But it had never been my business to take care of Ava. Unless her back was against the wall she really didn't need me. I was just an easy out.
And part of me didn't want to her to be okay. If she was okay, then I was the failure. If she relapsed I could too.
So I didn't do much. I hated myself for it, but pretending I'd done everything right is as useless as pretending that bad things don't happen to good people.
She took care of herself and everyone else. What was one more person? Besides, when I was around he was nice to her. It was easier to ignore the little bits she told me when we were alone because he was constantly tripping over her in public, trying to draw out that pretty smile from behind those gray eyes.
Like he was playing a role in a fairytale, he would open doors for her, push her bangs behind her ears and tell her she was beautiful, keep her laughing like it was fun instead of a chore, and paying her compliments like she was a beggar on a street corner. He was nice in public.
Or rather, he was nice to her at the start—until he found out that I wasn't just a friend.
That was Ava's problem. She took the attention off herself by projecting it onto someone else. It always seemed like her world revolved around me, because it was better to talk about her best friend than it was to talk about her life.
He didn't like that. In fact, he hated it.
Suddenly, she wasn't good enough for him and he made sure she knew that. He'd tell her that she was unclean. Her relationship with me was blasphemy and he didn't even know about what we'd done at the creek or all the things we did in my front yard. That was what made the night at the football field so great; when she went back to him a few weeks later he thought the girl that had whispered all those crazy, nasty things in my ear in the backset of my truck was a virgin.
Still he thought Ava was a dirty person and he was going to be her savior. The guy had a strange God complex.
He thought his saintliness derived from his persistence to convert people. It became his obsession to wash the sin from Ava.
Only problem was, Ava was rather fond of her faithless triumphs. All the years she'd spent painting a pretty little smile on her face when she wanted nothing more than to dig her own grave had made her cold to the idea of being softer. If she wasn't made of ice she'd drown.
So she followed along with a feigned whimsy of excitement. Her entire life she tried her hardest to encourage people to be themselves, but she was always a hypocrite like that. It was alright when she wanted to change for someone else.
I guess I didn't blame her. Anything had to be better than hating herself so much.
Still, it got harder to pretend she was okay when she stopped trying to convince me she was fine. Sometimes she'd ask me little questions that bothered me like if I thought her hair was okay or if her clothes were too tight, or if her breast were too small and her ass too big.
But the thing was, she looked like the exact same Ava I'd always known with her gray eyes, long blonde hair, and pretty pink lips. Her clothes didn't change much except for the additions to create the illusion that she hadn't lost unhealthy amounts of weight.
Then she asked me if she talked funny, or if her ears looked weird, or if I thought she flirted too much, or just laughed everything off too often.
She never asked me those questions until he came around again. And when I started questioning her about it, she stopped coming to me. He wouldn't let her. He said I wasn't a good person and that she needed someone that could get her closer to God.
I always figured I'd been closer to God when I made deals with him while shooting heroin in the basement of places I didn't know with people I'd hardly met than he'd ever been sitting in a pew pretending he'd never sinned.
I wasn't going to pretend that I was someone I wasn't, but Ava would do anything to become the girl she couldn't be.
When she tried to mix her two realities, the result was worse than either of us had ever expected. And it just her luck that had to happen in public.
She'd been so excited when he'd agreed to go to that party with her; the party we had every year that she loved. She was excited he allowed her to go at all—he'd spent the last part of our summer pulling her away from everyone she knew and everything she was comfortable with.
The night was beautiful and clear with the sound of laughter and a crackling fire breaking the natural hum of the dying summer heat. The smell of smoke and sweat was only drowned out by the seemingly endless supply of alcohol while the clothing of hot, high teenagers littered the banks of the creek.
It was everything we all wanted it to be, but the images in my head weren't the scene of final farewells to summer and endless possibilities.
All I could hear was the July rain and I could still see Ava standing just out of reach in her pink panties, grinning. The hard, dry ground still felt soft under my hands like she had shoved me back onto the field. The beer tingled my lips like a kiss from her. The hot, dry breeze ran over my skin like her hair falling on me as she stuck to and slid across my chest.
Yet none of it was real anymore.
Ava was standing just out of reach in loose jeans and a jacket in the sweltering heat. She didn't smile, or he'd make fun of how fat it made her cheeks look. Her long, blonde waves weren't loose and wild, but pulled carefully back even though it made he thought it made her shoulders look too manly. And her gray eyes looked so tired and lifeless, shadows under them from his thumb.
The air between us wasn't alive like it had been. Instead there was a wall, polished and proud.
She'd been excited before she'd came to the party where all her friends watched in horror as he berated her like it was a game.
Had she known how he was going to treat her in front of all those people, she wouldn't have been so excited. Nothing says I love you like being humiliated as your friends laugh nervously.
And no one did a goddamn thing. At least, not until he reached up and wiped a smudge of mascara from under her eye. That was fine, until he had the nerve to say she wore too much makeup and still couldn't cover up that ugly scar on her face.
That made me lose it. It was like he struck a match and in the dry, dead summer there was no way it wasn't going to start a fire. There was no way he was going to pour gasoline on the ground like it was rain and just walk away without a burn.
I remember slapping his hand away and then I didn't remember much until Ava and I were arguing down by the creek, as far away from the crowd of gawkers as she could get me.
Looking for what you know made me know that he wanted to be somewhere where he was in control. He didn't like to be called out and emasculated with an audience and she sure was going to get it when they got back to his house. That was what I knew.
And although I had always made a point out of not telling Ava what to do—she'd had enough control taken from her as a child and I wasn't about to continue the cycle—I told her she couldn't go home with him.
That was the worst mistake I could make and I knew it. Telling her no was asking her to disobey. She didn't like being told what to do and there was no way she'd stand for it from anyone. She didn't take shit from people.
But part of me wanted her to leave with him, because I thought it would be better than if she left with me. I knew it would be better. I knew it would be. Maybe he'd be pissed and let her have the verbal lashing of a lifetime, but it wouldn't hurt as badly as finding out how disappointed I was with her. Ava could take a lot of shit, but she couldn't live with disappointing me. I was the one person that was always supposed to love her no matter what.
And I did. But as she pleaded with me to trust her it became apparent that she was slipping.
"You're making a scene," she kept whispering. "Please just let it go."
But I couldn't. I wasn't going to let anyone treat her like that whether they loved her or not.
"It's not your life," she said. "Let it go."
I couldn't. I just couldn't. I didn't want to let her go and it was selfish, because I wasn't doing it for her. I was doing it for me.
Because maybe everyone thought I was the one keeping Ava's head out of the clouds, but she was keeping mine about the ground. She kept me busy. Idle hands were the devil's handiwork.
I couldn't let Ava go, because I needed her more than she ever needed me.
All the nights that ended into tomorrows, all the days that drug out into darkness, and all the lonely beds and shared skin meant I could give her up without a fight.
But if I was good at talking her into things, she was better. She left with him that night.
And the next evening I took it upon myself to tell her what I really thought. I had to speak up and keep my conscience clean that I'd at least tried to help her.
It was one of the many misfortunes of Ava that she was such a loyal person, though. Because despite wanting to be happy and free again, she said she couldn't leave.
She couldn't walk away, because he said if she did, he'd kill himself. And she was so wrapped up in wanting to make everyone happy she couldn't see the lie. He wasn't going to do a goddamn thing.
If he wanted to die, not even her pretty smile could have stopped that. For someone that had never believed in herself, Ava took the responsibility of being a lantern at midnight very seriously.
Knowing she wouldn't step away until he got bored with her or she fell over the edge of sanity, I tried my best to do the one thing that always worked: I was going to talk her into doing what I wanted.
I told her that he could blame her all he wanted, but in the end, it would always be his decision. Threats and excuses were smoke screens for honesty. And honestly, he wasn't going to kill himself over some girl that he didn't really love.
And she smiled at me. "I can't walk away from someone like that. I won't." Not like everyone had done to her all her life.
Suddenly I wanted to slap her. She made such a big deal about being happy and making sure everyone else was okay that she never realized just how messed up she was. Because any idiot could see that boy was all bark and no bite. People like him cried suicide for attention.
"What if he does it, though? What if he's not joking?" she asked. "I know it makes me selfish, but what about me? What am I supposed to think about myself?"
I told her he was going to do be the author of his own story. She was just a character.
Fate and destiny were concepts waiting to be written out by everyone's own hand. It's easy to blame society for all your problems, but it's hard to accept that fact that you control your own actions. Sooner or later everyone would have to stop bitching about the world and start realizing that they had complete and total control over everything they chose to do. Excuses were only as good as the person making them.
So she broke up with him the next day only to find out a week later that he already had a new girlfriend.
And it made me hate him even more, because he was genuinely nice to her.