LEVAN
I splash cold water on my face once, twice, thrice, a hundred times. And yet each time I look up into the mirror I see red, I feel my blood come to a boil, I hear my heart roaring in my ears with the piercing silence to accompany it. I don't see me. I see the Levan who loathes his father, who wants to beat his father to a bloody pulp, a black hole to suck him up, and a hurricane to rip him away from this house, this city, state, country, this fucking globe. I'm the Levan who wants there to be not a trace left of Davis Emery.
My hands are still shaking, my breathing is still labored, my face is still heated, my eyes are still wild; I'm still feral. Hell knows I'm doing everything in my power to not go back out there, into his room, and beat the soul out of him. I bet he won't remember it tomorrow morning. He can drink all the alcohol there is in the world, drive his drunk ass into a sewer and lounge there for the rest of his life for all I care. I do not give the slightest flying fuck about him or his habits. I wouldn't even bat an eye if he didn't come back home tomorrow. But what he did tonight made me completely lose it. He brought a twenty-something, drunk girl into our house. I swear I would behave if I wasn't this Levan that I am right now; the outrageous, the grizzly, the hulk.
He has never brought any women home before and I thought he was a broken man, a man who loved his wife too much, and that is partially why I never fought him back. But I did today, I guess there's a first time for everything.
I punched him straight into his face so that his crooked nose can finally break. The girl flew off screaming into the streets, having become surprisingly sober. His punch came flying into my face, my jaw, my ribs. A few kicks in the right places and I was pile of red on the floor, seething. He told me that I'm wasted effort. He told me to get out of his house. He told me that he can't stand to see me anymore. Finally, some truth poured out of his filthy mouth. And then he stumbled back into his room and shut the door out.
"Are you okay?" whispers Ava. I look into the mirror; she's standing at the door of the bathroom. I gulp, she gulps. Then I splash my face one more time and start wiping it with my blood-stained shirt.
"Yeah," I say and decide to take the shirt off. I can't wear it anymore, it smells like blood and it's so pungent that I want to throw up. My nose is still bleeding, no wonder. I watch Ava slide into her room quietly. I sniff, testing if it's okay to breathe through the nose yet but when I smell blood instantly, I decide on using my mouth for as long as I can.
I dump the shirt into the bin and make my way across the hall to my room. There I pick out a crumpled black shirt from a corner of my cupboard and pull it on. I look at myself in the mirror again, my face is black, blue and yellow; cut, wounded and bruised in so many places that I'm starting to resemble a graffiti I saw on a building on my way to school. In conclusion, I'd be camouflaged if I were out in the wild.
That's when I hear the doorbell ring. By the time I make my way downstairs, it has rung more than once. Nobody visits us at this time of the day. Well, nobody ever visits us at all, not even neighbors. They are all well aware of my father's outbursts. And nobody actually even cares about two almost orphan kids living in their neighborhood. That's exactly why I'm not surprised to find Ten standing at my door, where she shouldn't be at all.
She exhales in a rush and enters my house without so much as hello. My heart starts to drum thunderously. This is wrong, she shouldn't be here. I don't want her here. I want her to go away. Why won't you go away, Ten?
"Ten?" I say, shutting the front door as she continues toward the kitchen area. I'm endlessly chanting a 'what the hell' chain inside my mouth. She can't just barge in like that, can she? Did she forget anything here? I need her to get out right now.
"Levan, I'm gonna go on for a while now so please don't interrupt before I'm finished, okay?" she says, halting near the table and clutching the top of a chair with her back to me. I can only see her flowing dark hair. I gulp and feel myself starting to panic. She sighs and grabs her forehead with a hand. "Look, I didn't realize it that I was being weird, I swear. Damn, I didn't realize it until my friend made me. But now that I have, I am sorry for jumping on top of you like that, it was totally unnecessary and I'm sorry if I weirded you out. But I really like you, and I don't want you to cancel our plan-"
"It's okay, Ten. I'm not going to cancel our plans," I tell her, she takes her hand off her forehead and turns to face me. Her brows in the sky.
"It is? You won't?" she asks. I nod awkwardly. She mouths a big 'Yes' to the ceiling then presses her lips together, squeals inside her mouth and charges toward me. And I'm not sure what happens in the next three seconds. I'm not sure if she hugged me and squeezed me so hard that it damn near killed me, or if I just imagined it. But I freeze and keep standing there like a dummy. And I realize that it's weird to stand with your hands to the side when someone's hugging you, it feels like that forever.
"Uh, I'm so glad. Athena almost freaked me out," she explains as she pulls back and puts both her hands on her waist. Um, am I supposed to know who Athena is? I ask inside my head, but she doesn't listen. So I frown at her and then I notice her eyes darting all over my face, like she's looking for a trace, or maybe she found my stains, the stains that cover, not only my face, but have seeped into my skin, and transfused themselves with my blood. They're inside my brain, my lungs, my heart, my kidneys, my liver. My organs must look like a dumping ground for misery, covered in my body stains.
I tense up. I can see the gears of her sharp as a knife brain moving. Her smile fades and she lets her hands fall to her sides too as she takes take a step toward me again. She narrows her eyes and gasps.
"Boy, did you get into a fight again? Who did that your face?" she says, rather quietly. Her eyes flick darkly up to mine. I open my mouth and no words come out. I don't know what I'm supposed to tell her.
Am I supposed to tell her that my father did that to me because I punched him, because he dove in a tank of alcohol and brought a very drunk girl home? Am I supposed to tell her that I'm barely standing on my feet right now, not because I've been hit countless times but because I'm shattered inside? Am I supposed to tell her that I see only darkness and I'm craving sunlight?
"Levan!" she shakes me back to her, her eyes wide. For the first time, Ten the smile-er, laugh-er, joy-er looks serious, worried even. It's not good. "Tell me who the hell did that to you?" she asks me. I swallow the lump inside my throat and it joins the other rocks at the bottom of my stomach. Shit, do I have to tell her?
"I did!" both our heads whip to the end of the staircase where Ava stands. Ten's eyes scan Ava and then she breaks back into who she is, the real her. She laughs.
"You did?" she asks Ava, who nods in return. "Badass!" she raises her hand for a high five. They have a friendly moment where both of them are laughing because a twelve year old supposedly hit me. Wow. "But what's the reason behind such violence on your dear, dear brother?" Ten asks her.
"Um, why don't you sit down and I'll tell you the whole story while Levan makes dinner?" flying, comes Ava's horrid suggestion, there isn't really a story to tell. And we don't have much for dinner. I close my eyes and hope Ten decides to leave instead.
"Oh sure!" she says and sits down with Ava at the table. Great, I rub a palm over my face and shoot a glare in Ava's direction. She gulps. "So what happened?" asks Ten.
"Uh–uhm, I told him...Levan...that I'm hungry," Ava starts while I nervously walk to the other side of the counter and search the cabinets for some pasta. That's the only thing we have left besides a few vegetables. I'd need to go grocery shopping tomorrow and I'm reminded again that I might need to ask him for money because I don't have a job anymore, thanks to the stains he keeps giving me.
At the table, Ten is listening to Ava's story, about how I make the worst pasta in the history of making pastas. I roll my eyes at that. Then she goes on about how we supposedly fought over what I'm going to cook and then 'one thing led to another' is how she ends it. Ten looks at me while I set the pasta to boil.
"Is this true, Number Eleven?" Ten enquires, narrowing her eyes. I shrug.
"I swear, sometimes the pasta is too raw, sometimes too gooey. He sucks at cooking," Ava adds. I frown, this doesn't sound like a made up story anymore.
"Well, you'll have to eat what I cook, or better yet, you can cook for yourself," I tell her. Her pale blue eyes become wide and she gulps.
"Whoa, hold on. Number Eleven, that's rude!" Ten says, jumping to her feet and pointing at me. I roll my eyes and toss the mop in my hand onto the counter. Ten is infuriating. Why can't she just leave?
I walk around the counter, grab her hand and walk backward until we're at the door, then I tell her goodnight and shut the door in her dark hair.
No, that's all in my head.
"Besides, if you talk like that, there might be more violence for you today, so keep it down cowboy," she says in a southern twang, patting my shoulder. I feel myself tense. I swallow; she needs to stop touching me. "And get out of the kitchen, I'm making the pasta," she announces. Ava squeals with joy.
"You don't have to," I tell her, she laughs. She shouldn't.
"Believe me, I don't mind," she says, starting to take control of the cooking already. "Has your father eaten already?" she asks, only her eyes wander up to mine. My heart starts a weird, stuttering, out of rhythm thudding. Ava rushes to the living room and switches on the TV. Maybe it's just the way only a small yellow lamp is lighting up the room, and there are more shadows than light here or maybe...just maybe Ten knows something.
But she can't. How will she?
"Levan?" she says to get my attention back to her. She stirs the pasta as the water boils and turns to me. Her eyes fixate on my face and yet wander freely; "I just saw a car in the driveway that's why I'm asking." she smiles. "Has he eaten yet?"
"No," I tell her, my words dissipating into the air around us, "but he's asleep."
"Oh, don't worry I'll make enough so you can just heat it up and eat it later," she tells me and takes the dish off the gas. She strains the pasta and I stand, unable to make a move. What am I supposed to do? My brain has stopped functioning, my nerves are jammed.
Ten returns to the counter and does the rest of the cooking. She asks me to help her with chopping some vegetables and I do. We stay quiet. I keep thinking that she'll crack a joke or something and start laughing but she doesn't. It's almost like I'd prefer it if she did that.
Maybe the silence of this house is taking the toll on her. Maybe the dead house is eating her up; her smile, her laughter, her light. I need her to get out of here. I need her to speak and tell me she's still Ten, that she still has the Tenfection that's growing inside of me. So speak, Ten. Laugh, do something silly. After she puts the flame off, she looks at me and only a ghost of a smile appears on her mouth.
"Your dinner's ready, and I'll get going now, my mom must be sweating with worry," she tells me.
"Yeah, thanks for the help." We walk to the door. She steps out on the porch and smiles full and wide, her eyes gleaming under the moonlight. I sigh with relief.
"No biggie, Number Eleven," she says, "What good are friends for if they can't feed your hungry sister because you apparently can't cook and you'd probably receive another beating for it?" A laugh escapes through me. Why does it feel like I'm revolting against myself every time? Why does it feel sp forbidden to smile?
"Goodnight, Levan," says Ten, before turning around and stepping down into the lawn. She shoves her hands in her pocket and I watch her as she starts to fade away. I turn around, and right when I'm about to shut the door, she whips to face me again.
"Oh Levan? We're still meeting after school on Monday, right?"
"Yes," I tell her. She smiles wider.
"Oh great, maybe then you could tell me who really did that you," she says and waves at me, "see you in school!" I feel the ground beneath my feet shake. The dead house starts to crumble on me. Several seconds pass and I don't even try to run away. I'm stuck to it. It's stuck to me. I stand at the door until I'm buried underneath.