C H A P T E R 19: Troubled Waters
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It had been two days since Skylar left Santan Valley, Arizona and within those two days Scout-Juliet Compton had died.
Not in the sense of dirt and ash and peace lilies and the part were you cease to exist on the same plain as everyone who hadn't gotten into that car accident, or fell off of that ladder, or slit their wrists. She was dead in the sense that the power went out somewhere in her head. All of the little synapses inside of her blew like the lights on a circuit board, and although she was breathing and seeing and taking up space, in the same instance, she wasn't doing any of those things. Not really.
She was sitting outside of Georgia's house, in the muddy earth after the torrential downpour that preceded Skylar's departure. Her eyelashes dripped from the rain on the patch of dirt she sat on. Her knees were hugged to her chest with her head sandwiched in between them. She had buried her toes in the mud, and moved one every once in awhile to confirm that she hadn't become a part of the earth.
Scout had cried out all of her tears and sobbed until her throat was raw and her mouth tasted of copper. She wasn't enough of a fool to think that the love of her life had slipped through her fingers. Her heart did ache, but not entirely for Skylar. It ached for the notion that he was her chance to get out of this town, but, in more than one sense, it felt like he had thrown her out of a moving car on the interstate.
She should've ended it before it started. All she ever ended up was brokenhearted and disappointed, and she thought, on that note, that it was as good a time as any to cry again. But this time she couldn't. Her eyes stung like she was crying, and there was that repetitive hiccup in her chest like she was crying, but she wasn't actually. It was like the part of her that cried left in a fleeting attempt to catch up to Skylar. She bid it good luck in the form of a long sigh out into the stale air.
She rolled the word "why" around on her tongue for awhile, like a tooth fallen fresh from the socket. She could die considering all of the possibilities as to why he left; why he couldn't just stick it out; why he couldn't let people care for him. In the end, reasons didn't matter. Life happens, and it has to be faced in some way, no matter how much she hated it. Even with this realization, she was still high on terrible whys the whole slow and dreary walk back home.
Maybe it was her, she thought. Maybe all of her unlovable parts scared him off. Maybe if she had made herself more available, he would've stayed. But, no, she thought, because if she made herself more available, she would have made herself into something like Mandy, and that was the type of girl Skylar would use up in a night, and never speak to again. That's not who she wanted to be, but she didn't exactly know who she wanted to be. Maybe she just wanted to be his friend. Some distant part of her soul recognized a part of his somehow, and she missed the connection.
Scout hauled herself up the stairs, to her room over the shop. The sound of the rain dripping off of her in plops on the wooden stairs was magnified, and she counted each tiny explosion as she went. She was at fourteen on the last stair; nineteen when her hand reached out for her bedroom door at the end of the hall; and twenty-three when she stopped breathing.
Antonio was laying on his back in the middle of her mattress, staring up at the same ceiling Scout did whenever he came over for a fuck and passed out next to her, and she laid there wondering why girls let themselves get so used up.
"Hey," he said. His head fell to the side to match her stare. "Scott let me in. I've been waitin' here for an hour. Got some stuff we need to talk about."
"No," Scout whispered. "We don't."
Antonio sat up abruptly and Scout could practically feel the space between them shrink and some of the air leave the room.
"That's not how you treat a guest," Antonio smirked.
"Get out," she said.
"Look, Thin-Mint," Antonio started, and Scout shuddered. She hated when he called her that. She didn't even like thin mint cookies. They were his favorite. It started out as "Girl Scout," and then one day it was "Thin Mint" and she wouldn't hear the end of it until she broke it off with him and he found some other girl to traumatize and rename.
"Don't call me that," Scout said pointedly.
Antonio just smiled really wide and continued. "Your dad stepped out for a while because I told him you and I had some catching up to do, so why don't you just have a seat?"
He patted the spot on the bed beside him.
Scout didn't recognize her room as her's anymore. It seemed darker and the sheets looked like they had a different pattern. She wasn't even entirely sure if she was home anymore. Nothing felt right for her when Antonio was around. So, Scout just stood there, rooted to the floor and staring at the spot on the bed where his hand was as if it were a crime scene.
"This will go by a lot quicker if you just cooperate with me," Antonio said. "I don't know why you have to be so difficult."
Scout's head felt like it was in a vice as she took a step forward. She knew damn well Antonio wouldn't leave until he got what he wanted, especially with her father gone. She lost all of her confidence with no one there by her side. Antonio had that power over most people and it was always the worst when he got them alone. Scout found a new appreciation for every time Bo tagged along on their excursions and gave Scout that wedge between herself and Antonio. She wished Bo were there then.
Scout took another step and another until she was next to him on the bed. She sat on the very edge to give herself the most space from him without sitting on the floor.
Antonio snaked an arm around her shoulders, killing any margin of space between them, and whispered, "Have you missed me like I've missed you?"
Scout suddenly wanted to vomit. Her mouth filled with saliva and she fought with herself over whether or not to spit up on him or swallow it back.
Antonio squeezed her shoulder harder than he needed too; just enough to leave what would be a small, purple bruise and a shock through Scout as hot as the sun.
"Did you?" Antonio whispered much more gruffly than before.
Scout braced herself , wiping her sweating palms on her thighs, and said, "Just do what you have to do."
Antonio smiled again. He stood, sauntered across the room and eyed Scout as he closed her bedroom door and turned the lock.
Scout lost twenty minutes of her life that day.
She felt his sticky, uncomfortably warm palms running down her sides, and she felt every flake of dead skin and every callous on the pads of his fingers and all the jagged edges of his nails brush beneath her naval, where the buttons of her shorts popped open for him. It hurt. In her right mind, she chalked it up to being psychological. She knew her skin wasn't actually burning from his touch, but it was as painful as anything she'd ever felt. She experienced it as soberly as placing your hand on a hot burner.
Her throat throbbed when she breathed, like she had spent her whole life screaming instead of speaking. Her stomach was aching something fierce, like her appendix bursting. When he turned her over onto her stomach, her right cheek pressed against the mattress, her nose began to bleed a thin maroon river onto the sheet. She felt like a cartoon character deflated by an anvil. She would never know that the trauma of the situation caused her to have a minor stroke. She would never know that was why she lost that chunk off time, but if she did, she would have thanked her brain for cutting off a portion of its own blood supply for that moment in time. After all, who would want to remember the man you hated the most panting over your shoulder as he slams his hips into yours for what seems like an infinite stretch of time? Or his sweat leaking onto you and dissolving into your skin like you'd never be able to get rid of him? Or feeling like you were being ripped apart from the middle, up? Who would ever want to remember feeling like the filthiest thing; like you were tainted from the inside and no earthly amount of boiling water or suds or bleach could wash away a stain that made a home of your ribs? Scout knew she could hate. She hated many things. But if she remembered that moment in time, she couldn't live with how much she would hate herself for ever letting a man like Antonio near her.
When it was over, Antonio dressed himself while Scout laid in the middle of the bed, face-down as if she had been embalmed that way. He glanced at her as he zipped the fly of his jeans, and he smirked again.
"You kept it tight for me," he chuckled. "Keep it that way."
Scout didn't move until she heard her bedroom door shut and Antonio's foot steps making their way down the stairs. It wasn't much of a movement at all. All she did was lift a finger to make sure she still could. If she hadn't, she would've thought she was honest-to-God dead. She was sure that was what death felt like.
Scout wanted to sob, but she couldn't. There was nothing left in her that was capable of having a feeling at that moment.
If she could feel anything, then it may have comforted her to know that Skylar was feeling the same thing at almost the same moment seven hours away. However, she couldn't and she would never know what happened to Skylar that night, and vice versa. She felt as lonely as an island on troubled waters. No one could reach her, and she didn't even know if she wanted them too...