My throat constricts when I shout the last part, and I start kicking the gravestone. With the heel of my sneaker, with the toe of it, any part of it I can smash against it. “I wish you hadn’t taken the chicken-shit way out. I wish you hadn’t because that was my right. You took my life; it’s only fair I get to take yours. Except I wouldn’t have used a gun and made it quick. I would have used my hands. Around your neck. Until the life drained out of you the way it has out of me.” I’m jumping now, like I can break the cement in half if I just don’t stop. “I want to kill you! Again . . . and again . . . and again.”
I pause for a minute, panting. I’m staring at the gravestone like I’m waiting for him to say something back. I’m waiting for an explanation or an apology or something that will give me some peace as to why my life was ripped away.
There’s nothing. Only silence.
There’ll never be an explanation. Never an apology. Never absolution.
And without any of that, how is peace possible?
“I hate you, Earl Rae, you hear me? I hate you.” I glare at the gravestone, picturing the innocent look on his face that night I disappeared. How could someone so evil master such innocence?
“Burn in hell.” I wipe the sweat from my forehead and pull at the collar of my sweater because I’m stifling from the heat coursing through me. “I’m burning in my own.”
WHEN I SNEAK into the backyard hours later, it’s dark, and more houses are dark than light. My parents’ house is one of the few with lights still on, burning brightly inside.
I’ve missed dozens of calls from them. I’ve missed just as many from Torrin, whom they probably called after being unable to reach me, assuming I’d be with him. I don’t want them to worry. I don’t want to cause them any more pain, but it seems inevitable. Even when I try not to, I still find some way to hurt them. Like I did Torrin today when all I wanted to do was protect him.
Like when I didn’t answer my parents’ calls because I didn’t want them to hear me as I’d been earlier—I didn’t want them to discover just how damaged their daughter is now.
In my desire to protect them, I still hurt them.
It’s inevitable. I’ve accepted that now.
I’ve absorbed a decade of isolation and despair. I am swimming in it, and I can’t just find the right place to squeeze and wring every drop of it away. I might be able to find a way to drain a couple of drops here and there, but it will take time.
It might take as long to be free of it as it took accruing it.
I might never be free of it.
My thoughts have been dark for most of the day, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to slip up to my room undetected and get a night’s rest before confronting my parents. I’ve barely turned the key over in the back door before I hear their muffled footsteps rushing in my direction.
By the time I’m inside and locking the door, they’re both here. Mom’s face is puffy, and her eyes are red. She starts crying again. The wear from the day doesn’t show on Dad so obviously, but it can be found in the finer details: the way his hair isn’t so perfectly laid, his wrinkled slacks, the creases at the corners of his eyes.
“Thank god.” Mom’s voice shakes. “Thank god you’re safe.”
“I’m okay, Mom. I’m fine.” I lift my hands and step inside like I’m surrendering.
“Where have you been? The library—you weren’t there when I went back.” Her hand braces around the top of a kitchen chair as fresh tears fall down her face. “Why didn’t you answer any of our calls? Did you lose your phone?”
I slide the phone from my pocket. It’s shut off. “I didn’t lose it.”
“Why, Jade?” Mom sniffs. “Why didn’t you answer?”
“Because I didn’t know what to say.”
“I just wanted to know you were safe. That you were okay.”
I lift a shoulder and stay by the door. “I didn’t know what to say.”
“Torrin said you were at the hospital today, that you two had a difficult talk. Is that what this is about?” Dad’s voice seems like a roar compared to Mom’s and mine.
“This is about everything. What happened. What’s happening. Torrin. You guys. The media. Earl Rae Jackson.” My parents recoil when I speak his name. “This is about everything.”
Dad pops off a little huff. I take it as a contradiction to everything I just said, and it fans the anger I wrestled into submission earlier.
“Oh, and you can stop worrying about Torrin and me, Dad, since I know the idea of us being together has always pissed you off. That’s over. All of it. Should make you happy.”
Dad’s forehead creases. “Happy? Do you think any of this makes me happy?”
I spread my arms and shout, “How do you think it makes me feel?” My vision blurs, but I blink it clear. “I lost everything. And even though I’m back now, I’ve still lost everything. I’m a twenty-seven-year-old with a high school junior education. I’m a woman in a girl’s body.” I pinch the billowing sweater hanging off from me. “I’m an adult living in her parents’ house who has to depend on them for practically everything. I love a man I can’t love. I want a life I can’t have.”
Dad reaches for Mom’s hand because she’s crying harder now.
“None of this makes me happy,” I whisper.