Casually Homicidal, page 22
I scoff. “Well, it was worth a shot.” Tearing a drink napkin into small pieces, I hum along with the music.
“You’re a long way from home.”
I look over to see a man one stool down, nursing an Old Fashioned. “How can you tell?” I size him up—a six out of ten on the Billing’s Best Yogurt Creep Scale . My chest squeezes as I think of Hendrix.
“The kids in this town, they know how to drink, and this bar ain’t it.”
“How do you know so much about the kids in this town? You a creep or something?” I ask. Immediately the words bite me in the ass, and I think of what I said to Hendrix: Did tacos make fun of you as a kid? The words scathe, even after the fact. Jesus, why am I so touchy?
“No, I’ve just got a daughter in high school,” he says, sighing and shaking his head. He’s got a blue jumpsuit on, and his balding head shines with sweat.
“Then why are you at a bar on a Monday night?” I ask. The bartender gives me a free lemon-lime soda with ice, probably to get me to leave.
The man chuckles to himself, and the sadness in it hits me where it hurts. “Why are you at a bar on a Monday night?”
My eyes burn with tears. In every lyric of the music that floats out of the speakers in this cramped bar, I hear my mother’s voice, coming in loud and clear over that shitty payphone speaker. Turning to the man next to me, my heart throbs in my chest. But the man has looked back at his drink, self-absorbed once again. I suppose I’m no different.
“It’s because I’m running,” I say. It’s the truth—I know I’m running from something, because my heart keeps tugging at my chest, pushing me forward and dragging the rest of me along with it. I’m not really running from my past anymore. But I’m not running to anything, because I’ve got nothing to run to. My future is a blur, a mess of colors and feelings and ideas.
I think about what Norman told me earlier today—did I even listen? No, because I’m in this fucking bar, and not with Hendrix. Because I ran away from him. Again.
My skin crawls with shame. I want to go home. I want to go back to the way my life was before all this. Before this trip—before Hendrix—started breaking me open.
Then why did you hang up on your mother tonight?
The man turns to me, eyes sorrowful like a chained-up dog. “What are you running from?”
“Not just running.” I shake the ice at the bottom of my soda glass. The setting sun paints the bar in the most beautiful shade of dying orange. “I guess I’m searching for something too.”
“Ain’t everyone?” the man says. My breath gets caught in my throat and forms a knot there. Does what I’m searching for actually exist? Have I been searching for it in the wrong places?
The man sighs, turning back to me. “You’re obviously having a bad night, and I don’t want a girl like you getting caught up in all the shit that happens here.”
I sniff, not meeting his eyes. This man isn’t scary—actually, he breaks my heart a little bit. “What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Scott,” he says. “What’s yours?”
Swallowing down sobs, I say, “Arden.” The bartender’s begun to notice that I’m a sniveling mess.
Scott stands up, holding out his hand. “Why don’t you go on home, Arden? This ain’t no place for you.”
My tears feel like wet paint on my cheeks. Something inside me is breaking, but it’s not a shattering. It’s a splintering, a crack that grows and grows until it collapses under its own weight. There is no word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that can describe what I’m feeling right now.
“I don’t think I have a home.” The words cut through my universe.
Downing the last of my soda, I get up and leave the bar. Because that’s what I always do—leave. I’m running from something but I’m also running towards it. How can those exist all at the same time?
Scott doesn’t call after me—why would he? I’m just a stranger. I’m a stranger to my friends. I’m a stranger to my mother. I’m a stranger to myself. I’m running from all these things I can’t escape. It’s like I’ve got a balloon tied to my ankle—no matter how fast I run, it’s always chasing me. I am taking it with me. And in doing that, I’ve made myself homeless.
But what does that even mean? I only have these vague ideas, concepts, that I’ve become so fixated on, as if finally finding meaning will somehow fix all my other problems along the way. I’ve become obsessed with this limbo that Hendrix and I have created—this somewhere-in-between. Because it is nothing and also everything I want all at the same time. Because facing the future is somehow scarier than staying stuck in the past. Running in circles feels better than not moving at all.
On the night of my eighteenth birthday, I didn’t hang out with my friends. There was no cake, no celebration, no sips of wine to commemorate my legal adulthood. After work, I went out into the woods, to that lookout I had gone to on so many broken nights, and got stoned out of my mind. When I’m high, nothing feels quite so real . Sometimes, that’s exactly what I need, but sometimes it’s just a visceral escape. I remember lying on the cold ground, staring at the stars, hoping that the earth itself would swallow me into its embrace. Sometimes I think we need to scrape rock bottom every once in a while just to make sure it’s there.
And here I am, escaping it all yet again, caught in the middle of this twisted limbo. I stand on the edge of Pierce, Idaho as the pine forest and mountains swallow the road leading out of town. It feels like everyone is inside on this tragically beautiful night. I am the only one to witness the sun’s death, exploding in a breathtaking orange and purple display. If only I had any breath for the sun to take.
I had to leave—I had no choice. My meaning had to be sought elsewhere. But I think I’ve found it in the most unexpected place. My heart is heavy, swollen with the truth I can’t dare to admit.
My home is with Hendrix. Despite how he’s hurt me, he’s also changed me. I’ve found empathy, understanding, and meaning in him. He has found a cozy spot in my soul and made a home there. Even still, I find myself running from him. Running from someone who understands me more than I’d like him to, more than he’ll ever understand. Running from someone who has been down for all of my crazy, impulsive shit. Running from the home that’s been beside me all along.
Because that’s what you do, Arden. You run from stuff.
These old habits, they fight tooth and nail. I ran from Sarah’s vulnerability. I pushed Elliot away. It all bleeds out of my chest, dripping between my ribs. I’m sobbing again, right there in the middle of the road. I can’t run from my past, I just take it with me.
I want to go home. Except the home I left doesn’t exist anymore, and the home I want is just a dream in my head. My home is nowhere and everywhere all at once.
So I suppose it’s time to stop running.
25 Hendrix
Monday, May 28th
Time’s always leaving, just like her.
Watching as Arden walks out the door, something rips inside my chest, leaving sensations that ripple out through my body. The fries no longer look appetizing. There’s a moment in sheer desperation where I consider running after her, but I feel like that might make things worse. As if this whole thing isn’t already fucked up.
I feel like killing something. But I also feel like if I do, I’ll vomit again. The bar and grill is full of blue-collar men and couples at the tables. The room seems smoky in the warm evening light
I get up and walk out of the restaurant, just as our waiter comes to refill our drinks. Ghosts of myself—I seem to leave them everywhere, like the rank cigarette smoke that hangs around this restaurant. Anger and pain crawls under my skin. I hope I don’t encounter Arden, because I fully intend to kill her.
Sometimes, I do things and I don’t really know why. Like why I walk into a general store and ask for a ski mask.
The cashier just laughs and asks me if I’m aware that it’s summertime.
I tell him that I know. I demand that he get me one anyway.
The cashier flashes me a strange look as I pay for it and leave.
It’s not until I pull the black wool over my face that I fall back into myself, but by that point, it’s too late. I’m already combing through back alleys, searching for someone small or weak enough to fall prey to the blade at my hip.
There’s a scrawny man yelling on the phone behind the grill & bar, pacing. A child riding his bike down a residential alley. An old, portly man smoking a cigar on a cast-iron park bench.
But no Arden.
I go with the man, since he seems old and overworked—and the least conspicuous. Whatever town we’re in is small as fuck, so I can still see the old man on the park bench from the trees that encroach on the town.
Just as the sun has fallen past the mountains and the world will plummet into darkness in minutes, the man tosses his cigar in a nearby ashtray. As soon as I see him move to get up, I pounce, one arm around his chest and the other pressing the blade of my knife to his fleshy, shaved neck.
“Give me your fucking wallet,” I spit in his ear. I jam my hand down his back pocket.
“Oh, Christ! ” he exclaims, springing up and tugging at my arms.
It seems I underestimated how strong—and how tall—the old man was, because he rips my arms away from his body, whipping around.
And then I do it. I do the thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to do all this fucking time. I thrust the blade forward in one sloppy motion, but the man sees the move coming from a mile away and jumps backward.
“Hey! What the fuck ?” the man says. On the bench, he looked flabby, but now he storms around the bench, rolling up his flannel sleeves to reveal meaty forearms and clenched fists, clad with rings. Regret pools in my stomach. For a moment, I freeze and hope he beats me to death.
Since I neither run nor charge at the man, he reels back and slugs me in the face. My teeth vibrate, and the grass tastes metallic as I hit the ground.
Blinking until my vision returns, I stand.
“You gonna fucking run or should I drag your ass to the police?” the man says.
I run my bloody mouth across my forearm, wincing as my cheek protests to the movement. “Hit me again.”
“What?” he spits, scowling at me.
The point of the knife comes up to the base of the man’s neck before I can think about it. “Hit me again, you bitch.”
This time, he clocks me in the temple with the hook of his cane. My vision explodes into white. I stumble into a tree, sputtering with laughter at how good it hurts.
“Again,” I say, and this time, the old man hesitates before kneeing me in the gut. I crumple to the ground, an excruciating mix of bitter laughter and sobs boiling up from my throat.
Before I can plead for him to beat me until I’m dead, the old man rips off my ski mask and grabs me by my shirt collars, forcing me to sit up and look at him.
His face lights up with shock when he sees how old I am. “Fuck, you’re just a kid.” The man steps back, running his hands through his thinning hair.
“Please, kick me again,” I whimper, crawling on the cold ground. Blood from my nose and mouth leaks down my neck, hot and thick.
“Why?”
Because I am in so much pain. Because that pain has solidified into a coal of hot, burning anger and has lit me aflame. Because before I kill myself, I want to drag everyone else to hell with me.
I take my knife and stab it into the toe of his boot—in and out. He screams and kicks me in the ribs—so hard that I fall back, groaning and cringing in pain, rolling around on the ground. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe.
The man checks his uninjured toes while I grit my bloody teeth, facedown in the grass. He grabs me by my shirt again. Everything hurts.
“That’s enough, punk . If you stop now, I won’t rat your ass out to the cops. Now get the fuck away from me.” I can smell the tobacco on his breath, and it makes me miss my habit.
“Thank you,” I wheeze, grabbing fistfuls of dirt as I try to get up, but the old man yanks me upright by my elbow. Before I can thank him, he’s lit another cigar and is strolling back into town, unscathed.
Electric pain sends wooden stakes through my face and ribs, and I fall onto a tree, wiping the blood away from my nose with the ski mask. I try to laugh, but the pain shoots straight up my forehead, and twists the hot metal in my ribs, so I claw at the evergreen bark until it’s over.
With violent sobs swelling in my chest, I hit the tree with my fists until the pain turns them numb, until they’re a bloody mess of cartilage and bone. I scream into the ski mask until I choke and my ribs give out.
Heaving, I pound my skull with my fists, as if the force could unstick me. Unstick me from the thousands of moments I’ve been living in for the last seven years. I am a record skipping, forever stuck on that ugly scratching noise as the world screams at me to move on.
But I can’t.
A few paces into the forest, I find a creek, swollen and muddy from the recent rain. I strip down to my boxers, blood smearing across the fabric, and jump in. The cold slaps me in the face, shocking my bones back to earth.
Under water, while my eyes are still closed, words come to me like clouds settling in a valley. I hear twinkles of violin riffs and uncertainty. A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home?
In this horror of my reality, surrounded in cloudy, bitter creek water in the middle of fucking nowhere, Idaho, all I can think of is my Grandfather. And my mother. The urge to kill is gone, for that was a mere mask of what I’m actually feeling. After all that has burned away, there’s nothing but boiling, black regret and self-hatred.
I am a fish, and I am drowning.
This—whatever this is—is splitting the continents inside of me, like the earth itself ripping apart at the seams like it did millions of years ago. The problem is: I can’t decide which side I’d like to be on, so I let the trench between the land flood with water, so hopefully I’ll drown.
26 Arden
Monday, May 28th
‘Des Vu’— the awareness that this will become a memory
I find myself back at the bar and grill, staring up at the neon beer signs and wooden paneling. My fish tacos have gone cold.
Of all songs, of course the band’s playing their rendition of ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel. Dad. My straw chases the ice in my sweet tea. The lights are so low that nobody notices the tears streaming down my face.
“Can I get you anything?”
I sniff, hard. “No, thanks.”
I twirl the straw between my fingers. I hope Hendrix comes back . I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t though. Who knows what he’s doing right now?
Something sinks inside me and freezes solid. I hurt him; I tend to do that a lot. Then again, he’s hurt me just as much. But I won’t run from him if he comes back. I won’t.
Classic rock covers pass by one after the other. The band’s actually pretty good, and the bass player is hot. I wonder if he’d be down to make out after.
The thought makes me stop, and I dig my fingernails into my palms. I don’t really want that. I don’t even know him, and it’s all just so not real. So not real that it leaves a vapid, aching pit inside me—like a pinhole in a balloon that only grows the more air you pump into it. I’m just hurt. And lonely.
Someone approaches the table, and I instinctively bat the tears from my face.
It’s Hendrix, and his face is covered in red splotches that will soon turn into bruises. “You came back,” he says.
“Of course I did.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I see myself reflected back in his red-rimmed eyes. Before I think about it, I slide my arms under his and hug him. His dark brown hair hangs low and damp over his forehead, and the dampness from his clothes seeps into mine. Why is he so . . . wet? Before I can ask, I feel him stiffen, but he eventually hugs me back. He smells spicy like pine, but like real pine.
When we pull away, there’s a moment where Hendrix looks down at me, lips slightly open like he’s going to say something. But his face falls closed, biting his busted lip, confusion flickering across his forehead. We sit at the table, Hendrix barely visible behind the thick atmosphere of the restaurant.
“Where did you go?” I ask.
“Nowhere.”
I swallow. “Are you alright? Did something bad—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Please.” But he doesn’t sound mad. Painful desperation bleeds into his voice.
I breathe, trying to calm the spiraling ball of panic and offense inside my stomach. Hendrix presses a fist to his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He pauses. “Me too.” His words take me by surprise. They weigh heavy on my heart.
Timi Yuro’s ‘Smile’ is being masterfully covered by a girl who doesn’t look too much older than us. The lights flicker and change into deep purple. Hendrix rubs his nose and glances around the bar. Blood comes away on his fingers. He looks at it for a moment, and then directly at me. “Do you want to dance?”
It’s my turn to stare blankly and ask, “What? But you’re bleeding . . .”
He repeats himself, a bit exasperated. “I said, do you want to dance? With me?”
Slowly, a smile breaks on my face. I let go of the subject, knowing that I’ll find out in time. “Hell yeah. I love dancing.”
Hendrix clears his throat and pushes out his chair. “Ok . . . good, then.”
We awkwardly migrate to the dance floor—rather: the sticky, warped linoleum in the low-light. Hendrix and I stand inches apart from each other. The strangeness sits cold and spiny between us.
“Have you ever danced with a girl, Hendrix?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
He sighs. “Not really. I just asked you ‘cause I figured you would have asked sooner or later.”
Smiling, I sling my arms around his neck. “Hendrix, you’re one of the very few people who can read me like a book.”
