Page 214 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

We never did.

By two, I could barely stand unaided. I’m convinced there was a guardian angel with me that night. A really trendy angel—one that knew I’d be better off getting pissed than staying at home with Mom. Because that guy could have done anything to me at the party, but instead he called me a cab.

I argued with the cab driver for a minute when he wanted to drop me off. I kept telling him he had the wrong house.

They’d extinguished the blaze about an hour before I got there. Smoke hung thick in the sky, and wreathed what was left of the upper levels of my home. My front lawn was littered with police, paramedics, and firefighters.

And then there was the crowd.

When I finally decided to get out the car and try to find a cab driver who actually knew Lakeview and could get me home, my next-door neighbor hurried over and threw her arms over me.

“My—God—Indi.”

Then, finally, reality consumed me like molten lava.

I remember trying to run into the house. Men grabbing at me, dragging me back. And then I don’t remember much at all, because they fucking sedated me. My friend at the time, Sara, arrived a few minutes later. Her parents ushered me into their station wagon and drove me away.

The shit they gave me was so strong, I fell asleep in the back seat and only woke up later the next day.

Mom had been dead for almost a day before I heard the news.

I lift the chain and run the delicate links over my lips.

According to the police, it was a botched robbery. The thief—they could only find evidence of a single person on the scene—must have burned down the house to hide his tracks. He tried to make it look like a gas leak, but despite how badly burned my mother’s corpse was when they recovered it, her autopsy revealed signs of a struggle and aggravated rape.

Mom was petite, like me. Father used to say she was his doll. He wasn’t a large man, but she only reached his collarbones. It wouldn’t have taken a strong man to subdue her, to force her?—

A sob hitches in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut and force away every last shred of emotion from my mind.

I’m just glad my father wasn’t alive when it happened. It would have broken his heart. Just like he broke my heart and Mom’s heart when he died from cancer. That was over five years ago. Sometimes I wonder which was better—Mom’s abrupt, brutal murder, or my father’s year-long struggle where we’d known weeks before that he would be leaving.

Guess it doesn’t matter.

They’re both gone.

But their deaths taught me the most important lesson of all.

Love is for masochistic fucks who enjoy the feeling of having their heart ripped out.

Right now, I’m free. I love no one, and I never will again. All that shit about it’s better to have loved and lost?

I’ve done both. And in my mind, love’s just not worth the fucking pain.

Briar

“So when you gonna grow a pair of balls and tell your Dad to fuck off?” I say. Well, slur is probably a better word. We’ve almost finished the bottle of rum; the tequila suffered severe collateral damage.

We gave up playing pool and went to go watch a rerun of the weekend’s game. The plan was to figure out a strategy and suggest it to the coach for our game this weekend.

But as soon as our friendly debate began heading toward a screaming match, we decided to finally order a pizza and wait for it to be delivered on the front lawn.

That was ten minutes ago. Pizza takes a while to reach us out here in the rich part of town—sometimes up to thirty minutes. But we slump in a set of garden chairs and watch the moon rise while we wait, passing the last bit of rum from hand to hand.

Marcus snorts at my statement, and taps out a cigarette from a brushed steel case. We both stopped smoking a while ago, but on nights when liquor seemingly flows from the fountain of eternal fucking youth, nothing beats a cancer stick. He lights it, tugs at it, and passes it to me before replying.

“You make it sound so fucking easy.”

“It is. You say, Dad…fuck off.”

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