Page 126 of Scrimmage

Stephanie covers her mouth with her hand, stifling fake sobs, and runs out of the door.

I slam my hands on the marble counter and swipe them across, shoving everything to the floor. The crashing doesn’t even phase me. I hope it’s all broken. Ashland said she feels nothing for me. Nothing. She looked like none of it ever fucking mattered to her and I feel exactly how I probably just made Stephanie feel, and I’m not sorry for it. Ashland was always right about everything.

I never patched the hole in the wall. I couldn’t. I just stare at it. I used to hate Ashland, but I think I was just jealous of her. She grabs the world by the balls and squeezes until it concedes. There’s no wrong or right; not exactly. Not in the same way I see it. I finally decide I should throw her stuff out. That it might make me feel better. The second I pull the sketch book out of my side table drawer I know I can’t do it. At first I stare at it, willing myself to throw it away. I don’t. I fucking look instead.

I sit on the edge of my bed, setting it on my lap, and with a deep breath I flip to the first page. It’s sketched in pencil like the one she gave me. It’s the same one of Penny sitting on a couch with a pizza. The next one is of Penny, too. After a few pages of Penny I almost give up, but I flip one more time and all I see is black. It looks like shadows of something. This must be where she starts using the charcoal.

The next one looks like a doorway with a shadow in it. More doorways with more pronounced shadows. A set of eyes staring out at me on the page. They’re vacant, but not in a dead way. It’s in an unsettling way. There are several more pages of the same eyes, but they seem to make me more uncomfortable as they go on. I run into another sketch of Penny. In this one she looks worried about something.

I flip to the creepy eyes again and quickly sift through them until I reach a page of stars. They look like the ones tattooed on her arm. I’m not an art guy, but I can almost feel these pages. The stars aren’t cute or particularly special, but something about them is cold. I count twenty. On the next page the stars seem happier, maybe something you could wish on. Twenty. Another sketch of the stars strikes me as dark, angry, and hopeful all at once. Those are the ones that are tattooed on her arm. The ones she called failure. Nineteen.

This is wrong on so many levels. I know that, but I can’t stop looking. I study the dark stars a few more minutes, tracing my fingers over them. Appreciating them like I wanted to when she let me see her arm. Then I flip again, and things seem to spiral. I see the one that Prince got tattooed on his leg, except it’s different. A girl in chains with people holding her down. The next is someone with a knife, cutting a person's tongue off. I don’t know how, but I can tell it’s slow. Another of a man on the beach. He’s the man with the eyes. His hair is blowing in the non-existent wind as he grins, but it’s all so evil.

There are more of guns and knives and blood. People I don’t recognize. Death and fear bleed from the fucking pages. This is dark. Darker than dark. This is the kind of stuff that gets people committed. No wonder she doesn’t let anyone look at this. I don’t know what to make of it, but the shit she said that day she left tortures me. She said she was wrong. That the world would always be upside down for her.

The world distorts itself to Ashland’s point of view, and it’s a fucked up disaster of a love story. I look back over the pages and see it the way she sees it. Further on there are a few of parties. It’s all so fucking plastic. The laughter is too loud, imitating the crunching of bones. The atmosphere is grotesque, choking me with perfume laced vomit. The darkness isn’t in the shadows, it’s in the hollowness of people’s eyes. The warm ambiance of my room now feels like a stage light, exposing my deepest darkest fears. The colors and the decor mock me. The background noise is like claws on a chalkboard, nauseating and forcing me to shiver, and that’s the most comforting part of it all.

My mouth is dry, and I try to swallow. She’s always abrasive, and I can see why. She lives like this every single day. I see her in the midst of this doom, and she’s fucking beautiful. It isn’t the eyes or her face. Not her clothing or her aesthetic. I’m not even thinking about fucking her. I seeAshland and the gaping hole in her chest accompanied by a scrambled mind. I’m fucking overwhelmed.

I continue torturing myself until I recognize the person on the page. Dark angry eyes glare at me, but they’re confused. I don’t know how she managed to capture two things at once like this. It’s me. Some of it has been drawn in pencil. I don’t need an explanation to know this is portraying last year at the weekender. The very first time I had a taste of Ashland, before I even knew who she was. She said she didn’t remember, but I’m not sure I believe that. Subconsciously, she knew it was me.

In the next, my jaw is tight. This is the night that I had sex with her at the football party. The next one is me, too. I obsessively move on, hoping to see myself from her perspective again. The way she can capture a person is mesmerizing.

There are a few of Alexi bothering her. Even though they scream annoyance, I’m still jealous she drew him at all. They get dark again, then there are some that are in pencil that are ancient civilizations like she was drawing when we all studied. Then I see a half sketch of me sitting next to her on the patio of The Roost the day I stole this. So I was on her mind even back then. The thought causes me phantom pain. The day I started ruining her life. I got under her skin.

I scramble into the drawer and grab the crumpled drawing from the library, smoothing the wrinkles. It’s the brand on her ass. I’ve never asked her about it. It’s hard to ask her about anything. The first time I saw it I was still in denial about feeling anything. Then it just became a part of her. I focused on it, sure, it was proof that it was Ashland that was underneath me. As for what it means? I couldn’t guess if I wanted to. It looks like a crest wrapped around the letter D. I thought maybe it was some sort of tattoo thing, but now that I’ve seen all of this? I’m not sure.

I glance up at the clock and realize I’ve been studying the sketches for almost two hours. I’m fucking exhausted from feeling all of this. I shove it in my side table drawer and notice my hands are dirty with charcoal. It doesn’t bother me like it should. I change into a pair of sweatpants and stretch out onto my bed. I put my headphones on and listen to her playlist while I stare at the ceiling and imagine the stars she drew are up there. It didn’t look like a night sky, but the kind of shit you see on the ceiling of your kid sister’s room.

She’s really good at art, even if some of this content is disturbing, and I wonder why she doesn’t major in it. Penny said she has no problem advocating for her, but Ashland hides this side of herself. Her art is so honest, just like Penny said she is. The way I came to know her. So what’s honest about all of the dark shit? Seeing myself from her eyes pointed out things about me that I’ve never noticed. People always say I look angry and intimidating, but she clearly doesn’t see me that way. The anger is there, but it’s immersed with other things. Lust. Confusion. Self-hatred.

Everyone is boring compared to her. They always will be, and I fucked it all up.

Chapter Seventeen

Koda

Cole dropped the charges against me immediately. It didn’t matter that I hit him first. He said it was mutual, and that I shouldn’t be held responsible. I don’t know why he would do that other than to please Ashland. There isn’t an ounce of regret inside of me for what I did. Luckily, the media didn’t get a hold of it. Coach was pissed, but we’re in the playoffs so he didn’t make me sit out. There were no pictures or videos that could be leaked. Maybe word of mouth, but everyone that was there is a huge football fan and people fighting at a party isn’t really surprising. My hand was fucked up though.

“You alive in here?” Alexi stands in the doorway.

I pull my headphones off. “What?”

My place is in a state of disrepair, and I think he’s pretty fucking close to calling our mom.

“Just wanted to chill or something.” He shrugs and sits on the floor next to me, pulling out his phone and scrolling. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nothing to say.” Except there is. There’s a lot. I’m still trying to digest it all.

“I’m gonna level with you, bro. You’re not well.”

“What would make you think that?” I say rhetorically.

“Hm. You put your fist through your wall, then left it that way. You got in a fight with Cole at a party where you went to fucking jail. Your clothes are everywhere. There are dishes in the sink. At least they’re clean, but they never made it to the dishwasher. Mom fucking called me asking why you’re upset.”

I rake my hands through my hair. “I should've known she would know.”

Our adopted mom has always been a self-proclaimed psychic. When we were younger we tried to keep it quiet. It’s kind of embarrassing when your mom is telling people that their dead sister is actually their mother, or when she says shit about the most embarrassing thing they did as kids and how it’s okay. Then they look at us as if we somehow told her intimate details of their lives that we weren’t even around for. I don’t believe in supernatural shit, but I believe that my mom has some sort of ability.

---