Page 93 of Unorthodox
I expect her to tell me to kill myself.
I almost wish she would, so I could hate her a little more. So I could hate that innocence she still has, that faith that someone will be good to her. That someone will come for her, and someone will love her.
I want to hate that part of her, because it isn’t true.
No one is coming.
No one will save her.
No one came for me.
No one saved me.
And I couldn’t fucking save Oliver.
She should tell me to die. She should tell me I deserve it.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she slowly wraps her fingers around my wrist, and pulls my arm down.
I let her.
Then she steps closer but doesn’t touch me. She keeps her arms by her sides as she looks up at me, her eyes shining.
For a moment, she doesn’t speak.
But when she does, all she says is, “Don’t take the coward’s way out, Max. You’re far too brutal to hide like that.”
And I don’t hate her.
I don’t fucking hate her.
Instead, I grab her, pulling her to me, and for a long moment, I hold her against my chest.
She doesn’t touch me back. Doesn’t hug me.
But she doesn’t try to get away either.
Because that part of me, that innocence Oliver and I lost as boys…she still has it.
She still has it, and every day, I’m stealing a little more of it.
I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.
Someday, everyone has to learn there are monsters in the world. At least I could teach her that lesson far better than my father ever fucking taught me.
He was small.
He also didn’t speak.
My father thought that meant he was stupid. He was anything but. Oliver was whip smart in all the ways my father thought didn’t matter: He learned to read when he was three, learned to sign shortly after, although he preferred picture cards to sign language.
And when my mother brought out the playing cards, well, he carried an ace in his pocket every day, slapping it in my hand without looking at me when we cuddled together on the couch at night to watch movies.
Movies with car chases, because he was obsessed with them.
Before we left, when my father would beat us black and blue for doing something like watching television and being idle, he could entertain himself for hours on end, alone with nothing but books, earthworms, and dirt. Sometimes he hid the worms in his hair and my mother would laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe as she peeled them all out.
