Put Me Back Together(63)

I had the sudden urge to scream out “Yippee!” but thankfully I was able to hold it in.

He paused as he reached the closed door, pressing me back against it. His lips met mine, but his kisses weren’t quite as frenzied as they’d been earlier.

“Katie, I’m going to take you into this room,” he said seriously. “And I’m going to do things to you that will make you scream.”

I giggled. Oh boy, I was really going crazy with desire if I was giggling.

“But,” Lucas went on, “I don’t think we should have sex tonight.”

“What do you mean?” I whined. All the right parts were still pressed together in this position. I could barely see straight, let alone control myself, or my mouth.

“Don’t get me wrong, I want to,” he said. “I think that’s pretty obvious. But I don’t want your first time to be on our first date, do you? Your first time should be wonderful. I want to make it wonderful for you. And I want to be sure that you’re ready.”

“Oh, I’m ready,” I said. The searing heat between my legs told me so.

“Just trust me on this one, okay?” Lucas said, and his expression was so pleading that I couldn’t help but agree.

“I’m still going to scream, though, right?” I said playfully as he leaned down to open my bedroom door, which, come to think of it, I didn’t remember closing that morning. My own words echoed in my ears as the door swung open and Lucas tensed, tightening his grip on me and trying to back out of the room again, but I was too fast. I slithered out of his grasp, taking in the confusion and panic in his eyes before I swung around.

I’m still going to scream, though, right?

But I didn’t scream right away. I didn’t scream as I took in my paintings, the ones I’d taken off the wall to hide from Lucas, strewn across my bed, torn to pieces. I didn’t scream when I saw the paper with its two haunting words, the paper I hadn’t noticed was missing from my coffee table, sitting now on my pillow, stabbed through with a knife. And I didn’t scream when I saw the four-letter word written across the wall above my bed in a red substance that might have been blood.

LIAR

Lucas put a hand on my arm and said, “Katie, what—”

That was when I started screaming.

“Get out!” I cried, shoving him backwards as hard as I could, ignoring the look of utter shock on his face. “Get out of here!”


I’d caught him off guard and he stumbled backwards, though he had thirty pounds on me at least. But he didn’t have the weight of my horror bearing down on him. He didn’t have the strength of my barreling dread, or the fear I’d been holding inside of me for what seemed like forever. Fear of this moment. Fear of what was happening right now.

“Katie, let me help,” he said. He’d regained his balance and turned back to the door, but I was too quick for him. “No, stay out!” I shouted, terrified more than anything that he might come back in and see it all again.

I slammed the door in his face and swiftly turned the lock as he called my name and shook the door handle.

That was when the tears came, blurring my vision and pouring down my cheeks. I slid down the door, which vibrated against my skin as he pounded on it. I slid all the way to the floor, and wept.





16





I slept right there on the floor, my cheek pressed into the hardwood, shivering long into the night in my flimsy dress. I didn’t even consider moving to the bed, and not only because it was a god-awful mess and my pillow—which I would be throwing out later—had a knife cut right through it. Not only because I didn’t want to lie down under those four letters, dripping with malice. The real reason I didn’t at least pull a blanket off the mattress to cover myself was that I didn’t think I deserved it.

My past had finally, completely caught up with me. My shame had nowhere to hide.

The sun woke me up the next morning, an errant ray of light falling through the window I’d failed to cover the night before to pierce my eyelids. I dragged myself off the floor and Turner did the same, uncurling himself from his position beside me on the floor. It was the first time he’d ever slept beside me.

Great. I’m so pathetic even my cat feels sorry for me.

Grabbing my glasses from my dresser, I stood in the middle of my room facing my reflection in the mirror. My face was a disaster, my eyes raw and red, my skin a wan yellow, my cheek inflamed from spending the night shoved into the uneven wooden floor. I’d forgotten to take out my contacts the night before, but it didn’t matter; I’d cried them out. My bedraggled hair fell over my shoulders in knots I knew it would take me hours to brush out. Anita’s dress, now so wrinkled I doubted it would ever be the same, hung on me weirdly, making me look about fifty years old. I realized it was because I was stooping, as though fifty years of sorrow were piled on my back. Overall, I looked like a homeless widow, or a mad feral girl. What was most frightening was that I recognized myself in these figures.

That’s me, I thought. That horror is me.

I didn’t know where Lucas had gotten to. For a long time, far longer than I would have expected, he’d stayed by the door, pleading with me to let him in. After a while I could tell he’d sat down with his back against it, because his voice had seemed to be calling right into my ear. As I sat there, still crying, I could almost feel the heat of him through the door, just a thin plank of wood separating his back from mine. Eventually I cried myself to sleep.