If I Could Take It Back

The door of the classroom clicked quietly closed as Alexander rearranged his bag on his shoulder and looked around cautiously, his eyes moving across the crowd of people in the busy school corridor, watching as everyone found someone to gossip with, something to laugh about, a natural drive that moved them towards people who understood them.

Alexander didn’t have this. For a minute, he stood quite still, his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes downcast under his dark hair. He only realised that he was blocking the door when somebody roughly shoved past him on their way out.

"Out of the way, dork!"

Alexander said nothing; he only edged to his left slightly.

Eventually, he could stand the chatter of his fellow pupils no longer, and he dragged his legs away from the classroom door to find his locker. He opened it up and crammed his bags into it, knowing that some of the books were being contorted but not caring very much. As he went to slam his locker door closed, a single picture, taped on the inside of his locker door, caught his dark eyes.

The little girl in the picture was five years old, and adorable. She had her big brother’s dark hair but their mother’s piercing blue eyes, and she was grinning at the camera with her little baby teeth, reaching up her star-shaped hands towards the flash of the light the camera made. It was Cassandra, Alexander’s little sister, who was the cause of Alexander’s preoccupation. He stared at the photograph for a long while until his eyes blurred and he clamped them closed, mortified.

"No," he muttered. "No, you’ll not cry. No."

Alexander never cried. He couldn’t cry. He opened his eyes and looked at his baby sister.

"Oh, Cass," he whispered.

Alexander softly closed the locker door, almost as though slamming it would alarm his baby sister. Still, the metal click it gave brought back horrible memories for Alexander.

Alexander; fourteen, and Cassie; five. She’s holding onto him, her little arms wrapped around him, her innocent face turned against him, burrowed under his coat, her cold little body trembling. Alexander holds her close as the kitchen door slams with the same metallic click that would forever haunt him, though he could not yet know it. He can see his father standing in the room, and his brother with him.

"Aaron!’ his father shouts. ‘Where’s your brother?"

"Don’t know."

Aaron is smoking, not paying attention, therefore he can’t see Alexander holding the trembling Cassie, both of them cowered under the kitchen table. His father, however, is more observant. His lined face appeared at their level, seeing their eyes glinting in the darkness, sensing their fear.

"There you both are! A little unsociable under there, isn’t it?"

His breath reeks of stale vodka, stale cigarettes, and unbrushed teeth. Cassie smells this and buried her head further against Alexander.

"You should have found somewhere better to hide, God damn you!"

Alexander nearly punched his locker, but swiftly changed it to the motion of scratching his ear. He had to learn that he couldn’t let these things out, not in front of people. That wasn’t practical. That wasn’t acceptable. He would loose energy from dwelling on it, he had to keep his emotions in check. What had his father yelled when he had thrashed him all those times?

"Men don’t cry, boy! You want to be a man? Stop with the tears!"

Alexander couldn’t remember the last time he had properly cried, and it sure as Hell wouldn’t be now! He pushed himself away from the locker and hurried down the corridor, ducking as someone swung their bag haphazardly over their shoulder.

Ducking as their father commanded them out from under the table.

"Come on, Alexander, join the family! Ah! And you’ve brought the little mistake, too!"

Cassandra, more often than not referred to as “the mistake”, the child that was never supposed to have been born, the child who only her brother Alexander loved.

"She’s not a mistake, Dad," Alexander muttered quietly, in his characteristic way.

"What was that?"

The drunken man rounded on his son; Aaron looked up, interested. If here was one thing he liked better than cigarettes, it was watching Alexander getting thrashed by their father.

"Are you going to speak up, boy?"

His father’s eyes boring into his own, Alexander felt his courage falter even though Cassandra’s tiny little hand was still gripped in his own.

"Nothing, Dad." Alexander muttered, and he hated himself for it.

"That’s what I thought. Come on, Mistake. Let’s go out to the garden, shall we?"

He roughly grabbed Cassie’s arm. Cassie looked at Alexander with frightened eyes, huge eyes.

"Alex! Alex! No!" she begged him, but Alexander dropped her hand after a death glare from his father. He didn’t want to. Something inside him had made him do it. His feet itched to run after her. Aaron and his younger brother both knew that when their father took Cassie to the garden, she was going to get a beating.

"Why didn’t you go after her?" Alexander muttered to himself, and tears were beginning to squirt down his cheeks. He hated himself for that day, he hated himself for crying, he hated himself! He forced his way out of a stiff door and out into the grounds of the school, heading to the old maths mobile that was disused. No one went there anymore. He had to think.

He sprinted. He ran as though he were running away from his sister’s screams.

"ALEX!"

He ran as though he were running away from that day three years ago. He ran as though he were going for gold. He had to stop running when he reached the mobile. The aftermath caught up on him there. That was the worst bit. No one else knew the story. No one else knew that his sister was alive, if only just. No one knew that what had happened had, in a way, been worse for Alexander than if his sister had died that day.

The ambulance arriving, the police and social workers, the house crowded, Alexander being pulled this way and that, shouting Cassie’s name, the neighbour who had called the cops trying to explain his suspicions about the family, Alexander spotting the paramedics putting the stretcher with his sister on it into the ambulance, Alexander running to her …

"CASSIE! CASSIE!"

The split second where he had seen his sister’s bloody face, her lip busted, some of her baby teeth gone, her nose bleeding, a little oxygen mask being put over her nose and mouth, the doors closing, Alexander sobbing harder that he had done in his life, hating himself for this also, the questions from the cops, the look from his father, his mother pulling up in the car, the look she gave Alexander, the way she gathered Aaron to her like he was her only child, Alexander knowing that he would never again belong, and then -

Calm. Like now. Like Alexander leaning against the disused mobile, breathing heavily, holding back tears.

"You should have helped her." he whispered to himself. "Why wasn’t it you who got that beating?"

Calm in the hospital corridor. Alexander being told he could see her. Alexander going into the room where Cassie lay, his heart thumping, hurting all over from sobbing.

"Cassie,"

Approaching her bed. She had been awake. Her beautiful blue eyes looking at him. Widening. Widening in fear. Alexander, shocked, stunned, hurt.

"Cassie? Do you not recognise me? It’s Alex, Cassie."

"Bad man!" she shrieked, pointing at him. "Bad! Bad! Bad!"

"Cassie, no! No, I’m not bad, I’m –"

"You let bad man take me!"

"Cass –"

"You let go of my hand and bad man took me! You bad too! Bad man!"

Alexander had thought he could take no more, until Cassandra, tiny little bruised Cassandra, whispered words beyond her years.

"He hurt me. You let him and I thought you loved me, Alexander."

It was the first and only time she had managed to pronounce his whole name. Alexander was shocked until what she had said had caught up with him.

Then he realised he had betrayed the trust of the most important person in his life, and he hated himself.

"So now what?" Alexander questioned himself. "Separate care homes. You’ll never see her again, not ever. Little Cass. She’ll be eight now. I wonder if she thinks of me?"

Alexander hated himself. He should have stuck up for her, and the more he thought about it, the more the rage bubbled up inside him, filling his ears and nostrils and head, thumping at him, the truth that he had never confessed bursting to get out. No one knew he had let go of his sister’s hand. This was a new school, nobody knew anything. He turned to the old wall behind him, and, hand trembling, rage bursting, he grabbed the Sharpie pen out of his pocket, and squeezed the ink tip against the beautifully blank wall. The black was deep, so dark it was like looking into ravines scratched onto the wall. He printed, in large letters, his handwriting messy due to the shaking of his hand.

He confessed to himself, not caring that others may see. What would they know?

THIS I CONFESS: WHEN MY FATHER AND BROTHER USED TO GANG UP ON MY SISTER SHE RAN TO ME. DAD TOOK HER TO BEAT HER ONCE, AND I LET GO OF HER HAND. AND I HATE MYSELF.

He coloured in the most important words and went over them again and again, so they stood out black against the wall. Then, in neater handwriting, out of respect, I’m so sorry, Sparky. Sparky. His nickname for Cassie. Because of that spark in her eye.

He turned and walked away, leaving the message, but carrying his regrets with him. With him always.