Trembling With the Strings

“Gracie, I do believe you have stalled quite enough. Is it really that bad?”

“I just don’t usually talk about Lance. It’s been a long time since we last spoke,” I mumbled, messing with my hair. “He still goes to my school—he’s finally a senior—but...we just went separate ways.”

“Was he your boyfriend? Because I thought Darius was your first relationship,” Marcy commented, causing Dray to raise and eyebrow at me. I shook my head.

“It’s nothing like that,” I sighed. “It went like this...”

“Grace, do you know the answer to number twelve?” Lance asked me, throwing his backpack to the floor. He kicked off his shoes and helped me shrug off my jacket.

“You’re probably smarter than me even though you got held back twice,” I told him, falling onto the couch. He collapsed beside me.

“Sure-sure, but we don’t have to do homework right away. I really need to talk to you about something—two things actually. Do you think you could tell Katelynn to back off? She’s suffocating me, and she knows I don’t like her like that.” I nodded, and he took a deep breath. “Okay. But there’s something else.” I glanced over at him. “You know how I feel about you.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he shook his head. “I know you’re afraid of being anything more than friends, but you can’t tell me you’re not a little curious to see what it’d be like to be mine,” he whispered, suddenly way too close.

“Lance, stop,” I begged, tired of hearing that. “You’re seventeen, but I’m only fifteen. You’re more ready for that than I am, and you know it.”

He scowled, narrowing his eyes. He always got so mad. “That’s bullshit, and you know it!” He lashed out and caught my wrist. I forced my breaths to even out, glaring at him. He let go, looking down. “Where does your dad keep his beer?”

I pointed to the kitchen, biting my tongue as he ambled out of the room with his backpack, his head hanging. He’d always had anger problems, and he’d been an alcoholic since he was sixteen. I didn’t get worried until he’d been gone for over an hour. We were the only ones at my house since my parents were never home and my siblings were spending time with some friends.

I walked quietly into the kitchen, calling his name. I saw him sitting at the table, his face planted into the wood with quite a few empty beer cans on the floor around him as well as a gun beside his head. I didn’t want to know where that came from. I was getting worried, but he glanced up, looking at me through weary eyes. They lit up as he jumped to his feet, pulling me into his arms.

“Hey, baby,” he whispered, his breath reeking of alcohol. I scrunched my nose in disgust.

“Lance, you smell awful,” I told him, prying his hands off of me.

He scowled. “You need to loosen up, love,” he told me, pulling me back to him. He tried to kiss me, but he missed.

“You’re drunk,” I informed him.

“You’re sexy.”

“Oh, my God,” I groaned. “Lance, let go of me. We’re friends, remember?”

“But I love you—I’m in love with you. Don’t you want to keep me happy? I’m your best friend,” he slurred, jerking himself from me suddenly. “Huh, sexy?”

“I think you should go home.”

“There’s someone else isn’t there?” he screamed at me, his eyes narrowing.

“What? No! I told you already—I don’t want a boyfriend now!”

“Stop lying to me!” he hissed through clenched teeth, grabbing the gun from the table and roughly catching my arm. “I swear to God you had better stop fucking with me!”

“Stop!” I begged, not able to stop trembling. I tried to pull myself from him, but I felt the gun press to the side of my head. “Please.”

“You better fucking love me!” he shouted, tears falling out of his eyes. “If you don’t I’ll kill you and myself right now! Don’t think I won’t do it!” His finger was trembling as he put it on the trigger.

“Please,” I whispered, begging him to stop. I slammed my eyes shut, praying for someone to hear the shouting and call the police.

“Goddamn it!” he shouted, letting go of me and knocking a glass jar off of the table. It shattered and I cried out. He smiled suddenly, trying to hug me.

But I took off running down the hall. He shot the gun, but he missed—luckily. I slammed the door shut behind me, grabbing the phone and calling the police for myself. He was pounding on the door, demanding that I opened it that second. I curled into a ball in the corner, covering my ears and trying to think of anything but where I was.

I felt arms wrap around me, and it was only then that I realized that I had been trembling. I thanked Marcy, smiling.

“They finally came. But it was only his first offense, so they put this ankle bracelet thing on him. It kept track of if he was drinking or not. He begged me to forgive him, and he said that he didn’t remember anything that happened that day. I mean, he was my best friend. I couldn’t just leave him.”

“So what did you do?” Marcy asked, more wrapped up in my story than Darius, who was glancing around the room looking rather bored. I didn’t care too much, though.

“That day really changed me,” I told her. “I got really jumpy and paranoid. I flinched whenever someone moved. I started crying for no reason, and I’d wake up screaming every night... But, like I said, I had to forgive my best friend. Every day, right after school, I would go to his house and just stay with him. I didn’t realize that while I was gone my dad was taking out all of his anger on my brothers and Katelynn. I guess I really did abandon them, but at the time I just wanted to help my friend through this. Katelynn wasn’t too mad about the beatings, but she did care about how much Lance liked me. She started to hate me just because of that—as if she wanted to be the one with the gun held to her head!”

“Gracie, why don’t you two talk anymore?” she asked, looking at the door for some reason.

“He got tired of waiting for me, which was a good thing. He’s known as a man-whore at our school—but a hot one nonetheless. He decided that if I wouldn’t sleep with him, then we couldn’t be friends. It hurt, but I still had Abigail and then I later met Robbie. He’s gay, so don’t worry, Darius,” I teased. He rolled his eyes at me.

“Are you guys home?” my mother asked, stepping through the front door. She smiled when she saw me, but narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Now this I actually care about,” Darius told anyone who cared to listen, standing up suddenly.

And today had started out so promising.