Fiend

During that whole week, I remember that Jason was nicer to me. When we needed to partner up in class, he would jump at the opportunity to work with me. When I forgot my lunch money to pay for my food, he paid for it. And even when it would rain outside, he would offer me a ride home.

It was nice to have someone other than Aaron that cared about me, that wouldn’t treat me like I was the scum of the Earth. But in all honesty, I felt…smothered. I couldn’t take the constant niceness. And as psychotic as it sounds, I wished that he would have been mean to me. I wanted him to tell me to get out of his car and drive away at top speed.

When he saw my cuts that one day, it caused his personality to do a complete 180. I no longer believed that there was a mean spirit inside of him.

We were alone in his car, driving back to the one place I wouldn’t go if I had the choice. But the conversation went south very quickly. I couldn’t pretend that this was what I wanted anymore.

“Jason? Can all of this just….stop?”

He gave me a baffled expression, “What? Why?”

“I feel smothered, Jason. I appreciate you being nice to me but I really wish that you would just be…nasty…to me again.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No” maybe I am.

I paused. “I just don’t like this.”

“I feel like if I was going through your situation, I would want someone to be nice to me.” What I noticed over that past week was that Jason had a tendency to hold back his words from me. It was as if what he really wanted to say was too vile to be spoken.

“I do want people to be nice to me, but I don’t want to be suffocated in it. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

We reached my house by this point. He parked out front and wouldn’t look at me as I said goodbye to him. As soon as I got both of my feet on the pavement, he raced away. Why would someone become so upset over that?

When I walked inside of my house, I was praying that my father was still away on one of his business trips. But I already heard his footsteps as I made my way into the living room. He looked disheveled and was pacing back and forth. His cold eyes locked onto me and I froze as I watched my father come closer to me.

“I leave for two fucking days, Marina. Two days. And you manage to get yourself in trouble at school? Maybe you should have been a little smarter and shredded the letter from school like you deleted the message off the answering machine, huh?” He let out a cynical laugh.

“Dad, calm down please.” I had tears welling up in my eyes. I was always afraid of him, especially when he was in this state of mind.

“Calm down? Calm down! Why should I?” He unbuckled his belt from around his waist.

I didn’t look back, I ran. I ran for the door and out of the house. I knew he was right behind me, still with his belt in hand. The tears now falling down my face and this rain was making it even harder to see where I was going. The reoccurring memories I tried to remove from my mind daily. They were catching up to me.

I was helpless. I hit the pavement on my knees and hoped for a miracle. But the miracle never came. My father took me by the arm and dragged me home for the daily routine. In those moments, I learned not to scream because it would have led to more dire circumstances. But I’m sure to this day that in the past, my neighbors heard my screams. No matter how warm and friendly they seemed to be, none of them bothered to call 911.



It was Tuesday, which meant it was the start of the group therapy sessions. Okay, so it wasn’t really a group, it was more like Jason and I were stuck in the same room with Ms. Mays until she said we could leave and were "fit to be members of society".

But it was awkward. As Jason still would not speak to me after the incident in his car. This caused Ms. Mays to struggle in getting us to tell her something, anything about our lives

“Okay. Marina, what was your childhood like?” Ms. Mays always seemed to have a warm smile on her face. It was like she was unable to frown.

“I would rather not talk about it.” I told her as I looked around the room. When I’m nervous, I have a habit of not making eye contact and focusing on unrelated objects.

“Jason?”

He stayed silent, not making eye contact with either of us.

“We won’t be able to get anywhere or go anywhere if we don’t talk out our feelings here.” Ms. Mays at this point was begging us to speak.

But Jason and I still stayed silent.

“Let’s think of it this way then. Jason, Marina told me that you’ve been very mean to her for some reason. Why is that?”

“What? I have been nothing but nice to her!” Jason blurted out.

“Ha, you lost.” I joked. He didn’t laugh.

“I have done everything nice for her this past week ever since I-“ My attention immediately darted over to him. I have never wanted to tell someone to shut up so badly.

“Since you what, Marina?” Intrigued, Ms. Mays leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs.

“Nothing. And Jason, I really hate it when people pity me.”

“I didn’t pity you.” He said through clenched teeth.

“What would you call your little act then?”

“I was helping out a friend in need.” He yelled at me.

“So now I’m friend? This is news to me. Don’t make me laugh, Jason.”

“Maybe if you stopped being such a self-centered bitch Marina, you would open your eyes and realize that you’re not the only one who has issues.”

Not even my father, the man that abused me daily when he was around, had talked to me like that, “how could you say that? I don’t think you have any idea what is it like to be emotionally….abused every day.”

“You would be surprised at what getting to know a person could teach you about someone right? I’m done with this. Can I leave?” Jason stood up from his chair.

“Sit down Jason. Now.” Ms. Mays ordered. “Obviously, there is a very big elephant in the room that needs to be mentioned. It seems like you two are so similar with your problems that your personalities are clashing together.”

“How can you say that when you don’t even know what my problems are?” Jason got closer and looked her in the eyes.

“I can read you like a book.” Ms. Mays snarled back. “Now sit down. We’re only here to discuss the bully issues. But if there is any other problem, like this emotional abuse that is apparently going on, I want to know about it. I have to help you two and this may be the way to solve that issue.”

Jason cackled, “You’ll have better luck discovering the past of a dead corpse before I let you know shit about me.”

He moved swiftly and made sure that he slammed the door behind him. Ms. Mays and I sat there stunned at that outcome. For the first time in my life, I truly believed that I could relate to someone and it was with the one person that I considered to be my enemy.