Heartbeat

I take several deep breaths and a couple of prayers to any god I can think of before stepping into Gerard’s car the next morning. His car is still as dirty as ever; junk food everywhere with undone homework worksheets scattered all around. I climb into the passenger seat and dump my bag onto the floor, close the door and hope inside of my head that he won’t think anything bad.

“Where were you yesterday?” his voice eventually tears through the silence. I listen to it. I don’t know how to tell if it’s angry or not, I don’t know what it sounds like.

I shrug.

“Were you sick?” I still can’t translate his voice.

I shrug again. Shrugs always work. Not an immediate yes or no. Just an alternative to actually answering something.

“I waited for you,” he keeps going. He pulls onto the road that leads to the school. “For twenty minutes, at least.”

I stare at the dashboard and don’t say a word. If I stay silent long enough, he’ll shut up eventually.

“I was late for my first block because I waited that long.”

I can feel my half-digested breakfast curdle and stir inside of my stomach. It burns down to a soupy, acidic liquid and sloshes around inside of my throat.

“They gave me a detention because I was late,” he keeps going. I hear his voice now and it makes me close to peeing my pants like a scared little kid. I wanna skip the ride to school. Jump out of the car right now and run towards the horizon, never looking back. But I can’t.

I have to prepare myself for it. Without looking like I’m moving, I can freeze up my face statue still and stiffen my muscles so the impact of the smack or hit or whatever won’t hurt so much. It will still sting like nothing else, but maybe it won’t make as big as a mark.

“Are you coming to school tomorrow?”

I manage to nod my head. He reaches the school and parks in the student parking lot. I’m about to grab my bag and get out of as fast as I can, but his hand is around my wrist and pulling me back before I can leave. His fingers dig into the bones and the bruises ache, making fingers twitch. I freeze faster than anything, not even moving my eyes away from the door handle I’ve got them locked on to.

“Look at me.” His voice is like my father’s when he’s madder than anything; deep and low and ready to kill.

I can’t look at him. It takes strength I don’t think I have. But my eyes avert over to him and my head slowly turns and it hurts to look at him. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest and I’m ready to scream in fear.

“I hope you know how much of a fuck-up you’re turning into,” he growls. He sounds like a rabid dog ready to pounce and rip to shreds. I can feel nothing inside of my stomach. The food has burned down so much that it’s disintegrated completely, evaporated.

“You know what people say about you?” he goes. “They say you’re gonna come in with a gun. They say that you’re gonna pull a Columbine. You know what that does to me? Then they think shit about me. They think I’m just like you. You hearing me? Those fuckers think I’m just as fucked up as you. You now how humiliating that is? Huh? You piece of shit, you know how humiliating that is?”

The lump in my throat is so big that I think my entire neck is going to snap. Acidic vomit splashes around the inside of my throat, asphyxiating me. I want to run as far as I can, but his hand is on my arm and he’s keeping there on a leash with a small length.

And then it comes and I’m not prepared for it, so fast and harder than any of the others, just smashing onto my face and making my skull shatter into a million pieces. My cheek feels like it’s swelling up and I can feel the red mark already forming and the blood on my tongue and the sting on my gums like my teeth are about to shatter and crumble into a white powder on my tongue.

“And now you don’t even come to school and don’t tell me and get me fucking detention.”

My eye twitches with the sting on my cheek that burns like somebody held a lighter up to it and watched it while it burned at my skin.

“You fucking asshole,” he keeps going. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? Oh, what? Your mommy not hug you enough when you were little? You little prick, you just want attention! You just want people to feel sorry for you!”

His words pierce through the air like sharpened knives, nails falling to the floor with loud, hard, clanking sounds of grating metal. They say words shouldn’t really hurt anybody, but they pierce harder and deeper than an axe wound.

“Cunt.”

His fingers release from my wrist just as he grabs his bag and gets out. He leaves me there in the car, the cold air from the outside world seeping in and freezing my skin. I feel like a hot Pop Tart dropped on a cold kitchen floor, just sitting there with no words left to say.

I pull my hood up over my head and keep it like that for the rest of the day. It keeps my head warm and filters out certain cruel voices as it covers my ears.

I find the psychiatric hospital again by accident. By default, without even realizing it, I set my alarm clock to four in the morning again. I’m up and dressed and on the bus before the sun is even up. The same room is still empty with the bed remade and the floors swept. I steal a pair of pajamas from the laundry basket again and dive in under the covers, not even caring this time if the door is locked or not. I don’t dream. I lay there for a bit, just looking up at the vanilla-colored hushquiet. They’ve turned the heater on because it’s winter. I can’t hear the screaming kid, so it makes it easier to indulge into the silence. It’s so peacefully quiet here, it feels like you could take it in your hands and wrap it around like a blanket.

Maybe I could admit myself here. People have done it before. They’ve admitted themselves to these places and they don’t have to leave until the doctors think they’re cured. I could go to this place and stay here forever, just because I don’t know if it’s possible to be really cured. I’ll be in here and there will be no more whacks or hits or anything else, but it will still be there like a big, too-visible scar, staining my insides. It won’t ever go away. I’d have to have it taken out surgically. Maybe I should ask my father to do that for me, but then he’d find out.

And then they’d all know.

I can imagine my father’s words, easily.

“So, you’re saying he hits you?”
“Yeah.”
“He abuses you?”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“What?”
“You interrupted me during my work time to tell me that?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not even important.”
“Oh…”
“Get out of my office.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”

That’s the thing about high school. In middle school everyone’s supposed to be innocent and not even say a single swear word. And then you get to high school, and they toss you against lockers and beat you up and have guidance counselors there to playact their way into convincing you that they actually give a crap about your issues. You go from little kid to grown-up age in less than a second and it happens just like that. Bam!--Face through the windshield.

I crawl deeper underneath the covers and indulge into the warmth. Underneath the blanket, I can listen to my heartbeat pulsing inside of my head through my ears. It taps at the side of my skull, like my heart is right there inside of my head just beating up against the inside of it. The cold from the outside kicks in through the window and makes me shiver. I bite my lip and scrape off the dying sin with my teeth. It still stings, still doesn’t have any stitches.

The door opens up with a click and I keep myself underneath the blankets.

“Checks.” The nurse closes the door and locks it up again, leaving me in there.

I close my eyes to slip back into my head. Inside of my headworld, I have no wings, but I’m on the balcony of a huge building, standing on the railing and looking down and then just leaping off and falling until I pass out from shock before I even hit the bottom. I only wake up after my head smacks onto the floor when I fall out of the bed again.

I get my clothes back on and catch the bus before the nurses find me again.

My parents are bickering at home, an argument boiling and simmering slowly, building up into a full-blown fight that doesn’t look that safe.

I wonder what would happen if I just blurt it out right there. Would it make them stop fighting?

I can imagine my mother.

“Did you say he hits you?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Did you finish your homework yet?”
“No.”
“Go finish your homework.”

I leave the kitchen with no words.

If I set my alarm clock for an earlier time I can be on the bus so early nobody will even be awake by the time I get there. The nurses glance at me, but once I get into their pajamas, they don’t suspect a thing. If you stare into the whiteness in the rooms long enough, it’ll feel like you’re drowning in it, but it feels better than anything you’ve ever felt before. I could sleep forever.

I almost think about just moving in there. I could pack my bags and admit myself to it and they’d give me a room and I’d be all set. But it’s Gerard who is stopping me.

I forget to set my alarm clock. I wake up at the normal time and Gerard’s car is waiting for me outside. He says nothing inside of the car. There are no hits, but no kisses either. Nothing but pure silence. I almost fall asleep to it, but he gets us to school before that can happen. Inside of the school, Mikey clings onto me like a spider monkey. He talks to me in all the classes we have with each other and sits with me at lunch. He asks me if I want to come over to his house to do homework together if I’m getting such bad grades. He asks me if I plan on joining any sports at all this year. I say nothing and try to pretend that I don’t exist.

He waits in his car for me at the end of the day and still says nothing. My lunch scalds into an ashy material inside of my stomach and splashes up into my throat so much that I think I’m going to throw up all over the glove compartment. I think almost, for a moment, that he’s just going to drive me back to my house, safe and sound. No sex, no whacks, nothing. But when we get back to my house, his glare keep me pinned down the seat, chaining me in, refusing to let me leave.

“So you didn’t come to school again,” he finally says. “For three days straight.”

He turns his car off and jangles the keys in his fingers.

“You said you’d come. And then you didn’t. I was late again.”

I can slip back into my headworld easily when I have the psychiatric hospital on my mind. I can close my eyes and see the white walls and feel the comfortable sheets and blankets and soft pajama pants and hear the screaming kid and the nurse saying “Checks” and every other patient in that place who’s just as fucked up as anyone could ever be, but it’s okay, because it’s meant to be like that because it’s okay to be fucked up in a place like that and I can see it all in my head and it almost makes me smile, how comforting and nice and silent it is and nothing could ever be better than it.

And then before I can even figure out what’s going on, the psychiatric hospital isn’t in my head anymore and I can’t see it or imagine it or smell it or hear it or anything and it’s just gone right when I feel the sting of his palm ramming against my face again and that whole side of my head feels like it’s swelling up and bruising like nothing before and when my head explodes into a million pieces, screaming out in agony, it’s impossible to go back into headworld and the hospital is just gone and I can’t go back to it at all and when my teeth stab into my tongue to suppress the scream of pain, every fiber of anger and rage whistles through my brain faster than anything and I can feel it under my skin, itching through my muscles all the way to my fingertips, just tingling and urging me and I can’t go back to the hospital and I don’t even see it happen before it happens with my fingernails digging so deep into the palm of my hand as my whole hand clasps itself into a fist and it’s just coming coming at his face until I see my knuckles connect with his face and for a moment, time stops and the world freezes up, but then his head smashes up against the window and when I finally snap back to reality, I can already see the red on my fingers and the red smeared on his face and the red coming out of his nose.

I see the red color on my hand and then the red color on his face and once it actually registers into my head what has happened, I think my heart actually stops beating for a moment.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost, with his expression or pure shock, he can’t even believe what just happened.

“What the fuck…” It’s not even a whimper. Not even a whisper. He says it like it’s barely there at all. “What…the…fuck.”

And then I see his face and the red color of the blood is dripping out of his right nostril and all I can do is sit there and watch his expression contort into the most horrible look of something that is beyond rage, beyond anger, but complete wrath. His eyes burn into mine and almost blind me and my stomach drops down into my butt so fast I think I’m going to crap myself.

I can’t even look at him without thinking that the fury in his eyes is going to sink through my skin so much that it will just rip my flesh right off. I tear my eyes away from him and find the door handle and grab my bag, with the last thing I see before I‘m sprinting towards my house, being his arm wrenching out towards me to grab me or rip my whole arm off or rip something else and I’m just running until my legs feel like cold jell-o and when I reach my house and get inside, I lock the door like there’s a robber about to break in. I find the door to our backyard and click the lock on that as well, alongside the door to the deck and the porch and the bathroom door, too, after I belt up to it where I can throw my head into the toilet bowl and finally empty the contents of my stomach so hard that it stings my throat when I’m finally finished with fear of him suddenly bursting through the door, ready to kill, still running through my veins, even colder than the blood itself.