Don't Touch...

Could it get any worse? She was so… weird. Everyone knew it. The watched her as she walked down the hallways, eyeing her as if they’d never seen a human before. Audrey had been taking more medication than ever lately, she saw her counselor every other day. They were always watching her. Always. She had no privacy. They knew, they knew about the kiss, they thought she was a freak. She was unnatural. She had kissed her brother. She didn’t know how they knew, but they knew. She could feel it.

“You’re getting paranoid Audrey.” Mr. Jake said Friday afternoon.

Audrey shook her head. He didn’t know. He didn’t see them.

“I’m not paranoid,” She snapped.

“Audrey…” Mr. Jake stated calmly.

“You don’t know what it’s like! All you know is what you’ve read in books! You have no idea how I feel every day of my life! You don’t know how it feels to have absolutely no control, to feel like everything you do is wrong. You just don’t understand.”

Audrey watched as Mr. Jake pulled out a yellow slip of paper and started rambling about the new medication he was going to put her on. She shook her head vigorously.

“I don’t want any more medication.”

“This will help Audrey.”

“No, it won’t. It’s never helped. Just give up. I’m a lost cause.”

Audrey shouldered her bag and walked from the room. Mr. Jake was paid to let her yell at him, paid to keep her secrets, paid not to judge. Monday she would go back into his office and apologize. She’d take the prescription. Everything would be fine again.

She took deep breaths. Was this really how she wanted to live the rest of her life? Jacked up on meds like a psychopath because she couldn’t be normal without them? There had to be another way. There just had to be.

When she got home a new car was in a drive way, one Audrey had never seen. Voices were heard through the open windows. The loud angry voices of men in an argument. Audrey stepped inside and flinched instantly, the fighting was much louder in here.

Two men stood in the living room, hunched towards each other, screaming. Rick’s face was visibly red. Mother sat on the couch, her head in her hands.

“Mark, she’s fine. Don’t worry.” Mother murmured to her feet.

“You don’t know anything about her Kelly.” Growled the man with his back to Audrey.

Audrey’s stomach twisted. Dad.

“Don’t talk to my wife like that!” Rick yelled.

Dad turned to Rick. Audrey knew the look he was giving Rick. It was the look he only ever used when defending Audrey. An exasperated yet angry look. She wrapped her arms around her middle and stood frozen.

“Have either of you had even the slightest concern about her? You completely uprooted her with barely two weeks’ notice. She’s living with new people, going to a new school. Have either of you even spoken to her new counselor?” Dad had calmed down the slightest bit, but his body was tensed, ready for a fight.

Rick was big, but Dad was muscled and trained to use his muscle. If it came down to a fist fight Audrey had no doubt her Dad would win. Though she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She didn’t hate Rick and didn’t want to see him hurt.

“Audrey can take care of herself.” Mother stated.

Dad laughed, it was the same kind of mirthless laugh Audrey had given Garret just a few weeks ago. He looked at Mother as if she had gone insane. Audrey gripped the sides of her shirt. She wasn’t sure how she felt about them talking about her like this.

“She’s on five different medications. She’s having anxiety attacks on a regular basis, she hasn’t been eating. Do you even look at her anymore? The stress you put on her with this move has just about given her stomache ulsers, and now, she’s paranoid.”

There was that word again. Paranoid. Audrey didn’t like to think she was paranoid. She could feel her nails dig into her sides where she gripped her shirt as the word ran through her mind. Paranoid.

“No she’s not.” Denied Mother.

Dad ran his hands through his dark hair. Rick seemed to be at a loss for words. And then, there was Garret, he came up behind Audrey. Loud enough that she could hear him and he wouldn’t surprise her, but quiet enough that no one in the living room would know they were there.

“We shouldn’t be listening to this.” Garret murmured. Audrey nodded and let him guide her upstairs, his hand barely hovering over her shoulder. “They’ve been fighting for an hour. It’s ridiculous.”

“What are they fighting about?” Audrey asked as she sat back on her bed.

“Your Dad wants you to move in with him.”

Audrey’s eyes widened and her heart soared. This was what she had been wanting! If she could only speak to Mother and Dad… then she could tell them what she wanted to do.

“He thinks Kelly is neglecting you.” Garret Continued. “But when you’re a teenager don’t you want your parents to leave you alone? I hate it when my dad gets all up in my business.”

It was obvious that Garret understood nothing about Audrey. She craved attention from her Mother, because her Mother understood things most others didn’t. Her Mother had always taken Audrey’s feelings into consideration, until this marriage. Now, Audrey’s Mother barely gave her a second glance.

Before The Marriage, Mother would have dropped everything to get a refill of whatever medication Audrey needed. She would have done just about anything Audrey needed her to do . But now… Now Mother was too absorbed in her relationship to even care.

Audrey heard a crash and the slam of a door. She leapt to her window to see that her Dad was getting in his car and driving away. Tears crept up in her eyes; she didn’t even get to say anything to him. He would come back. He would have to come back.

“I’m going to see if everything’s okay…” Garret murmured.

Audrey would not cry. She refused to cry any more. Instead, she occupied herself with arranging the shelf of poetry books in alphabetical order by author and title. It was a short job though, considering how impeccable her room already was. So she resorted to pulling her homework from her bag and sorting it by due date on her desk.

Garret returned with a grim look on his face. “Dad broke a vase… Kelly’s in tears… I think she’s going to let you move in with him.”

“My Dad’s not a bad person.” Audrey defended instantly.

“I didn’t say he was…”

“No, but you’re thinking it. The way you look says you are. He’s not a bad person. He- He’s just responsible.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Garret shook his head.

Audrey returned to her bed. “Mother gets careless. She’ll do things on impulse and not think of the consequences.” Audrey traced the flower pattern of her bedspread. “When I was younger, she would move us from place to place a lot; sometimes because she liked the change, other times to get away from a bad boyfriend.”

Talking about Mother was easy. Not like talking about herself. Because Mother didn’t care what people thought. A trait Audrey never inherited. People wouldn’t really judge her for what her Mother had done. Or maybe they would… But Garret… Garret probably wouldn’t.

“I think that’s where this came from,” Audrey waved an arm around at her room, all the items alphabetized, labeled, perfectly straight, and in height order.

“What? Your OCD?”Garret asked. Audrey flinched and nodded. “So where’d the other stuff come from? Like… your fear of germs and… people and stuff?”

She shrugged. Audrey had never liked people, not since she could remember. But the germs? That was because of one of Mother’s boyfriends. Garret and Rick were nothing compared to him. He was filthy. A construction worker… or sewer fixer or something. Audrey tried not to remember.

“Life.”

Garret didn’t really care about these things. He loved to poke her, tilt picture frames, spit, and breathe. Not that you could help breathing. But breathing on people… it was just gross. He would do anything to annoy her.

Audrey didn’t want to talk anymore. She slid under her covers and curled up. She could feel Garret’s eyes on her, wondering what she was doing. But Audrey didn’t care at the moment, she didn’t want to care. She just wanted to sleep. But the feel of Garret’s gaze had her remembering the feel of everyone’s eyes on her at school. They all knew she was a freak. All of them.

Paranoid.

I am not paranoid, Audrey thought. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Dad would know what to do; he wouldn’t think she was paranoid. Cracking her eyes open slightly, Audrey gazed at the orange medicine bottles littering her bedside table. Maybe she should just throw them out. Maybe they were what was causing what Mr. Jake thought was Audrey’s paranoia.

She didn’t know how long she lay there in complete silence while she waited for sleep, but it was a long time. Her mind kept replaying conversations from her entire life. Counselors talking to her Mother, Doctors talking to her Mother, Audrey talking to counselors and doctors, Audrey talking to her Mother, like some wicked replay of how much of a freak she truly was.

Fingers grazed her cheek, “Please don’t leave me.” Garret whispered. “I know you want to move in with your Dad but please. Please, please, don’t leave me.”