Behind the Façade

--------Carson----------
I was right to worry about what to tell Hunter about my newest injuries. The next time I saw him, three days later, he noticed the limp and my bruised jaw immediately. Even after three days – I had faked sick to give my leg time to heal, in which time I hadn’t seen my father at all – when my limp was almost imperceptible and the purple bruises that lined my jaw were perfectly concealed, he pointed it out right away.

“Carson, what happened this time? Your jaw, and…oh Jesus, Carson. Why are you limping?” he asked, grabbing my shoulder, worry in his eyes. It didn’t surprise me, but did amaze me, how he noticed. How he cared. When people saw me, they saw a girl not as pretty as her best friend, who got perfect grades in all of her classes, and who always left a party early. They saw a girl whose plainness allowed her to fade into the background and just become another prop from a scene. A girl who tried to joke about everything. They saw a girl with straight brown hair and pale skin, a girl with brown eyes. But they never looked close enough to really see her. They never noticed that behind her perfect façade there was a girl who was beaten every night, whose mother left her when she was eleven, whose sister was blinded by her father and his reckless violence. They never saw that her perfect smiles were always fake; they never heard her perfect, steady voice falter, they never saw that behind a mountain of concealer there was a face full of painful bruises, and they never saw that her eyes were lifeless and broken.

Hunter did.

“Carson, what happened?” he asked again. Fortunately I had already picked my excuse.

“It's nothing, Hunter. Last night, when I was going to bed, Brianna was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her. So I didn’t turn on the light, and when I was climbing the stairs up to my room, and I kind of tripped over a pair of sneakers I’d left out. Bruised my shin and banged my jaw.” The trick to lying was adding details, but not to go overboard.

“Huh,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Really.” I guess I wasn’t as good at lying as I thought. Or maybe it was just Hunter.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You know, just because we’re not playing truth anymore doesn’t mean you can lie to me.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m telling the truth. Now let’s go inside.” I took his arm and pulled him to the stage where the rest of the band and Savannah were currently taking a break, eating pizza over grease-stained song sheets.

“Carson!” Savannah shrieked, shifting her position in Mark’s lap. “Come on over, this pizza is delicious!”

“Hey babe,” Logan grinned as I sat down next to him. “Sorry you were sick with… with the… what was it again?”

“Just a cold,” I said. He slid his arm around my waist and leaned in to kiss me, but I instinctively pulled away. A look of jealousy flashed in his eyes and I started to panic before I thought of an excuse. “No, no, no,” I giggled, wiggling a finger at him. “You don’t want my cold!”

“We can share it,” he said, trying to kiss me again.

“No,” I laughed, pushing him away. “I don’t want to get you sick, Lo.”

“Hey guys,” said the stage manager Tom, entering the room. “I got you guys a gig. The Art Gala opening in New York. Two weeks from today. And they need you guys to have three new songs, alright?” the guys erupted in cheers and their hands clapped together in high-fives.

“We’ll get it done, Tom,” Hunter said coolly, still standing in the doorway.

“This is fantastic!” Savannah cried. “Can Carson and I come too? That would be amazing!”

“Yeah, baby,” Mark said. “Of course you can.”

“Carson?” Logan says, turning to me. “What do you think?”

“I can’t leave Brianna. I really can’t. So I don't think so.”

"Brianna will be fine with your mom and dad, she's a big girl," Logan said, and I froze up, fighting the urge to slap him for causing the pain that just hit me.

"My dad, and no. He- he works a lot, and she needs a lot of special care, because she's blind, and needs special care," I sputtered out the words, knowing full well that Hunter was behind me, completely un-fooled.

“Why don’t you bring Brianna?” Hunter suggested, throwing me off guard. “We all like her, and we wouldn’t want you stay home.”

“Then I guess that could work,” I said hesitantly, wondering how I would ever explain leaving with Brianna for New York. Of course, I hadn’t seen my father since the episode with the gun. As far as I knew, he was so drunk in a bar somewhere he didn’t know where he was; or he was dead in some alley. Either way, nobody could know. If he had left us and gotten so drunk he couldn’t get home to take care of us, that would mean foster homes. If he was dead, that would mean foster homes. And I didn’t know where he was, so there was no way to tell which was true or make sure nobody else found him and reported anything. Brianna and I could never be taken away from each other. Ever.