Shut Your Eyes

I wasn’t aware that leaving Maggie with Sidney meant that she would be getting kidnapped.

On one hand, I was happy that they’d finally wandered off alone – but on the other hand, I’d just let Sidney Crosby wander off alone with my sister. This had never been an issue for me before, but now it was, and I was handling it the only way I knew how – copious amounts of alcohol.

Alright, maybe not that much alcohol, but I did wish the bartender at the restaurant would hurry up with my drink.

“You need to calm down, Max.” Kris suggested while he waited with me by the bar.

“I am calm.”

“Then stop white-knuckling the edge of the bar.”

My fingers straightened out uneasily. Kris chuckled and shook his head.

“I thought this was what you wanted, you know, Maggie being happy and all that.”

“I do want her to be happy.” I mumbled as I took a sip of the drink the bartender had just slid in front of me.

“Well then you’ll have to get used to her being around Sid.”

I made a face and grumbled a bit. Even though I wanted Maggie to be happy more than just about anything, I’d like her to be happy somewhere that I could keep my eye on her.

“Speaking of Maggie,” Kris continued with a lowered voice, “what exactly is the plan for tomorrow?”

I looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, all you told me is that we’re going up there to see Maggie’s ex – you never said why, or what we were going to do once we saw him.”

I glanced around to see if anyone was going to walk up from the table that we were all sitting at together before looking back at Kris with a heavy sigh. “Gavin keeps calling her. I don’t know how he got her number, quite frankly – I don’t really care how he got her number, but I know he needs to stop.”

Kris furrowed his brows. “What does he say when he calls?”

“Oh the usual. Half of the time he’s apologizing, the other half he’s…” My voice trailed off slowly and I took another sip of my drink. Kris seemed to get the hint.

The mere thought of Maggie having to spend one more day afraid to pick up the phone made me sick to my stomach. Kris looked like he wanted to say something helpful – something to make me feel better – but I didn’t need him to console me. I didn’t need consolation. I needed revenge.

I shook my head. “She shouldn’t have to live like this.”

Knocking back the rest of my drink, I left the empty glass on the bar and turned back towards the table. “And after tomorrow – she won’t have to.”



I woke up early the next morning with Kris calling me to say he was right outside. I let him in quietly, gesturing towards Maggie’s room with a nod.

“She’s still asleep. I’m going to let her know we’re leaving.”

He nodded and took himself into the kitchen to wait.

I wandered into Maggie’s room, pushing open the door with a quiet creak. Her room was still dark, and I could see her small frame curled up underneath layers of blankets and surrounded by too many pillows. The bright blue glow of the clock by her bed told me that it was quarter till six, and I didn’t expect her to be awake anytime soon.

I padded over to her bed and gently nudged her shoulder. She moved, trying to burrow even deeper into the mattress. I just kept nudging her.

“Maggie, Kris et moi partons.” (Maggie, Kris and I are leaving.)

She mumbled something in response, but I had no clue what it was. I leaned in and kissed the tiny bit of wild, curly hair that peeked out from underneath the covers. A hand reached out from under the covers and blindly searched around till it hit me in the side of the face. She patted my cheek a couple of times before tucking her arm back underneath the blankets.

“Je t'aime, Mags.”

She again mumbled something that I couldn’t decipher, but instead of asking her to repeat it I simply walked back out of her room and shut the door behind me with a click.

Kris had poured himself a cup of coffee and was leaning up against the counter waiting for me.

“Ready to go?”

I grabbed my keys off of the counter and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The drive to Philly didn’t take any longer than it normally did, but it certainly felt longer. Every stretch of highway seemed to drag on endlessly. Minutes felt like hours as Kris and I rode down the highway in silence. We had the radio on, but the overwhelming tension in the air drowned out the noise.

Something bad was going to happen.

I just knew it. Kris did too – I could tell from the way he sighed quietly every now and then. He knew that whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to be good, but he’d signed up for it – good or bad.

I didn’t even know if he would be there. According to Maggie, he worked at a law office, which to me meant that he would be gone from the hours of nine to five. But Maggie had also told me about his little drinking problem – and alcoholics rarely showed up to work on time.

Either way, I wasn’t leaving without the rest of Maggie’s things. I’d always teased Maggie about being a border-line packrat, and I knew that there was no way all of her things had fit into that duffle bag she’d showed up on the front stoop with. And since there was no way I was going to let her go back and get them herself, it really only left one option.

Kris turned towards me with a pensive look on his face. “What’re you going to do to him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Gavin. What are you going to do to him? I mean - I didn’t sign up to drive for five hours to talk to the bastard.”

At least Kris was on the same page that I was.

I sighed and glanced at him. “Kris, if you had a baby sister – one baby sister – and some guy decided that it would be alright not only to beat the life out of her for years, but also to take her away from her family and her friends so she had no one but him, what would you do to him?”

Kris thought it over with a dark look in his eyes before finally responding, “I’d kill him.”

“Take that feeling and try to bring it down to just under illegal.”

“Beat the shit out of him and threaten his life?” He questioned.

I merged into the exit lane for Philadelphia and looked back over at him.

“Bingo.”



We pulled into the parking lot of Maggie’s apartment complex at half past ten. I’d only been here once before, and that was last Christmas when I’d had to force Maggie to come on our Christmas road trip. Gavin hadn’t been at home, and I did everything but throw her over my shoulder and carry her to get her into the damn car.

She fought me tooth and nail, saying something about Gavin wanting to stay in Philly for the holidays, but I was having none of it. Looking back at it now, it was probably a terrible decision on my part – a decision that Maggie had no doubt paid a price for – but at the time it seemed like the only thing that mattered. She had to be home for Christmas for it to feel like the holidays, and I made sure that she was.

Kris must have noticed the blank stare on my face as we sat in the parking lot with the car running,
because he turned to look at me with one eyebrow raised in confusion. “Second thoughts?”

I glanced over at him and shook my head. I was too busy thinking about my little sister covered in bruises to have second thoughts.

He nodded and moved to get out of the car. “Okay then.”

I followed his actions and climbed out of the driver’s seat, taking a second to stretch my legs a bit before heading up to the apartment. Kris was standing by the car and staring up at the high-rise before us.

“This is a nice building.” He commented dryly.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “So?”

“So, I just didn’t expect someone who beats his girlfriend to be living somewhere normal.”

“Where do you think they live? Underground?” I asked sarcastically as I brushed past him towards the entrance.

I wasn’t watching him, but I could practically hear him make a face at me while he kept any comments he wanted to make, to himself. We walked into the warm foyer of the apartment building, and I immediately made a turn for the elevators while Kris followed behind me.

The trip up to the seventh floor took entirely too damn long in my opinion. The elevator climbed along its cables slowly, and the floor numbers ticked by at a sluggish pace. Kris’ foot tapped anxiously against the floor, but he never said a word – choosing to stare up at the ceiling instead of staring over at me.

Finally we made it.

Stepping out onto the stable floor ahead of us, I took a moment to remember whether Maggie’s apartment was left or right down the long hallway. After taking a cue from the door numbers around us, I led Kris down the left side of the corridor – stopping only once we reached the door with a large metal 8 on the front of it.

We stood there for a long time – staring it down like we could will it open with our minds.

“Ready?” Kris finally asked as he held out a hand to rap on the door a few times.

I nodded. It was time to finish this – it had gone on for far too long.

He knocked, more forcefully than I expected him to.

A quiet moment went by.

I knocked the next time. My fist pounded against the door like the building was on fire, but no one answered.

Kris looked over at me, a slightly disappointed look on his face. “What should we do now?”

I didn’t drive five hours to stare at a door, so I did the only thing I knew to do.

“Back up.”

“Max,” Kris warned seriously.

“Back the hell up.”

Kris’ eyes bore into mine, but he sighed heavily and moved out of my way. I backed myself up to the wall, squared up my body, held my breath, and ran for it.

The door cracked against my body and popped open easily. I fell into the apartment, landing on the floor with a heavy thud. Kris stared at me in disbelief from the doorway – nothing left but a splintered door jam with a broken door barely hanging on by the hinges.

“I’m going to jail.” He muttered as he wandered into the apartment, stepping over my body as he went.

“No one’s going to jail.” I said as I got up off of the ground. “I thought I smelled gas coming from the apartment.”

He rolled his eyes. Kris was awkwardly standing in the living room, unsure of what to do with himself. “What do we do now?”

“Get the rest of her stuff, I guess.” I looked around. “Should we start here?”

“Maybe we should start with stuff we know is hers.” Kris suggested lightly. “Like her clothes and stuff.”

I could tell he was uncomfortable, I was too. I felt like I was intruding on something intensely personal, and I didn’t know how Maggie would feel if she knew we were here. Nevertheless, we were here. No going back now.

Kris followed me back through a hallway – I assumed Maggie’s room was waiting at the end. The apartment was surprisingly clean. Nothing was out of place; everything was arranged neatly on side tables and counters. The rugs were straight on the hardwood, and I could tell Maggie had decorated the place. It had her touch, as sad as that touch seemed.

I pushed open the door at the end of the hallway and walked into the bedroom. The room looked dead, like a hospital room. Everything was straightened to a painful degree, even the bedspread was tucked tightly under the mattress. There were no pictures on the walls or sitting on the bedside tables. The whole room was cold.

Kris had opened the closet and pulled out a suitcase that had Maggie’s luggage tag on it and brought it over to me. “Do you want closet or bureau?”

“Bureau – I don’t want you looking at her underwear.”

He scoffed. “And you do?”

I looked back at the closet that was filled with safe things like sweaters and shirts. He had a point.

I shoved the suitcase at him. “Keep your eyes closed while you’re tossing stuff in there.”