A Tub of Cold Water

The first day of freshman year was the first time I saw him. He was standing only twenty feet from me, his pale jade eyes downcast and roaming the flecks of lively color on the white floor. He was leaning back against the wall with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his stormy grey hoodie, the zipper pulled up to his navel, and beyond that was his wrinkled white V-neck and dark denim straight legs. His hair was a bedridden mess and no hope was evident in the tangled strands of raven curls. His sleeves were pushed up to the middle of his forearms and the dashes that lined all the way up to his elbow were dark reddish brown and crusty with scabs.

His name was Sawyer Beckett. He was suicidal and didn't care who knew. He didn’t try to cover up the scars, he didn’t try to shield them with his sleeves, and the next day, the scars were always darker and scabbing over. He was either arrogant or oblivious. Sometimes, I thought he was both.

That first year of high school, I stayed away from Sawyer at a very comfortable distance, until it came to Culinary Arts, where we were partners. He never really said anything to me that was worth documenting—just ingredient directions and small talk about the weather and how tiresome the school day was. He never paid me much mind or attention, and I couldn’t help but stare and admire the tainted beauty that became him.

It was no secret that Sawyer Beckett was attractive, and to a small lump of girls, the fact that he had scars staining his perfect image made him all the more beautiful. Other than that, no one else really glanced his way. If he wasn’t being bullied, he was a budding wallflower, but because a nice fan club of girls did find him attractive, he never truly blossomed.

When sophomore year came around, I found that I couldn’t focus on the beauty of Sawyer, because he spent four months in a psychiatric ward somewhere in the city. To the people of this small town of East Jesus Nowhere, that was like shipping him off to Mars.

I also couldn’t focus on him because that was the year that I fell victim to my own form of self-hatred and life-absorbing depression. One night in December, I gained the courage to kick the chair from my feet and drop toward my knees, allowing the noose to tighten and choke me. Even though to me it felt biblical, my mother—who had walked in to place a kiss against my temple to bid me goodnight—didn’t feel the same way. In fact, she had said that it was the most selfish act I had ever attempted.

Within the next week, she had separated from my father and moved out of the house. She claimed that she blamed herself for the way that I acted out, but I recognized it as the perfect opportunity for an escape clause. Dad called their relationship love, but she called it a bust. She was always selfish and conceited. She was always receiving and never giving. She was always the victim and never the assailant.

A month after she left was when my father started turning his palm to my skin. He never took mercy on me because he blamed me for my mother walking out on us. He would cry while he hit me, blubbering old stories that illuminated their love as one that should be recorded down in history. After a couple of months, the cries turned into snarls of abhorrence and overwhelming frustration.

Now, in junior year I was still suffering at home while my mother sent a monthly postcard with her, her fiancé, and her newly inherited daughter Leila printed with their wide smiles, sending her love, if you could even call it that. He still hit me when I messed up, or just because he could, as he so commonly stated.

Sawyer was back at school, caught up, and in a nice amount of my classes. I called this luck, but still, those scars that made his beauty scared me.

He was seated beside me in the far-left of the English classroom, his arms stretched out over his desk as those pale green eyes regarded me through his peripherals. I wanted to ask him what he was staring at and if he liked what he saw, but my tongue felt dry and my mouth tasted sour.

When he looked at me, the blood in my veins froze to a frostbitten temperature and my skin scorched a deep crimson. He could notice the effect he had on me, but if he did, he didn’t make it obvious. His eyes would dance up the clear, soft, stainless skin of the inside of my forearm, as if he were waiting for his scars to ink into my arms. Or maybe he was admiring my clear skin where a solid amount of girls admired his tainted dashes?

I watched him, but he didn’t notice, couldn’t care to notice. It heated my skin even more when he slowly reached his slender fingers out to touch my skin. Even though I was secretly craving the touch of his sliced middle finger against the bright blue vein of my arm, I inched it closer to the middle of my desk.

“Can I help you?” I whispered with a twinge of fear instead of clear confusion or outrage.

His eyes flicked up to dance over the contours of my face, drinking in the ginger waves of hair that floated down and around my shoulders, the large freckle that rested against the left side of my neck, and then finally settling on my hazel eyes. That voice was deep and soft, a perfect contradiction to everything that was Sawyer.

“No.” He said soundly while a piece of a shadowy curl swooped down over his pale eyes. “Just… admiring.”

I curled my arm against my chest and rubbed my fingers against the inside of my arm while I stared at him, watching his eyes drink in my pale skin and dilate to the look of confusion I wore. “It looked more than admiring to me.”

Was I angry? I didn’t feel angry, yet my voice concluded that I was. I was confused, no doubt, but angry was a bit extreme. He hadn’t done anything to harm me, and I couldn’t really complain that he wanted to reach over and touch my smooth skin. I should have taken it more as a compliment than anything else, truthfully.

Right when I was about to amend for my rude statement, Sawyer cleared his throat and slowly drew his arm back onto his desktop. “My apologies, then, if it was such a burden to you.”

It was at that point that I didn’t feel guilty for being angry at him. Turning my head away from Sawyer, my eyes rested on a tall, dark-haired, middle-aged man named Mr. Spenson. He was bouncing an orange ball against the floor before he chucked it at Sawyer.

Reaching his hand in front of his face, Sawyer gripped the ball tightly, making his scars flex and threaten to break open once more. Mr. Spenson smiled approvingly and jerked his head. “Stand up.”

Obeying, Sawyer slipped from his seat and stood with his arms in front of him as he tossed the ball between each hand. “Now what?”

“Now, tell me something about yourself and then toss the ball to someone else.” Mr. Spenson said the words and rolled his eyes as if it were blatantly obvious to everyone in the room but Sawyer.

Bouncing the ball into the thinly carpeted floor, Sawyer pursed his lip while he roamed the contours of his mind for something to share with the class. After another thirty seconds, he’d taken to tossing the ball into the air instead of the ground and finally spoke only loud enough for the teacher to hear.

“I love English. It’s my favorite subject. I love writing prose and poetry, but I’ve never attempted anything outside of the classroom.” Sawyer stared at the teacher, his pale eyes brightening to the subject of his words. Turning toward me, he tossed the ball up and drew his hands behind his back. “You’re up, ginger.”

Scrambling to my feet, I grasped the ball in both hands and pressed it to my chest to ensure that I had a good enough grip on it. I inclined my hands and looked around at the class as they openly gawked at me.

“Um, I’m Aubrey Ackman. Hi. I love listening to music. It’s all I really do, no matter where I am. Um, here.” I stuttered as I tossed the ball across the room to someone else.

I’d never done well in crowds, never exceeded at public speaking, and I hated being put on the spot. Something told me that perhaps Sawyer had known that. Then again, I probably thought that way for some other unknown reason that concluded in my mind that I possessed some of his attention.

Through the remainder of the hour, I could still see his eyes flicking toward me and resting there. I could feel his pale green stare boring into my face, his eyes sitting still. Again, I wanted to turn toward him and ask him if there was something I could do for him because I couldn’t stand him staring at me discreetly. And again, my tongue shriveled and dried up and my mouth tasted sour of something I couldn’t describe.

So, as a fallback, I turned my eyes toward him and stared back. My gaze was wavering and unsteady, but I managed to stare at him for a few seconds before faltering. I’d begun to wonder why he hadn’t stared at me like this throughout my freshman year, why he hadn’t turned his attention to me before, but now seemed completely spellbound.

Some things chose not to make sense in this world. This just happened to be another unsolved mystery. Yet, still, throughout the rest of seventh hour, Sawyer Beckett stared a relentless hole through the side of my head.

__________________________________________________

At three-thirty, I was finally making my way off my bus and down my street. I could feel my heart pumping an unsteady beat through my chest and sweat dewing up on the back of my neck. It wasn’t the heat, I wasn’t bothered by that, it was just the fact that my father may or may not be at home somewhere. I needed to be cautious, because if he was home, I’d sure have a beating for not cleaning the kitchen this morning.

To my very unsteady heart, there was no black Ford Focus in the driveway and automatically, I released the breath I had been holding for the last thirty seconds. Jogging across the dark green front lawn, I stopped outside my basement window and pulled it up with a grunt. After I had slipped inside and pulled it closed, I dropped my bag down onto my tan hand-me-down couch and tripped over onto my worn-in futon.

Still trying to calm my erratic heart, I trudged over and flipped my ancient computer to life and scurried silently up the stairs to my door. Unlocking it, opening and closing it all in the same second, I went to the mail box outside the front door.

Grabbing the first article, I dropped the other insignificant contents down onto the end table beside the black leather recliner. On the front, there was a woman with strawberry blonde hair and the biggest Hallmark smile, cradling a blonde daughter who couldn’t be older than three. The smile on the little girl’s face could almost force a giggle through your lips and melt the coldest of hearts. The tall dark-haired man standing with his arm lazily thrown over the woman’s shoulders posed a serious look with a loose, crooked smile. He looked like something pulled straight from the Sexy Doctor section of any dirty magazine. He could almost make you jealous that you weren’t hanging off his arm. The whole Hallmark scene could almost push a welcomed giggle through your lips and burst a face-enveloping grin in a small wake of appreciation of your own family.

But, I said almost. A tear had wedged itself out of my left duct and I rubbed it away with the heel of my hand before my cheeks scorched a soft scarlet. Flipping it over so I didn’t have to see their happy, Hallmark faces, I read the inscription.

My dearest little bear,

Stop being such a ghost and pick up the phone. Call me, chick lit, I want to know how you’re doing, I want to know what you’ve been up to. You really do need to know that I love you more and more every day. I’d do anything for you.
Love, mama bear.

As a sob bubbled up my throat, I swallowed it back with much difficulty before snarling, “Liar.”

P. S. Little Leila’s birthday is coming up in a couple months. It’s only once that she’ll ever turn three and I want to share that with you. Maybe you could fly over and stay with us for a week. It’ll be fun. Stay in touch, darling.

Beneath that were her number and a small note reading “in case you forgot your numbers” which forced an exaggerated eye-roll from me. Ripping the postcard into four, I moved into the kitchen and dunked it into the trash can.

Spinning on the pad of my foot, I speed-walked back to my bedroom door before thrusting it closed behind me and locking it once more. I jogged down the stairs and fell back against the rolling computer chair and that’s where I let my head drop into my hands and allow tears to consume me for a weak moment.

Moments turned into minutes and those minutes turned into hours before I finally looked back up at the intrusion of headlights illuminating my dark room, with the exception of light that came from my flickering screen of balloons, cubes and spikes. The headlights caught me like a deer until they shut off with a bomb to my insides. It wasn’t before long until I heard the jingling of keys and heavy footsteps walking across the front landing and stopping momentarily at the end table.

Dust spirals shifted down majestically on this very horrific moment in time as the steps stomped off into the kitchen. They paused and my heart rammed so hard into my chest that I couldn’t breathe properly. This moment was suspended in time as realization slammed down on my shoulders and forced me out of the computer chair and onto my knees. I forgot to finish cleaning the kitchen!

Those heavy footsteps picked up into double time as they headed for my bedroom door at the top of the stairs. The door handle jiggled relentlessly as my fingers climbed into my hair where I tugged through a silent sob. Then, the keys were plucked from his pocket once more and my bedroom door shook again and again before being pulled successfully open.

Christopher Ackman was home, but I used to call him Daddy.