Nine

In all of my years in high school, I don’t remember ever smiling a genuine smile. People saw the fake one plastered on my face all the time. You know the one. The deceiving one where your lips curve upwards a bit too high and maybe your teeth show, maybe it even looks convincing after you’ve done it a few times, but it never touches your eyes. You smile just for the sake of satisfying those around you, but when their faces are turned, it’s wiped away in an instant. You look down, maybe at your anxious fingers or the cell phone always in your hand for this very reason to look occupied, but inside you’re praying with everything you have that no one’s looking. Day in and day out, it becomes a ritual. Why can’t you just admit you’re not okay? Why can’t you just ask for help?

It’s because no one can really help you. Not in the way you need them to. Only you can do that.

It took me too long to realize that myself

At graduation, I only smiled when Logan forced me into a photograph with him. With his hand wound tightly around my waist over my gown, I smiled that same fraudulent smile and the second the flash went off it was gone.

I was nervous someone would notice. But Logan couldn’t tell the difference between that smile and any other, so I was safe.

Everyone in my class seemed so cheerful at the day. I saw them huddled with their families, letting their little siblings wear their caps and their parents kiss their foreheads. I felt no such joy. All I could think of was my mother. She was missing the one moment of my life she had always wanted to see. Graduation was always special to her even if it was just another bump in the road I got over to me. She would tell me not to be modest and that when they day came, I would be proud of my accomplishment. “It’s a milestone, Ava,” she’d say, “It’s a bridge from one stage of your life to the next.” But when the day did come, I felt nothing close to pride. I had no ounce of satisfaction for the crinkled diploma in my hand. All I felt was nostalgia for the song I would never hear again.

Logan understood my longing. As he sat across from me on the floor of his living room the evening after the ceremony, I knew that he understood even if he didn’t say so. He had set a tissue box in front of me so that I could cry cleanly. To say I didn’t appreciate it would be selfish, but it was one of the few times that the small gestures weren’t quite enough for me. I wanted to close the distance between us and nestle into the crook of his neck. I wanted him to hold me for a while.

“Logan?”

He only hummed in response, keeping his eyes glued to the drawing on his lap.

“Can I have a hug?”

“What are you, Ava? Six?”

His scoff made me assume it was just a joke, but it made me think twice about my request. Somehow the replay of the words in my head did sound childish after all. Maybe it had been an immature thing to ask for. But as my eyes stared down at the fingers in my lap, I still wished they could be intertwined with someone’s other than my own.

Logan must have grown tired of my moping because I heard him sigh.

“Okay, fine. Two minutes.”

He extended one of his arms and quickly, before he changed his mind, I crossed the room.

Getting close to Logan was often an all-or-nothing game. Sometimes, he would make me spend all evening in his arms, usually upstairs on his bed and usually while he kissed me. Other times, he didn’t care for it at all, like when he was busy with his work or when I did something to annoy him. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell when he was in what type of mood. I learned not to ask.

I stayed leaning against him like that for a while with his arm rigid behind my back. The view by his shoulder was fascinating because I could watch him up close while he drew. I liked quiet, focused Logan. I liked the Logan with the eyes that brightened with each stroke of pen he glided across the page. I liked what this Logan created with his hands. His art was always rich. I glanced down to see what the day’s masterpiece would be, expecting something like a wrinkled diploma with its edges slightly burnt or a battered, vintage camera capturing graduation day.

But what I found instead was never forgotten.

“You’re drawing me?”

He didn’t give me the answer I wanted. He didn’t give me an answer at all. He simply kept his gaze down, concentrating on the shading he was doing on the hair. I gave his silence the benefit of the doubt. To give me a vocal affirmation would be pointless considering the fact that the proof that he was, in fact, drawing me was right in front of my face. In actuality, it was a dumb question to ask. So I asked one with more substance.

“Why are you drawing me?”

When he spoke, the words surfaced in a distracted monotone.

“Because you’re pretty when you cry.”

The girl living in the paper balanced on his knees was frail. She was wearing my clothes, but I didn’t think it looked like me. It couldn’t possibly look like me. From the flatness of her hair to the lackluster frame of her body to the tears streaming down her face, she was a tragic soul. The sunken eyes and cracked lips screamed at me that this face I was staring at was the face of a girl who looked dead.

Was this how he saw me?

Before I built the courage needed to ask such a question, there was a loud bang from the other room that sounded like metal clashing against itself. It made me jump. But more fatally, it broke Logan’s concentration, sending the line he was working on down and across the page.

I never adapted to the volume of his shouting, no matter how many times I heard it.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Noah, I’m gonna murder you!”

It was my fault that I didn’t move away quick enough because when he tried to throw the notepad across the room, the arm I clung to stuck at his side and he pulled it back harshly.

He turned to me. “Get off. Can’t you see I didn’t want you this close in the first place?”

I backed away from him, leaning back against the couch.

“And stop staring at me like that. I don’t need you breathing down my throat here.”

I don’t think I have ever felt my heart beat as fast as it did in that moment. I struggled to calm myself from his outburst. I didn’t consider it his fault. Not at the time. His brother was probably exercising in the other room, the accidental collision of weights causing the sound. But as I felt my hands shaking in fear, I didn’t feel like being in that room for much longer, not while the sounds of Logan’s screams still echoed in the walls.

I left the house promptly without a look back at Logan.

It was the first time I had ever felt scared of him. I had known he had a temper a bit more expressive than the average person’s. That was the one emotion he showed with that much passion. I didn’t hold it against him because I never expected perfection. I let it go because it was Logan. But I had to admit that he had never gone so far with me so close.

I walked home in the dark, never surprised that Logan wasn’t chasing after me with desperate apologies. I spent the evening locked away upstairs, ignoring any knocks on my door and staring up at the ceiling from my bed.

Fear was always something that I had difficulty accepting and controlling. I didn’t like the feeling of being afraid. It’s easy to say that most people don’t, but that’s not fully true. Most people don’t like the source of their fear. In my case, I did. I liked Logan. What I despised was the actual physical act of being scared that drove me into hysteria from my bones outwards. I could literally feel the blood pulsing in and out of every vein in my body in a rushed frenzy. It was my biggest weakness. I was most vulnerable when I was scared.

It was strange that while my view that evening was simply a plane of white above my head, my eyes showed me so much more. I saw the darkness in Logan’s face that became a near pitch black when he stared me down. I saw him storming into his brother’s room after I left and saying things to him that I don’t like to imagine.

But despite all of that, I never put any of the blame on him, even if any sane person would.

Late that night, after my father forced me to eat dinner, I got a call from Logan. I was relieved seeing his name pop up, but I couldn’t help the involuntary tremble of my fingers as I gripped the phone.

“Don’t leave like that again,” he said, “I was worried.”

I was quiet for a moment, relishing in the feeling of being so cared for that he worried about me.

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Logan. I won’t do it again.”

He sighed and I could hear paper being torn in the background.

“Come over tomorrow,” he said, “Noah won’t be home.”

“Okay.”

“And wear that blue shirt. The one with the flower on it.”

“Okay.”

“By the way,” he went on after a brief pause, “I got into the Art Institute.”

I felt my insides swell at his sudden news. He had been wanting to go there for a long, long time.

“Congratulations, Logan, that’s wonderf—”

“I leave in a few weeks. I wanted to give you something. You’ll get it tomorrow.”

I bit down on my lip because I was never good at receiving gifts. I thought that was why Logan never got me any until that point.

“Aren’t you going to say ‘thank you’?”

“Thank you. That’s very sweet of—”

“Great, I’ll see you tomorrow. Sleep tight.”

The line disconnected before I got a chance to say goodbye, but I didn’t mind. I was excited for my gift, whatever it may have been. I laid down with a smile, forgetting the mishaps of the day and focusing rather on the next.

But mere minutes after my head met the pillow, I saw a figure on the ceiling that alarmed me. I saw Logan leaving me for college, turning his back with large suitcases and his art bag in both hands.

I suddenly feared the future now that it involved the possibility that I would be without him. I didn’t know how I would survive should he leave. I had scraped by in high school thanks to him. I had done alright. But if Logan left me, I was convinced I would lose every bit of stability I had tried so hard to muster up. I would lose balance and fall behind without having him to keep me moving in his direction.

I didn’t want Logan to go to college, but I knew I could never tell him that.

Not if I wanted to spared witnessing his rage once more.