Carcass

For those of you already emotionally invested in my story, I’m sorry to say that the kiss didn’t involve Piper and I. With all of the history between us, it would have been ludicrous if our first interaction in nine years involved lip locking. Even I’m not that tactless.

Well… I guess that I am, really, when it comes down to it. Because I was kissing Nora Parker in the park three blocks down from my house, careful to not be seen by my hawk of a mother who was of the belief that I was wasting my potential on hook-ups, and who I knew would endeavour to make Nora feel like somewhat of a whore for being involved with me. Which… well, she was Nora Parker, and she wasn’t the most innocent of girls in our town, so I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time. But at the same time, no self-respecting man over the age of twenty wants to be caught kissing a girl by their mother. Especially not at the rate that Nora was going.

She had just moved her hand down to rest against my lower back when I noticed something ruffling in the corner of my eye. I went limp against her lips, and she paused, pulling away to give me a questioning look. Because though the grass was unkempt with lack of tending near the rusting swing set, I could see the whisper of a hand laying unfolded just feet away from the foot of the pole, and it was making my stomach churn so harshly that I thought I was about to vomit. And when I pulled away from Nora and shook her hand off of my wrist, ignoring the look of irritation that she sent me, I broke out into a run, quickly moving across the few metres between us with something akin to terror bubbling in my stomach.

I think I knew it was her. I somehow knew. And all I could think was god… no… you’ve done it. You’ve disappeared to that place you thought about on your darkest days, the place that I always convinced myself that you’d never go. Because I somehow unrealistically thought every day from the moment I held her hand at three years old that it would always be us in the world. And when her mother died and her dad slipped away I kept thinking that, kept thinking that parents would go and friends would disappear, but Piper and me… that was forever. Because she was that little baby in her mother’s arms and I was that scared little boy and even though we hadn’t talked in years there was something infinite about us… like we were one in the same. And so seeing her with bruises all over her body and blood trickling from her wrists made me want to scream and cry… or maybe just close my eyes and disappear. It wasn’t a manly thought. It was far from who I was, at the age of twenty four, on the verge of something special and caught up inside my own walls of pride. But lying there she was something less than what she’d been in her mother’s arms twenty-two years ago, all flushed pink and with her eyes clenched shut and her hands falling limply beside her. Because this time she was black and blue and her eyes were closed but I had a bad feeling that they would never open again.

“John?”

I flinched. It was Nora, glancing at me in irritation across the field, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. And maybe I’d forgotten how to speak, because all I could do was lift my hands and shoo her away fervently and listen to her huff of frustration and her footsteps lead away back down the road. Because I knew that Piper, my Pip, would have wanted it to just be me. Maybe not even me, but most certainly not a girl we used to joke about in year four for wearing a bra when she hadn’t yet developed.

I leaned down to brush her hair away from her face, cupping my hand against her cheek. I was still in shock; maybe I should have called an ambulance or gone to get my mother, but I just couldn’t move properly or establish a functioning thought. And maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t react so harshly, because when my hand met her cheek her eyelids fluttered slightly, blinking heavily before opening just a crack, dark blue eyes staring at m hazily through clumped lashes.

“Pip?” I said softly, seeming to come back to my senses. “Pip, what the hell were you doing? Why would you do that to yourself? I’ve got to take you to the hospital… god, what were you thinking?”

I think with the way my voice was croaking I must have been close to tears, but Piper didn’t even seem to flinch. She just pushed herself up, wincing slightly as she coiled away from me with lazy eyes and a thick stance. “John?”

I don’t know why I expected the first word she said to me after nine years to be something more than a name; my name, more specifically, but it was and it lasted a moment before it disappeared. And suddenly she looked angry, the look bound across her bruised face, and I couldn’t help but be relieved that she wasn’t as close to death as she’d seemed. “How could you think I’d do that? After… after…” She didn’t need to say it. After him. I knew. And she was strong for it, because I don’t think I could’ve refused myself that weakness after losing a mother and the heart of a father. I don’t think I could’ve accepted that there was no advanced road leading to the finish when things got too hard. Sometimes I thought about it myself, shut off in my room with my notebook laying limply in my hands and my guitar spread lazily against my bedsheets. I would look out the window and see the closed curtains and think about how my life had changed so much from wanting to be a musician, and how much I’d lost over the years; how they seemed to fall away from me like leaves from a tree. And God, I’d wish my life was deciduous and that things would grow back after I lost them, and I’d look out the window and wonder whether Piper would ever sprout out again.

I thought about death a lot. Not in an I’m going to end this all way or even a life is too hard way, but in a way that involved wondering whether it was better afterwards. Whether Mr Oakley would have been happier with the bullet lodged slightly further to the left, or whether Penelope Oakley could have the child she was willing to die for somewhere else. But then I’d think of Piper and realise that it was a selfish pleasure that never benefited anyone else.

“How did this happen, then?” I asked, flicking my eyes to the scrapes and bruises against her skin and the tears in her white dress.

She flinched, dirt-covered hand clenching at the bottom of the tattered dress, vainly pulling it further down past her knees, as if the action would make her invisible. Her head dropped down to rest against the grass again, and her eyes fluttered shut, and there were scrapes across her eyelid – like she had been scratching at them. And for a brief, maddened second I panicked, naively thinking that that was the last straw; that she’d gone again. But then her chest heaved and her fingers clenched more tightly around her dress, and I knelt down beside her in the grass.

“Did someone do that to you?” It was a shocking and sudden thought, and from the way her body flinched I took it as a yes. And I began to freak out, for legitimate reasons this time, which was admittedly unlike me when it came to most things in life. “Who did it?” I asked, more roughly this time.

She didn’t answer, but I wasn’t going to wait another nine years. I reached underneath her and pulled her into my arms, ignoring her cry of protest when I stood up. I held her against me and she opened her eyes, and when she saw me so close she began to cry; thick tears rolling down her cheeks. I’d forgotten what it was like to see someone cry; Mum was always far too strong and busy for that, and I hadn’t seen Dad for a year or so. My friends and I were those new-age types of men who refused to show emotions, and though I’d seen Piper at school I’d never seen her in tears. Maybe the last time was at the funeral. I had a feeling that it had been a very long time for her too. But whenever it was, or however long it had been, she was crying in my arms and as I started to walk towards my house I thought of her that first time we’d ever met; lying in her mother’s with her eyes shut.

I hoped more than anything that I could carry her someplace better.