Christina (Daughters #1) (2 page)

The next morning when I come out to the kitchen, Mom is standing there, flipping eggs in a pan. She looks normal. Her hair is done and her jeans and blouse indicate she’ll be going in to work. She smiles and tucks a strand of shoulder-length black hair behind her ear. She could pass for thirty if she wanted to. She has clear, barely wrinkled skin and a pretty, warm smile. My anger at her melts as I slip onto a bar stool. She crosses the kitchen and leans across the counter to touch my hand. “So how was Kelli yesterday?”

The current girl drama I have going on. And at hearing her interest, my mouth opens and a fifteen-minute dissertation follows.

Okay, I don’t exactly have it bad. But sometimes, I just want to understand that thing, the strange, unexplainable thing that I can’t quite put my finger on that goes on. That thing that makes my mom, sometimes not my mom. That thing I can’t quite see, but I know with absolute certainty is there.

~Max~

THE FIRST TIME THE fist smashes into my gut and knocks my breath from my lungs, it feels like I am about to drown and nothing will make me breathe again. The second time the fist connects, it hits just the corner of my chin and sends my neck bending back with a sharp jerk. At this moment, it feels like one of those movie montages. You know, the kind that slows down and is flashed frame by frame. My senses feel heightened. Sounds are louder. Colors become sharper. People around me are cheering and soon become a blended mess of movement like watercolors streaming together down a canvas. Their noise fuels me. It burns through my body and powers my fists. I come back at the guy, who’s almost a foot taller than me and outweighs me by a good thirty pounds. I attack him like I am a fucking cougar, let loose on a dog. I pounce on his back and I use my hands to pull his eyelids, giving me a chance to loop my arm around his neck. I let go so my weight hangs off him. I fight dirty. No rules. No mercy. I have to. I am only five-foot-five and weigh a hundred and fifty pounds. I don’t have a lot of room for error. If he gets me in front of him, he could pound me into a bloody pulp at his feet.

No way. Spurred by that, I start thrashing hard on the guy’s back and he keeps pulling at me. When the kid finally falls to his knees, I let go. I usually win. I am so good at being totally underestimated. As a rule, I am laughed and mocked and jeered at by the crowd. Most don’t think I am serious when I challenge them to a fight. A fight that I always intend to win. I’ve been doing this game for eight years. I learned from the best, my older brother, a former drug runner who is now in prison for kidnapping and overdosing my other brother’s girlfriend. But for a little while, he taught me how to win, and win no matter what the odds. And although I hate Quentrell, I took those lessons to heart. No one pushed Quentrell around or made him look stupid. And no one would do that to me, either. Between my height and speech problems, most of my youth was spent being humiliated by my peers. Now? I rely on my fists to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

I have to be careful however, that my adoptive parents and family don’t catch on to what I do. I try not to do it too much or get a reputation. I try to do it only with college kids in the area who don’t know me or mine.

But this time I fail. As the guy is straining and making weird grunt sounds, I spot her.

Christina.

Christina Hendricks is standing in the crowd around us. We’re in the front yard of some faceless, nameless (to me, anyway) farmhouse where these college kids like to congregate. I often insert myself into them, and when I’m sure no one recognizes me, I put on this little show. I start by finding big, drunk jocks who consider me no more than a joke, and never a threat. I make contact somehow. I might bump into them; or spill something on them, or do something to make them bristle and speak to me. When I’m rude enough, the guy wants to immediately kick my ass. I just laugh it off, and say that the jock would lose. I say it loud it enough to challenge the kid’s pride into taking me on. Then the kids all laugh at me because there is no way
I
could win. Sometimes I don’t. I’ve taken my fair share of beatings in my nineteen years. But most often, I get the better of my opponents before they do more than just tap me with their fists. And even when they do more, I rarely ever feel it. I have an aversion to being touched, but I have no aversion to being hit. Kind of screwed up, I know. Christina has pointed that out to me multiple times. But still, she respects my boundaries, and my proclivities.

Except this. Fighting. She always hates when I fight. I rarely tell her when I leave her house or my own and sneak off to do it. I don’t do it all the time. Not like I used to when I was young. Just sometimes. Once in a while. Just when I need it. The rush of adrenaline. The sense of power and control. The supremacy of fearlessness. That, perhaps, is what I get out of it. It makes me feel invincible. My fear is gone once I’m hurt. A punch? A kick? A hit? They come at me, and even connect with me; and the bruises and blood eventually heal and go away. Finished. It’s the
approach
of the fist or foot that instigates the fear: not the actual deed.  And I love beating the fear. Some say I’m crazy. A hellion. A psycho. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I’d like to know anybody raised the way I was and see how normal they are.

My solution has always been to fight. Perhaps I seek retribution from a world that has, for most of my life, beat me down. Abused me. Hurt me. Humiliated me. When I fight, nobody can beat me down, or abuse me, or embarrass me, or hurt me. Why? Because I choose to be there. I choose my opponents. I choose the circumstances. I always choose. I put myself there. So it’s my choice every time.

But I prefer not to do it in front of Christina. What is she doing here? How could she be here? I can’t believe at twelve o’clock at night I’d find Christina at some college party. Christina doesn’t usually show up at these kinds of places. She parties a little bit, but usually with kids in our senior class. And always I am there, watching over her, protecting her. Even if she never truly realizes how much I do. But now she is
here.
Worse still? The hand I notice that’s holding hers.

The slight pause is almost my undoing. The guy gets a fist into the side of me. I let out an “oof,” but hold on tighter.

Christina, her eyes round in horror, turns and flees, as if she’s afraid of me. I hate it when I scare her. I hate it when she runs from me. I hate it worst of all when any guy’s hand touches hers.

Even if it’ll never be mine.

~Christina~

Tonight’s the night. I have waited over eighteen years to have sex, and I’m doing it tonight. And the one I’ve chosen for the honor? A sophomore at Central Washington University who brought me to the party tonight. I live in such a small town, where the only real bonus is that it’s a college town. There is always a fresh influx of students each year; so since I’ve turned sixteen, I have new guys to choose from every year. Behind my parents’ back, of course. They treat me as if I’m still about eight, and not a senior in high school, only a month away from graduation. It hasn’t dawned on them, or anyone else, really, that I’m officially an adult.

We are in a two-story Victorian with a raging party going on. It’s out in the middle of nowhere at one of the old farmhouses that surround Ellensburg. Some idiots rented out an old, historical house to a group of college students. Not a smart move. But there are bedrooms! Lots and lots of bedrooms and I agreed to use one of the rooms with Brad, the sophomore. He isn’t anything all that special to me. Just some guy I dated a few times. He’s cute enough. I’m figuring since he’s
in college
he must be a lot more experienced than the boys in my own class. At least, he can’t be any worse.

I don’t really care who does it, just that it gets done. I really want to do this and get it over with. Get on with it. Whatever you want to call it. I cannot graduate high school and still be a virgin. So lame. I am really tired of being lame. But having my parents for parents, it’s hard to be otherwise. They don’t allow me to do anything. They are strict to the nth degree. I might as well have been raised in a freaking prison.

I came with Brad and we’ve been milling about for an hour or so. I really hate the taste of beer so I only pretend to sip it. Brad downed several glasses and took a few hits off some weed. I pretended to be enthralled with the crowd and ignore it. No. Don’t need that on my breath. I was supposed to be at my girlfriend’s tonight. I hope the cover worked. Oldest trick in the book. But I so rarely lie to my parents, I have a good chance of getting away with it.

My stomach is a little jittery, considering what I plan for tonight, I think I’m keeping my cool and all. I am not talking or giggling too much, or doing the usual things I do when I’m nervous or excited. I am standing here, pretending to sip my drink, while I smile when it seems to fit, and hoping I blend into the average age of the crowd around me.

Commotion. Almost the entire room shifts and starts out the doors to the front yard. I glance at Brad just as he yells, “Fight!”

My stomach curdles. Fights only made me think of Max. I hate that. Luckily, he doesn’t do it very often anymore. And tonight, I do not want to be thinking about Max when I’m trying to have sex.

Brad pulls my hand so I have to let him drag me with him towards the fast-growing crowd outside. I am near the back. My shoes sink into the soggy grass. The crowd hollers and yells catcalls. They seem to be chanting a name, “Johnson” or “Jackson” or something like that. The obvious favorite. More “whoo-hoo”s and “wow”s. To me, it’s sick the way people revere such a blood sport.  It’s sick to cheer on people that are hurting each other.

My stomach has cramps. I hear the grunts and the flesh smacking. It makes me feel like running inside and hiding under a table. I can’t stand to witness the revelry and merry making over anyone hurting another.

When the crowd clears, I see him.

Max Salazar.

He’s on the other guy’s back. The guy is bigger than he is and slowly losing as it’s evident Max is choking him. My stomach completely churns. How can he do that? How can the Max I know, the Max who plays basketball with me, and messes around on video games, and is just there all the time at my house, now be choking someone?

He sees me. I memorize the moment his eyes find mine. They grow big and shocked. His mouth opens as if he is about to say, “Christina?”

But he misses the fist coming right at him and I scream when it connects. Max’s face contorts in pain and he almost lets go. Oh my GOD. I
cannot
watch him getting hurt like this. I am sickened by it. For his pain, and for the pain he is inflicting on the other guy.

I run into the house and search for privacy until I find a small, empty, half bath. I sit on the toilet seat and let my tears fall. I hate him. I sometimes hate Max because I just can’t begin to understand him or why he does the things he does. Some are terrible things, like right now, choking another human being!

A knock sounds on the door. Brad? Has he come looking for me? I doubt if he noticed my eye lock with Max. Last I saw him, he was entrenched in the fight. But then, there it is again, our knock. The special knock that only Max and I know. We made it up when we were fourteen. We were in trouble and put in separate rooms. He started tapping on the wall between us, my imaginary jail cell. Like I said, my parents are my jailors. Anyway, by the end of it, we devised this complicated code of taps and knocks that only we knew. We only used it when entering each other’s house or room. And now there it was.

Leaning forward, I rest my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands while I consider telling him to go away. But it’s Max. He’ll just stand there and wait for me to come out, without a word of complaint. He’ll wait five hours if that’s how long I take. I could picture him simply leaning against the wall, his arms crossed… and not a word would he say. He wouldn’t knock again or beg me to come out. He’d just let me stew… and wait. He can be that persistent. I save myself the trouble, get up and unlock the door.

He steps inside. I gasp when I spot the blood on his forehead. His hands are dripping in blood too. He split his knuckles. My stomach turns at the sight. I hate blood. I
detest
that he does this to himself. It repulses me. It sometimes makes me so disgusted, I want to hit him just to try and knock some sense into him.

I stare at him. He stares at me. I am five-foot-one, and one of the few people that gives him the effect of having height. His face is completely expressionless.  He is half Latino so his eyes and hair are dark. He holds my gaze. He has balls unlike anyone I’ve ever met before. He is freakishly fearless. He will take on anyone, no matter how much bigger or fiercer than he. He is small, lithe, and scrappy. He is also quiet. So quiet, most people forget he is in a room, or even in their lives. His dark eyes rarely show what he thinks or feels. Because of his ethnicity, and Ellensburg having a high number of transient workers from Mexico, both legal and illegal, to work the farms and ranches of the area, most people think he doesn’t speak English. But instead of correcting them, he almost revels in that mistake. He loves the anonymity. He craves it. He is there, but more as a ghost than a human being.

Sometimes, I feel the weight of Max’s burden on me. I am his voice, and his only connection to the world. I assumed that role by myself, when I was in seventh grade and I first met him. I took him to school with me, and back then, his severe speech impediment made him stutter and slur his words. He’d been mocked and jeered at all his life, while I was well liked and popular. We live in such a small town, that I became a kind of queen bee around everywhere. And I claimed Max as mine.

He and I are completely different. I am outgoing to almost everyone. I am usually friendly and I hope most people think I’m a nice person. Max is so introverted, like I said, many think he can’t speak English or only broken English. Not true. He can speak perfectly when he chooses to. He remains unfriendly to almost everyone. Except me. Max is usually nice to me.

And always… there is Max. Sometimes, he is like this huge albatross around my neck. He never even tries to fit in anywhere. He has no friends. He’ll beat up anyone for no real reason. Another oh so not appealing fact about Max is: he loves to pick fights. I mean to the extreme. He’s been running street fights since he was in the fifth grade. He earned a sufficient amount of money doing so, as he was the perfect hustle, owing to his slight build and stature. I’ve seen him fight. He’s fierce. No one sees it coming. And I hate it. One time, I saw him bring a kid to his knees. I ran from him, afraid and crying, and refused to speak to him for a week. He really scared me. He always scares me when he fights. He becomes a different guy when he goes into what I call his fighting “trance.” It’s creepy. This blank expression comes over him. It’s all-consuming and impenetrable. It’s also lethal. Or at least, almost lethal.