Equilibrium (Marauders #4.5) (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

A Lot of Pretending

~oOo~

ELIZA WAS SIX YEARS old, and her mom was in the kitchen. She was singing while putting things on the counter. She’d kicked off her shoes by the door. They were pink with a bow on them. Eliza liked those shoes, and she’d really have liked to try them on, but she knew it would make her mom angry. Not because she was afraid Eliza would destroy the shoes, she’d explained that several times, but because Eliza could hurt herself. But she’d promised that when Eliza got feet as big as her mom, she could borrow her shoes as much as she wanted to.

“Are you baking?” Eliza asked and pushed her kitchen chair to the counter before climbing up on it. “Can I help?”

“Of course. We’re making cupcakes today. Wash your hands.”

“Can we make them pink?”

“It’s for Dad’s birthday. I don’t think he wants pink cupcakes, honey.”

Eliza thought about it a little. “Can I put pink heart sprinkles on the cupcake that’s for me?”

“Yes, you can. But only on one. You’re not going to accidentally fall and drop the heart sprinkles on all of them.”

“I like pink heart sprinkles,” Eliza mumbled to herself.

“I know you do, but not everyone likes the same things as you do,” her mom said. She picked up two eggs with one hand and held them in front of Eliza. “Wanna learn how to break eggs?”

~oOo~

Eliza

It was my eighteenth birthday, and it was also exactly six months since I’d been taken. That’s how I thought about it, ‘when I was taken.’ I was taken, and then shit happened. That’s how I dealt with it.

I was in the shower and drizzled soap all over the front of my body. There were parts of my body I didn’t want to look at, and most definitely couldn’t touch. The first two months, I could just barely wash my hair. It’s really hard to get hair clean without touching it.

In
The Bell Jar
, Ethel Greenwood, the protagonist, said she didn’t think there was anything a hot bath couldn’t cure. She described how she meditated in a scorching hot bath and felt herself ‘growing pure again.’ The bad things ‘dissolved and disappeared,’ and the nasty, dirty things she’d seen or experienced turned into something pure. I’d tried that, with water so hot it made my heart race, but it hadn’t helped me feeling pure again.

Nothing helped.

It was getting better, but my boobs and the insides of my thighs were still no-touch zones. My… lady parts were referred to as ‘the black hole’ in my head. That was just a black hole of a whole lotta nothing. It didn’t exist—at all.

Just before Christmas, Dad had asked me why the hell I was using so much fucking toilet paper, and I’d choked. I hadn’t known what to answer because the reason was simply that I wrapped an obscene amount of toilet paper around my hand when I dried myself to not accidentally get skin-on-skin contact. It hadn’t been about me being embarrassed about it in front of my dad, but more that I hadn’t wanted to tell him, since he’d finally started talking to me in a more or less normal way, and answering honestly would mean bringing the weirdness back up to the surface again. And also because he’d been kind of pissed, or at least grumpy, and he hadn’t been like that for a long time—I’d missed grumpy Dad. Finally I’d stuttered something in the line of, ‘I just don’t like touching myself there,’ and he’d taken that deep breath while doing the face I hated. He’d acted weird for a few days, but then it had gone back to sort of normal. He hadn’t commented on my toilet paper use again, though.

He was kind of back to normal in general, but I caught him studying me sometimes, and he was more protective than ever. I could tell he was trying to fight it, but I liked it. It used to drive me insane that he was the way he was when it came to the rest of the world vs. me. It had been almost impossible for me to get a date, and before what happened, I’d just barely been kissed, since Dad had the worst ‘deathglare’ on the planet, but these days I was glad no guys dared to talk to me. I needed a wide berth between me and men I didn’t know. I could deal with it unless I had a really bad day, I just didn’t want them too close.

It had taken a while. At first I didn’t want to talk at all. I was scared of even opening my mouth, and while I was at the hospital they sent me loads of shrinks and stuff. I found out later I was on suicide watch, and that had actually surprised me a little. Sure, I wasn’t exactly crazy about life, but I’d never considered killing myself. Then I was released, and they kept taking me to shrinks and counselors, but they’re kind of useless when you’re not talking.

After about a month or two of hiding in my room, Dad had sent Billie to me. She’d said, ‘Your dad seems to think I have some magic fix to make you feel better just because I’ve been raped, too, but I don’t. They don’t exist.’

It was the most honest thing anyone had said to me until that point, and I liked it. I didn’t want magic fixes, I didn’t believe in them, and I didn’t want people who believed in them around me. Then I’d remembered how Dad called her ‘Shooter,’ and asked her to teach me how to use a gun. It turned out later that I’d gotten the reason for her nickname wrong, but she’d taught me how to use a gun. For a while, she and Dad were the only ones I felt comfortable with leaving the house with. I knew she would be able to defend me. The more I was outside, the easier it got. I still didn’t like being alone, but going to the mall didn’t make me hyperventilate anymore.

My birthday party was at the clubhouse, and that was another place I was comfortable at.
Really
comfortable. I had both Dad and Bull there, but I still wasn’t crazy about the idea of a birthday party. It was one thing to just hang out there, but a party would mean I was the center of attention, and I didn’t like that anymore. I just didn’t have the heart to tell Mom, and I trusted Dad to make sure it didn’t get out of hand.

It felt a bit weird, though. Eighteen meant I was legally an adult, and I didn’t feel like an adult, but I guessed that could have been because I didn’t really feel like myself. I didn’t think my parents knew what to make of me either, which wasn’t surprising. I wasn’t sure how to reassure them I was okay when I wasn’t, but I needed them to back off, too. The constant hovering around me was starting to drive me insane. They tried to hide it, everyone tried to hide it, but it was hard to not notice.

After the shower, I put on a white sweatshirt and pair of bright red cigarette pants. It was Mom who’d told me they used to be called that, and I’d loved that name, so I kept using it. That or ‘Audrey Hepburn pants,’ because I loved Audrey Hepburn. Or, I used to, back when I still loved stuff at random.

It took me a while to find my yellow shoes, but once I’d found them, I took a look in the mirror.

Clothes from
before
.

I’d noticed that when I wore those, Mom backed off a little. And I felt pretty okay with not hiding in one of my Dad’s shirts while I was at the clubhouse. Lately that had been how I was dealing with everything, just finding ways to get people to back off and give me some space. I needed space.

As suspected, getting people to back off and give me space was not easy when it was my own birthday. It took them all about thirty minutes to become comfortable and forget about me. Mom had given me a piece of cake, and I couldn’t really find a good excuse to not eat my own birthday cake. But I found a relatively calm spot behind the bar, and when I was sure no one, and especially not Mom, was looking, I threw the piece of cake in the garbage. I kicked the trashcan a few times to make the bottles and other crap fall over it.

“Not good?” someone said behind me, and I jumped and spun around so fast I almost fell over.

It was Roach, one of the loans from New York, and he was holding up his hands to calm me down. Like I was a scared puppy, or something.

“I’m full,” I said and looked down into my handbag so I didn’t have to look at him, and also to make it look like I was busy. I smiled when I saw the joint I’d taken from Mitch’s dorm room. It was my birthday, after all. It wasn’t my first joint, but it was the first since
before
, and I was planning on smoking it that night out on my balcony. Like a small, relaxed celebration just for me. “I’d already had a piece,” I said to Roach, but I still wasn’t looking at him.

“Okay, Princess.”

I didn’t know Roach very well. Actually, I didn’t know him at all. For, like, a second after he’d arrived, I’d thought he was cute, but then I was taken, and I hadn’t thought anyone was cute since then. It really didn’t help that he’d called me ‘Princess’ each and every one of the, like, three times he’d talked to me.

“Stop calling me that,” I said, still without looking at him.

“Why? You are one, so why not call you that?”

“I don’t like it.”

“What do you like?”

I liked being left alone, I liked closing the curtains around my bed and just lying there like it was my whole world, and I liked shooting at things. Paper things, mostly, but it was more about shooting than the target. I didn’t tell him any of those things, though.

“I’m sure Dad’s got, like, some rules about you guys talking to me.”

“He does,” Roach said. “Just came over to say happy birthday. So, happy birthday, Princess.”

He left, and I waited for a few extra seconds before looking at him to make sure… that it wasn’t… like he was…

I exhaled in relief when he didn’t turn around. It wasn’t something weird going on with him. He’d just come over to wish me happy birthday.

~oOo~

Roach

Roach was bored. Brick had established some firm rules for the birthday party, and one of them included no excessive drinking—which didn’t bother Roach—and no fondling the sweetbutts. Which actually didn’t bother Roach that much, either. He liked to get his dick sucked as much as the next guy, but it wasn’t a daily requirement for him.

It was more the entire vibe of the place that was bothering him and bored him to death. Everyone was careful, they even talked in lower voices than they usually did, and it was just weird and tense. All because of Princess Eliza.

He got it. The chick had been raped, and they’d been hard on her. Roach was one of the ones who’d found her, and she’d been black and blue with a dash of blood red. But if this was how people behaved around her, she must have been going nuts. It would drive him nuts, but then he doubted he had much in common with a chick like Eliza.

It was good that she had people who cared, of course, but still… Roach had met more than his fair share of rape victims. Hell, it had happened to him, too. There wasn’t a street kid out there who hadn’t been raped and beaten up a few times; it sort of came with the territory. Sure, it was probably a lot bigger deal when it was someone who’d grown up like Eliza—all protected and seemingly safe.

He still thought it had to be enervating for her to have people treating her like she was a retard.

He’d done his due diligence, though. He’d wished her happy birthday, and he’d given her a gift. Not that he knew exactly what the gift was. Mel had bought it, asked for money, and given it to him when it was already wrapped. Everything had to be perfect for Princess Eliza’s birthday—down to what gifts she got.

The first time he’d met, or rather seen, Eliza, he’d concluded she was the most spoiled and annoying brat he’d ever seen. Now she’d been hurt, but she was still a spoiled brat.

A few hours later, he saw her giving Billie a hug, and then Brick before she walked out the door, so he assumed his family duties were done for the day and turned to Bull.

“I’m off.”

“Yeah. See ya tomorrow.”

“Yup.”

He walked outside to go home, but just as he straddled his bike, he saw something red flashing by in the alley between the clubhouse and the fence. He went over to see what it was.

It was Eliza. She was sitting on the ground with one arm holding her legs in front of her, and in the other hand she had a cigarette.

She flew up to her feet when she saw him, and he held up his hands and took a step back to calm her down. For a second she was looking at him, and then she was back at that… annoying thing he’d noticed before, when she wasn’t looking at people. More staring at nothing.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she mumbled and wiped off her ass.

“You can smoke in the clubhouse.”

“I know,” she said and dropped the cigarette on the ground. “They pretend to not know I’m a smoker.”

Figures.

“A lot of pretending going on around you.”

Her eyes flew up and she looked at him, but she didn’t say anything.

She even had the typical blue shade of eyes as girls like her always seemed to have. Baby blue, his sister had called the color. He called them ‘cheerleader blue’ when blonde hair and clothes in happy colors accompanied them, like on Eliza. She definitely had a suburban cheerleader thing going.

“Anyway,” he said with a shrug. “Have a great birthday.”

She nodded, and just as he turned to leave, she spoke up. “Shooting.”

“What?” he asked.

“You asked what I liked. I like shooting. And drama. Like theater, I mean.”