Margarette (Violet) (18 page)

The smell shocks Margarette into action. A searing
sermon whipped into a muffled frenzy follows her as she runs down the stairs
with her bags. Her mother has gone completely crazy and inadvertently burned
the word of the apostles and their editors.

Margarette doesn’t stop, doesn’t think; she runs out
the house and for a few blocks, her book bag on her back and her tote on her
shoulder. She is afraid her mother would take the car out after her so she runs
through the trees behind the neighbors’ houses into the woods. For a moment she
feels alive and for once she doesn’t care about the end of the road; she simply
rips through the trees as the next inevitable step away from her life. The
momentum pushes her further than she was ready to go before. The air is sweet
and she breathes it in like an elixir of life. Every breath is borrowed freedom
from her personally decorated hell. Maybe she did make it like this; maybe she
made her own mistakes. It’s not the first failure for her and it’s far from the
last.

She hides inside the convenient convenience store
and calls Paulie, shaking. He picks her up at the store ten minutes later. Paulie
knows something is wrong, but drives her willingly, wherever she says, agreeing
with everything she says, hoping for the opportunity to be a partner in crime.
Her request is cryptic at best; he doesn’t know much other than she needs a
ride to an area near the train station.

The CD player in the car doesn’t work so the ride
is mostly quiet. She knows she left out enough details that he doesn’t really
know why they are going downtown. He helped her with her bags, so she thinks
maybe he knows; maybe he understands and is protecting her. She feels safe for
a moment as the sun shines in her eyes. This time she would not consider going
back.

It is strange to her that her whole life everyone
spent so much time telling her about love, warning her about sex and making it
seem a certain way. Her experience was a flash of emotion without enough time
to absorb what happened. Did she even love Tommy? Did she know Tommy by
watching his habits? How could she love anyone when she couldn’t get her head
straight? Nothing else matters in the town to her. Everything is broken in a
way that cannot be fixed. Maybe Paulie is the only thing left here for her, but
he isn’t exactly the anchor she needs.

Taking him with her never crosses her mind, but
she doesn’t want to hurt him either. Asking him to go with her would only interfere
with the Plan. The circumstances just set her adrift so she chose to change
directions.

At the next big intersection Paulie asks, “Where
to?”

She points him in the direction she needs. As he
turns into the train station, he looks at her suspiciously.

“Why are you going to the station with your
luggage?” he asks. “You’re going on a trip?”

“Well, yeah….”

“Where? You’re going to see family or something?”

“I, uh…. Not really… family, per se…” she
stammers.

He figures out the first part of her plan without even
realizing she had a hidden one. But given her poorly-concealed anxiety it’s
suddenly clear to Paulie that she’s doing something else.

Skipping town.

“
No
.” His eyes widen as he figures it out.
“I don’t want you to go. Frick this damn town! I don’t want to be here either,
but I am. I put up with it. Don’t tell me you’re leaving.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

“You won’t leave?”

“No, I won’t tell you I’m leaving.”

“Margarette….”

“I have to, Paulie.”

“I’ll go with you,” he offers quickly.

“What? No. You have another year to go.”

“I can finish high school wherever I want.
Wherever you go.”

She started shaking her head before he finished.
“I don’t think so.”

“Margarette, I know I can never really get out
what I want to say, but this is not right. Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know. I could go see my dad,” she lies. “See
if he’ll help me. I’m going to try to go to college. Maybe I’ll be lucky and
never come back.”

“Lucky? I’ll never see you again.” Paulie’s voice
changes, as if breaking.

“Shit….” Margarette is not ready to discuss Paulie’s
tender feelings after fighting with her mother. “Let’s not do this, okay? I’ve
had a horrible…” she pauses, reconsidering the word
day
, “life. I can’t
deal with this now.”

“Right now is all you’re giving me!”

“Paulie!” Margarette yells angrily.

He flinches, and tries a different way. His voice
softens. “Margarette, please. I didn’t even know I was dropping you off at the
train station to leave. I thought you were going to stay with a girlfriend or
something. This was a total ambush.”

“Paulie—”

“No, let me finish,” he protests. “Please stay. I’ll
help you in any way that I can. Find an apartment to stay away from your mom,
get a new job. Just don’t run away. I know… I
think
I know… what you’re
going through. Whatever’s got you afraid, we can face it together.”

His words are meant to be affectionate and supportive,
yet Margarette bristles at the thought of him knowing about her pregnancy, and
worse, the suggestion that she’s afraid. She’s not
afraid
; she’s
fed
up
. And she finds she has no patience for him or his poorly-worded proposals.
Her mind is set; she’s leaving this ass-backwards town, and nothing he or
anyone can say can make her stay around here, not even another hour.

But she takes a second to answer, trying hard to curb
her anger so as to not yell at him, because deep down she knows he only means
well. Except that Paulie misunderstands the second of silence, thinking that
his words may be working, and moves to grab her hand.

She snaps her hand back, as if his flesh were
infectious. “
Don’t
, Paulie,” she hisses, her words laced with venom,
almost similar to her mother’s darker tone. “Do you even hear yourself, what
you’re suggesting? Stay
here
? And do what, hang out with you all day? Go
around town ignoring all the bitches and the dicks that keep trying to make my
life miserable? Frick that.”

“No! Not like that. Those people… they don’t mean
anything.”

“It’s not just them! This town sucks! I want to go
to college. I want to
be someone
. I can’t do that here.”

“College? But I thought you… you’d be taking some
time off. Because….” He looks up at her, and the anger in her face makes him
look away. “I must’ve made the wrong assumption.”

She sighs. “I was pregnant, Paulie,” she admits. And
just like that, her nose burns and her eyes fill with tears. Her eyebrows
scrunch in pain.

“Margarette…” Paulie starts to say, but swallows
thickly and has to pause. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a… an experience I’ll never forget. But
it’s over. And I’m… I’m not over it. I have to get out of here. Do you
understand?”

“Yes. But—”

She doesn’t care to hear him out. “Goodbye, Paulie.”
She turns around quickly without waiting for him to reply, exits his car and
moves towards the bus. She gets in and chooses the row facing the other side of
the parking lot, so as not to see Paulie while the bus leaves.

When she settles in she places a hand over her
heart, noticing that it is beating faster than normal. Her goodbye with Paulie
definitely didn’t go well; it felt like a fight, and left her hurt and agitated.
They were friends, not lovers. It’s like they broke up without ever being
together.

As the bus leaves, her heart begins to calm down.
Funny, the farther away she gets from home, the safer she feels.
Home
,
she scoffs internally. Her home becomes just an empty room where she grew up.

She thinks of Tommy and quickly shakes the thought
away, but unfortunately her mind next replays Mrs. Gallager and every venomous
word she said, Mr. Gallager’s cryptic advances, and May’s prejudiced antagonism.
She squeezes her eyes tightly to shut off the Gallagers, but then her mother
cackles behind her eyelids holding a lit match to the Bible. The pharmacist
shakes his head, judging her, as if the baby had put itself in there by magic.
No one ever judges the father.
Frick them all
! One after the other, the
faces of her recent past swim in front of her mind’s eye, and angry tears
finally spill. Not a single one of them have a single redeeming quality to
offer her.

Paulie
, she thinks. No, not even him. He
would only bring her down.

I’m free
, she thinks, and emotion burns the
bridge of her nose and blurs her eyes. She’s free from them all. Free to go to
college if she wants. Free to become whatever she wants to become, to start all
over. Free to find him.

I will find him.

I will know him.

He will love me
.

To Be Continued

K LeMaire is the real
author of this book. It was his idea, his words, his bad humor.

I, Johi Jenkins, am just a
glorified editor.

We did our best to write
this book together without kicking the other one out. But having our two very
different minds work on the same manuscript was challenging! So, please, feel
free to send me your feedback. Grammatical and formatting errors may exist in
this edition. Please help me correct it.

If you would, please take
a moment to review this book in your review site of choice. I will always
appreciate your feedback.

Connect with me:

Email: [email protected]

Blog:
www.johijenkins.blogspot.com

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/johijenkins

goodreads:
www.goodreads.com/johijenkins

Born and raised in
Louisiana, K LeMaire got lost and ended up in Chicago, Illinois, following a
strange Puerto Rican girl. He’s an artist, likes to build things, and write
code and fiction in between.

Johi Jenkins grew up in
the small town of Las Marias, Puerto Rico but now lives in Chicago, Illinois,
with her husband, the elusive K LeMaire. She likes sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal
romance books and video games.

Other books by Johi:

The Thirst Within (The
Thirst Within Book 1)

Resurgence (Resurgence
Book 1)