Perfectly Flawed (55 page)

But still, it was a great holiday.

Seventeen

Something’s wrong—very wrong. I can tell as I lift my
head from the pillow once I leave my safe haven, everything will be
severely different.
But how?
Mommy always makes the troubles
go away; she always kisses my forehead and whispers a lullaby to
help me fall back asleep when I wake up from a scary dream. So if I
seek her out on my own, she can make this eerie pain with no source
go away, right?

That’s what Mommy’s do.

Clutching Mr. Snuffle Hiccups to my tiny
frame, I pad across the room from the closet, a safe place I hide
from the scary, loud sounds Mommy and Daddy make when they’re angry
at each other—something I haven’t heard since Daddy left—to the
hallway to scurry to Mommy’s side.

I need Mommy.

The light above the stairs is lit bright,
something I find unusual. Daddy hated leaving the light on, he
wouldn’t even let me sleep with a nightlight when I asked, begged,
even cried for one because of the monster in the house. I guess I
can thank him because the dark no longer scares me, but I still
want to know why the light is on…

Maybe Noah or Ivy left the light on.

I push open the door to my parents’ room—or
Mommy’s room now—shuffling inside but leaving the door open like I
always do just in case Ivy or Noah get scared and need Mommy like I
do.

My hands reach up to the pale white comforter
that covers the bed, tugging lightly until I can pull it back,
trying not to drop Mr. Snuffle Hiccups—my lifeline. A chocolate
hand falls to the side, dangling from the bed, something dark drips
from the tips of her fingers to the white carpet beneath my feet.
It smells like wet metal when I breathe, the scent thick and strong
when I move closer to Mommy.

“Mommy?” I whisper lightly, hoping she can
hear me. That maybe the soft sound of my voice is enough to wake
her. “Mommy?” My tiny hand grasps hers, pulling her lightly in
attempts to wake her up.

She doesn’t move.

Something sticky coats my fingers, though. I
pull my hand back and rub my hands together, feeling the warm
liquid stick to my fingers but I don’t want it on my hands. Slowly,
I rub my hands down my white nightgown, watching the liquid slide
down the fabric in a streak of faded pink.

I pull the blanket back, dropping Mr. Snuffle
Hiccups when the sight of red overwhelms, the scent of wet metal
flooding the air. It’s everywhere; on my Mommy’s skin, on her
pajamas, dripping onto the carpet, my feet, and my Barbie
nightgown—where is it all coming from? How can I stop it?

Mommy isn’t safe.

“
Mommy!
” I say louder, still hoping
she’ll wake up. I tug on her hand but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t
even make a sound.

JoJo, what do you do when someone is in
trouble?
I hear Mommy’s voice in my head. She wanted me to be
safe and to know what to do to remain safe.
But what do I
do?

I call
... memory-me replies, trying to
pass Mommy’s test. Then it hits me.

I grab the large, white cordless phone on the
bedside table. I wipe my hands on my pink-and-white Barbie
nightgown, streaking across Princess Barbie’s face, then dial 9-1-1
just like Mommy taught me.

“
911. What is your emergency?
” a deep
male voice on the other line asks.

What do I tell him? I don’t know what
happened to Mommy.

“My Mommy won’t wake up,” I say quietly,
feeling the tears spring and run down my face. I want to be strong
for her, I need to be strong for her right now, but the tears won’t
stop. Maybe I should make Ivy talk to them, she’s older than I am,
she’d definitely know what to do, what to say, right now. “And
she’s covered in red.”

“Did you try to wake her up?” he asks.

“I tried and she won’t wake up.” My hand
reaches for my Mommy’s hand, clasping and pulling, seeing if she’s
only playing with me. It would be a mean trick but I would hug her
and crawl into bed because she’s Mommy and I love her.

“What’s your name, honey?”

“JoJo,” I tell him. “JoJo Lucas.”

“Well, JoJo,” he starts, sounding so far
away. “Is there anyone else in the house with you? Other than your
mom?” the voice asks. “Can you tell me your address?”

My address? I should know this. Mommy told me
when I started school. She even wrote it inside my pink backpack.
But I can’t remember it.

“No, I don’t know it,” I squeak out, my tears
flowing faster down my cheeks. I can’t help my mommy because they
can’t get to us. I can’t remember my address to save Mommy.

“Is there anyone else in the house with you,
JoJo?” he asks.

“My brother and sister,” I answer, my
trembling legs carrying me away from the bed. Some part of me tells
me it isn’t a good thing to be near, in fact, it’s really scary.
“But they’re asleep in their rooms.”

I start crying loudly, sobbing into the
phone. The man on the line starts
shush
ing me, telling me
everything will be okay, all right, but I know that it won’t be.
Because Mommy won’t wake up and I don’t think she ever will.

I hear, “Josie?” behind me.

It scares me and I almost drop the phone on
the floor.

I turn around, facing the voice. “Daddy?” I
say, looking up at my Daddy as he stands in the doorway, staring
down at me. Something glints in his hand, something silver and red.
And he’s covered in red, not as much as Mommy, but enough for me to
see. “Daddy, what’s in your hand?” I ask.

“Josie, hang up the phone,” Daddy says, using
his scary voice, the one that he uses on Mommy before he’s mean to
her.

“My Daddy’s here,” I say to the man on the
other line.

“I’m sending an officer, JoJo,” the man tells
me. “Don’t hang up the—”

A hand smacks the phone from my hands to the
ground. “How many times have I
told
you not to play with the
damned phone, Josie?” he yells loudly.

“What’s wrong with Mommy?” my tiny voice
squeaks out in a cry. I start moving backward, trying to get away
from whatever he’s holding. It doesn’t look nice, it looks painful.
I know it’ll hurt me.

“Nothing is wrong with Mommy,” he snaps at
me, spitting on me as his words leave his lips. “Do you want to see
her?” he asks.

“I want my mommy!” I cry. My tiny voice
amplifies in the dark room as I start to cry harder.

“Stop whining, you little brat.” His face
contorts into something mean, something evil. Something I haven’t
seen before. He’s not my Daddy anymore; he’s something else,
something I don’t want to be around. His face splits into a wicked
grin, bearing his teeth like a dog before it attacks. That happened
to me once—and it’s still terrifying. “I’ve been looking for you
everywhere, Josie?” His free hand reaches toward me.

“
What’s wrong with Mommy?
” I cry,
sobbing louder. I’m backed into a corner, cowering like the little
girl that I am, while Daddy moves closer and closer.

“My God, you were always such a little baby,”
he grumbles, reaching for the phone on the floor and turning it
off, glaring at me when he throws it against the wall, hard. I
scream as it shatters and the pieces fly everywhere.

His arm rises, the metal glinting in the
minimal light that filters through the blinds into the room. I
remember Mommy telling me the light came from the closest
streetlamp on the street. With nothing left to do and no Mommy to
help me, I scream as loud as I can, feeling the air burn my lungs
as my voice leaves my throat. I scream, and I scream, waiting,
waiting for…

I shoot up in my bed, my hand clutching my
locket, my breathing erratic, and surprisingly, I’m not screaming,
because no one has rushed into my room to check on me.

What the fuck was that? What was in my
head?

It was so… vivid.

Holy shit.

Taking a deep breath, trying to calm down, I
drop from the bed and my knees hitting the carpeted floor. My legs
are shaking too much to manage walking, so I crawl to the closet. I
grab the green blanket from the top of the bin, dig my hand in the
box on top and pull out my stuffed Mr. Snuffleupagus that I renamed
Mr. Snuffle Hiccups when I was a kid because it was very hard to
say
Snuffleupagus
at three years old. I tug the door closed
behind me and fold myself into a ball, clutching the stuffed
Sesame Street
character my chest with one hand while the
other holds the locket. I do this until I can fall asleep.

I never do.

Eighteen

The month of December starts with me at the mall,
trying to shop for a birthday present for Zephyr, but I’m still not
sure what to buy for him. I continue to trek from store to store,
scoping out random knickknacks, but nothing really screams
Zephyr!
to me. In the past, I’ve given him books about art
and artists, baseball caps, even a little ceramic football. This
year, I want to get him something awesome, something I haven’t
thought of before, something that he’ll love and use, but I can’t
find that special… thing. Luckily, I have a couple weeks until his
birthday. I’m just planning early.

Harley, Zephyr, and I have been planning to
retrieve my file from my shrink’s office. We’ve decided to wait
until after the holidays. I mean, I’m heading out of town, Harley’s
going to be visiting family, and Zephyr can’t do it by himself, no
matter what he says.

So we plan to start our mission in
January.

In the meantime, I decide to Christmas
shop.

I drag Zephyr to the mall with me against his
will. For Harley, I buy a Slipknot t-shirt I know she doesn’t
already own. It’s large—it’ll swallow her—with all nine members’
faces on the front. I purchase a Hello Kitty wallet for Jamie
because she loves Hello Kitty and, since she’s had her wallet for
three months, I know she thinks she’s overdue for a new one. For
Kennie, I buy her a bottle of bacon perfume—because they make that
now—and a pink belt. For my aunt, along with bacon Chapstick, I buy
her a new scarf from Fuego in her favorite color: purple. I even
bough myself a Christmas present,
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
by
Edward Gorey. While waiting for Zephyr to walk up, I read the
entire thing twice.

Halfway through the mall trip, Zephyr
disappeared to do a bit of Christmas shopping of his own. When he
walks up, carrying five different bags, I can’t help but wonder
what’s hiding within them.

“Want to stop by the food court?” Zephyr asks
me. “Maybe grab a slice of pizza,” he offers, lacing his fingers
with mine and tugging me closer to his side as we trail behind a
young couple pushing a baby carriage.

“I’m not really all that hungry,” I tell him,
slightly wishing I had an apple. I’m not hungry for junk food, I
should tell him. “Can we just head home,” I ask, trying for sweet
and innocent before I continue with, “and possibly share what’s in
the bags.” I lean closer to him, trying for a sneak peek at
his.

“Nice try.” He laughs and leads me through
Sears to the escalator, leaving the second floor to the parking
garage where his sister’s car is parked. “I can’t wait to get my
own car,” he whines as he opens the door for me.

“What would you get?” I wonder aloud as he
slides into the driver’s seat, “some shiny sports car that goes
zero to sixty in two seconds?”

“I didn’t know I was going through a midlife
crises.” He laughs and I shrug lightly. I don’t think I could
handle a Zephyr with a sports car. “I was thinking something a
little… different.”

It wasn’t until a week later that I learned
what
different
meant to him.

To me, it translated to
scared
shitless
.

“On a surprisingly sunny day, still freezing,
I was standing in the yard. Well, not standing, more like tripping
over a frozen apple I neglected to trash when it fell from the tree
in the center of the yard. I was on the way to the mailbox and, as
luck would have it, falling on my ass. Obstacles don’t help the
uncoordinated. While standing in the yard trying to brush off the
back of my pants, an engine revving down the street caught my
attention. It wasn’t
that
an engine was starting up, coming
to life, it was that the sound came from the engine of a
motorcycle.
Who would be dumb enough to ride a motorcycle this
time of year?
I look toward the sound and watch as a—aha, I was
right!—motorcycle zoomed right by my house.

I could hear it turning around in the cul de
sac and when it came back down the street, it stopped in front of
my house. The helmet lifted and Zephyr shook out his hair as he
grinned mischievously at me.

I gawked at the sight in front of me.

“Are you serious?” I nearly yell, walking
down my driveway to check out his bike. Zephyr has a bike now.
Yeah, that’s not going to sit well with me. “Why?” I ask with a
forced laugh.

“I’ve always wanted one,” Zephyr tells me,
kicking the kickstand down before standing away from it, lovingly
admiring it. He even drags his hand along the side of the glossy
finish. “I finally got the endorsement last week and this is an
early birthday from my parents.”

“Molly and Antonios actually
bought
that for you?” I ask, believing his parents have both gone insane.
Actually, from the sound of it, his parents have been replaced by
aliens because there is no way, not even a cold day in hell, would
his parents willingly let him get this two-wheeled death
machine.

“Why wouldn’t they?” He looks to the bike.
“I’m the baby. They like to spoil me.”

That’s true. But I thought they’d rather he
stay alive
, damn it!

“I still can’t believe it,” I whisper,
sliding my hand slowly across the smooth, glossy finish.

“It’s a Kawasaki Ninja 1000,” he tells me,
gushing. His eyes trail over it in a weird way, nearly perverted.
Is it possible for a man to have an affair with a motorcycle? From
the way he’s looking at it, I know I’m about to be replaced.