Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1)
Read Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1) Online
Authors: Yessi Smith
Copyright © 2016 by Yessi Smith
All rights reserved.
Poem by j.r. rogue printed with permission
Visit my website at
www.yessismith.com
Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creation
Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing,
www.unforeseenediting.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9971199-1-6
This book is dedicated to Jill Sava and Madelyn Valle. I couldn’t do this without either of you.
To Lee Casey, who was the first to love Camden and always pushes me to be better.
And Mary, who never fails to show her endless love and support. Our friendship means the world to me.
Contents
I’m not afraid
to carry some of my past
on this skin.
the dirt is as real
as the beauty,
and I have trouble
separating
which nights
had one,
the other,
or both
now
anyways.
—J.R. ROGUE
PROLOGUE
No one hears a child’s cry. The sounds of screaming and breaking glass in a sorrow-filled house go unnoticed by neighbors too preoccupied with their own lives. The silent fear is all-consuming until even leaving your room brings on a terror that makes the boogeyman look friendly.
They hear the laughter though, the lies that fall so easily from my lips. Feigned feelings are far more welcome than the emptiness that embodies me.
You don’t know my name, but you’ve heard my story countless times before. That of an abused child. An unloved little boy. Ignored by society.
I am more than my story though. More than the doubt, the guilt, the hurt.
Because of her. She saved me, so I did the only thing I could do when my dad called Yanelys a whore. I fought back, wanting to right all the wrongs of today. Wanting to wash away her sorrow and cleanse myself of her shame filled eyes.
Screams bar the walls of my bedroom. They’re mine, my mom’s and every other child who has fallen victim to their parent’s hot anger.
My dad pounds his fists into my face, my stomach, my back. Blood spills, pain spreads. I crouch into a cocoon, the hatred of my dad pouring over my beaten body like hot lava.
“So, you’re a man now, huh!” my dad shouts. “Twelve years old and you have a girl between your legs!”
“It’s not like that,” I whimper, because it wasn’t.
Everyone thought it was, and I let them, not wanting any of our classmates or teachers to see where my dad had stabbed me this morning. Yanelys had simply been trying to clean up his mess when our PE coach walked in on us in the bathroom. Yanelys went along with the assumptions because that’s what she does. She looks out for me. She protects me and I let her because I’m a coward. A stupid, selfish, coward.
But today, I stood up to my dad and while I don’t regret it, I wish I’d had one last chance to tell Yanelys how much I love her.
“Where’s your little whore of a friend?” my dad barks.
From the floor, I push at him, wanting him to take back the ugly words he said about my best friend. Vicious laughter falls from his lips and he kicks me repeatedly. My gut, my head, my legs. Everywhere, all at once.
I breathe in the slow burn of my dad’s increasing anger and bursts of violence. Dizzy, my mind grows foggy and I follow the delirium until I no longer feel my dad’s fists raining over my body. My eyes roll to the back of my head and I picture Yanelys’s smiling face. I reach for her hand, knowing she’ll always hold on.
ONE
CAMDEN
Worn shoes and tattered clothes are a direct contradiction to how I carry myself. Even when the smell rolling off my body turns my empty stomach, I keep my shoulders square and my head held high. Not that it matters. No one looks directly at me anyway.
I see myself though—the vision of broken glass bleeding on humanity —but I won’t succumb to the hunched figure of a tired man. Society doesn’t see the fragility of my grief or my desperation for help.
No, what they see is the reality I’ve painted for them. A cold thin figure with sunburned skin and the pitiless smile I grant them if they look in my direction. Wincing, they turn away to look at anything but me.
I’m worse than invisible. At least the invisible can’t be seen.
Me? I’m an outcast. Deplorable by definition. Unworthy. Unapproachable.
Twenty-four years old and completely alone.
My only human contact comes from rushed figures pushing past me as I walk on the sidewalk to make my way home from work.
Home
. The word itself is laughable. As if I have a home.
I have a place where I stay. A couch I sleep on. But no actual home to speak of.
There are days though, days like today, when I don’t want the company of my old pastor. When I don’t want a couch or a bed or even a corner to sleep in.
I just want myself. My eternal silence where all there is to hear is the crushing of every broken dream I’ve had since youth.
The North Carolina rain complements my damp mood, so it’s only fitting for me to be outdoors for a while. Unemployed from a job I never really needed. A martyr made to survive off scraps because of a dignity I can’t be stripped of. It’s all I have because
they
took away everything else. I don’t know what I did to piss Karma off, but she’s an unforgiving bitch. Relentless in delivering her punishments to me.
In my worn shoes and tattered clothes, I lie down on the concrete ground outside of an abandoned building and let the sky’s tears fall on my face. The cold rain makes my teeth chatter as lightning flashes above me.
A lifetime ago, I felt the gentle caress of a palm on my cheek. And, damn it to hell, I want it back. I want
her
back. The familiarity of her touch. The lull of her voice. Her eyes that could see past every mask I wore, as well as the answers to questions she never asked. All of the broken promises I uttered in desperation, fully aware I could never keep them.
Her warmth soothed me, made me whole.
Yanelys.
I met Yanelys when we were eight years old. She was my beginning, the reason I started living, and I always thought she’d be there until the end.
From the moment I met her, her brown eyes became my constant. When my parents fought, I’d quietly creep out of my bedroom window and into her bedroom, knowing she’d keep her window unlocked in case I needed her. When the police arrested my parents and took me away, her parents gave me a home after my social worker had deemed them fit as my guardians. And when we were teenagers living under the same roof, I’d sneak into her room and crawl into her bed, needing her strength to hold me together.
The only time we were away from each other was when I’d lived in a group home. This happened before we lived together, before I knew what it meant to have a family, when my heart still teetered on the edges of dejection. My life at the group home wasn’t optimal, but it was safe, which somehow made everything worse.
I was twelve years old and away from my best friend, my safety blanket, who knew all my secrets and kept her promise to never expose them—until she felt she no longer had a choice.
I never held that betrayal against her. Even on the longest nights on a hard, lumpy bed, I’d count my blessings with every inhale and exhale. I was alive because of her. My dad would have beaten me to death if she hadn’t told someone.
The day she’d told her parents, her dad had shown up at my house and held my parents at gunpoint while Yanelys and her mom broke into my bedroom through the window. They stayed with me until the police and ambulance arrived. That night, I thought God had finally seen me. I was safe.
But then the police took me away. Sure, no one hurt me while I was at the group home, and Yanelys and her parents would come visit me, but it wasn’t the same. Split-second decisions to seek out Yanelys’s comfort when I couldn’t cope were a thing of the past.
And there was so much I couldn’t cope with back then.
There’s still so much I can’t cope with.
Starting with Yanelys’s tears.
She was the one who pieced me together when I was nothing more than a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.
And I was the one who tore us apart, ripping my heart straight out of my chest in the process.
It’s okay though. Without her, I have no use for a heart anyway.
Forced or not, it was my decision, my doing.
My consequences.
There was never any coming back from that decision. I knew it the minute I walked away from her. I felt the ache in my bones with the emptiness she left behind.
With my back arched, I can reach into the back pocket of my jeans and take out my wallet, knowing exactly where I’ll find Yanelys’s old high school picture.
It’s worn, far worse than my clothes, with the edges wrinkled and torn. My callous fingers touch her face, tracing her full lips with my finger. Her light-brown eyes look back at me, reminding me of the carefree young woman I fell in love with. Her smile isn’t just permanently fixed in the picture but inside of my soul as well.
The memory of her smile dulls the ache in my chest, a poor substitute for the relief her presence used to bring me. The passion we shared made me feel like I could conquer everything, including myself. It was the same passion, the same irrepressible demons within me, that made me leave. Every time she smiled at me, touched me, breathed the same air as me, my heart would threaten to break through its cage to not just love her but to let her know of that love.
But I wasn’t a fairy tale. And, news flash, the beast never turns into a prince.
My scars run deeper than mere flesh wounds. They’re a part of my soul, having seared themselves into the fiber of who and what I am.
When the rain stops, I put away Yanelys’s picture, touching the outline of her dirty-blonde hair, and I stand up from the hard floor to make my way inside the vacant building. Shoulders hunched to keep me warm, I am now the vision of the tired, lonely man I’ve become. After I find a room and huddle in the corner, I close my eyes and allow the loud thunder to lull me to sleep.
I don’t think of Yanelys or the job that I lost. I don’t think about where my tomorrows will lead me. I only think of the rain hitting the rooftop like a million heartbeats.
