Shattered Soul (6 page)

I hated myself for enjoying the feel and taste so
much. I hated Calvin for always placing me in this position. I
hated the drug itself for being so good, because I knew this would
be the beginning of a binge until Calvin’s personal was gone.

I handed the tube to Brent, and then watched as it
made its way around the room and back into the hands of the
red-head again. Before she could take another hit, Dope Man and
Calvin emerged from the back room.

“Steph, chop out nine long skinny ones,” he told
her.

She moved quickly. My eyes focused on her hands,
mesmerized, as she worked. When she was done, nine long skinny
lines sat on the silver tray. Dope Man held the glass tube in his
fingers, heating it up again.

“Ladies first.” He handed the smoking tube to the
red-head, Steph.

My mouth watered with anticipation as she stuck the
unheated end in her nose and the hot end to the first line. She
snorted and came up fast, tipping her head back, to blow out a
thick cloud of smoke. The sickeningly skinny brown-haired girl was
next, then came Dope Man and so on.

I was last in line.

I put the tube in my nose and snorted hard as I
skimmed over the line. I tipped my head back and exhaled the smoke
that had magically filled my lungs. My nose burned and I tasted the
first drip of drainage that slid down the back of my throat over
the next five minutes. It was hard not to gag, but I suppressed it,
enjoying the head rush and tingling of my body as meth traveled
through my veins making me feel alive.

We didn’t stay but a few short minutes after.

Once we climbed back into the car, I gave Brent back
the gun from my waistband and felt relieved when they were locked
away inside the glove compartment again.

Brent tossed me a cigarette and I lit it. I sat in
the back, bouncing my legs, gazing out the window, enjoying my high
immensely all the way home.

It was around six when we pulled in the driveway. I
walked into the house feeling completely jacked and was shocked to
find Mom wide awake, sitting on the couch watching TV without a
bottle of rum in sight. Calvin and Brent seemed to be just as
shocked when they walked in behind me and froze also.

“Can I have the keys to
my
car now, so I can
use it?” she asked coldly. She didn’t ask how we were or what we’d
been doing, she didn’t even mention how zooted I’m sure we all
looked, all she wanted was her keys.

“Sure, Mom,” Calvin answered, stepping forward and
handing them over.

Mom took them from his fingers, snatched her purse up
off the couch, and stomped towards the door.

“This place is trashed, clean it up,” she shouted
before walking out, slamming the door shut behind her.

Calvin and Brent chuckled, but I stood staring at the
closed door, dumbfounded. Not because Mom had seemed so cold and
irritated, but because it was the first time in weeks I’d heard her
speak without slurred words and in a complete sentence. I knew it
would be a couple of more weeks before I got another chance to see
her like that again, because I knew where she was going. She’d
needed the car to go to the liquor store, credit card in hand, to
get herself another stock pile of rum.

I glanced around. The place did look like a dump and
smelled of stale cigarettes. If Mom had said to clean the house any
other time, I probably wouldn’t have, but I had so much energy
coursing through my veins and a sudden urge to do something, the
thought of cleaning didn’t bother me at all.

I walked to the kitchen for a trash bag. When I came
back into the living room, Brent sat sifting through a pile of CDs
on the floor in front of the stereo, and Calvin was already on the
phone, probably with Jade.

I began dumping over-flowing ashtrays into the bag
and then made my way around for all the fast food cups, wrappers,
and crumbled up cigarette packs that littered the floor.

Thirty minutes or so passed before Mom returned from
her liquor store run. She walked through the door with a large
brown paper bag in one hand and an already opened bottle of rum in
the other. Apparently, she couldn’t wait until she was inside the
house to take a swig. Hell, I’d bet she probably took her first
swig once she got to the car before even cranking it up.

Jade walked in behind her.

“Found your trailer trash girlfriend walking on the
side of the road. Figured we were going to the same place, so I
might as well give her a ride,” Mom muttered on her way towards the
kitchen.

I stopped cleaning, my eyes shifted to Jade. She
stood at the door, her arms folded across her chest, looking so
fragile and sad I felt bad for her.

“She’s not trailer trash, Mom,” I said, without
realizing I’d spoken out loud until it was too late.

My mom walked out of the kitchen to smirk at me as
though she didn’t agree. “Well, whatever you want to call her, here
she is,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

“Jade, her name is Jade. That’s what I call her.” Why
was I still speaking? Why couldn’t I have just let it go?

I noticed Calvin begin bouncing his leg from the
corner of my eye. I didn’t have to shift my gaze to know he was
growing more pissed at me by the second. My eyes flickered to Jade;
she was still standing at the door, only now she didn’t look so sad
and frail, she was staring at me and smiling. I smiled back,
slightly, and resumed my cleaning, avoiding all eye contact, with
Calvin especially.

Mom chuckled and started down the hall. “I’m going to
take a hot bath. No one bother me,” she grumbled.

I shrugged off my thoughts and went to the kitchen to
raid the cleaning cabinet for anything we had left. Calvin
followed, making every muscle in my body grow tense.

“What was up with that?” he demanded.

I turned to face him, standing up straight, feeling
extremely bold as adrenaline pumped through my veins.

“With what?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what
he was questioning.

“With stickin’ up for my girl,” he uttered, stepping
forward the remaining inches between us and puffing his chest out.
The tip of my head came below his chin, even with me standing as
tall as I could manage.

I didn’t say a word, mainly because I wasn’t sure why
I’d done it.

Calvin pushed me and I stumbled slightly. His chin
dropped to his chest and his eyes grew fiery. “I said, why are you
sticking up for my girl like that? You got the hots for her or
something?”

I could see where this was going and fast. No matter
what, I was screwed. There was no right answer to his question and
no right reason to give for why I’d said what I’d said.

“Do you?” he asked again, his eyeballs blazing.

“No. Just figured someone should stick up for her,
since you obviously weren’t going to,” I said loud and clear.

I held my breath, not believing those words had come
from my mouth. I’d been thinking them, but I had absolutely no
intention of saying them out loud. Before I could think on the
subject any further, Calvin’s lips twisted into a wicked smile and
his fist smashed into my jaw.

My head flung back from the power of his blow. Shock
sizzled through me, followed closely by massive amounts of
adrenaline. I straightened up in time to catch his next blow just
under my left eye. Calvin didn’t give me any time to recover before
he pounded me with another one connecting with my jaw again.

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I put my
hands up to block my face from the blows which were sure to come
next. Calvin chuckled, and then I felt his knee strike me in the
gut. All the breath inside of my lungs came rushing out as I
buckled over in pain and fell to the floor.

“Calvin, no!” Jade shouted as she ran into the
kitchen.

Oblivious to her cries, Calvin kicked me in the
stomach, starving my lungs for air even further. Blood exploded
from my mouth and sprayed across the linoleum as I coughed and
choked.

“Stop it!” Jade shouted at him again.

Calvin didn’t stop. I took two more kicks to the
stomach and thought I heard something pop; it wouldn’t be the first
time I’d gotten a rib broken by Calvin, and then he was on top of
me, pounding again at the side of my face. My arms were doing me no
good in defense and I knew better than to swing back, he’d kill me
for sure.

“Calvin, stop!” Jade screamed. “Stop!”

“All right, break it up!” Brent yelled and I felt my
brother’s weight being lifted off me.

I opened my good eye to see Brent plucking Calvin off
me in one He-man motion.

“Get off me! I’m done, I’m cool,” Calvin shouted,
straightening his t-shirt. “Let’s go.” He walked out of the kitchen
without looking at me again.

I curled up into a ball and closed my eyes, listening
to two sets of footsteps walk away, thankful my beating was over. A
cool hand touched my forehead. Jade.

“I’m so sorry, Seth. He’s been on edge lately. Let me
get a wet rag,” she insisted.

“No,” I choked out, wincing at the pain from my
busted lip. “Just go,” I insisted in more of a pleading tone then
I’d intended.

I hated to seem rude, but if he saw her helping to
clean me up it would only make things worse, for myself and for
her. I’d never actually saw Calvin hit a woman before, but with as
easy as he found it to hit me, I wouldn’t put it past him and I
didn’t want to risk it.

“Go!” I repeated a little louder this time. I closed
my eyes.

“Okay,” she whispered, draping the wet rag across my
hand.

I listened to the sound of her sandals click as she
walked away and finally relaxed once the front door slammed shut
behind her. I remained laying on the cool linoleum floor curled
into a ball, spitting the blood pooling in my mouth out on the
floor. Pain pulsated in my face. I should have kicked Calvin’s ass.
I should have at least attempted to get one good hit in, but I
didn’t.

I had wussed out, again.

The sound of the bathroom door opening and closing
stirred me. My heart jolted, I didn’t want to hear my mother bitch
at me once she saw I was laying on the floor with my own blood
splattered around.

That was a lie.

The truth was, I was scared she wouldn’t care at all,
or that she’d have some smartass thing to say about how I had
deserved it. The best thing to do was clean it up and move on as if
it never happened.

I winced as I forced myself to sit up and the kitchen
swirled around me a few times from lightheadedness. I grabbed the
rag beside me and began mopping up my bloody mess before getting a
clean one for my face.

Mom walked into the kitchen as I was carefully wiping
the crusted blood off my chin. She didn’t look at me, she didn’t
even ask what had happened, even though I knew she had to have
heard it. She sat her half empty bottle down and began digging in
her purse on the counter. I continued cleaning my face over the
sink as I watched her from the corner of my eye. Mom pulled out a
pack of cigarettes and held one out to me.

“Want one?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said and took it from her shaking
fingers.

Mom took one out for herself and stumbled her way out
of the kitchen and into the living room without another word. My
heart sunk.

I tucked the cigarette behind my ear and started
towards my room to change my clothes. No way I was staying another
second in this house if I didn’t have to.

I slid my shirt off gingerly and cringed at the pain
the motion unleashed in my rib. I glanced at myself in the mirror
above my dresser, assessing how bad I looked.

There was a good sized red mark where Calvin’s knee
had met my stomach, which would probably be gone later, leaving
behind a light bruise in its place. But, it was the reddish-blue
swollen mark across the left side of my lower rib cage that I knew
was going to cause me the worst pain of all.

I lightly pressed my fingers against it and a sharp
pain shot through me, making me clench my teeth. Because nothing
was poking out, I wondered if I’d fractured it or maybe bruised it
to the bone. My face looked like hell. My left eye had almost
swollen shut already and my top lip was so puffed up it was
impossible for me to close my mouth all the way.

I hated Calvin, but I knew I’d hate him even more
tomorrow when this looked and felt even worse.

I continued to change and grabbed an extra pair of
clothes. I rolled them up and tucked them underneath my arm before
grabbing the cigarette off my dresser and walking out of my
room.

Mom sat on the couch, watching a movie when I came
into the living room. I didn’t say a word to her, I continued
towards the front door as if she wasn’t there. I stepped outside
and closed the door behind me, pausing for a split second as a
depressing thought flooded my mind. Would anyone care if I chose to
never come back?

I pushed the thought from my mind, afraid of the
answer swimming to the surface and cocked my head to the side to
light my cigarette. I adjusted the clothes under my arm and began
walking in the direction of Trip’s house.

The walk to Trip’s was a long one, it was nearly
eight by the time I walked up the front path. His mom’s black Lexus
sat out front, but his dad’s Beamer was gone. It was Saturday
night, his parents were probably at some fancy cocktail party
somewhere getting hammered.

I walked to the front door and knocked, just in case
his mom might still be home. Trip answered.

“What the hell, man?” he freaked, rushing me inside.
“What if my mom had answered the door? She’d freak if she saw you
this way!” He tossed his hands up and waved them around in an
exaggerated motion as he spoke.

I walked past him and towards the spic-and-span, cut
straight from the pages of a magazine, kitchen and grabbed a bottle
of water from the fridge. Trip continued to rant and rave behind me
as he followed. I took a swig and turned to face him.