The Redemption of Callie and Kayden (5 page)

voicemail where she could yammer to it about how messed up she

thinks it is that Kayden beat up Caleb. But giving her an open door

to a one-sided conversation is like Christmas morning for her and I

don’t want to have to listen to her go on and on in hopes of

hearing something important.

I press TALK and put the phone up to my ear. “Hello.”

“Hi, sweetie,” she singsongs and my face instantly sinks.

“How are you?”

“Fine.” I ignore Luke’s questioning stare and watch the road.

“You don’t sound fine,” she replies and then sighs. “Callie,

you’re not going back to being depressed again, are you? Because

I thought college was healing that.”

“I was never depressed,” I respond flatly. “Just quiet.”

She sighs exaggeratedly and I grit my teeth. “Look, honey, I

just wanted to let you know that Caleb’s probably going to be

pressing charges against Kayden for what he did.”

“What!” I exclaim, startling Luke enough that he jumps and

swerves the truck a little and the side of the tire clips the curb,

causing the truck to lurch. He quickly regains control and I lower

my voice and press my finger to my ear to hear better as I huddle

toward the door. “What the fuck do you mean he’s pressing

charges?”

“Callie Lawrence, you will not use that kind of language on

the phone with me, young lady,” she warns. “You know how much I

don’t like the F word.”

“Sorry,” I apologize. “But why is Caleb pressing charges? They

both beat each other up.”

“No, Kayden hit Caleb for no reason,” she says. “Caleb was

just defending himself.”

“He didn’t hit him for no reason. He hit him because of me.”

It slips out like poison vapor and I choke on each syllable.

There’s an extensive pause. “Callie, what do you mean he hit

Caleb because of you? Why would he do that?”

My shoulders curl in as the shame and the dirtiness floods

my body and I remember her limited ability to understand things.

“It’s nothing. I’m just upset and saying stuff. It doesn’t mean

anything.”

She pauses again and I wonder if for a split second, she’s

contemplating my words on a deeper level. “Callie, is there

something you want to tell me?”

When I breathe again, it’s deafening and I swear the whole

world can hear it and they know my secret. “No, Mom.”

“Okay then.” She sounds disappointed, like I was just about

to give her the secret locked in a box inside me. But only Kayden

has the key to it. “Well, I just wanted to let you know in case it

comes up. I know his best friend goes to school there with you and

I don’t want you to have to hear it by gossip.”

I shake my head. “All right.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Callie.”

“Okay, bye.”

We hang up and I clutch the phone in my hand, strangling

the life out of it. My palms start to sweat and I can’t stop thinking about Kayden. He did it for me. He did it for me. I need to save

him. “I think we should go to Afton.”

When Luke looks at me, there are lines on his forehead and

his hands are gripping the steering wheel. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I raise my hips and slide the phone into the pocket of

my jeans. “My mom said Caleb’s going to press charges against

Kayden.”

He keeps some of his attention on the road as he turns the

truck into the parking lot in front of my dorm. “Are you shitting

me?”

I zip up my coat and put my gloves on. “No, and I need to fix

it… somehow. It’s my fault it happened to begin with.”

He parks the truck near the front, puts his hand on the

shifter, and pushes it into park. The radio plays and the engine

keeps cutting out. I wonder if he knows why Kayden beat up Caleb

that night, if he ever told him.

“All right, it’s a deal.” Luke stares at the McIntyre residence

hall in front of us. It’s the tallest of the residence halls at the

University of Wyoming and it looks lonely, towering above the

others. “You want to leave tonight or in the morning?”

I grab the door handle and pull on it. “In the morning. I’d like

Seth to come too if that’s okay.”

He nods and reaches for his pack of cigarettes on the

dashboard. “That’s fine as long as you guys don’t mind squishing

into this thing. It’s a piece of shit, but Seth’s car’s never going to make it to Afton with all the snow.”

I shove open the door. “He’ll be fine with it I’m sure.” I swing

my feet over the edge of the seat, getting ready to jump down.

“Callie,” Luke calls out. “Is there any way we can fix this? Stop

Caleb from pressing charges? You know, if he does, Kayden’s

going to get suspended from the team. He’ll probably never play

again. And he’ll probably get suspended from school. Plus, he

might have to go to jail or pay a huge fucking fine that he can’t

afford without his father’s help.” He pauses, deliberating with his

forehead bunched. “I just really want to make sure that

everything’s okay with him… Sometimes when people hit bottom,

they give up…” His voice grows softer, like the weight of a fall leaf.

“Kind of like my sister.”

The gravity of the situation pushes on my chest as I hop out,

grabbing the door for support. I remember that Luke had a sister.

He never said how she died, but after what he just said, I wonder if

it was suicide.

Pressing my palm to the nagging ache in the center of my

heart, I turn around toward the cab. “I’m going to try. I just have to figure out how.” I already know how. The big question is, can I do

it? Can I finally say it aloud, confront him, threaten him, make it so that he’s so terrified he’ll walk away from it. Can I tell my mother, father, and brother? Can I trust them to believe me and be on my

side?

Do I have that much power? Do I have that much courage?

In the end, I know I’m going to have to answer those

questions and make a decision that’s frightened me for the last six

years of my life, but maybe it’s time to face it.

Maybe it’s time to quit being so scared.

#46 Transform yourself

Kayden

I’ve been here six days, almost a week, but it seems so much

longer. It’s just after lunch and I’m in the middle of my daily

individual therapy session, which is better than group (I don’t

bother talking in that one). I’m sitting in my room in an

uncomfortable metal fold-up chair. My side hurts like hell and I

can’t stop picking at the wounds underneath the bandage on my

wrist. It’s cloudy outside and thunder and lightning keep snapping

and booming, lighting up the room with a silver glow.

“Tell me how you feel,” the therapist says.

He says it every God damn time.

And every God damn time I give him the same response.

“I feel fine,” I reply and flick the rubber band on my wrist

over and over again until the skin on the inside of my wrist stings.

This is what they gave me to help my self-mutilation, like a tiny

sting can replace a lifetime of cuts, stabs, broken bones, the raw

pain of life.

My therapist’s name is Dr. Montergrey, but he told me to call

him Doug because using his professional name makes him feel

old. But he is old, well into his sixties, with gray thinning hair and lots of wrinkles around his eyes.

Doug puts his finger to the bridge of his nose and adjusts his

square-framed glasses as he reads over the notes he has on me. I

can only imagine what they say: a threat to himself, angry,

irrational, uncooperative, self-damaging. He jots down some notes

and then looks up at me. “Look, Kayden, I know sometimes it’s

hard to talk about how we feel, especially when we have so much

hate and rage going on inside, but you might find it helpful to talk

about it.”

I flick the rubber band again and the snap is covered up by

the deafening clap of thunder. The room lights up and the rubber

band breaks, the pieces falling to the floor. I stare at them as I rub my swollen wrist. I still have a bandage on one of them, the one

that I made the deepest cuts on. The other one is starting to heal

and soon there will only be scars. More scars. One day I wonder if

I’ll be one big scar that will own every ounce of my skin.

Doug reaches into the pocket of his brown tweed jacket and

retrieves another rubber band, a thicker one that’s dark red. I take

it, slip it onto my wrist, and begin flicking it again. Doug scribbles some notes down, closes the notebook, and then overlaps his

hands and places them on top of the notebook. “You know, the

longer you stay in denial, the longer they’re going to keep you

here.” He gestures around at the room. “Is that what you want?”

I stop flicking the rubber band, fold my arms, and lean back

in the seat with my legs kicked out in front of me. “Maybe.” I know

I’m being a pain in the ass and I don’t know why. I feel bitter on

the inside, unworthy to be here. I feel everything and maybe that’s

the problem. I clench my hands into fists and jab my fingernails

into my palms, which are tucked to my side so the therapist

doesn’t see them.

“I just don’t want to be here,” I mutter. “But it’s fucking hard,

you know?”

He leans forward with interest. “What’s hard?”

I have no idea where I’m going with this. “Life.” I shrug.

His gray eyebrows dip underneath the frame of his glasses.

“What’s hard about your life, Kayden?”

This guy doesn’t get it, which might make it easier. “Feeling

everything.”

He looks perplexed as he reclines in his chair and slips off his

glasses. “Feeling emotions? Or the pain in life?”

Fuck. Maybe he does get it. “Both I guess.”

Rain slashes against the window. It’s weird that it’s raining

instead of snowing and by morning the ground is going to be a

sloshy mess.

He cleans the lenses of his glasses with the bottom of his

shirt and then slips them back on his nose. “Do you ever let

yourself feel what’s inside you?”

I consider what he said for a very long time. Sirens shriek

outside and somewhere in the halls a person is crying. “I’m not

sure… maybe… not always.”

“And why is that?” he asks.

I think back to all the kicks, the punches, the screaming, and

how eventually I just drowned it all out, shut down, and died

inside. “Because it’s too much.” It’s a simple answer, but each word

conveys more meaning than anything I’ve ever said. It’s fucking

strange to talk about it aloud. The only person I’ve ever said

anything to was Callie and I sugarcoated it for her, to keep her

from seeing how ugly and fucked up I am on the inside.

He removes a pen from the pocket of his jacket and his hand

swiftly moves across the paper as he scribbles down some notes.

“And what do you do when it becomes too much?”

I slide my finger under the rubber band and give it a flick,

then do it again harder. It breaks again and I shake my head as I

catch the pieces in my hand. “I think you know what I do, which is

why I keep breaking these damn rubber bands.”

He chews on the end of his pen as he evaluates me. “Let’s

talk about the night you got in a fight.”

“I already told you about that night a thousand times.”

“No, you told me what happened that night in your own

words, but you’ve never explained to me how you felt when you

were making your decision. And emotions always play a large part

in the things we do.”

“I’m not a fan of them,” I admit, slouching back in the chair.

“I know that,” he responds confidently. “And I’d like to get to

the bottom of why.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I tell him, dragging my nail up the inside

of my palm to soothe the accelerating beat of my heart. “No one

wants to hear about that. Trust me.”

He drops the pen on top of the notebook that’s on his lap.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because it’s true.” I stab my nails deeper into my skin until I

feel the warmth and comfort of blood. “I’m nineteen years old and

everything that’s done is done. There’s no point in trying to save

me. Who I am and what I do is always going to be.”

“I’m not trying to save you,” he promises. “I’m trying to heal

you.”

I run my finger along a thin scar on the palm of my hand that

was put there when my dad cut me with a shard of glass. “What?

Heal these? I’m pretty fucking sure they’re not going anywhere.”

He positions his hand over his heart. “I want to heal what’s in

here.”

Usually I bail on these situations. Otherwise I’ll end up feeling

things I don’t want to, and then I have to take it out on my body

just to cope. But I can’t here. They won’t let me anywhere near

anything sharp, especially razors. My jawline and chin are

extremely scruffy because I haven’t shaved in a week.

“This is getting way too heart-to-heart for me,” I say and

grab onto the sides of the chair to push myself up.

He holds up his hand, signaling for me to sit back down.

“Okay, we don’t have to talk about your feelings, but I want you to

answer one thing for me.”

I stare blankly at him as I lower myself back into the chair.

“That depends on what that one thing is.”

He taps the pen against the notebooks as he deliberates.