Chapter 3

Going home didn’t seem like a great idea at the moment. Tammy would make that call, and then my parents would want to sit me down for a talk. With my legs still shaking, I wasn’t up for going back now. If I could have avoided home forever, then I would have. But that was the rub. I didn’t want to be home, but I didn’t want to be anywhere else either. Nowhere made me feel better, or calm.

I started walking, not paying attention to the direction I headed. Surely I would end up somewhere. I mean, I have to, right?

My gaze stayed on my feet, as if they could have offered entertainment for me. What they did do, was distract me from how much time passed me by. When I checked, it had been a half hour, and I ended up in a Walmart parking lot.

Well, I could always use more candy.

I went inside and grabbed a basket from the bin at the entrance. An old man welcomed me to the store, and I had to make myself smile at him so he didn’t know I was terrible. He seemed to have bought it, because he wished me a nice day.

I made a bee line for the candy section at the middle of the store and accepted that I would get diabetes before I turned twenty. Since I’d be eighteen in a month, that felt like a good run to me. Snickers had earned the right to take me out.

When I got to the candy section, I had myself a little moment to feel overwhelmed with my choices. My entire stash back at home went quickly, since eating at three in the morning made me feel better. Or, it at least distracted me for a little while. That and my TV got me through some long nights.

Candy didn’t make my thoughts go away like I’d hoped it would have. I kept thinking about the car rolling away from me, and how useless I’d been to stop it. Everyone saw me being stupid, and careless. It wasn’t like I’d been well received at that school anyway. They all knew me as the oddly quiet girl, who always hung off the arm of one of the lacrosse players. I could only have imagined what I would be dealing with now.

I started with the candy bars, picking out my favorites, and the favorites of my parents. If I bribed them with candy, maybe they wouldn’t have hated me for crashing a car into a lamp outside. As well as destroying all the windows. Tammy would have to get that thing towed, and I wouldn’t ever hear the end of it. School would be hell tomorrow but thinking more about it would only give me an anxiety attack.

I put a handful of candy bars in the basket and moved over to the bagged things. I cocked my head at them, staring until something called out at me. Several items looked okay, but I put them in the basket halfheartedly. The whole time, I kept thinking about how I shouldn’t have been doing this. It was a waste of money, and my parents would have wanted me to come home. This wasn’t going to do anything to help them trust me. I wished I’d left that hammer in the toolbox where I’d found it.

“Excuse me,” someone said from behind.

I turned, and saw a boy standing in front of me. He had his hands in his pockets, and a shirt that said Ninja Sex Party, with, you guessed it, a cartoon ninja guy on it, and another guy dressed in blue. Once I got past that, I glanced up. The boy had hair such a dark brown, that it looked almost black as it fell slightly over his forehead and around his ears. He stood tall, at what looked like six feet, and the t-shirt made it clear that he had some muscle on him. Not a ton, but enough to look like he could have picked me up and thrown me a good twenty feet. Bulky wouldn’t have been the right word to describe him, but he looked just shy of it. Finally, when I looked into his dark blue eyes, I realized I’d seen his face before. I was pretty sure I had a couple classes with him, but I didn’t know his name.

“Yeah?” I said.

He smiled. “I’m a little lost and I was hoping you might know the store a little better. Where can I find knitting supplies and Magnum condoms?”

I tilted my head, narrowing my eyes at the boy. “Seriously?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I’ll be honest here, I thought that would go over better.”

Exhaling, I said, “Thought what would go better?”

“Well, you looked like you were hoping a train would come out of the wall and hit you, so I thought I’d be nice and try to make you laugh. I was only kidding before. I don’t actually knit.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to smile.

“That’s a lie,” the boy said. “I do knit. I knit like a motherfucker. I can make a sweater in three hours flat.” He snapped and put his hands back in his pockets.

I nodded, and switched the hands that held my basket, since the handle bit into my fingers. “Well it was nice to meet you, weirdo.”

Before I could turn, he stuck his hand out to shake. “Thanks, you too. Poe.”

Reluctantly, I shook his hand. “Clover.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t talk, buddy.”

He waved his hands. “No, no I liked it. Glad to meet someone else in the weird name club.”

I let myself smile a little. “Your parents a fan of The Raven or something?”

The boy’s eyes darted around for a few seconds, and he cleared his throat. “Um, no. We just got stuck with weird names. I have a ten-year-old sister who didn’t avoid the honor either. She’s Malon.”

“Oh, you poor bastard.”

“Eh, I’m kinda into it.”

Again, I smiled, and then set my basket on the floor when I couldn’t handle the weight any longer. “Okay then, Poe. I guess you have some giant condoms and knitting things to gather up.”

I turned again, going back to my selection of candy that I didn’t really want all that much now. I felt like I bought it just to buy it, either for something to do, or something to eat. It all looked like a bad idea and a stomachache from here.

Poe poked his head around me, looking at the candy. “Whatcha doin’?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“You still look miserable, and I feel like if I leave you alone, it would be rude of me. Also, I’m in a Skittles mood.” He picked up a pack from the shelf.

“Please,” I deadpanned. “Don’t pity me. I can fend for myself.”

“Obviously. You got the little chocolates with toffee in them, so I know you’re smart. The point being, it’s kind of a bummer to see someone so sad, and so close to the candy.”

I wasn’t in the mood to spill my guts to a stranger, or even a person I knew. I’d found that I did better when I let the pain rot inside of me, like a normal person. I needed to tell the guy to shove off in the nicest way I could have.

I opened my mouth, but then Poe cut me off. “You have first lunch?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Cool.” He paused, and then squinted at my hair. “You have some glass in your insane curls. Is that like a fashion thing or…”

I sighed and went searching. Poe had to help me, sifting through an orange mess until he found the piece. I’d probably wake up with blood all over my pillow from unseen leftovers, but I had that coming.

“All better,” Poe said. “Best not to wear something pointy. At least, that’s my policy.”

“Right…”

He waggled his eyebrows at me. “It was nice meeting you, grumpy Gus. I hope I’ll see you around.”

“Sure ya do.”

“What? I do.”

I didn’t want to get into a fight in the middle of a store, so I nodded. “Then I guess I hope I see you too.” 

*** 

If I could have snuck into my room without being noticed by my parents, then I would have. I could hear my siblings playing before I unlocked the front door. I winced when I turned the lock and considered sleeping in the park for a night. How bad could it have possibly been? The slide could fit someone my size.

I pushed the front door open anyway and looked inside. While I could hear Orny and Tuney, I didn’t see them or our parents. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me before I bolted for my room.

I breathed again when the door shut, and I sat on my bed. My room was a safe place. Everything organized to the way I wanted, and empty. It worked for me in a world where nothing worked. This was as close as I could have gotten.

I laid on my back and glanced at the clock. It felt like nearly eight, but the stupid clock told me it was only about five. Not even dinner time. How could time have gone by so slowly? It didn’t make sense to me how I could have been left with so little to do.

Before Peter, I had a handful of friends. Casual, but I spent some time with them, and it had been fine. Then he came along, and everything changed. We got so close, and those other friends didn’t matter for me, and he had none to begin with, so it was the two of us. With my best friend gone, I had this massive gap to deal with. That might have been the most jarring thing. I had no one to reach out to when I had news, or felt bored, or lonely. My only friend was missing, and I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore.

Someone knocked on my door, making me sit up in response. I already knew who it would be, so I hid my candy under the bed, and went to open the door. Mom and Dad had sullen looks on their faces as they walked in, and I went back to my bed for the lecture.

“Clover,” my mom started. “I got a very upsetting call at work today. Care to explain to me what happened at school?”

While there wasn’t much to explain, I still had to go over the story with them. God knew what Tammy told her, and I didn’t want my parents thinking I meant to push a car down a hill.

“I was in the parking lot after school,” I started. “I stopped for a minute and leaned against a car. She left it in neutral, and it started rolling down the hill. I tried to stop it, but the glass broke instead of stopping.”

Dad sighed, covering his face with his hands. “What moron thought it was smart to put a parking lot at the top of a hill?”

I shrugged.

Mom didn’t seem to want to cut me as much of a break. “You did a lot of damage to that car, and it’s going to take me a while to get it all fixed up. We talked about this kind of thing…”

“Yeah,” Dad added. “You wanna tell us what you have against cars lately?”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I told them. “It really wasn’t. I leaned on it, and I didn’t know she put it in neutral. She didn’t care that it was an accident. Tammy wanted to kill me.”

My parents exchanged a look, clearly trying to decide what to do with me now. It probably looked like I went off the deep end. To be fair, I might have. I didn’t mean to break the windshield, but I did throw a hammer through the air. I didn’t mean to push the car down a hill, but I stalked my ex-boyfriend. I asked for all this, I supposed. I had issues…

“You’re terrifying us,” my mom said. “You don’t spend any time with people anymore, and now, you’re getting into trouble. You have to tell us right now if you’re planning on keeping this up.”

Dad said, “We have two little kids in this house that need us, and you can’t be off getting in trouble every single day. Our focus has to be on the children who actually need to be taken care of. You’re grown up now, Clover. Act like it.”

I knew that they were right on this, but what could I have done? Nothing felt right, and I didn’t know how to fix that. It wasn’t like I had someone I could have reached out to. No safe place that would have made me feel like I wasn’t totally insane for all the thoughts running through my head. That place left me a month ago, and I couldn’t go back there. I was on my own, and I had to learn how to get along anyway.

“I’m sorry,” I said as my eyes prickled. “I really didn’t mean to do it. The car started rolling, and I couldn’t stop it.”

“What were you even doing in the parking lot?” Mom asked. “And where were you all afternoon? Why didn’t you come home?”

I could have been honest with them, and said I wanted to avoid the conversation. That wouldn’t have sounded mature of me. Then again, neither was lying to them about it. Or saying I went off to buy a bunch of candy because real food didn’t look appealing to me at the moment. They got on me about that too, since I wouldn’t eat anything healthy.

“I had to get an extra credit assignment from a teacher,” I lied. “She made me come get it after class, and she needed help with something. I didn’t think it would be that big a deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Dad said. “I know you didn’t mean to mess up that car, honey, but we have to do something here. You’re grounded.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “What? I haven’t been grounded since I was ten.”

“Too bad,” Mom said. “You go from school to home until we tell you otherwise. If we keep ignoring this, then it’ll look like we don’t care.”

By all means, make sure it looks like you care. Don’t actually care.

Where did I go anyway? I almost never went farther than the driveway anymore, so I didn’t care all that much. I’d stay in my room, and stare at the wall like I always did. Though if I said that, my parents would have killed me.

“Okay,” I said. “I accept my grounding. I earned it.”

Dad nodded. “We don’t want to do this, but you need time to think about where you’re going in your life. You can’t let some boy upset you so much that you get into trouble.”

Some boy. He said it like I wasn’t in love with him. Like we didn’t make plans for our future and talk about our children. He said it as if the rug of my life didn’t get pulled out from under me, and then burned. Everything had been perfectly planned out, and I didn’t have to worry. I had answers to it all. Now, without any of those answers, the whole world fell apart.

My eyes went to the little wooden carvings on display, and I thought about every single time Peter had given me one. He’d looked so happy and proud, and I loved them all. Now it stung my chest to see them, and I still couldn’t bear to throw them in the trash. It would have been like erasing all the good memories that I’d had with him. If I had only those left, then I had to keep them.

Something felt wrong in my brain, and it had been since long before I met Peter. Something missing, or off at least. I didn’t feel things the right way, and it was like people could see it in me. They didn’t like me, and they had no reason to. My empathy had gotten all out of whack, and I couldn’t even care about myself. Peter used to tell me that I’d eventually grow out of it. I still waited for that.

“Just hang out in here for a while,” Mom said. “I think you need some alone time.”

I nearly laughed at that, since I almost only had alone time. This was the most my parents had spoken to me in months. Even when Peter and I broke up, they didn’t say much more than he was a jerk, and some other person would come along eventually. I couldn’t see myself with anyone else. A boy or a girl, it all looked the same to me, like it always had. Before Peter, I didn’t think anyone would have wanted me. Now, I didn’t want anyone else. I’d never even been attracted to that many people, let alone had feelings for them. Peter and I just fit together, and things went from there.

I didn’t want to look for that again, when I knew I wouldn’t have found it.