I turned my head and let my hair fall, a wall between my mother and me.
She huffed loudly in her typical dramatic fashion. “What’s going on with you? I’m so tired of asking this question and getting no answer. You used to be a straight-A student. You had your sights set on an Ivy League college, and now I feel as if you couldn’t care less about anything.”
I ignored her. “Where in Indiana?” I asked my father.
“Indianapolis,” Dad said. “I’ll be working in the city, but there’s a little town called Harmony, just a few miles south. Your mother’s right. You’ve changed, and the only thing we can surmise is that you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd. Moving you out of Manhattan to a small town seems the best thing to do, which is why I said yes to this opportunity.”
Bullshit.
We were moving because Mr. Wilkinson told my dad he had to move. It had nothing to do with me. My parents loved me the way you’d love a piece of art: an object to keep in the house and admire with the hopes it will someday be valuable. Ever since the night of the party—a party I’d thrown without their knowledge—I’d become an eyesore to them.
The truth was without this job, my father would be sunk. He’d been at Wexx Oil & Gas for three decades. He was far too embedded to start over at another company. In his house, my father was strict and demanding, taking out his lack of control at his job on us. Because at Wexx, when Ross Wilkinson said, “Jump,” my father jumped. This time, all the way to Indiana.
“And you, Willow Anne Holloway,” Dad said, waving his fork like a tyrannical king with a scepter, “are going to find some extracurricular activities. And that’s non-negotiable. Your college applications are a disgrace.”
I didn’t reply. He was right, but I just didn’t give a shit.
“It’ll be a nice change all around,” he declared. “Instead of this townhouse, we’ll have a huge house on a few acres of land. Lots of space. More than you can even imagine. And fresh country air instead of city smog…”
He kept talking but I tuned him out. Words had become so meaningless to me. I had to keep my most important ones locked behind my teeth. The time to tell what happened to me with Xavier Wilkinson had long passed. As soon as I washed my sheets and burned my clothes, it became too late. If I let the truth out now, it’d swirl into a violent storm that would raze my father’s career and destroy my mother’s lifestyle.
If they believed me at all.
“Are the Wilkinsons moving to Indiana also?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Dad said. “Headquarters is still here. I’ll be running their Midwest branch. And since Xavier is still at Amherst—”
“Can I be excused?”
Without waiting for an answer, I picked up my plate of hardly-touched food and carried it to the kitchen. I dumped it in the sink, then hurried through the living room. It was decorated for Christmas, complete with a glittering, elegantly decorated, completely fake tree. When she was alive, my
grandmother insisted we get a live tree to fill the room with green scents and warmth. Garlands of popcorn and clay ornaments I’d made in grade school. But she was gone, and our townhouse looked less like a home and more like a department store decorated for the holidays.
I ran upstairs, the name Xavier Wilkinson chasing me.
I tried not to let myself think of him. He didn’t even have a name in my reckoning. He didn’t deserve one. Names are for humans.
X. That’s what he was. An X. X marks the spot. If I were to draw myself, he would still be on me: five-foot-four with long thick wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, a dimple in my left cheek my grandma had loved, and a big black X scratched over the entirety of me. X marks the spot, on me, on the mattress, like a pirate’s map. What was plundered. Pillaged. Ra—
(we don’t think that word)
I locked my door and hauled the covers off the bed, onto the floor. I hadn’t slept in my bed since the night of the party. There was a black X on it too. I didn’t sleep much on the floor either. Horrifying night terrors assaulted me on the regular, and I’d wake up paralyzed, unable to breathe; the ghostly pressure of a mouth on mine, hands around my throat, and a body, pressing me down, crushing me, until I felt like I was being buried alive.
Bundled up on the hardwood floor in a plain gray comforter—X had ruined my grandmother’s beautiful quilt—I lay on my side, staring at the stacks of books piled on the floor, the shelves, the windowsill. When I needed to escape, I ran into their pages. In them, I could be someone else for a little while. To live a life other than this one.
Maybe this move won’t be so bad after all, I thought, my finger tracing the spines. A new story.
My sleeve pulled back a little when I reached to touch my books. I tugged it back further and examined the little black X’s that marched in a wavy line from the crook of my elbow to my wrist. Like insects. I reached for the black Sharpie I kept hidden under my pillow and added a few more.
X marks the spot.
My hope that Harmony would give me something better died. So long as I was the main character, my horrible story would remain the same.
Until.
Isaac
I woke up shivering, wrapped tight in my blanket that wasn’t nearly thick enough. Icy light fell across my bed, offering no warmth.