Game Changer (The Field Party)

“Ezmita, I’m not one hundred percent sure I didn’t just seriously injure or possibly kill my father. How’s that for bad enough?” I asked, holding my smile to lighten my words. It felt wrong tarnishing her with my nightmares. She wanted to escape her overbearing family. I was almost positive I didn’t kill mine, but I sure as hell hurt him and he wasn’t going to forgive that. So, yeah, I disagreed with her. My shit show was bad enough to do this.

“Why?” she asked, instead of running off in fear of a possible murderer or crazy guy who was about to off himself.

“Why.” I repeated the simple question. I thought for a moment, then inhaled the cool night air. I wondered how many more breaths I would take before this was over. I missed the idea of no longer having the summer sun warm my skin. Not holding a football in my hands again. Smelling the leather as I held it. I was regretting taking those things for granted. “It was an accident. I meant to hurt him. To shut him up. To stop him. To protect my mother,” I said as I stared straight ahead. Then I looked back at Ezmita. Her eyes looked like the color of caramel under the streetlight. “I’m a prisoner too. I can’t leave this town because I can’t leave my mother. He’d kill her eventually, and I can’t get her to see that. I can’t get her to leave.”

Ezmita frowned, but it wasn’t one of disapproval. She seemed concerned more than anything. I waited, needing her to say something. This stranger who I knew from sight only and very little interaction, I was relying on her to make this better. To change my mind. To give me a reason to step down and face whatever stood ahead of me. I wanted her to convince me not to be a coward.

“If you do this, then you’ll be leaving her. Forever. Not just for months at a time. You’ll be leaving her alone for the rest of her life. You’ll be leaving her with guilt and pain I don’t think you can imagine since you’re not a parent. Right now, my parents think I’m in the store cleaning like I was told to do. I wanted to talk about college and my acceptance letter to Loyola Marymount and the scholarship I received. But that’s in California, not here. So they refuse to listen. They sent me away from the dinner table to clean. To remind me who the boss was.

“I ran instead. I didn’t clean. I didn’t obey. I always obey. I didn’t this time. I can’t keep trying to be the perfect daughter because my older sister overdosed on heroin at seventeen years old. I can’t be who they wanted her to be. I want to be me. I want to live the life I choose. I don’t rebel and do drugs like my sister did. I’ve been the perfect daughter. Not anymore. I can’t. I have to be free.”

Ezmita had her own set of problems. It seemed I’d just been given the CliffsNotes. I was sure there was more to an older sister who had overdosed, and parents who expected her to obey them. She was out here in the dark on a road alone, running. I didn’t know a girl who was brave enough to be out here at night by herself. There had to be a form of desperation in her, too.

“One would argue that you being out here alone in the dark running is your own form of suicide,” I replied.

She frowned at me. She hadn’t seen it that way. Maybe she hadn’t thought it was that dangerous to be out at night alone.

“I see your point, but I wouldn’t have let someone take me without a fight. I was running from my overbearing family. Not running toward the hope of death. You’re standing on the brink of it. That’s not fighting. That’s giving up.”

She was right. I wasn’t a quitter.

I sighed and slid my foot back. I heard her gasp, and I jumped backward before she could suffer any more of this nightmare with me. My feet hit the road beneath me, and the railing was now in front of me. I stood there and looked up at it wondering if Ezmita hadn’t come along, would I have gone through with it?

She was right. I’d have caused pain and more destruction. My mother had suffered enough, but she wasn’t going to leave my father. I didn’t think he was dead or that he was going to suffer a brain injury that would give him any lasting problems. But I did know it was possible he would kill me. I wasn’t going to jump, but I couldn’t go home. Not yet.