Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

“How are you so stupid?” he demanded. “The only thing it would change is that people would think I’m the father. Why else would I be taking up for you?”

Desperation constricted her chest. “Because you’re my friend!”

The word friend lingered, a distant echo in the small shed. They had been friends for more years than they could both remember. All of them, in some way, had always been in each other’s lives.

Clay shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t be your friend anymore, Emily. Surely you see that. Everything has changed.”

She wanted to scream until her throat bled. Nothing had changed for him. He was still popular. He still had the clique. He was still going out West to college. He still had a future.

“Emily, you have to understand,” Clay said. “My parents thought it was me. I had to swear on a Bible. They were going to force me to marry you.”

“Force?” Emily said, as if she had no say in the matter. “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Clay said. “If you get married, all of this will go away.”

She pressed together her lips so that she didn’t laugh in his face. Nothing was going to go away for Emily. The baby would still be growing inside of her. Instead of interning for a senator and learning about macroeconomics and tort reform, she would be cleaning vomit out of her hair and changing diapers.

Clay said, “I can’t risk my parents thinking that I lied. They’ll disown me. You know how religious they are. They’ll put up with a lot of my shit, but not that. They made it damn clear to me. I’ll have nothing.”

She finally laughed. “Well God forbid you lose your beloved parents.”

“Go fuck yourself, you stupid, conniving bitch.” Clay’s anger sparked like a warning flare. “I will not get stuck in this pissant town. I will not live the rest of my life surrounded by fucking bourgeois cocksuckers who don’t read books or talk about art or understand the fucking world that we live in. And I sure as shit will never see either of your fucking faces ever again.”

Emily heard a sob from Jack. He was staring at Clay, a mournful expression on his face. His devastation spread like a miasma straight into Emily’s heart. Every day, over and over, they both lost the same things again and again.

“Clay,” Jack said. “You said I could go with you. You said—”

Emily would have missed Clay’s transformation had she not been watching him so closely. His handsome features contorted into a monstrous hideousness. Rage darkened his eyes. His elbow was cocked back as he ran across the room. And then he smashed his fist squarely into Jack’s face.

“Fucking freak!” Clay punched Jack so hard that his head splintered the wall. Then he hit him again. And again. “You’re not my fucking girlfriend!”

Jack held up his arms in vain, trying to block the punches, not hitting back though he was so much bigger and stronger than Clay. Even when a tooth chipped, a finger snapped back on his hand, he kept taking it.

“No—” Emily’s hands went to her mouth. She was horrified by the violence, incapable of stopping it. Clay kept pummeling Jack until they were both on the ground. His fist was like a pile driver. Even when it became clear that Jack would do nothing to stop him, Clay kept hitting him. It was only when Clay’s energy was spent that he reluctantly stopped.

His face was slashed with blood. He was sweating profusely. He pushed himself to standing. Instead of leaving, he swung back his foot to kick Jack in the head.

“No!” Emily screamed. “Stop!”

Her voice was so loud that the air seemed to shake with it.

Clay’s head whipped around. His eyes were wild.

“Stop!” Emily said, her voice urgent with fear.

Clay had frozen, but only because he seemed to realize where he was—inside a shed that was on the Vaughn property with their pregnant daughter watching. His hand went to his face. Instead of wiping the blood away, he smeared it like horror make-up across his cold, hard features. He had finally, deliberately, showed himself.

His real self.

The boy she had met in elementary school, the cool kid who had talked about art and books and the world, was a disguise for the blood-covered fiend who had nearly beaten his lover to death.

Clay didn’t bother to return the mask to his face. Emily had seen him now. She knew exactly who he was. He pointed his finger at her chest one last time. “If you tell anybody about this, I’ll do the same fucking thing to you.”

He shoved her away from the door. Emily stumbled, catching herself against the wall. The door slammed so hard the fractured glass panes finally toppled over, splintering onto the floor. Clay would go home to the Morrows now. He would clean himself up before he saw them. He would sit at the dinner table and eat his mother’s Thanksgiving dinner and watch football with his father and neither of them would know that they were harboring a cunning, sadistic animal.

Jack rolled over onto his back. He let out a pained cry.

Emily rushed over to him. She dropped to her knees. She used the hem of her blouse to wipe the blood out of his eyes. “Oh, Jack … are you okay? Look at me.”