AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So are the Chos and the Patels and the Van Huycks. Every person I’ve met in this neighborhood is gathered around the Kensington’s pool watching Lila ride me like it’s the last night of her life.
“I told you,” Lila says, “Everyone spies on everyone here.”
Her face changes from a teasing smile to a primal, almost predatory snarl. She grabs my hips and slams her own hips down onto me hard and fast, her eyes boring into me with something that looks almost like hate.
All thoughts of pleasure are gone. I scream and struggle, trying to pull away from her, trying to get out of here, but I can’t move. I can only close my eyes and wait for it to end.
“Oh God! Oh no, no, NO! Annie!”
I open my eyes again, and I'm no longer in the Kensington's pool. I'm no longer naked, either. Lila's not here, and neither is Vivian or any of the others.
I'm on a sidewalk in Encino. My sidewalk. The sidewalk in front of my old house. I'm not nineteen anymore, either. I'm ten years old, and I'm staring at the body of my sixteen-year-old sister. Her pretty brown hair is caked and matted with blood. One side of her face is smashed in, and her left leg is twisted awkwardly, torn and broken from the impact with the sports car that hit her at ninety miles per hour.
“Annie!”
That’s my mother screaming. She’s younger now, ten years younger, but she looks twenty years younger. She’s beautiful. Even more beautiful than Vivian Chase, though I don’t think of that beauty the same way.
She won’t be beautiful for much longer. Five weeks from now, she’ll take her first drink. She won’t stop drinking. Two years later, my father will divorce her. I’ll cry and beg him to stay, and he’ll look at me like I’m dirt stuck to his shoe and won’t bother to answer me. Two years after that, Mom and I will be evicted from our house and move to the shitty apartment in Cudahy where we live now.
Six months after that, I’ll come home from school to find my mom on a bender. She’ll look at me with contempt and hate and say, “I wish it was you.”
***
I wake up and sit bolt upright, crying out. I sit still a minute, hoping my mother didn’t hear.
Of course, she didn't. She's still drunk. She won't hear anything for the next twelve hours.
There’s moisture on my face, and I can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears. Probably both.
I roll out of bed and fall to my knees, clasping my fists and putting my head down on the mattress like I’m praying. I’m not praying. I decided a long time ago that if God was real, He didn’t give a shit about people like me.
My heart pounds in my chest, and I breathe huge gulps of air. I feel like I’m drowning. My body shakes, and my mouth feels clammy and dry at the same time.
“God,” I whisper hoarsely, still not praying. “Oh God.”
It’s a long moment before the shaking calms down. I try to remember what I was dreaming about, and to my dismay find the images—all of them—just as clear as they were when they occurred.
I try to forget what I was dreaming, but I can’t. The images run around my head in circles, refusing to release me.
But one thing can release me.
I lift my eyes to the closet and feel a rush of mixed fear and desire course through me.
Desire’s the wrong word. This is more like desperation.
I tear my head away and sob softly, clamping my hands in front of me and squeezing hard enough that my palms turn white, and my fingers turn a bright shade of red.
“Please,” I whisper, “God please.”
But God doesn’t answer my prayer. I still see my sister’s body on the pavement in front of me, and when I open my eyes, I continue to see it, lifeless, mangled, just like the family she left behind, just like the life I’m forced to live.
It won’t matter if I get out of this apartment. It won’t matter if I get out of Cudahy. It won’t matter if I end up living in Autumn Downs or Beverly Hills or the Palace of Fucking Versailles. I’ll never escape the memory of Annie’s body lying broken in a pool of her own blood.
But I can numb the pain. I can push it away. I can find relief for a moment.
I make one last effort to stay strong. “God, please.”
God remains silent.
