Hey guys! I hope you enjoy the first story I've ever written for this site. Just a quick note: a few months ago, I published the first two chapters, but since I'm super indecisive, I kept going back and rewriting them over and over again. So I decided to just wait until I was happy with them and then upload them both at the same time. So yeah... they've ended up completely different than they were when I started, but oh well! :) Thanks for reading! xx
(Sylvia's POV)
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Don't think.
The cracks in the mirror make my face look cartoonish. Like an old china doll. Broken.
"Stay outta trouble. I'll be back tomorrow." Even through the door that divides us, I can hear my old man's words bleeding together and know he's already drunk. Like he thinks I have no idea what he does all night long. Like he has some reason to expect me to be responsible while he'll barely even be able to get his own face out of the gutter in the morning.
Seconds later, the slam of the front door shakes the entire house. My eye shadow palette tips off its shelf and clatters into the sink, the sound jarring like fingernails on a chalkboard. If he has to leave, can't he at least do it quietly? When I pick the palette up, the powder pours between my fingers like sand. Helplessly I watch it collect in a metallic golden ring around the drain. No, I don't care. Let him slam all the fucking doors in the world. I gave my last damn years ago.
Nothing. That's what I hear. Before he left there were occasional thumps and bangs, which I hated, but now there's just a soundless vacuum, which I seem to hate even more. So I hum a few bars of some catchy Beatles tune I must've picked up from the radio.
Where's my lipstick? The last time I used it must have been... last Saturday. I rifle through my memory of that night, but find only fuzzy, disjointed snapshots. After searching high and low, I find the tube lying just under my bed skirt, in a layer of dust and grime and cigarette butts and glittering shards of glass. I must've dropped it before I fell asleep—well, passed out, to be more exact. When I towel it off and open it, the tip crumbles off, leaving a glaring red smear on my skirt. With an explosive cuss, I try to scrub it off, but only succeed in widening the smear. I don't have another clean skirt, so this one will have to do. It doesn't matter anyway. The only thing the guys care about is what's underneath it.
I've learned not to see the stares—or at least not to let them faze me. The way men look at me, the way their eyes crawl all over me like spiders, is so familiar I can almost think of it as a loving caress. They buy me drinks, too; never once since the day my breasts reached the size of baseballs have I had to open my own wallet at a bar. That's just how men work.
Red kiss marks are my stamp. With my lips I leave behind my calling card, brand the men with some lingering piece of myself. Other people have a family crest, or a fancy curlicue like the ones you press into hot wax on an envelope; I have my lipstick. But then again, every girl in the country wears lipstick. Besides, men all taste the same anyway: sweat and sometimes cheap cologne.
Wielding the lipstick stub like a crayon, I etch horns and a maniacal, saber-toothed grin on the mirror. Now I'm a satanic china doll. Broken and angry.
Curling my toes until they crack, I wriggle on a too-small pair of Stilettos I stole from a Sears when I was fourteen. Their glossy blue-black color has been mottled by sickly peeling patches—the result of too many years of too much use. Wonder if I could get away with swiping another pair. The bathroom door sticks stubbornly, but after a few good kicks, it gives in. On my way out of the house, I grab some Cheerios for dinner and deposit them in a fold of my shirt. The sun has just disappeared under the horizon, leaving the sky bruised, and the hairs on my bare arms bristle at the nippy March breeze.
The cheerios are dry and stale and stick to the roof of my mouth. God, but I need a smoke. I dig a weed out of my purse and puff away, breathing the smoke to the side so I don't have to walk through it. There's a flower garden in someone's front yard, full of petunias and pansies and frilly yellow pom-poms I don't know the name of, and I glare at it menacingly. How can it just sit there and be so delicate, so effortlessly happy? I give it a mighty kick on my way by, making sure some of the stems snap.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Don't think.
The bassline of some song thumps in my chest before I even reach Buck's front stoop. When I open the door, "Can't Get No Satisfaction" threatens to destroy my eardrums. In the screaming brilliance of colored lights, silhouetted figures dance. Somehow a beer finds its way into my hand, and somewhere not too far away, a girl shrieks with laughter. Or maybe fear—I can't tell. Sweat beads across my brow, and cigarette smoke hangs in the air like fog. Dimly I know my friend Sharon is beside me, and then she's not. Must've gone to hover around some guy. Hank Williams is blasting. A few inches to my right, Two-Bit Matthews, his eyes glassy and his tank top soaked with sweat, has his hands all over a blonde whose wobbly heels and frosted lipstick might as well be screaming, "Underage!" He's too boozed up to notice, let alone care.
"You... you what?" A girl's screech carries above the din. I look around for its source.
"Oh, I dunno, I mean... c'mon, wouldn't ya agree this place's a little... dirty?" another voice clucks.
"Shoot, Bethie!" the first girl huffs. There's something familiar about her, about her dirty blonde hair, about the way her dark eyeliner makes her eyes look huge, but I can't quite place her. Maybe I'd be able to if I wasn't quite so boozed up. "I just can't believe you'd say somethin' like that, is all."
"Bethie" is a short, pug-nosed brunette I've brushed shoulders with at the DX a few times. She shrugs, folds her arms over her chest, and replies smoothly, "Ya gotta do what ya gotta do."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Mom said it ain't fittin' for me to be spendin' so much time 'round bums and dropouts, and I can't say I—"
"But—but how could you?!" the blonde explodes. "They're—they're white trash! Always think they're so great, always on our case 'bout stuff we got nothin' to do with. Always chasin' us all over our own turf, too. You were there the day Jamie got jumped. How could you just..."
"Greasers do that too," her friend scoffs.
"No... no, it just ain't the same, Bethie. Ya know it ain't."
She's right. There is a shade of difference. Socs tend to be a little more barbaric, wanting to kill greasers and not just hurt them. More often than not, greasers have no choice but to play defense.
"I mean, there's some pretty bad hoods in here," Bethie is rattling on, shrinking back as if being a hood is contagious. "I just can't figure out why y'all like comin' here. It's no place for—"
But her words get lost in my anger. I'm sober enough to know I'd walk away if I was smart, but drunk enough not to. I'm just about to give into temptation and slap that ugly little face when she adds, "Smells like grease in here, too. Dirty car grease."
At which point I switch my plan to a good old-fashioned punch in the jaw.
I get up in the girl's face, so close I can smell her flowery perfume, and, giving her no time to react, introduce my fist to her jaw. At the same time, a second, invisible fist unclenches deep in my chest. And the next thing I know, we're both on the floor and my fingers are wrapped around her wrist to keep it down and she's writhing and begging me to get off but I won't cut traitors no slack, and then there's blood smeared on her upper lip and all I can hear are her stupid catlike mews.
I don't even feel the hands on me until my swings no longer reach the girl's face. One look at her limp form brings a laugh of victory to my lips. Good. I've really hurt her. I allow myself to be pried off of her without a fight. A ring of spectators has formed, as if we were performers in an arena. Two-Bit even let go of his blonde long enough to enjoy the show.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Don't think.
"Feel free to get offa me now," I snap, and the hands release my shoulders. It's Theo Williamson, a hulking, two-fisted guy who screwed me a few months ago. Another canvas for my lipstick stamps. He doesn't seem to remember me. Bethie's blonde friend rounds on me, fire in her eyes, and I clench my fists by my sides in case they'll come in handy, but she just flips me the bird, turns on her heel, and hovers over Bethie like she's a sick child.
My heart is still racing and my breath coming in gasps. Someone passes me a drink of some sort, which I down in three loud gulps. Booze always works wonders for my nerves.
"You're crazy, dollface," says a voice in my ear. I spin around and realize who gave me the drink: none other than Dallas Winston. Now, everybody knows Dallas Winston; whether you like him or not, the rules are you have to respect him, and if you don't follow the rules you end up like Bethie. When Dallas came to Tulsa, it was like a tornado swept through the entire east side. He grew up in the tough part of New York City and has even been hauled in jail several times.
To tell the truth, I want nothing to do with the creep. Something in that pea-sized brain of his thinks it's his personal right to screw every girl on the face of the planet—and he doesn't go about it nicely, either. Hell, he'd even try to put the moves on the queen of England if he had the chance.
"Whaddya want with me?" I drawl flatly, knowing perfectly well the answer.
His lips are stuck in a drunken smirk. One blonde eyebrow cocked, he sneers, "You got that little broad real good. Almost as good as I could've done."
I don't have the energy to put up another fight, especially when it comes to Dallas Winston. "Oh, I done worse," I shrug, nursing my beer and trying to look uninterested.
Big mistake. "Oh yeah? Like what?" Hitching his thumbs in his belt loops, he sidles in front of me, blocking my view of the girl. He regards me from the corner of his eye and then winks, cocks his head, and puts his tongue between his teeth. He thinks he's so cute, the little moron. "C'mon, you can tell me. Don't be scared." Suddenly his dagger-like blue eyes look a little less like daggers, and before I have time to move, his fingers are up in my hair. I brace myself for a yank, but it never comes.
"Use your imagination." The words are twisted a little, because I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
"What was that, dollface?"
"I said use—"
"Oh, you said you like the way my pants look, didn't ya?"
"I said—"
"Said you'd like 'em better if they were off, though."
"Stop it, you creep." I bristle.
"What'd I do?" His fingers are still playing with my hair—not nicely, but not quite rough either. "Nah, what I really wanna know is what'd she do?" His thumb jerks over his shoulder.
It takes me a beat to realize he's talking about Bethie. "Wanted to become a Soc."
"Yeah, little broads always fuckin' backstabbin' us, that's for sure." He nods, a quick, mean motion, and his eyes regain a little of their sharpness. "I mean, awe, that's too bad." His hand, the one that was just in my hair, suddenly darts around my waist. A little sigh flutters its wings in my chest, but dies as quickly as it began when I feel his hand suddenly slip toward my butt. "Get offa me," I yelp, squirming out of his grasp.
"Who's gonna make me?"
"Me."
He only laughs this big dopey laugh and slouches against the wall, his cig dangling from his fingers. "I'd like to see ya try."
I try to stare him down, but it's no use. Guys have said things to me before, but this... this is different. "Look, if you're tryin' to ask what I'm doin' tonight, it ain't you." It's my default leave-me-alone line. Works every time.
But apparently not on The Amazing Dallas Winston. "No one talks to me like that."
"Oh yeah? I just did." Maybe it's the booze that helps me ignore the danger in his tone.
"Hey dollface, you still workin' at the Dingo?" he mutters after a thick pause.
Guys are like alley cats looking for food; they'll follow you around for a while, but if you don't give them what they want, they'll eventually get tired of you and move on to someone else. I resolve not to look at Dallas' face.
"You gonna answer me or what?"
"Nah, I got fired," I tell my hands.
He slurps up the last drops of his drink. "What for?"
"Bein' late too many times."
I can hardly believe it when when his arm snakes around my waist a second time. The nerve of him! Instinctively, I fight back with a fierce slap and whirl around, my voice shrill. "Don't ya know when to leave a girl the fuck alone?"
"Okay, okay, I get it," he sneers, but not without rubbing his forearm, which is reddening from my slap. "You don't wanna talk about bein' fired, I get it. Ya don't gotta yell in my face about it."
I bite back a snide remark.
"I hate this song," he mutters, too busy ogling me, I'm sure, to really listen to the song. He's got this look in his eyes like a little kid gazing at a glowing television; at this my cheeks flush despite myself, and I bow my head.
Then I realize I looked at him.
"Got a problem with my face?" he snaps, but it wasn't his face that made me look. It was something in his voice. And when I look at him, I see it in his eyes. His mean little blue slits, rather.
"Well, what is it?"
I chug the last half of my drink and slam the bottle down with a hollow bang. "Nothin'. Nothin' at all." Maybe if I say it, I'll believe it.
"Who messed up that pretty face of yours?" He means the scar above my eye.
"Had a run-in with the fuzz for threatenin' an officer," I mumble. It's the first thing that came to mind. The scar is from my old man.
"C'mon, dollface, let's go outside. It's hot in here."
"You just wanna get me alone so you can do things to me without no one watchin'."
"That's exactly what I want." Maybe I'm just imagining it, but his eyes seem softer again.
Maybe it's what I heard in his voice, or maybe it's because I'm too crocked to remember my own name, or maybe it's a little bit of both, but somehow or other, I find myself standing beside Dallas Winston on Buck's back porch. The party thumps on the other side of the door, beating to a chorus of crickets. It's quiet and cool back here; it might even be nice if it weren't for Dallas breathing down my neck. He digs a pack of Kools out of his back pocket and offers me one. I hesitate before accepting the gift, but figure it's just a weed.
"You're off your rocker, dollface, is what you are," he mutters, lighting up.
Before I can stop it, a grin steals across my face, and I'm grateful for the darkness. "Look who's talkin'."
A chilly breeze picks up. At some point, his arm finds its way around my waist, but this time it doesn't move to my butt, it just rests there on my waist. It feels warm. For a moment, I don't push him away.
"Look, what the fuck are you trying to do to me?" Winded by the force of my own words, I stiffen and stumble backward.
"Ain't that obvious?" he smirks, his face flickering with the light of the moth-covered porch lantern. And I realize I'm looking at him again.
"I ain't about to bow down and kiss up to you like everyone else," I inform him, looking away.
He sighs, dragging a hand down his face. "Playin' hard to get, huh?"
I take a long drag and watch the curls of smoke fade into nothingness. Like life. Nothing lasts forever—not cigarette smoke, not friendships, not even people. When it comes down to it, everything is temporary. I like temporary. Temporary is safe. Temporary is making sure there's always an escape route. Temporary is hit-and-run. If there's one piece of information I've absorbed in my seventeen and a half years, it's that it's a hell of a lot easier to let go if your grip is already loose.
You may get one night, I want to tell Dallas, but don't get your hopes up for anything else. I've seen enough relationships to know that.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
Don't think.
Flashback
I didn't know how long he'd be gone. It's not that I didn't want him to go—wait, no, of course I didn't. I didn't want him to go. But... there was a tiny, terrible part of me that knew I could breathe a little easier when he wasn't around. Sometimes he'd just leave with no explanation, just... one day he'd be there and the next day he wouldn't. You'd never know when he'd come back. And there was always the looming possibility that he might never come back. But there was one unfailing pattern: time after time, he'd come back stumbling and very angry at me and Momma for reasons I could never quite figure out.
"Take care of your mother for me, will ya?" he growled over his shoulder, pulling the door closed with an echoing slam. I counted his footsteps as he grew smaller and smaller; I reached fifty-three before he disappeared around a corner. When I turned around, Momma was curled up at the foot of the stairs, her shoulders quaking. I stood awkwardly, rooted to the spot, transfixed by her anguish. I had never seen a grown-up cry before. She raised her contorted face and I looked at my shoes. "He's supposed to love me," she half-screamed, half-sobbed. "He's supposed to love me, Sylvia! I married that man! He's supposed to love me. What've I gotten myself into?" She sagged again, her whole body lurching.
That night, I slept fitfully. Outside my window, a thunderstorm raged, wringing the trees and threatening to uproot my house with a single swing of its fist. In the morning, Momma wasn't in her room.
"Momma?" I called, but I knew my voice rang empty inside the house. "MOMMA!" The silence was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. Forgetting that I was clothed only in my filmy nightgown, I broke into a sprint. "Have you seen my momma?" I asked the bearded man who sold Momma bread on Wednesdays. He shook his head. "Have you seen my momma?" I asked the butcher. He shook his head. "Have you seen my momma?" I asked the lady behind the register at the corner convenience store. She shook her head and said, "Put somethin' on over that nightgown, kid, 'fore ya go gettin' yourself int' any trouble, ya hear?"
On wobbly legs, I started for home. Huddled just outside the front door were about five cops. I stopped in my tracks, and my stomach turned to lead.
"You Sylvia Richards, girl?" one of them barked, squatting so his eyes were level with mine. I would remember those eyes, those piercing green eyes, for the rest of my life.
I nodded. Tears were a growing threat; I felt them licking, stinging at the edges of my eyes. I swallowed hard. I would not cry in front of a cop. If there was one thing I had learned from my parents, it was never to show weakness in front of a cop.
"Daughter of Bob and Emily Richards? Ten years of age?" he continued.
I nodded once more.
"Where's your daddy at?"
I froze. "I-I dunno."
"Whaddya mean you don't know? Ain't 'e at work or someplace? Don't you know where 'e is?"
Another cop spoke up. "Just tell 'er, Banks."
So he did. Momma had been found beside Pike's lane, just out of town, around four o'clock that morning. Her car had gone over a small drop-off. She had most likely died instantly.
Reviews are strongly appreciated (hinthinthint) :))))))) It is my first time using the site. How am I doing?