Good Girls Played with Dolls

Chapter Four:

Kirsten Cohen: Crazy Secret Keeper


He pushed his thumbs into a PlayStation controller. He was half awake, floating in a limbo between energy and lethargy. Every few minutes his eyes would snap shut, hoping that he'd take the hint and go lie in his plush bed, but he didn't. His feet never touched the ground. He never laid eyes on those hardwood stairs. "I thought she was attractive. Is that weird Ryan? When I saw her standing there with Alex all I could think was, 'Holy crap! She's hot.' And she was, I mean, she is, but…" Seth rambled, attacking his opponent with a blunt object.

"She's your sister." Ryan interjected, on screen his character countered. Seth nodded. "And you're not supposed to think your sister is attractive."

"Hasn't been okay since biblical times." Seth replied, hands moving frantically. "With the exception of that whole Dollanganger gang."

"Well they were trapped in an attic, not a lot of options." Ryan scratched his head. "Though I'm pretty sure it's okay to think she's attractive as long as you don't do anything about it."

"Not helping."

"Maybe you should be more concerned with your mother and less concerned with your sister."

"I can't think about her. Unlike you, my mom's always been a rock. It's a little hard to think about her, you know, losing her mind." Ryan raised an eyebrow. "She hasn't left her room in three days, I think that constitutes as a lapse in sanity."

"She gave a child up for adoption." Ryan lowered his voice, "Can't be easy."

"I know. I get it. I completely understand. I just. I've spent my whole life believing that I'm an only child. I'm the spoiled little baby whose parents coddled him to the point of social incompetence and I've finally excepted that. But that wasn't good enough for the cosmos, no, I finally get used to things and then, at sixteen, it comes out that it's all been a lie. It's not like Dad brought her home. No, mom slept with Jimmy Cooper, got pregnant, and has been lying ever sense." Seth raised his hands in the air in triumph. "It just seems out of character."

"Is that my head in your hands?"

"It is." He stood up and did a victory dance. "A year and a half and you haven't learned to play with the big dogs."

"And you haven't learned to dance."

Seth dropped his controller and fell back onto the couch with a thud. "Maybe we should just invest in those wife beaters you seem to love so much."

"They do send a message."


She pushed her fingers into a fist, tight and round. The veins in her hand bulged, blue and predominant. She closed her eyes. The rooms was silent. It was her and her alone. No mother, no father, no brothers, no sisters, no friends, just her; the girl who liked to pretend the room was an alternate dimension. The girl who liked to believe the red punching bag was some soulless fiend.

There was a time limit. If she kept her eyes closed too long, she'd be dragged into a dark corridor. A corner of her mind that was normally left untouched. She could feel things bubbling to the surface, words and images she had suppressed, making there way from the dark side of the moon.

They made a trip around the cerebral cortex. She saw pale fingers. A predominant chin. A malnourished stomach. Her mother's limp corpse. Her eyes flashed open. She exhaled tightly, breathing heavy and rough.

She pumped her arm. Jab. Cross. Hook. Uppercut. Her leaded hand knocked the bag to the ground; broken chains stared back at her. She had found her rage.


She bounced on her purple sheets, black hair flying high. Unexpected words had seeped from some muscular brunette's pink lips three days ago and she was left with the wreckage, her blonde best friend and a rum bottle. She pressed her feet onto the floor. "Get up." She demanded. "We're going out."

"Where to?" Marissa asked, shooting her friend a narrow glare.

"I don't know." She paused. "The Bait Shop?"

"You mean the place my bastard half-sister works?"

"Seems a little harsh, but yeah." Summer twirled a strand of hair, looking for the bright side. "She's a bartender, might be able to help you continue your experiment with alcoholism."

Marissa rolled her eyes. "I'm sure she wants to help her moronic blonde half-sister maintain a buzz."

Summer raised an eyebrow, toes tapping awkwardly on a floorboard. "Did you just call yourself moronic?" She bit her lower lip, a mound of strawberry scented flesh. "Cause you're definitely not moronic. If you're moronic, then I'm idiotic and I'm not willing to work with that title."

"You know what I mean." Marissa replied, breaking out of her cocoon of pillows. "Everyone wants somebody to hate."

"Like your mother," Summer said softly, standing up.

"More like Kirsten Cohen, crazy secret keeper," Marissa scoffed.

"I don't know. I get it. The whole adoption thing, it's a lot to deal with, pretend you never were pregnant, pretend nothing ever happened, and boom! The guilt is lessened."

"I guess," Marissa shrugged.

Summer pulled on Marissa's arm. "Come on." Summer persisted. "We don't have to go to the Bait Shop, but you can't keep hiding from your mother by laying on my bed watching cheesy romantic comedies."

"That's what we do."

"Lets go to the mall. Lets shop. We're good at shopping. Some might even say we're shopping champions. Heroes of the handbag." She paused. "Bloomingdales is having a sale." She added trying to lure her friend out of bed.

"I don't know."

"They made another Nicholas Sparks book into a movie. We liked A Walk to Remember." Marissa looked at her skeptically. "So maybe it comes out in June, but I'm sure there's something romantic playing."

Marissa stared at her friend. "Come on woman. You found out you have a nineteen year-old half-sister, big whoop! My mom left my dad when I was thirteen to run off to Barcelona with some Spanish actor, whose no Benicio. You don't see me hauled up in my room with a bottle of Captain Morgan's."

"I won't be hauled up in your room three years from now. She left three years ago."

"Yeah, doesn't mean it hurts any less, having your mother abandon you."

Marissa stood up. "You realize that Benicio Del Toro's from Puerto Rico, right?"

"Quite honestly," Summer replied, with a heavy sigh. "I could care less."

"Just checking."


Kirsten Cohen stared at her husband. His bushy eyebrows moved up and down. She ran her feet against the mattress, her legs covered by a dark comforter. She played with her hair, it hadn't been brushed in days. "You said I didn't have to explain."

"I said I wouldn't ask you about it again." He tapped a mound of papers against his leg. "I always thought - well - I always hoped, you'd just tell me on your own."

"When you get married, nothing is private. You have no secrets. Everything is out there for your spouse to see and I didn't know what to say. I didn't even tell Jimmy." She shook her head. "How could I tell you and not tell Jimmy? It just didn't seem right. She wasn't yours. She was his."

"I understand. I do." He rubbed his lips together. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters. I've been practicing law long enough to understand."

"And that scares me," Kirsten said softly. "You're too understanding. I gave up Jimmy's child without his consent. I never even said, 'I think I might be pregnant.' I just hid. I ran away. How can you forgive that?"

Sandy shook his head. "It's not up to me to forgive."

His wife sighed, eyes clamping shut. "I know." She looked up at the ceiling. "But how?" She looked at her husband weakly and stared into his eyes. "How is she? I mean, the records. She's not a heroin addict or anything?"

"No. Not a heroin addict." Sandy shifted his eyes.

"What's wrong?" He shook his head. "We've been married too long for that head shake."

"Nothing. I just think I should talk to her before you do."

"I'm her mother."

"But I'm the one who understands her situation."


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