Trigger warnings in this chapter for some violence, but mostly a lot of intimidation and manipulation.
Chapter 11 – Tortures of the Damned
Rachel P.O.V.
I wake up early Monday morning inside of Santana's room.
I have been waking up every single morning at six for as long as I can remember and although I feel remarkably different on this particular morning, I force myself to push through my regular routine: elliptical, shower, hair and dress, protein shake.
By the time I am finished with everything it is just past seven. Santana is still asleep which is a surprise to no one. This is the first week that Coach Sylvester was not making Santana wake up for extra cardio in the mornings. That, combined with the fact that the coach had to make a road trip to Detroit – the apparent only place in the country that sells her -black-market protein supplements – this morning in lieu of practice meant that today is a rare opportunity for her to sleep in.
I sneak back into her room. I am already dressed and showered and on any normal day, that would be enough for me but today is different.
The bruise on my cheek is fading rapidly but much to my dismay the older that it gets the more visible it becomes. On Sunday morning, it had shown itself as a light-blue mark that could barely be seen. Today, it is dark green like dying grass. It can be spotted from a mile away.
I make my way over towards Santana's dresser which doubles as her vanity. There is a collection of makeup sprawled across it with no particular sense of organization. I look over some of my options. I don't even know where to start.
I see a small bottle labeled Liquid Foundation and figure that that might be a good place. I pour some of the stuff out onto my fingers, rub them together and then, begin to apply the foundation liberally against my face. Unfortunately, I remember a moment too late that Santana's skin tone is just half a shade darker than mine. When I am finished, I look I would if my face got a bad sun tan while the rest of my body did not.
"Rachel, what are you doing?"
I turn away from the mirror towards Santana, who is now sitting up in her bed and staring at me like she has never seen me before.
"Nothing," I turn away quickly but my voice is full of guilt. Even half asleep and from across the room she can register the mess that I have made of my face. I watch her scrunch her own and feel my heart sink.
"Is that my makeup?" she asks and I deflate.
"Are you mad?"
"It's too early to be mad," she groans as she falls back against her mattress and thrusts her pillow over her eyes in an effort to block out the sun.
"What time is it?" I hear her muffled question.
"Almost seven."
"Ugh!" I can hear her disappointment through the pillow and am not surprised when she throws it angrily onto the floor before forcing herself to sit up with the understanding that if she doesn't do it now, she will just lay in bed all day.
She looks exhausted and when she finally gets out of bed and catches a glimpse of herself in the same mirror that I am currently using to screw up my own face, I can tell that she knows it.
"I'll be back, I have to do something about this," she mutters to me gesturing to her own face before giving me a little nudge and gesturing towards mine. "And when I get back, we'll do something about that, too."
I force an appreciative smile as she sneaks out of her bedroom.
"Good, you're up," I hear my mother address Santana the moment that she steps into the hallway. Today is a rare occasion in which neither my mother or Santana have to be at their schools at obscene hours of the morning. I can't remember the last time that all three of us had been in the house at the same time on a weekday while the sun was still up.
Santana delivers a groan in response and my mother clicks her tongue at her. "Don't be so dramatic, Santana. You're starting to sound like your sister. Speaking of, is Rachel awake yet? I haven't heard a peep out of her all morning."
"She's in my room," Santana informs her. Her voice is still heavy with sleep.
"She slept in there again last night?" my mother asks. She sounds worried. I hate to do that to her but she cannot possibly know the truth. I swallow, waiting to hear how Santana will respond. The idea of her cracking and telling our mother my secret has been weighing heavily on me all weekend. With Santana half asleep, who knows what she will say?
"No, she's just using some of my makeup," Santana lies for me and I hate how relieved that makes me.
"Makeup?" my mother questions. She sounds astonished and just a little bit curious. "Who is she trying to impress?"
"I don't know," Santana shrugs instead of what I know she wants to say; that I am not trying to impress anybody, I am trying to cover up a bruise left on my cheek by your boyfriend…
"She talks to you Santana. Can you please figure out what's going on with her?"
Another sigh because Santana already knows. She just can't tell her.
"Sure mom."
Citing Santana's growing expertise as a cheerleader, it takes her less than fifteen minutes to transform her sleep-induced appearance to perfection.
When she gets back to her bedroom I am still waiting exactly where she had left me, staring at myself carefully in the mirror trying to figure out where I had gone so wrong here in Lima while Santana was able to transition so flawlessly.
"Rach, hand that thing over, will you?" I sigh. Santana doesn't trust me with her foundation brush anymore but looking at my reflection again, I find that I don't blame her.
"Is it really that bad?" I cringe and hand it over.
"No…" she tries to lie but the evidence of the truth is hidden blatantly in her tone. "If you're thinking about running off and joining the circus."
"San!" I cry, reaching backwards so that I can smack her gently on the shoulder.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding," she insists, squatting down in front of me so that she can get the best angle to work her magic on the mess that I have made of my own face.
"Can you fix it?" I ask nervously.
"Of course," Santana nods. "I can fix anything."
I have a feeling that she might be over-stating her abilities but she applies different things from different tubes and bottles and containers and works until we hear a horn blazing from outside.
"That's Noah," Santana informs me, wrapping up the last of my makeup. "What do you think?"
I turn away from Santana and over towards the mirror for the first time. When I see my face, I don't even recognize it. The me that is staring back from my reflection is entirely new.
"Woah…" I breathe. Behind me, Santana smiles proudly, taking my diminished verbiage as a compliment.
"You look hot," she confirms. "You look like mom does in all of her old headshots."
"The ones that she keeps locked away in the back of her closet?" I grimace.
"Rachel…" Santana breathes, placing her hands against my shoulders where she looks me in the eye with an expression like she doesn't know if she should still be calling me her baby sister or if she should start exclusively referring to me simply as her younger sister. That's how I know that she means what she is about to say. "You're beautiful."
I smile at her. "Thanks San."
"No problem," she says, grabbing onto my hand and pulling me out of her bedroom. "We're gonna be late."
I walk inside of my high school with Santana and Noah trailing just a couple of steps behind me.
Once inside, I feel everybody's eyes on me but can't seem to find the confidence to convince myself that it has anything to do with my make over and everything to do with them being able to see the bruise that is just underneath t his caked on, fake layer of skin.
I find myself hiding behind Santana after only a couple of steps in. This is the kind of attention that I don't particularly enjoy.
"I'm not so sure about this, Santana," I swallow, suddenly very self-conscious.
"You'll be fine Rachel. This is just a normal day at school. You're worrying too much." Santana tries to assure me but as she does I watch a junior boy in a varsity jacket look at me and even wink and I have to avert my eyes to the floor.
"But guys don't stare at me like this on normal days," I remind her.
"Well, that's their fault," Santana tells me. "Like I said Rachel, you look good. Embrace it."
Santana spots Brittany at the other end of the hall and turns her attention over towards the blonde. Rushing forward to meet her best friend, she leaves me exposed. I swallow and look around the hallway to observe the wandering eyes, all of which seem to be finding me. One particular boy who is in my grade hasn't stopped goggling at me since I walked through the doors. He stares without even bothering to pretend not to behind a pair of thick, black glasses and a tangled mess of red hair. When he sees that I have caught him, he finally builds up the nerve to approach.
"H… hi Rachel," he stammers. His voice is nasally and nervous as he waves at me with one hand and pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with the other. "You look blushing this morning."
"Thanks Jacob," I sigh.
"Go away, creep." Santana comes to my rescue just in time. This time, she is dragging Brittany with her for backup. In the presence of two Cheerios and his secret crush, Jacob scampers away like a cockroach.
"San, be nice," I tell her although I am secretly grateful for the interference. That Jacob kid seems harmless, but he does have a tendency to creep people out.
"That's the burden of being hot, Little S. You have to be a little bit mean sometimes. It's the only way to pick out the boys from the men." Brittany adds her own two-cents into the mix. I should heed to it. She has been hot her entire life so she should know a thing or two. I feel my cheeks flush roughly the same color red as her and Santana's Cheerios uniforms. Santana has been telling me that I looked good all morning but she is my sister. She has to tell me that. Brittany on the other hand, had no such obligation which was helping my confidence.
"Ugh, Rachel, you look fantastic!" I am bombarded with yet another compliment and turn over my shoulder to see my friend Kurt walking right up to me. I can't help but to beam a little bit. The self-consciousness from the gawking of all of the strangers in the hall is starting to dissipate, replaced by the idea of compliments from friends who seem to notice the difference in me this morning. Kurt is very strict when it comes to dishing out compliments. If he is telling me that I look good, it must be true.
"Didn't I tell you what a long way a little bit of foundation goes?" he asks me, eyeing me up and down, nodding at the things he approves of and clicking his tongue at the things that he doesn't. "Not the outfit choice that I would have gone with to compliment your palate but you make it work so I'll give you points for trying."
"You were right, Kurt," I smile at him without even bothering to tell him the reason that I had to go so above and beyond this morning at all because suddenly, it is a distraction that I don't even seem to remember.
By the time I round into the choir room for glee at lunchtime, I am all confidence. The rest of my school day has gone as smoothly as my morning had which is such a rare occasion for me these days, I chose to embrace it.
"Alright guys, now that everyone is here, listen up," Mr. Schuester stands from the piano bench, walking to the center of the classroom just as we finish settling down into our seats. "The performance order for Regionals was just selected. The lottery was completely random and we were drawn to perform first which means that we are really going to have to tighten up all of those loose ends in our set so that we can set the bar as high as we need it in order to beat Vocal Adrenaline."
"We're going first?" There is a collective gasp of disappointment followed by an immediate deflation. I don't say so, but I agree with my teammates. Going first against a team like Vocal Adrenaline, who always has additional bells and whistles tucked away in their back pocket, is a death sentence. If I know my mother, she will recognize any and every flaw in our performance and use it to her advantage.
"First of all, it's not that bad of a position to be in Mercedes."
"When is Vocal Adrenaline going?"
Mr. Schuester hesitates. "Last."
A collective groan filters throughout the room.
"We're dead," I hear somebody say behind me and I try not to agree with them, but I can't help it. It looks like my dreams of defeating my mother are over.
"We have the opportunity to set the stage here, you guys!" Mr. Schuester tries to play the optimist, but his efforts are largely failing.
"Yeah, set the stage to lose," Noah mutters.
With a heavy sigh, Mr. Schuester rubs his hands across his tired face, looking for any possible words of encouragement to convince his glee club that we can beat Vocal Adrenaline.
"Come on guys, it's not that bad," Finn stands up from his seat and approaches Mr. Schuester in a show of support. I feel my heart start to speed up like it always does whenever Finn is around. Why is it that the only boy that hasn'tnoticed me today is the one that I want to notice me the most?
Because he is with Quinn, I remind myself of the blonde who is sitting just behind me and try not to deflate.
"Rachel?" I am pulled out of my thoughts by the tall boy addressing me and I stiffen. As the acting team captain, I know that I am the usual go-to girl for a good morale booster but today, I am trying to pretend that it is all for me.
"G-going first is fine," I hear myself stutter and when he smiles at me, I feel as though my stomach has just flown up and vacated out of my ears.
"We're not going to beat anybody if we don't keep practicing," Mr. Schuester steps in between Finn and I, snapping me back into focus. "Line up guys. Let's run through this."
I have to take the school bus home from school today because while Santana did not have Cheerios practice this morning, Coach Sylvester had doubled down on her afternoon practice as a result. If I wait for her I know that I will be waiting all night.
I am anticipating being home alone for hours where I will grab a snack before dinner and lock myself in my room to study for the trigonometry test that I have tomorrow. Disappointment settles in quickly however when I discover that I in fact, am not alone at all.
Andrew is on his back on the kitchen floor with half of his body buried inside of the cabinet underneath the sink. He is working on the pipe that has been leaking since the day that we moved in. An array of tools fan out all around him. An open can of beer is tucked close into his side surrounded by four already empty ones.
My stomach is roaring with hunger but my shoulders stiffen and a voice originating from my gut senses danger. The lack of trust that I have in Andrew makes the bruise that is still on the underside of my cheek throb.
The consistent bangs and dings of Andrew's tools against the pipes match the pangs of my empty stomach but I back out of the kitchen slowly. I am trying to be quiet but before I can disappear completely, Andrew pulls himself out from underneath the cabinet to reach for his beer.
A thin layer of sweat is sheathed across his forehead, dripping down the side of his face where his afternoon scruff is already starting to come in. When he notices me staring at him I can't help but to gulp. He looks me up and down and his eyes feel like laser beams against my body. His stare is so much worse than any of the boys at school today.
"What has you dolled up so nice today?" he asks, taking a large sip of his beer that drains the can. He crushes it inside of his large palms and I try not to be intimidated by the ease by which he manages to do it but the bells are still ringing inside of my head to get out of here.
"I had a solo to perform in glee club today," I lie, ignoring my every instinct to run.
I watch Andrew stand to his feet and walk towards the fridge.
"Glee," he scoffs. His tone isn't exactly one of disapproval but it's not one of enthusiasm either. I think back to the compliments that he had given Santana and I on the day that we had first met him at Sectionals and I wonder if all of that had been a show too. "You and your mother waste so much time and energy on a silly high school club."
He cracks another beer and walks back towards the sink.
"How was school?" he forces conversation, his voice muffled as he ducks underneath the sink again to go back to the work that he had been doing on the pipes.
"It was okay," I shrug. I force myself to relax. This is fine. Andrew is trying to make conversation, he is trying to be friendly. Sure, the little quip about glee had not been appreciated but he is trying. Maybe this is way of apologizing to me for what happened the other day. Maybe this is his way of letting me know that his outburst had been a one-time thing, that he wasn't a permanent threat, that he appreciates that I had not run off and told my mother about what happened and that it will never happen again.
"Do me a favor," he calls out to me. "Hand me that wrench by your feet."
His syllables are melded together. I watch him sit up and pull a nearly empty pack of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket. He flicks it open and pulls a cigarette out with his teeth, clamping down hard. His hands, stained yellow and black by years of tobacco and hard labor fumble with his lighter before he finally gets it to stick. Tilting his head forward, he lights the cigarette and inhales deeply despite the fact that I know that my mother has asked him several times not to smoke in the house.
"This one?" I ask instead of mentioning the smoke. He blows a plume of smoke out from in between pursed lips and nods.
"That's the one. Hand it over here, will you?" I take a couple of tentative steps over towards Andrew and hand the wrench over to him. He is trying to ease his way back into my confidence but I am still walking on eggshells around him.
"Do you want to learn how to fix a leaking pipe?" he asks me.
"I'm not very good with my hands," I admit softly.
"That's okay, it's easy," he encourages me forward. "You should always have a few basics tucked away. You women, you're all so vulnerable, always waiting for a man to come save you."
He laughs at his own joke. I force myself to reciprocate but I don't feel it. My father was a tough man but he was also the only man in a house with three women. He taught us what he could not because he thought that we were vulnerable or fragile but because he wanted us to be prepared.
I wonder if Andrew really thinks this way of all women or if this is just the type of women that he is attracted to so it is all he knows. I think about my own mother and her current state of fragility and I wonder if it is really such a coincidence that they ended up with each other.
I don't want to make him angry so I bite my tongue and crouch in front of the sink. I watch him carefully until I hear a hiss, a pop, and then the unmistakable sound of rushing water.
"Dammit!"
I jump back just enough for Andrew to scramble up from underneath the waterfall that he had just created beneath the sink. He throws the wrench that I had handed him clear across the room and glares at me like I am somehow to blame for simply being the mediator between him and the tool that had given him an early shower.
I see that same look in his eyes that he had worn the very first time he had ever hit me and my stomach drops. I knew that I should have gotten out of here while I had the chance.
"This piece of shit house!" he roars indignantly, standing to his feet. He kicks through the graveyard of empty beer cans and moves to turn the water off before it can flood our entire kitchen.
"Well, are you just going to stand there like an idiot or are you going to help me?" he roars. I stammer stupidly like a fish out of water, mouth opening and closing against absolutely nothing.
I don't know what to do. At my core, I have always been a rational thinker. My approach to problem solving is direct and immediate and even though I know that it is not so simple as being a matter of will, I am angry with myself for falling to him so willingly. I am angry that my silence continues to protect the man who should be held the most accountable. I am angry that every time I so much as get close to saying something, I catch a glimpse of my mother and I notice that she is actually smiling for a change.
To her, this man is good and strong and solid. He is the kind of man that you might trust with both your life and your children's. He is tall and strong and handsome and the world tends to hold onto this notion that people who look like this are not possibly capable of that.
But there is something underneath the surface, something that is bubbling and smoldering and threatening and I can't for the life of me figure out why it only seems to come out when Andrew is around me.
I approach Andrew's old truck and the second I lay eyes on it, scrunch my face. I am not too pleased to be sitting in this oil-stained death trap in my brand-new Sectionals dress.
Andrew is already comfortable in the driver's seat. His forearm flexes as he rolls down the driver's side window with a manual hand crank before lighting a cigarette.
I crinkle my nose with distaste at both the smell and the action but quickly remember that I am supposed to be playing the mediator here and resolve to stay silent as I settle into my seat and strap my seatbelt around myself.
"What was that about?" Andrew asks me through the silence. He is talking about the way that Santana had pulled me to the side to ask me what I was thinking volunteering to drive back to our house in his truck after the show that I had just put on at lunch.
"Just Santana," I shrug as though he would have any idea what that might mean.
"I get the impression that she doesn't like me very much."
I am surprised by his bluntness. The initial impression that I had made of this man is that his desire was to play the peace-keeper. Besides, if anything I thought that it had been Santana who made the better impression between the two of us.
"She's protective," I settle to answer.
"I got the impression that you didn't like me very much either." I freeze. If I had been surprised that Andrew had called Santana out like this, I am stunned silent that he would do the same with me.
"I'm protective too," I settle to answer after a moment even though it doesn't really explain anything. "You have to make a left out of the parking lot.
I change the topic quickly. I don't want to risk this conversation continuing in this direction.
Andrew glances at me briefly but he does not resist my urge to slide back into formalities. Instead, he throws the truck into gear and follows my instructions. He doesn't bring it up again. In fact, he doesn't bring anything up again, only listens as I chirp in with directional guidance every couple of minutes. It comes as a relief to me. The only thing that is filling the gaps in between our silence is the steady drum of the radio and I am strangely content with that.
I glance out of the passenger window as we enter into Lima Height's familiar downtown district, counting down the minutes until we are home. It is no more than another two or three miles to my house but at this rate, we might as well be travelling cross-country.
I am shocked back into attention by the squeal of brakes and a sudden lurching. Adrenaline rushes through my veins as my body braces for an impact that never comes aside from my seat belt, which locks and catches me tight across my chest.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" the man in the driver's seat roars.
His aggression throws me short. I cower further away as he slams his fists down against the steering wheel, horn blaring at the vehicle that had just swerved in front of him, cutting him off at a red light.
Throwing the truck into park, Andrew climbs out of the door and into the street. He doesn't even bother closing the door behind him. Stiff as a board, I am too afraid to even breathe.
The light turns green. Stalled in the middle of an active lane, horns begin to blare behind us in a symphony. I sink inside of my seat, equal parts horrified and mortified as Andrew storms towards the car that had cut him off. He is cursing and screaming, his shoulders are broad and threatening as the cars behind us begin to billow around us like we were a rock in a raging river.
I can hear him screaming his obscenities from here. His voice knots around itself until he is no longer making sense, words tangling together so that he is saying everything and absolutely nothing all at once.
The man in the car that Andrew is approaching seems eager to get away and I cannot say that I blame him. He surges forward, begging for traffic to move so that he might be able to escape this guy. When the road finally clears, he lays his foot down against the gas and peels down the street to safety.
Still cursing and muttering under his breath, Andrew lumbers back towards his truck. His face is beet red and he stares like a dog with its teeth bared.
I watch the taillights of the driver who only just managed to get away disappear down the road. The dust that has kicked up in its wake settles, the traffic light turns red again and the flow of the other cars on the road stops. The scene looks just as it did a moment ago, but I know better now.
"Idiot," Andrew mutters, climbing back into the truck, slamming the door behind him.
I swallow, stunned into silence. The whole event sticks like a thorn inside of my throat, making speech impossible.
When I neither say or do anything, Andrew turns to face me dead-on. He watches me staring straight ahead with wide, terrified eyes, praying for all of this to just be over.
"I didn't mean to scare you, hon," he tells me. His voice is much softer than it had been only moments ago. He reaches across the seat and places a comforting hand down against my leg, directly above my left knee.
His palms are rough and calloused. I feel them sink into my flesh. There is concern on his face, but it is predatory concern which somehow frightens me more. I shift inside of my seat in an effort to pull out of his grasp but only manage to hike his hand further up until it is midway up my thigh. He doesn't make any move to correct it and I freeze, petrified.
"Please don't tell your mother about this, okay?"
He sends me into the garage to pick up some of the extra piping that he keeps in the back of his truck. I rush inside as fast as my legs can take me. My head is throbbing from the lack of food combined with the stress of the situation. I leave the door that connects to the house open for extra lighting as though this is going to help me distinguish between a tee pipe and a cross pipe.
The back of Andrew's truck looks like a miniature junk yard. There are tools piled up with no semblance of organization. I am far from an expert in hardware. Grabbing a wrench that Andrew had pointed out to me is just about as far as my skills go. Everything in the back of this truck looks the same to me.
I stare for a moment, evaluating the different sizes and shapes that I see back here, trying to decipher which one is the right one, understanding full well that I have only one chance not to screw this up.
The longer that I look the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. In the end, I just grab the closest piece of pipe to me and utter a quick prayer.
"What took you so long?" he huffs.
I glance up towards the clock on the wall. Nearly five minutes has passed since I'd descended into the garage. It didn't feel nearly that long. I guess that time is just something that you only notice when you believe that you have an infinite amount of it at your disposal. Minutes, seconds, hours, it doesn't matter. Waiting for the end lasts forever.
I don't answer. Instead, I just hand him the pipe. He balances it inside of his hands, scrutinizing it. Immediately, I feel the air charge in between us and I know that I have made a terrible mistake.
"I told you the three-inch cut. This is the one-inch." He informs me, waving the pipe in my face as though a fourteen-year-old girl who has never taken so much as a shop class is supposed to know the difference. I don't even bother mentioning that he'd never once specified a size. "Jesus Rachel, are you really this stupid or do you just never listen?"
"I... I..." I have nothing to say. I have never been spoken to like this before and I am not entirely sure how to respond.
I am so busy trying to figure out what to say that I don't even notice that Andrew has flung the pipe back until it is already slicing through the air towards me. I see it just in time to turn away so that the blow misses my face but hits me hard against my left shoulder blade instead.
The pain is blinding but the white light that flashes behind my eyes is a thorough distraction that muffles any possibility of a scream. I grit my teeth hard and lose my footing where I fall hard against the wall.
"Get up," Andrew demands, unsympathetic. I concede that my best bet is to listen but the pain is paralyzing and he gives me no time to recover. I try to pull my throbbing arm protectively against my chest but Andrew grabs onto it, just above the elbow and jerks me back to my feet. I feel my arm twist and bend unnaturally and I cringe. Bruises bloom against my skin where he holds me. My body is his canvas and he is determined to leave his mark on it.
"I'm sorry." I whisper. I feel pathetic but the apology seems to be key. I feel Andrew's grip slacken.
"Go get the other one. The bigger one." He makes his demand and my shoulder immediately smarts and twitches where he had just hit me with the smaller version of what he demands I give to him. The implication in his tone is enough to let me know that I better not mess up again because this time, I will be handing him a larger, more dangerous weapon.
I swallow fearfully, trembling from my head down to my feet. It takes a moment for my feet to remember how to walk but once they do, they move as slow as humanly possible. I will follow his request, of course I will. Despite this being an open invitation to put me in danger, I somehow know that if I don't do it, it will only be worse for me.
Slipping back inside of the garage, I take my time again. The only sound that I hear is my pulse inside of my temples combined with the panic of my movements as I jostle through the back of Andrew's truck in search for the proper tool... whatever that might be.
I fall into a pattern, shifting the junk around. With each swipe of my hands, the only thing that I can think about is how I managed to get here. Girls like me did not fall into traps like this, but all of the times that I had seen him lose his cool and let it slide, I realize that that falling into his trap is exactly what I have done. When did this get to be okay? When did I have to start worrying about being home by myself?
I spot the pipe that I am looking for and snatch it out of the truck bed. I take my time, checking and double checking that tiny piece of pipe, ensuring that it is the right one. I read the measuring marker scratched across the top a thousand times. I process the words 'three inch' until they blur together and my eyes cross... Until the sound of the door opening and closing cuts through the silence, leaving me stiff.
I refuse to turn around even though I know that it is him in the doorway. The light from the hallway is dimmed by his prominent shadow. Only moments later, the door that I had so purposefully left open squeals closed and I hear his footsteps marching towards me. It takes me a moment to realize that something is not right. I don't even realize the shift in the lighting of the room until the door is already shut.
Immediately, a certain semblance of quiet filters inside of the room. It is more deafening than even some of the most chaotic moments that we have had in the past.
'Don't let him in.'
I beg myself to listen to my own advice but the panic rolls in and pulls me under.
"What's taking so long?" His voice is normal but his presence is ominous enough that it makes me stutter.
"I... I'm not sure what you need." I stutter an excuse that I realize, too late, will probably only make things worse. My incompetence would only make him angrier.
"Oh, for Christ's sake..." I hear him mutter and then he is walking towards me. One step, two steps, three... That is all that it takes for him to come close enough to smell my fear and to feed off of it. This, he thrives on. He makes it his own.
I tense, preparing for the worst as he grabs the piece of pipe out of my hand.
"You can't do much of anything, can you, Rachel?" The room isn't much more than an oversized shadow but I still watch him grab his drill case out from the back of his truck and open it carefully. He pulls the drill close to his eye and gives the trigger a couple of firm squeezes to test it. The mechanical whirring fills my ears immediately. The sound shoots ominously up my spine, turning my blood to ice. Despite myself, I hear a soft moan of fear escape from between my slightly parted lips.
"Jumpy?" He taunts me, chuckling to himself as he places the drill back inside of the case and flips the latches closed with a tight snap. I watch his every movement with a precise care, refusing to take my eyes off of him, refusing to be caught by surprise should he choose to lunge.
Andrew stands up to his full height. He is taller than me by a long shot. He is still holding onto the pipe tight in his right hand. He thrusts it into my face sharply. I flinch but he never hits me.
"This is a three-inch cut," he informs me. Reaching out with his left hand, he wraps his fingers tight around my wrist, pulling me in closer until the pipe is resting hard against my cheek. The material feels cool against my bare skin yet somehow, I still perceive it as burning hot all the same. I can feel my body shaking. I am praying for the best, yet simultaneously understanding that I am better off expecting the worst. "Don't forget that next time."
I nod my head vigorously and beg myself not to cry, not to show a weakness that will only make him angrier.
It feels like hours that we stand here in this dark garage. His grip tightens against my arm, the pipe pressing deeper into my face. He evaluates me, waiting for me to flinch, waiting to see just how much it takes for him to have complete control.
Just as I am starting to wonder just how long this stand-off might last, I feel him retreat. He lifts the pipe off of my face and releases my arm suddenly, causing me to lose my balance and stumble into his truck.
"Such a pretty face, Rachel," he tells me softly. His fingers graze along the spot against my face where he had just held the pipe. Somehow, his touch burns even more than the pipe had. "It would be a shame if you were to ruin all of the work you put into it today."
His fingers fall off of my cheek. Without another word, he turns out of the garage. From this angle, I can only see his silhouette, I can only hear his footsteps as he trudges back towards the door. I watch but do not risk so much as breathing, convinced that one wrong move in his presence will be all that it takes.
When the door closes safely behind him, I wait a couple more minutes before risking moving. My knees are unsteady. I have to use the ledge of Andrew's truck as a crutch as I swipe a trembling hand through my hair, attempting to stem my shaken nerves.
Slowly, I lower my fingertips down to my cheek. It stings as though I had been cut but when I remove my fingers and look down at them, I see no blood. My arm is throbbing dully from where I had been grabbed on the same shoulder that he had hit me with the pipe but otherwise – aside from being terribly rattled by the entire incident – I seem to have escaped relatively unharmed.
My legs feel weightless, much too weak to support the rest of my body. I use the last of my energy to drag myself into the bathroom and look into the mirror. The makeup that Santana had helped me with this morning is still clutching onto my face. It makes me feel dirty. I don't want to look at myself like this anymore. It is not worth all of the compliments that I had received today, not if one of those compliments had come from Andrew.
I run the sink and immediately thrust my face into the tap. I scrub until I feel like I have scraped not only all of my makeup off, but all of my skin as well. When I am finished, my knees finally collapse under the pressure. My body slides slowly onto the cold tile, my back pressed up against the bathtub. I close my eyes and concentrate very hard on trying to remember how to breathe.
I sit here for a long time; long enough that after a while, the only light that I have left is coming from the last bit of sunlight streaming in through the window, fighting for its final minutes of dominance.
It seeps through the glass and contrasts horribly with the otherwise blackness of the room, shrouding everything with a fake, teasing glow that creates the illusion that I am living in a world that exists only in shades of black and white.
Black and white. I guess in a way, this is fitting. In the end, that is what life always seems to boil down to anyway.
Always.
"I was thinking about joining a few extra clubs."
I mention the idea offhandedly from inside of my history book, lobbing it to Kurt who is sitting across from me in the library. The two of us are supposed to be working on a history paper that we both have due tomorrow, but Kurt has spent the last hour doodling more than he actually has been writing and I have been exploring the school's list of clubs looking for one that catches my attention.
"Yeah?" he asks, but his voice sounds bored and only half-interested. I can't blame him much. "What about glee?"
"Glee will always be my top priority," I assure him.
"Well what other clubs did you have in mind?"
"I don't know," I shrug. "The debate team?"
Kurt frowns. "Oh, you don't want to do that," he warns me. "Glee and the debate team? You might as well be signing your own death warrant."
"How about Model UN?" I ask, watching him shake his head from side-to-side; another warning. "African American Student Union?"
Kurt cocks an eyebrow. "You're not African American."
"I think my mom has a second cousin who is…"
"Listen Rachel, I know that you're ambitious but nobody can be that ambitious. Take a break. You're going to burn yourself out before you're even a sophomore."
"Thanks for the support, Kurt." I huff, sinking down into my seat. He scoffs at my dismissal but turns back to his homework. I hadn't meant to get snippy with him, I just don't know how else to tell him that the reason I need these extra clubs is because I can't afford to be at home by myself anymore.
Yesterday's incident with Andrew had really shaken me up. I can't stop thinking about it and had flunked my trigonometry test this morning because I couldn't concentrate long enough to study last night or long enough to get the numbers to sit still on the actual exam.
By the time Santana got home last night, it was already late enough that I was pretending to be asleep in my own bed. I didn't tell her a thing. Now, that all of the dust has settled I am starting to wonder if I had let it sit too long to tell her now.
Overreaction or not, Andrew's increasingly erratic behavior is making it so that I am afraid to be in my own house lately, especially by myself. I had shrugged off the day that he had moved in on Saturday as a fluke. All of our tempers had been flaring that day. We were exhausted and timid and uncomfortable and it had been my fault for not expecting it. But yesterday had scared the hell out of me. The thing is that I can't for the life of me begin to understand why he only acts like this when it is just him and me.
He retains his charm around my mother, sucking her in deeper and deeper. Santana is wary, but he has been careful whenever she is around her ever since that first day.
Still, the marks of his rage are starting to build up. I had woken up this morning with not only the bruise still on my cheek but a handprint on my arm from where Andrew had grabbed me. When I had checked my shoulder in the bathroom mirror, it was swollen like a soccer ball and an angry shade of navy.
The quiet between Kurt and I falls so suddenly that it quickly grows uncomfortable. I turn back to my history homework in order to pretend that I am concentrating and try to focus seeing as how my grades could surely use the extra attention after today.
I know that this is what I should be paying attention to right now rather than clubs but the thing is, school work can only take me so far in the art of avoidance. The school library closes at five whereas clubs hold the key to keeping me here long into the night just in case Santana's Cheerios practices run later than expected as is so often the case. Maybe, just maybe if I keep piling them on, I can have my schedule packed tightly enough that I would never have to worry about being home alone with Andrew ever again.
The doors to the library open and through the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Finn walking in. His hair is damp and clinging perfectly to his forehead, fresh from showering after football practice. I try not to blush furiously at the sight and bury my face even further into my history book although I am hardly paying attention to the words.
I sneak tentative glances up towards Finn. His gym bag is slung around his muscular shoulder, exposed by his Titans Football cut-off pinny. Instantly, I feel my heart begin to race, heat flush inside of my cheeks. I suddenly wish that I hadn't foregone the makeup this morning. It's not like Andrew was going to see me at school.
"Hey Kurt, are you ready?" Finn walks straight past me without so much as an acknowledgement and I sink, embarrassed that I am constantly building myself up for something that never will and never could be.
"Are all of you Neanderthals finished manifesting your manliness by wrestling over a tiny ball made out of pig's flesh all while wearing pants tighter than my own?" Kurt asks his brother sarcastically as he closes his homework and begins to pack it inside of his bag, a gracious reprieve from the work that he was barely doing in the first place.
"Uh... I guess." Finn shrugs, that dazed look returning to his eyes indicating that he has not understood a word that his step-brother had just said. "Do you need a ride, Rachel?"
Just as I am starting to accept the fact that in Finn's eyes, I am invisible, the older boy turns to me with a question that leaves me instantly cotton-mouthed, unable to formulate a single word, let alone a complete answer.
"B-Brittany usually drives me and Santana home after Cheerios." I finally manage, stumbling over my words, my voice barely above a whisper. I am not terribly surprised when Finn's only response is to laugh. I panic briefly, afraid that he is laughing at me and my tendency to stumble every time he's within a five-foot radius of me, but just when I think I would be better off rolling over and dying right here on the spot, Finn explains himself.
"Vanessa Robins dropped the entire pyramid from the bottom row fifteen minutes into Cheerios practice today. Trust me Rachel, Sue Sylvester is not letting the Cheerios off of practice any time soon. Come on, I'll give you a ride."
I choke slightly at his insistence. Immediately, I recognize that this is an opportunity I might not get again. All other thought falls immediately out the window as I nod my head stupidly and attempt not to make a fool out of myself.
'Breathe, Rachel,' I tell myself. 'Breathe and then focus and then speak.'
I attempt to listen to my own advice but I can feel myself grinning so ridiculous, so widely that I can practically feel my face splitting into two.
Finn smirks at me in response to my uncharacteristic loss of calm, that smirk that is as crooked as his dance moves and I instantly forget everything, like why I should probably stay here and wait for Santana to be finished with Cheerios despite her tardiness and why I cannot risk going home by myself right now.
"Thanks, Finn."
The ride is quiet but I sit in the back of Finn's truck floating on Cloud Nine. In fact, I am so focused on where I am that I don't even remember where we are going until we pull up in front of my house and Finn spins around from inside of the driver's seat with that same smile on his face that makes me forget how to breathe.
"I'll see you at glee practice tomorrow," Finn offers, snapping me back into reality, reminding me that I cannot just sit here in the back of this truck for the rest of the night and stare at him, as badly as I might want to.
"Right..." I shake my head back into the present, unbuckling my seat belt and scrambling to get out of the car before I can embarrass myself any further. "Bye Finn. Bye Kurt."
I say my proper goodbyes, slinging my backpack around my shoulder too quickly to remember the devastating bruise that has blossomed there from Andrew hitting me with the pipe yesterday. I gasp and tense so much that Finn notices it.
"Are you okay Rachel?" he calls to me from his truck. I feel my face glow red.
"I'm fine," I tell him, careful to shift my bag onto my good shoulder so that he does not get too suspicious.
I watch Finn shrug before turning back into his car. Honking his horn twice, he offers me a wave which I reciprocate before pulling away from the curb and driving off down the street. Kurt is in the passenger's seat. He returns my wave enthusiastically. I strain to see if Finn had seen me too but the tint in the windows of his truck makes it impossible to tell.
"Knock it off, Rachel." I whisper to myself as I feel the heat flush inside of my cheeks for the millionth time in the last couple of minutes alone. "You're living in a fantasy land."
I wait until the truck disappears around the corner to drop my arm limp against my side. Hiking my bag slightly further up onto my shoulder, I turn back towards my house, looking up the front path with a pit of disappointment, suddenly sober. The high that Finn had left me with disappears as I look up towards my empty house. Frowning, I try not to face the reality that my mother's dysfunctional relationship has probably ruined everybody else for me as well.
I walk slowly up the path towards the front door and take my time unlocking it before shoving it open with my shoulder, falling inside. I had foregone every promise that I had made to myself about avoiding being home alone with Andrew for a five-minute care ride with Finn.
What the hell is going on with me?
Santana gets home before Andrew tonight because Andrew tends to work late at Burt Hummel's shop on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When she arrives, I am waiting for her in her bedroom, sitting cross-legged on her bed.
"What are you doing?" she asks me. She is walking slowly with stiff legs and I know that Coach Sylvester must have really laid it in on her tonight. I frown wondering if her bad Cheerios practice is going to make it so that she doesn't want to talk to me tonight.
"Are you okay?" I ask instead of answering her. I watch her frown.
"I'm exhausted," she admits. "Coach Sylvester had us doing wind sprints for two straight hours."
She falls onto her bed onto her back next to me and stares up at the ceiling. I look away from her. I can't tell her about what happened with Andrew when she is like this. I can't make her bad day any worse.
"You wanna talk about something?" she turns up to me still clearly suspicious about why I am sitting in her room waiting for her to get home. I sigh. I can't tell her that I was waiting and praying that I would see her before I saw Andrew. I can't tell her that the reason that I had been waiting for her in her bedroom instead of doing my history essay is because I was too terrified that he was going to walk through the door to concentrate. Instead, I have to think about something else and I settle on the second thing that has been on my mind today. Finn.
"I want to talk to you about Noah," I tell her. I am expecting it when she gives me a look of utmost surprise.
"Noah?" she asks, tipping her eyebrows.
"Well, not Noah specifically," I blush and look down into my lap. "Just boys in general."
I watch the grin spread wide across her face.
"You have a crush." It is not a question.
"No!" I blush furiously. "I just… I want to know when you decided that you were ready to have sex."
Santana nearly chokes. "Rachel are you thinking about having-"
"No," I stop her quickly. The truth is that I am not considering having sex (not like I have anybody to have it with) as much as I am considering the sudden complications stemming from the abrupt emergence of thoughts of boys being much more than boys into my life.
I think about Finn, who I want to notice me so bad but doesn't and I think about Andrew who I don't want to notice me but does. I can't tell Santana about Andrew directly, but maybe she can indirectly help me sort out some of these questions that are wound up so tightly inside of my head.
"I just… How did you pick Noah?" I finally ask and watch as her expression turns soft.
"It's not like it was a lottery, Rach," she tells me. "I didn't just wake up one morning and decide that I was going to have sex. It just sort of… happened. The pressure to do it is so high, especially now that I am on the Cheerios and the Celibacy Club too."
"Really?" I smirk. "The Celibacy Club?"
"Trust me, that club is nothing more than a bunch of hormone-addled teenagers forcing themselves not to think about sex," she points out. "It's like an orgy waiting to happen."
"Do you think there's pressure in the glee club too?" I ask.
"It's all the same, I think," she shrugs. "It's completely normal at our age to be thinking about relationships and boys and sex and love. It's a part of life, Rachel. It's how you know you're growing up."
"What if somebody is coming onto you and you don't want them to?" I ask. It is the subtlest way that I can think to ask how to avoid Andrew without giving myself away. Santana raises an eyebrow at me and stiffens as though threatened.
"Do I need to beat somebody up?" she asks. "It's not that creepy Jacob kid, is it?"
"No," I roll my eyes. I wish that I could tell her that this is not the case of some kid at school that I can't seem to shake, some kid who she can get the football team to throw in a dumpster or dump a Slushee on. This is a grown man, and that grown man just so happens to live under our very same roof.
"Why are you asking all of these questions?" she cocks an eyebrow at me. "Are you sure there isn't a guy?"
"There's not a guy," I groan but I feel my face glow again as I struggle and fail not to think about Finn and what it might be like to have the same thing with him as Santana has with Noah.
"Don't lie to me," she smirks, nudging me gently on my shoulder. It is meant to be playful, but the painful bruise on my back flares up again and I have to bite my tongue to stop from crying out.
"Okay, there's a guy," I force rolling my eyes. "But it doesn't matter. He doesn't even know I exist."
"Guys are stupid, Rachel," she tells me. "Especially teenaged ones. Sometimes it has to be you to show him how incredible you are. Is it anybody I know?"
"A kid in my class," I lie quickly trying to ignore how dry my mouth has gotten. "You don't know him. He's off your radar."
"Well if you're into him maybe he should be on my radar," Santana warns.
"Don't embarrass me," I roll my eyes but she has given me all that I can think to handle tonight. I leap off of her bed before I can risk pushing my luck with her finding out the truth. I am already humiliated enough. What would Santana say if I told her that I was crushing on the not-so-single senior quarterback of the football team? What would she say if I told her that the one I was trying to avoid was Andrew?
"Thanks for the advice Santana," I tell her, waving myself out. "I'm going to go to bed."
"Rachel, wait!" Santana stops me in the doorway. When I turn to look at her, her face has lost all of its gentleness. Now, she only looks concerned. "Are you sure that's it?"
I think about everything that happened with Andrew, everything that I had already lied to her about. Her face is exhausted. It is already worried. I can't make it any worse. I force a smile and nod my head.
"Yeah," I tell her, lying through my teeth. "I'm sure."
I make it all the way to Friday without another incident with Andrew even though I still have not found any way to occupy my idle time and playoff football means that Coach Sylvester has the Cheerios practicing further and further into the night every day.
It's good for Santana, I guess. She likes cheerleading and seems to be fitting well into her newfound popularity. The thing is that with my sister now pre-occupied with her new life, I am finding that I am a little bit on the lonely side. Especially with everything going on at home.
Tonight is the Titan's first playoff game. Santana had left early with Brittany. She had invited me but I found that I am not in the mood for football. After failing to complete my history essay on time for its Wednesday deadline, my teacher had given me an extension until Monday. That meant that I would have to work hard to scrape something together by then.
I sit outside on the front porch sifting through my textbook. It is starting to get cold outside but Andrew is inside drinking on the living room sofa and with my mother still at work I know that that spells a recipe for disaster.
The sun had started to go down a while ago. It is almost too dark for me to even distinguish the words that I am reading. The porch lights offer little relief. I can go inside and continue to work in my bedroom but I don't want to risk ruining this streak that I have going.
It is about half an hour after the night has shrouded me in total darkness that a set of headlights pulling into the driveway nearly blinds me. I find myself acutely aware for the first time of just how dark it has truly gotten as I squint up into the light from my mother's Range Rover.
I ease my textbook carefully closed as my mother cuts her headlights and steps out of the car, clutching a brown paper bag of food dripping with grease.
"Hey." She calls out to me, her head cocking carefully as she tries to gauge what I am doing sitting outside in the dark. Her long legs stride towards me confidently but I know she feels hesitant like she always seems to be when she is talking to me or Santana these days. "What are you doing out here in the dark?"
"Just working on some homework. My bedroom was starting to get a little bit stuffy." I hate lying to her even though I know that I have to. "I lost track of time I guess."
"You're gonna ruin your eyes straining them like that." She warns me, ushering me to my feet and through the front door with a gentle, leading hand between my shoulder blades.
The lights are on inside of the living room and the kitchen, but both rooms appear empty.
"Is your sister still at her game?" My mother asks me, surveying the empty home.
"She said that Coach Sylvester was going to keep them late to rehearse for Nationals," I inform her, kicking off my shoes, leaving them in the foyer.
"That coach of hers is worse than me. Almost." She flashes me a small, sideways smile that I somehow bring myself to return. "How about Andrew? Is he home yet?"
At the mention of Andrew's name, I feel my face fall. I check the living room where he had been when I stepped outside but he is not there anymore and all evidence of his presence, including his empty beer cans are gone.
"Yeah." I mumble under my breath. "He's home."
"Andrew?" Turning towards the empty house, she calls for the man. Her face scrunches, confused when she does not get an immediate answer. With a small sigh, she turns back towards me, handing me the brown bag of food. "Here hon. Take this to the kitchen and make yourself a plate, okay? You must be starving."
"Sure, ma." I take the bag into the kitchen just as she asked as my mother calls out for Andrew once again. This time, he answers, emerging from behind the garage door.
"Sorry, I was changing the spark plugs in my truck," he tells her innocently. "I couldn't hear you under the hood. How was work?"
I slowly begin to pull the Chinese food containers from their bag and place them on a display along the counter. I watch carefully as Andrew steps into my mother, framing her face inside of his hand, leaning into kiss her.
"Long. But I've had longer," my mother tells him, pulling her lips away from his.
I can feel my stomach twisting into knots at the sight, and smell of the Chinese food in front of me isn't helping. I feel suddenly nauseous. The sight of his hands on my mother does something to me because every time I see him touch her with such a gentleness I know that I am getting further and further away from her ever believing that those hands are capable of something so much more sinister.
I am suddenly not so hungry. I stare down at the bowl in my left hand and the quart of lo mien in my right. I had been eyeing the food with a hungry greed just a couple of seconds ago. Suddenly, I am not so certain that I can stomach it.
I grimace at the thought, feeling a sudden loss of control as my muscles fall slack and my fingers loosen. Before I can even think to correct my error, the food slips irreparably out of my grasp. I struggle to juggle the contents before it can create a potential disaster, but it is much too late. The food crashes to the floor, splattering the tile with an impossible mess. Milliseconds later, the bowl follows and the cheap glass shatters into a thousand pieces. In my effort to stop the accident, my elbow hits the bag and the rest of the food drops to the floor and splatters.
The sound startles both Andrew and my mother who jump apart immediately. Their eyes follow the noise and find me, standing guiltily in the center of the kitchen. For a second, I swear that I can see Andrew's eyes flash red and I am afraid that he is going to lose it in front of my mother. Then, he seems to remember present company and the look passes.
"You okay, Rach?" He is the one to find his voice first. I wonder how it is not possible for my mother to see how full of shit he is.
"Fine." I tell him, my voice dry. "My hand just slipped. I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'll clean it up."
"It's okay, Rachel. It was an accident." My mother waves off my apology, rushing towards me. Unfortunately, Andrew is following right behind her. "Come on now, you aren't wearing any shoes. Get out of here before you cut yourself."
I take one glance at Andrew standing over my mother's shoulder and fight the urge to push her away and rectify this mistake myself. My mother steps into the kitchen, high heels crunching the broken glass underneath her. She offers me her hand to help guide me back towards the dining room. The simplicity in her rare gesture is enough that I do not hesitate before taking it.
I watch from the dining room, shoulders hunched like a puppy about to get scolded as my mother gets to work picking up the larger pieces of glass while Andrew comes up behind her with a dust pan and broom.
It is a complete one-eighty from how I know he would be reacting if my mother weren't here. I know this because I still have the bruises on my back and upper arm from when I had simply handed him the wrong pipe.
"I guess Rachel does take after you." My head snaps up at the sound of my name. There is a smile on his face and laughter in his eyes. I feel so stuck by him he might as well be keeping me in a cage. "You two are just as clumsy."
She turns over her shoulder to face him. I want her to yell at him. I want for her to tell him not to talk about me like that but I know that she won't. In her eyes, he is only joking. She can't see past that playful tone in his voice or his charm. I'm afraid that she never will.
"Poor kid was doomed from the start."
She talks herself down for his sake. I try not to think about it like that. I try to mind my own business and look down at my feet. I try not to think about whether or not Andrew will find an excuse to hold this against me.
"You know, you're lucky that I'm here." I hear Andrew tell my mother as he starts to sponge up the spilled food against the tile floor with a wad of paper towels.
"Please, I would do just fine without you." She does not sound particular confident about her counter-argument. Instead, her voice is high-pitched and airy. It reminds me of the kids that I hear in the hallways of my high school. The thought makes me nauseous.
"Oh Shelby, be reasonable." He tells her. That grin is still wide across his face. I wish that somebody would just wipe it right off but know that I would never have the guts. "A single mother would never make it. Not working a job like yours."
His voice continues to ring with a playful, sing-song feel but the words behind his tone has my hair prickling against the back of my neck. It seems like a strange thing to say. I know that he is pushing his boundaries because even my clueless mother picks up on it.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks him, pushing herself to her feet where her eyebrows furrow in the middle and her hands find her hips.
"I'm just saying all of those long hours you work and all of the attention and effort that you have to put into your job..." He explains himself but my mother is still scowling. "Look all I'm saying is that with all of this effort that you put into your job, you don't always have time for the kids. You're just not cut to multi-task like that. That's why you've got me for. I can worry about Santana and Rachel while you worry about your job."
His words leave a fowl taste in my mouth. Who is this man to say this to my her?
But his words are so manipulative, they are so perfectly placed... The second that I see my mother's eyes soften, I know that he has her; not just in this battle, but in every one to follow.
When I had been much younger, one of the first lessons that my mother had ever taught me about theater is that in order to make it believable, it has to be a perfect combination of both fact and emotion. Theatricality, she would always call it. Her cardinal mistake now is that she is following only emotion while simultaneously forgetting the facts. This - she'd warned me from the start - is a fatal flaw bound to set an aspiring actress up only for failure. Emotion means nothing in theater if you cannot remember your lines or make your cues. Emotion means nothing if you cannot see the truth behind the story.
"Hey, don't worry about this alright, Rach?" It is him that talks to me first. My name on his lips feels like an ice cube sliding down my spine. When he starts to walk closer towards me the rest of me might as well be freezing right alongside it. I have to resist the urge to step away. "I'll just run out to the store quick to pick something else up."
His voice is soft but cuts just as deep as it had when he had been screaming at me just the other day.
"Thank you, Andrew." My mother sighs dramatically like he had just done something profound like rescued her from a burning car or got her cat down from a tree. I can't tell what bothers me more: his front or her blindness.
"I could use some help." I should have seen it coming, but I hadn't and by the time I figure it out he has already reached out, placed his hand against my shoulder, and started squeezing. His grip is so tight that it takes every bit of my self-control not to flinch.
I swallow hard and look over my shoulder for my mother's help. With nothing more than my eyes, I beg for her to provide me with some reprieve; to insist that I cannot leave until I have finished cleaning up my mess, or until all of my homework is done, or until hell freezes over... Really, I will take anything at this point.
"Go on, Rachel." Is what she says instead. "Take a break from all of that school work for a little while. Even my Vocal Adrenaline kids take breaks every now and then."
I feel as though I could cry. Here I am, sold out by my own mother and she doesn't even realize what it is that she is doing to me.
But there is no way that I can fight my way out of this situation without raising suspicion. When he wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into him like we are old buddies, I know that it is a done deal.
My mother looks pleased at the idea of her new boyfriend getting along so well with her children. Her eyes swim as I swallow an urge to beg her to help me and an even stronger urge to vomit.
"Don't be too long, you two." She tells us as she beckons us out of the front door, pushing me to join him. Pushing me right into his arms.
"Don't worry." He turns in the doorway and I swear his eyes glint in my direction. "We won't be."
We make it all the way to the restaurant and nearly back home without a word.
As Andrew turns his truck back onto our deserted block, he slows his speed down so dramatically that we are barely doing anything more than rolling.
I am sitting in his passenger seat for only the second time in my entire life but I feel equally as uncomfortable now as I had then.
A small bag of food sits in my lap to replace that which I had ruined after making that mess in the kitchen. It feels warm against my legs and is potent with the stench of grease which makes my stomach bubble to the point that I have to swallow several times just to avoid throwing up all down my front. The last thing that I need right now is to give Andrew any more of a reason to be angry with me.
He hasn't spoken a word to me since the restaurant, and even that was just to bark some orders at me to take the food out to his truck and wait for him there. I have been waiting, expecting him to yell this entire time but his continued silence makes me even more nervous. The anticipation that dangles in between us rests just as heavily against my skin as the marks from his hands had.
After what seems like an eternity, Andrew finally pulls his truck back into the driveway and throws it into park. I do not move right away, waiting for him to make the first move, waiting to see what he might do next.
When he finally shuts the car off without so much as a word and shrugs out of his seatbelt I rush quickly to follow suite, trying to move fast enough to avoid giving him any opportunity. But I find out fast that there is such a thing as moving a little bit too quickly because when my trembling hands find the latch to release the belt buckle, I am met with only resistance and find out too late that I am stuck.
"Here, let me get that for you." His voice is low in my ear as he leans in across the driver's seat closer towards me. His hand reaches out and I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. "That one gets stuck sometimes."
His hand brushes against my thigh and lingers, a little bit too long on his way down to unhinge the latch. I can feel my body stiffen so tight that my muscles begin to cramp. All I can think about is the last time that I had been alone in a car with Andrew and I immediately start to fear the idea that this might become a habit.
The click of the buckle comes with a rush of relief towards the indication that I am free but the feeling is short lived. As I attempt to shrug out from underneath the faulty seatbelt and Andrew's wandering hands, his grip finds my knee and squeezes to the point that it is physically painful. I wince but his gesture does the job of keeping me still, half out of fear and half due to the fact that any sudden movement results in a burst of pain that travels up my entire leg.
He holds me there for a moment, taking his time and waiting until I have completely stopped fighting him before he turns to me slowly. His face is neutral but somehow, his pale eyes still make me shudder.
The second that he moves his hand, I scramble to get out of the car. I take the bag of food and bring it into the kitchen as quickly as I can. I need my mother here. I need her to save me without her even realizing it.
I don't even realize the sound of the shower running until I am trapped in the kitchen and I feel Andrew's presence looming behind me. My mother isn't here. She is not going to save me. I don't know why I had been expecting anything different.
He comes up behind me and I try not to shudder when I feel his arms snake around my shoulder.
"Things are going to change around her from now on, Rachel," he tells me with a low tone.
I am not sure if he is looking for me to respond. If he is, then I am sure that he will only be disappointed because not only do I not have anything to say, I find that I couldn't speak if I tried.
"I don't know what it was like when your mom was running the show," he finally continues when it becomes painfully obvious that I am not going to say anything. "But she's not the one in charge anymore. I am."
He pauses once more, waiting for me to say something, challenging me to oppose him. But I know better than that so I stay silent and just pray that this will all be over soon.
"I want you to know, Rachel that what happens between the two of us is going to stay between the two of us do you understand me? I don't know what you've been telling your sister about me but it stops right now."
My eyes grow wide. In the split second that it has taken him to bring up Santana.
"I... I didn't... I wouldn't!" I splutter stupidly but can't seem to get everything out.
"Don't lie to me!" His rough, calloused hand balls tighter against my shoulder and he throws me to the ground. Not expecting it, my body flops down with ease. I feel my back press into a shard of glass that my mother must have missed while she was cleaning up and it digs into my bad shoulder in a way that makes it flare with pain. I would have cried out had it not been for Andrew pressing his foot down hard against my sternum. It is not hard enough to hurt but just hard enough to steel my breath. I feel my shoulder press harder and harder into the glass shard until my skin breaks around it and I feel a little bit of blood start to trickle down.
"If it doesn't stop now, I might have to do something to her that I don't want to do, Rachel."
The way that he says it makes him sound almost apologetic, like he has absolutely no control over his own actions. I wonder if he truly believes that to be the case. Somehow, that makes him seem even more terrifying.
My bottom lip trembles. Fear of what Andrew might do to Santana should she find out the truth is exactly the reason that I have not told her anything. I don't want to drag her into this. I don't want her to have to go through anything that I have to, especially on account of me.
"W-what if she doesn't believe me?"
It is the exact opposite of what I want to say. I want to tell him to screw off, to get out of my life and leave my family alone, to leave here and never come back... But I am not strong like Santana. I did not seem to inherit that same fire that she had gotten from our father, or the stubborn streak that had come from our mother, or at least who our mother was.
My sister - as I am sure Andrew has learned by now - has a personality all of her own. She is observant and protective and has already started to confront me with questions that I do not have answers to. What if I cannot help but to tell her the truth? What if she figures it out all on her own?
I understand the second that I see Andrew's eyes flash a familiar shade of red that I have said the wrong thing. He increases the pressure of his foot against my solar plexus and I feel my entire ribcage groan as it starts to cave inward against my lungs.
"You want to be an actress, don't you? Just like dear old mom?" His voice is choked with a mocking tone that makes my blood boil even though I know I would never do a thing about it.
"Y-yes." I stutter. My voice sounds pathetic. This seems to satisfy him. He takes his foot off of my chest and grabs me by the arm, pulling me up to my feet and close into him.
"Make her believe you." He spits. "Or else she's next."
I swallow heavily. My arm and my ribs hurt but it is nothing compared to the ocean of thoughts swarming around inside of my head. I have always been wary about letting Santana know anything that was happening to me. I didn't tell her how I felt every time he was close to me. I didn't tell her about Tuesday when he had lashed out and I certainly wasn't going to tell her about tonight. I guess that I had always assumed it but it seems now that Andrew himself has solidified the idea that my silence is in fact the only weapon that I have to keep Santana safe.
I now wonder if there is any way of escaping him without taking my entire family down with me. It seems unlikely. I can't bring Santana into this, and my mother... Would she even believe me?
"And Rachel, about your mom..." It is as though he is reading my mind. I know that it is irrational to think this way, but I am beyond the point of rational thought and the idea of Andrew being inside of my head is more than what I can handle right now. Is there any place that I am safe from him? "I hate to say it but she really is crazy about me."
He sighs as though this news is somehow discouraging to him. When he looks down at me again, his eyes are much softer than they had been before. I am not buying his act for a second but I at least recognize that he is speaking truthfully.
"She'd pick me over you, Rachel." He tells me. His hand reaches back down and touches my shoulder. It is much softer this time but for some reason, it hurts even more. "I think that we both know that much."
The craziest part about it all is that I know he is right.