First off, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! I know mine was crazy. Anway, sorry for the delayed posting. I've been beyond busy with school and helping everyone out with Christmas and New Years stuff. Plus I have WPCD (Winter Post-Christmas Depression) and I'm always absolutely exhausted.
Disclaimer- I do not own Degrassi, nor do I own Eli or Clare, or anything else I may act like I own in this story (except Clare's dad)
Anyway, here's the chapter. I worked really hard on it, so hopefully it came out well.
Alli and I haven't spoken in over a week. I'm so used to the normal routine; one of us, usually me, creating a bump in the road, and Alli turning back around to smooth the creases until everything is patched up. It's always been there in the black and white, within reach, but now I'm not so sure about anything.
Maybe it's because it wasn't a fight we were involved in. There were hurt feelings and hard closings, but never the venom in our voices or the exchanging of cruel words; never anything that could be classified as a problem soon to be fixed. This wasn't a bump in our road, but the end of it.
Things with Eli and I remain neutral. The persistent question still clouding the air, erased by our content, friendly motions, and then written again with hinted flirting. It's all so crazy, the constant back and forth jerking of yes and no, maybe and I'm not sure, and suddenly I'm becoming nauseous with all these turns in different directions.
But even still I don't ask him, nor do I think I ever will. If he wants anything more, he will come and get it. After all, he is Eli.
Our short story for English class is coming to a close. Munro Chamber's life is officially sprawled out into a million pieces that no longer fit together. His girlfriend dumped him for a motorcycle driver, leather-jacket lover with more money in his pocket than Munro has in his entire bank account. Not to mention the pile of eviction notices have finally tipped over, followed by the last string of second chance cut loose. House gone. True love gone. Hope gone.
I feel guilty ruining someone's life like that, even if they may not be real. There's enough in this world we don't understand, and everyone who lives in it becomes victimized with misfortunes. Repeating the cycle just for a good grade feels cruel.
I glance over at the digital clock below the T.V. The green fluorescent light hurts my eyes, which are now adjusted to the omnipresent darkness. I look long enough to know that it's 2 am, and to know that my dad hasn't walked through the door yet, and to know that I'm the biggest idiot in the world for actually caring but I do anyway.
I tuck my legs under my body and stare up at the ceiling. I can't even make it out through the obscurity. All I know is that there's a soup stain directly above where the coffee table is, caused by one of my father's many outbursts that resumed in throwing things. There's a beer tarnish under the couch and a dent on the corner of the countertop. All these small things joined together just like Munro's eviction notices until they grew so tall that they're blocking my view.
But right now it doesn't matter. It's 2 am. Even if they weren't standing tall, I wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.
An unfamiliar voice inside my head is murmuring to go to sleep. Another voice is mumbling words too fast for me to make a coherent thought of them, even though I know that what it has to say may be more important. So I ignore myself and continue to sit in the chair, staring at random things I know exist yet don't see, and wait for the person who hurts me the most to take the pain away.
2:15
2:40
2:50
3:05
Faintly, I hear the rumbling of his car pull up outside my house. Footsteps grow louder and louder, followed with fumbling of keys and the opening of the door.
I see his figure enter the kitchen. It's too dark to tell what hand his briefcase is in, but his shoes are still on, and shrapnel of alarm thrashes through my veins.
He picks something up off the counter and chucks it at the wall with full force. The shrieking sound of glass shattering suddenly pounds through my ears and the withering pieces fall to the tile like rain on a stormy day.
I gasp quietly, but not quietly enough. He spins around. "Who's there?" He barks.
I don't say anything. The ability to speak is long gone.
"Clare, is that you?"
Somehow, gracious for the miracle of my own ability, I manage to speak. "Yeah, it's me."
He walks towards the archway and turns on the light. Everything comes into view; the tile floor, the broken gravy bowl; his briefcase lying on the ground. But I don't focus on any of it. All I can look at is my father, whose eyes are so dead and abused it looks as though he hasn't slept or eaten for months. The sleeve on his shirt is ripped along the wrists and his hair is spewed wildly along his head. It's like the last straw for him is finally here, that any sanity or capability to deal with whatever he's forced to face has faded away in these few anonymous hours.
"What are you doing up?" He demands, running a hand along his head to fix even the slightest bit of tangle in the forest of his own hair.
"I-I-" The words are there, but a lump in my throat is resisting them from coming out.
"What are you doing up?" He repeats, his voice growing heavier like his footsteps on a bad day.
I can't tell what today is.
I stand up shakily. "Waiting for you." I sound small, fragile. My fear is palpable to him. I'm an easy target.
"Why?"
Why?
"You don't have to wait for me. It's not your job. I'm the dad here," he says.
Are you, dad? Are you really? Do dads go through life wearing a mask that hides who they really are? Do dads not even tell their friends that they have a child?
Do dads beat their kids?
Is that a dad?
He turns around as though the noise of breaking glass finally reached his ears. Startled, he shifts his gaze rapidly from the mess to me.
"Clean this up," he says quietly, his entire body beginning to shake.
He sounds small, fragile.
Just like me.
As I stride over towards the mess he made and bend down to clean it up, the incomprehensible voice inside my head becomes understandable for the first time. The voice isn't that of my dad's, whose always ruled my world and controlled my actions. It's my own.
Get out.
It's over.
Stand up for once in your life.
I'm tired of listening to other people. Letting someone else take the reins and crash me so hard I'm buried in bruises. So I grab a hold of my own voice and follow the path it's leading me down.
"Why do you do it?"
My dad, who is jadedly walking up the stairs, slowly turns around, giving all attention to me. Tempted to slouch down and shut up, I stand even straighter, look at him harder, and fight.
"Do what?" He says, the same taunting voice that always dared me to anger him even more.
"Don't even ask that," I place the pieces of scrap glass on the counter, "You know exactly what I mean."
He shakes his head and steps forward towards me. The layer of frustration is beginning to build up again, but I realize now it really isn't me acting as the cause of it.
"No, I don't," He stands firmly, the counter and kitchen table between us. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do!" I screech. I'm going to have to say the words eventually, hit the nail on the head once and for all, but even so I'm doing everything in my power to avoid it.
"Clare," this time he doesn't sound angry or full of rage. Just tired, as though we've had this conversation a thousand times and he's sick of repeating the same old words. "Can we not talk about this?"
I can't help it. I'm just so mad right now. Taking my hand, I swipe the pieces of broken glass off the counter and back onto the floor with the rest of the mess. During the action I catch a sharp corner of it on my palm and blood slowly starts oozing out.
Like I actually care. I've had too many experiences with blood to care anymore.
"Talk about what, dad?" I ask.
He groans in utter frustration. All current barriers I've had before, all self-control and ability to lie is gone. Now I'm raw, the pieces of thin gold from my gilding seeping away.
"I don't know, Clare! You're the one who started this conversation! What are we talking about?"
"Why do I even have to say it? You know what I'm talking about!"
"No I don't!"
I roll up my shirt until it reaches to about my rib cage. The bruises are even more evident in the bright lighting of the kitchen, stretching out of my pale skin. Even I can't help but be surprised how all these blatant markings could stay hidden for so long.
But they weren't hidden.
I was hiding them.
But my dad doesn't seem to care. He turns his head away and sighs indolently.
"We don't need to talk about this," he mutters.
At this point I'm about ready to scream with no rational words in mind. I just want to let it all out, all the lies and bruises, all the times I've felt pain words can't describe and held it inside myself.
"Ask me," I demand tensely, my shirt still risen up by my bleeding hand, "Ask me where I got these."
"Put your shirt down, Clare."
Shaking my head, I repeat the words, louder, more forceful. I want him to know just how it feels to be the small voice stuck inside a room full of noise. "Ask me where I got these."
"Goddamn it!" He marches over towards me, just like all those other times, and shoves my body into the counter. I regain my posture and point an accusing finger in his face.
"That's where I got it from!" I scream. "From you!"
He pushes me again.
I push him back.
He slaps me in the face.
I shove him harder.
Amount of fighting and screaming passes between us.
But then I realize the truth. My dad is unstoppable. No matter what I say or what I do or how hard I try to fix things, he'll always be the man who beats his daughter. And it doesn't matter if she beats him back.
So after all the screaming, all the denial, all the bruises, all the slaps and kicks and torture and resisted tears and lies and pushing people away, I run over towards the closet, pick out my jacket and head towards the door.
"Clare, wait!" My dad grapples my arm in his hand. He softens his grip when I flinch.
Too late for that, dad.
"Where are you going?"
I tug away from his clutch, but he seizes my arm again. "Away from you."
"No, wait, please," Closing his eyes for a moment, a hand reaches out to brush my cheek. "Don't leave me. I love you."
"Oh really?" I jerk my body away from him and slam against the front door. One one-eighty turn and a twist of the knob and all of this can be gone forever.
"Yes," he gasps desperately, "I love you so much."
"If you love me, why do you hurt me?"
He tries to shove me away from the door, but I resist and wait a moment for some kind of response.
"Because," his voice falters.
Any answer is the wrong answer.
No answer is the wrong answer.
"Because I'm a wreck Clare," he smiles brokenly, "I'm a total and utter wreck. Work is driving me up the walls. I'm working double time with the same pay and the company is about to shut down. But listen, I could get help. See a therapist. A family counselor. Things can get better. But you can't leave. "
For the splittest second I may consider what he says. Maybe things could get better.
No. It doesn't matter if he never lays a harmful hand on me again. The past will still be here, laying out in front of our eyes and blocking any view for happiness.
This will always be apart of my life.
I turn the knob and walk out the front door. After every part of the yelling and clashing noises, the serene street is like a sanctuary.
Just like life, it all ends in silence.
The world is cold and unwelcoming as I march solitarily along the sidewalk. My breath is visible through the little amount of glow brought upon by the streetlights. I rub my arms with each opposite hand, remembering science class in 7th grade; friction causes heat.
For a few moment's I walk with absolutely nowhere to go. After realizing that freezing to death is a high possibility, I halt my legs and think.
I start walking again.
Eli's house isn't too far from my own. We've been there a couple of times whenever he would need to run home and retrieve an English assignment he forgot to grab before. Three blocks ahead, take a right, pass Path Mark, walk through an alleyway between a run down furniture store and the local beauty shop, and continue down the road until a patch of houses appears. Eli's is the third on the left, green sidings and a grass driveway.
The map is painted in my head. I keep walking, crushing through the freezing air and trying to ignore the goose bumps and bruises underneath my coat. When I finally reach the opening to the alleyway, though, reality strikes.
It's three thirty in the morning.
On a school night.
I'm such an idiot. What kind of person marches outside, in the deadly cold, at freaking three thirty in the morning, and knocks on your door, saying "I need you."
Someone like me, I guess. Someone who really needs you at three thirty in the morning.
So I shake off any hesitation and continue on walking. The alleyway is deserted; clumps of gravel and rocks shifting below my feet, a dumpster settled beside me.
I feel like one of those girls in the horror movies. The stupid one who goes out late out night into a dark, abandoned alleyway, vulnerable and scared for her life. Then, right as she sees the beautiful sight of a clearing-
Well, you know the rest.
But I'm not one of those girls from the horror movies. There is no killer waiting for me at the end of the road.
No. My killer is waiting for me at the beginning of it.
I can't help but let my mind wander off to my dad. How just a few moments ago I thought that the last straw appeared within the last few hours.
I was wrong. The last straw was coming the second his hand came in contact with my face all those years ago. It's been fading away ever since, and probably long lost gone a while ago.
The last string of hope I, he, we, had been holding onto was nothing but a cloud of gas floating in mid-air. Disappearing with only the swap of our hand. Nothing but our imaginations patching up the wounds that won't ever heal.
Eli's house is finally within view. My walk swiftly shifts into a run, my legs numb from the cold yet somehow more powerful than they've ever been. Maybe it's the exhilarating rush from the night's previous events. Maybe I'm just merely happy to be approaching warmth.
I'm about to knock on his door until I realize that one of his parents might answer.
For a moment I contemplate my options, until I finally think of a reasonable one that doesn't seem too insane. I pull out my phone and quickly click on Eli's cell phone number.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three rings.
I'm about to hang up.
"Hello?"
I definitely wake him up from sleeping. His voice is raggedy, most likely from snoring, and he sounds only half-conscious.
"Eli," I whisper. My exhilarated high is gone now, replaced with the utter torture of fifteen degrees Fahrenheit plus wind chill. My bones begin to feel as though they might shatter into millions of pieces, and just saying Eli's name sends a monstrous amount of pain down my throat.
"Clare," he's more alert now, "What's wrong?"
"C-come," My teeth are chattering, "Come outside. T-to your front door."
The line quickly disconnects, and I'm almost certain I can feel his urgency through the phone.
Standing alone in the cold, I look around the world, at the other houses nearby, and wonder how many other people have ever had to run outside at three thirty in the morning like me. I can't be the only one.
The door clicks open and I look up at Eli. He's wearing a baggy t-shirt and ripped sweat pants. His hair is a wreck, sprung out wildly in all different directions, and the stance he's in is full of exhaustion. His eyes, however, tell a different story.
"Clare," he says, like my name is some secret message to open a door to a parallel universe.
I shake my head and block out any misleading thoughts.
"We need to talk."
So obviously this story is coming to a close. Probably 2-4 chapters left. Could be more, probably not less. I just want to let you know, that as a dramatic affect, I will be putting no author's notes in the last chapter, although I will label it last chapter so you know. However, afterwards, I will post another chapter giving shout outs to all my biggest fans, thanking you all and virtually crying in appreciation, and then...DUN DUN DUN...giving you guys a summary for my next story =) Yes, I have another Eclare fic idea planned out, and it ROCKS. However, in my summary, don't hold onto every small detail I tell you, because odds are things will change. It's just as of then.
Anyway, THANK YOU for the reviews! You guys are incredible! So did you like this chapter? Tell me in reviews =)
-JENNA