Teenage Crime

Chapter 4

It was the first Sunday Aspyn had spent with her new “family”. They, unlike her family, spent Sunday together. Went to church, watched football, had a family dinner. It was completely foreign to Aspyn. They all seemed to get along so well. It seemed unnatural.

         “Okay, let’s pray.” Mr. O’Strander said. Everyone took each other’s hands. Harry grabbed Aspyn’s, shocking her a bit. She looked over at him. He gestured to his hands and then towards his brother sitting on the opposite side of Aspyn. She looked at him, at his hand waiting for her hand to grasp it. She held it slowly and then followed suit with everyone else, putting her head down.

         “Dear lord, we’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done for us this blessed week. Thank you for bringing a new part of our family, Aspyn, in,”

         You probably shouldn’t be thankful for that, Aspyn thought.

         “We’d like to thank you for the food on this table, and for the wellbeing of all our beautiful boys. And we pray that you help Harry next Friday, as the East Chapel Hill Tigers go after the West Chapel Hill Panthers. Thank you lord. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”

         “Amen.”

         They all broke from their peaceful states and began to eat, talking about how the North Carolina Panthers lost their game to the Washington Redskins and how the youngest brother, Will had made the winning goal at his soccer game.

         Praying is weird, Aspyn thought. How could you be spiritually connected to God for two minutes and then be completely disconnected from him? And how do you know God is listening? Why would God care about you personally, out of the six billion people in the world? What makes you so special? Praying almost seemed like a conceited thing. Thinking God actually cares enough to listen to what you want and need. If God was real, he sure as hell didn’t care about Aspyn. How do you know you’re not just praying to thin air?

         Praying just seemed like a thing people do to gain comfort. They like to think some all-mighty man in the sky is listening to what they’re saying. It makes them feel as though they can get through tough times, that there will always be a shining light at the end of the tunnel. It was fake. Superficial. It had no substance. It was just words put into a pretty pattern, like a song. It was like a cry for help that no one would ever hear. It was melancholic.

         “Aspyn?”

         “Huh? What?”

         “We asked you how your father was doing.”

         That’s another thing this family did. Everything was we. We do this, we do that. Like one everlasting unit. Did they not understand that they merely just shared the same last name?

         “He’s uh, he’s, uh, um,” Aspyn stammered, not knowing what to say. He’s a piece of shit. That’s how he is.

         “I don’t really know how he is, honestly.”

         “Oh really? Have you not seen him?”

         “Figuratively.”

         “Do you miss him?”

         Aspyn pondered on this for a few moments. She didn’t know what she felt anymore. She was feeling too much. She desperately wanted to go back to that world of no emotion. She needed to take a breather. It must be the drugs wearing off.

         “I used to. Miss him, that is. But, I haven’t really seen him in so long. I miss what he was. I’m not sure about what he is.”

         This astonished them. There was no talking for a few minutes.

         Strike one.

         “A girl in my grade got suspended for drinking on campus.” Harrison, the second youngest boy said.

         “Oh my. Who is this girl?”

         “Her name’s Carmen Verbeck.”

         “I don’t want you hanging around Carmen, okay honey? I don’t want you getting involved in all that,” Mrs. O’Strander said, delicately putting her napkin on the table. “You know where those types of kids go. They start getting into all kinds of drugs and they start doing bad kids. The only place those kids go is jail, or hell.”

         Shit.

         “I knew a girl in high school who would do inappropriate things with different men every night. She was a cokehead, too. Started drinking and smoking marijuana in eighth grade. She got arrested before her senior year and got sent off to rehab. Didn’t work though. She came back worse than ever. Into all kinds of illegal drugs. Coke, heroin, LSD, crystal meth. Her and her parents got fought, and they kicked her out. She died when she was 22 from an apparent drug overdose. And I can tell you right now that she is rotting in hell,” Mr. O’Strander said, slamming his hand on the table. Leighton jumped a bit.

         They all continued telling adolescent horror stories. Aspyn started to feel sick. She put her head down and closed her eyes, trying to block out all their sharp, harsh voices.

         “All she wanted was to have fun, I’ll bet she’s having a lot of fun in hell.”

         “Her cokehead ass deserves thirty years in the state penitentiary.”

         “I hope that meth head rots in a jail cell, and then turns around and rots further in hell.”

         What the fuck are you doing with your life? What’s wrong with you? Do you not have a soul? Are you planning on rotting in a jail cell for the rest of your life? All you have going for you is your beauty, and all beauty fades over time. You’re a failure of a daughter. You don’t fucking deserve my forgiveness, Aspyn. You’ll never amount to anything. Are you happy now? Are you happy with what you’ve become?

         Aspyn pushed her chair back, making a loud noise. Everyone stopped talking.

         “I need some air.”

         She got up and walked out into the hot, muggy air of late August. She walked further down the driveway until the house was just out of view. She ran her hands threw her hair and put her hands on her forehead. She squatted down and began to cry. These people were nothing like her. They weren’t here to help her. They were like vulchers, each of them picking out what was left of her limp body. They wanted nothing to do with her. They had to know why she was here. They were going to use her mistakes against her and hand pick out all her flaws. She felt more and more sick as she thought of it. She stood back up. Barely being able to keep up her balance.

         My family sent me here. They knew what it would be like. And they did it anyway. The thought of this completely disabled her. She keeled over and threw up. She then stumbled over. As she lies there in the middle of the driveway, a million thoughts went through her head. She needed them to stop. All these thoughts were mentally and physically wearing her down to the evanescent state of nothingness. Eventually, she’d wear so thin she’d be nothing but a breeze in the meadow. She’d float away, never to come back.

         Her mind had become a jumbled mess of emotions. She needed to focus in on something other than her mental state of being. She looked to her left and saw a bunny hopping through the yard. It wasn’t doing much, just hopping around, occasionally stopping and twitching at sudden sounds.

         If only humans were like bunnies, she thought, That bunny doesn’t remember its family. It doesn’t remember what mistakes its made. It doesn’t need a purpose. Its sole purpose is to have no purpose. It was born one day, and will die another. It fears nothing, it feels nothing. That bunny is in it’s own state of serendipity. It’s never felt anything else. It never wants to feel anything.