N0 B0DY, N0 CRIM3 | Bang Chan

Unravel

Kiera had spent the past evening crying. Salty tears coated her cheeks and soaked the collar of her shirt. She cried and cried and cried. Tossed herself into her bed after hearing what her parents wanted to do with her, she cried until her tears stopped coming. After that, there was only the safety of a dreamless sleep. 

The next morning, she woke up to the sound of screaming. Plangent wails from her mother filled the hall outside of her room. She blinked a few times trying to figure out if she was merely dreaming. After hearing the sharp tone of her father, she knew that something was wrong. 

Not wasting a second, she slipped off the clothes she fell asleep in the night before, and switched into a pair of blue jeans with a simple dark red shirt. Silently, she tip-toed out of her room, and headed towards the screaming. 

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I said I was sorry!" 

"You never should have done it to begin with! I trusted you! You just had to go out and run your big mouth to someone. It was probably your best friend. You ran your mouth to big-mouthed Brenda and here we are now!" 

"Don't call her that! She's not-" Beverly Campbell hiccuped. "She wouldn't do that!" 

"Well who else could it have been? I know it wasn't Philip!" 

"I don't know!" 

Kiera inched her way closer towards the living room. Tension radiated off the two of her parents. Her mother sat on the L-shaped black leather couch hunched into herself. She didn't remove her eyes from the floor. Meanwhile, her father was pacing back and forth in front of it. 

His fingers ran through his graying hair. He tugged at the strands and shook his head. "We haven't even been here for two weeks yet! Not even two weeks and this is coming back to bite me in the ass as if the first time wasn't already enough!" 

"We could just...we could just say the messages were faked. They can do that now, you know? People can fake messages and w-" 

"Shut up!" Willie roared. 

Kiera jumped from the edge of the hall. 

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" With hands clenched into fists at his sides, his face turned bright red. "They already know the messages are real! I thought I told you to delete all of your old social media, but you refused. You did this to me! To us! It stung the first time, but now everyone knows! Everyone knows my wife is a cheater!" 

Kiera's eyes widened at once. She knew her mother wasn't perfect, but when had she cheated on her father? There was no way. Her parents had prided themselves on a lot of things and their marriage was a big one. The two of them had been high school sweethearts; the perfect epitome of the classic American dream. 

They started dating in their freshman year of high school. Dated all the way through college and married a few months after they graduated. They bought a house and, within a few years, her mother became pregnant with her. Her mother had always prided herself on being the perfect wife. 

Her father sucked in a deep breath and shook his head again. A chuckle of disbelief came out of his chest. "I can't believe this, I just can't. I finally got to become the president of the United States and now I have to be reminded that my wife is a two-timing whore. You could have picked anyone and you went after my best friend!" 

His words struck Beverly's heart like knives. She winced and cowered into herself more. "I-I didn't mean to hu-" 

"Save it!" Willie snapped. "I don't want to hear anymore of your bitching. You knew what you were doing when you started going over to Philip's house. I should have known when I started coming home from work to find you all dressed up and strutting around like a peacock. It wasn't for me, it was for him!" 

Although Kiera disliked her mother, hearing her father berate her mother like that made her blood boil. She closed her eyes to gather the last bits of courage she barely had to begin with and walked out into the living room. "What's going on?" She dropped her face into a frown and she surveyed the pair. 

Willie rubbed his hands over his face. His daughter's appearance had only added to his increasing frustration. "Why don't you ask your mother?" 

"Willie, please," her mother spoke softly. "She doesn't need to kn-" 

"Tell her!" He spat. "It's the least you can do now that I have to address the whole fucking nation and admit your fornication!" 

Tears welled up in Beverly's eyes. She didn't dare look up at her daughter as she tried to blink them away. "I m-might have cheated on your father." She sniffled and quickly wiped away a tear that fell. 

Willie shook his head, "don't stop. Tell her who it was with. Don't play coy, you know what you did. You sure weren't shy when you showed up at his house with the gifts I bought for you." 

"I-" She sniffled, "I cheated on your father with Philip. Philip, his best friend, I-I didn't mean to. I just..." She trailed off trying to find the right words.

Willie scoffed and threw up his hands. "You didn't mean to? It was six months, Beverly! Six fucking months of screwing my best friend behind my back! I put food on the table. I paid for your stupid pedicures. I took care of you! I took care of us!" 

A burst of anger shot through Beverly. She stood up and faced her husband. "Don't act like you're so innocent! I asked you over and over again to stop staying over at the office so late. You didn't have to be there, you chose to be! I was lonely and I told you that!" 

"You screwed my best friend!" 

"Well, you stopped screwing me!" 

Kiera blinked in shock at her parents' outburst and slowly started to back up. This had suddenly turned into a conversation that she didn't want to be a part of anymore. Step by step, she inched her way back towards the hall. Heading back towards her room, she let out a sigh, and shook her head. 

It turned out that living the high life in the white house wasn't as glamorous as her parents had insisted it would be.