Edge of the Ravine

27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

My state of apathy lasted longer than it should have. A full year had passed since I left the valley and the ravine and still I continued to traverse the world in a shell-shocked state. As if by Alec removing himself from my life, he took my soul with him. Despite knowing the entire time how foolish that line of thinking was, I still could not wrest any enthusiasm for life from my aching heart.

It wasn't until I'd been in New York nine months that some vestige of my old self returned. Really, however, there came a blossoming of self I'd never before experienced. Akin to a caterpillar emerging from the chrysalis as a butterfly, so I returned to the world of human beings a completely transformed creature.

On the day of my emergence, I was walking through the slums that was our neighborhood on my way to the grocery store. Normally, I no longer brought food into the house, but we needed milk. Somehow, it was the only way to ensure that Karen chose sustenance over drugs, when she had to buy it herself. (Not that it worked as often as I would have preferred.)

About a block from our apartment building was a small overpass with cement risers on the side and a chain-link fence to make sure people didn't fall. The thing was busted in numerous places and was more of an eyesore than almost anything else in the city. Of course, that was just my personal opinion.

It was at the end of this riser that I noticed a young woman sitting with her back to the fence. Her black hair was short and cut so that her bangs could cover one eye. And though it was the middle of August—albeit not as warm as desired—she was dressed in a stripes turtleneck that I found incredibly odd. As I made to walk past, her eyes raised to mind and for a single moment, I noticed the yellow-green bruise that begun to fade around her left eye.

It was as if a lead anvil had dropped into my stomach. I couldn't explain it in any other way than the facade that encompassed my world vision had finally shattered. Like a mirror falling off a wall, everything around me was broken and cracked. And though I'd always known it, this one moment was all it took for me to really experience it. For the first time in over a year, I knew what it felt like to react like a human being again.

Once the weight in my stomach disappeared, I felt a sense of clarity. Quite quickly, it turned into a raging inferno as I looked at the girl again. Blood rushed in my veins and my pulse pounded like tribal crumbs in my ears. Knowing now that the turtleneck hid bruises and probably scars, maybe even a broken bone, I couldn't help but feel murderous and protective and sad and hurt. Together it all churned in a dark, disastrous storm in my mind that was sweeping up every other thought or emotion to filter into my head. At last, like the winds of a hurricane, it all blew outward and that was the end of it.

Unfortunately for Karen, she was the target of my rage.

Continuing in the direction of the corner store, I stopped at a pay phone across the street. Without thinking about what repercussions this could possibly have, I dialed the number for the police. And I lied. Saying I heard gunshots a couple of blocks over from where I actually was, I gave the directions to the crack house where Karen was holed up that afternoon. Before the operator could get any more information out of me, I hung and headed home.

The way I figured it, Karen needed help. And the only way she would get it would be court-ordered. If getting her arrested with a needle in her arm was what it took... at least I was finally helping.

That night I bought a bus ticket for Charleston, South Carolina.