Ripped [TO BE PUBLISHED 2016]

24

Even when we were younger, my father never liked Cassie. She lived right next door, and he was friendly with her family, but as soon as the door shut he would start his mumbling.

"That Sanders family is trouble, I promise you," he would say during dinners, usually after his umpteenth glass of wine.

"Oh honey. They're good people. They're just different," my mother would say, placing her hand on top of his. That was usually the end of that. But when Cassie came over for lunch on warm summers, or we made homemade popsicles from pomegranate and pineapple juices, he would always stay in the room with us, watching us, like she didn't trust me alone with her.

But still, Cassie lingered. My dad never let her sleep over at our house, and God forbid I ever spend any time at hers. On warm summer nights she would crawl from her roof onto mine, and we would snuggle together under the covers.

We talked about boys, and school, and what we thought high school would be like. Under the moonlight, she would show me her vinyl collection, and I would tell her about my art shows. There were a lot of them when I was younger. Art shows. I was showcased in America and Italy and France. People in Africa bought prints of my work and hung them below their silver chandeliers.

Most of my paintings were photographed and went viral on the internet. I started getting scholarship offers for arts schools since before I'd even gotten into middle school.

Whenever I had an interview or a show, Cassie would stay distant. She wouldn't come with me, she wouldn't watch. When she watched me get awards, or the things I was able to buy with the money I made, her face always twisted up and I had to talk about something else.

But she understood things that other people didn't. She knew that I never wanted to go to college. I thought college was for people who weren't already good enough at what they were doing. She understood about the omnipresent glass bottles that lined the kitchen tables, and the fights that sometimes erupted from behind my mom and dad's room.

She stayed with me even when all the other little girls abandoned me, calling me a freak and telling me that I couldn't play with them. She supported me when I started rejecting the fame, when I told my mom to stop selling my work because I wanted somebody to sit with me at lunch.

My mother blamed it on the fact that I was growing up. My father pointed his fingers, mostly at Cassie and her family. It didn't help when their house was foreclosed, her dad busted for cooking meth and her mother caught in bed with another woman.

When her mother packed all of her bags and threatened to take Cassie away, she ended up on our front doorstep, begging me to stay at my house. My parents thought I was harboring a dog, and when they found Cassie, they called the police.

Her mother never even noticed she was gone.

They took her away to a house with an elderly couple that had three cats until her mother got remarried, and she was forced to live with a lady she couldn't even call mom...

Firm hands pull my hair back as I heave into the cold porcelain toilet. I let my head rest against the cool white surface.

My head spins, and Cassie sets another glass of water next to me.

I drank it down, let my head rest on the floor again. My heart beats rapidly. I suck in short shallow breaths.

"Are you done yet?" Cassie asks, slightly irritated. "Because the day is wasting away and you're spending it over some fuckboy who would probably never like you anyways."

"What?" I feel like I've been sucker punched in the gut. "What do you mean?"

She smirks. Like I was stupid. Like I am stupid. Like I should've known. "He's a major hottie. He's in high school. No offense, but if he had the entire world to choose from, then why would he ever pick you?" She touches my shoulder softly. "What makes you special?"

I shake my head. I should've known. I should've known, dammit.

She was right.

"So are you done moping? Can we go now?" She taps her foot against the linoleum impatiently.

I suck in a breath. My heart hits my ribs, hard, begging to be ripped out. It hurts. Everything hurts. A lone tear falls down my cheek.

"Oh, honey," Cassie says, her voice softening. "Come on. I'll make you forget him. It will be okay. I'll make you forget him real fast." She holds out her hand. "Trust me."

I shake my head. I am so tired of trusting people. Tired of putting my trust in people and being let down. But what choice do I have?

I wrap my fingers around hers.

She smiles and hands me another cigarette.