Boycotting Blue

19/Lou

Lou

I tossed and turned until four in the morning. Either I was too hot or too cold… or too ashamed. My feelings were hurt, plain and simple. The look in Blue’s eyes had went straight to my soul right before he left me. It wasn’t anger or sadness, but a pain that spoke more  than his words ever would. He was going to do something stupid. And soon.

   Sighing, I tossed my covers off of me and grabbed a hoodie. I slid it over my head and shuffled quietly downstairs. I passed by my sister’s empty bedroom, aware that the door was closed and the room was empty. She had committed suicide in that room. After we moved everything out, my parents had emptied the whole thing.

   I could hear my parents lightly speaking in their room. They were discussing Daddy’s job. I ignored them and kept moving.

  I moved downstairs and out the backdoor, closing it shut behind me quietly. There.

 I could see the basketball goal in Juan’s backyard staring back at me, mocking me. I wanted to take it down. As soon as Juan put up the basketball goal, Blue arrived. Maybe if I took the goal down, he would disappear. Go back to Florida and take all these stupid feelings with him.

   I wiped at my eyes. I was not a cry baby. I was just emotional. And with my sister’s death anniversary coming up, the last month had been hard for me.

  Getting up, I ventured into the woods behind my house. I had often walked back here, pretending I was Cinderella and Snow White. I’d pretend there was a deer near-by, and I’d speak to it, picking up little nuts and stuff in my hands and scattering them in a path leading to me, hoping, wishing, and praying I would encounter a curious deer and…. And what? My fantasies never got further than that before someone called me back. Usually Mama, upset that our live-in nanny or babysitter had let me wonder off again.

    I touched each tree I passed by, enjoying the silence. People often complained about loud noises, but silence was scarier. It spoke volumes. Silence meant you were alone. Being alone meant being vulnerable.

   I was neither a cry baby nor vulnerable.

   Never vulnerable. The day after Daisy’s funeral, my dad handed me boxing gloves and made me fight. After that, I took mixed martial arts classes. I could fight, somewhat anyway, even if I was small. Grief and anger had taken me through those months. I had gotten my black belt faster than anyone at that time. I wasn’t a fighter, though. I defended myself. I never started stuff intentionally.

   The darkness seemed to swallow me up. I could only see the faint glow of our backyard porch light glowing in the distance. Good. Sometimes I wished I could be swallowed up, transported to another world where my mom wasn’t a porn star and my dad didn’t care. A world where my sister was still alive, grinning and joking with me, telling me I was a prude.

   No tears, I reminded myself, picking me head up in time to avoid running into a tree.

   I giggled at myself. Me, the girl who could hold a knife to a drug dealer’s neck, was about to be taken down by a tree.

     I placed my hands in front of me to map out a careful path. I had no idea where I was going, except away. If I had to stay in that house and look out my window at that damn basketball goal for any amount of time, I’d break something—preferably Blue’s face.

     I could see nothing now, just blackness. The wind picked up a bit, sending leaves flying at me. I didn’t know how much further I could go. I had never went this far before. I knew it stretched for a mile, give or take a couple hundred feet.