End Game (3 page)

“Hannah, I failed you. I left you there. I
only thought about my stupid adolescent fears and myself. I wish
that I could take it all back,” he said.

“I had Ray, Zane. I did okay,” I told him
confidently.

“I can see that Hannah. Half of you is
fucking gone,” he said smiling at me. I smiled back, and in that
moment, all I wanted my friend back, so I flew at him and hugged
him like it was the last time I would be able to. There was no way
this was over. He would have to earn my trust back, but I wanted
him in my life again. I decided right there I was going to have him
back in my life, and boy would it be fun making him work for
it!

I asked Rayanne to give Zane and I some time
for us. I told her I would talk to her later about the stuff with
my mom. She seemed hurt, but I knew that we would be okay.

For the next 2 hours I told Zane how it would
be. I told him how I wanted him in my life, but he must be patient
and prove to me he wouldn’t bail on me when the first sight of
getting laid presented itself.

“So, I can’t just jump the first girl I see?
I think I can handle that Hannah,” he said smiling at me with his
dimples in full effect. “Can we talk about the big thing that has
changed about you Hannah?” He asked looking me up and down.

“By whatever do you mean Zane?” I asked, in a
southern bell accent.

“You look amazing Hannah, and I can’t believe
that it’s you! You were always a beautiful girl, but this is
crazy,” he said.

I stopped him right there because I didn’t
need to hear lies. “Why did you say that Zane? You don’t have to
lie. I know that I wasn’t beautiful before.”

“Okay. I am not going to argue about this
with you. Please, just know that I wont lie to you ever again. I
know what losing you feels like, and I can’t go through that again.
It broke me,” he said. I wanted to ask him how it could have broken
him when he left me, but I didn’t think I was ready for the answer.
Instead, I did what I do best, and ignored it.

I told him all about how I decided, one day,
I was tired of being out of breath and getting tired walking up
stairs. I was seventeen years old and couldn’t even walk up a
flight of stairs. I never felt like I was in my right skin being
big. I told him how I never felt like me. What I left out was the
part of coming home after prom, looking into my mirror naked, and
being ashamed of myself. I hated myself at that moment more than I
have ever hated myself. In that moment, I thought I could either
change myself or end it all.

It wasn’t the first time I had that thought,
but it was the most intense. The fears of being just like my mother
and being unlovable overwhelmed me. I mean, my mother didn’t even
love me and now Zane would never love me. Rayanne’s face popped
into my head and I knew I couldn’t do that to the one person who
always had my back. I also couldn’t do that to my future self. I
owed it, to who ever I would become, to change myself. For that
reason, that night after I left prom, I started the process of
losing weight and trying to love who I was…big or small. It hasn’t
been easy, but I won’t give up until I can look in the mirror and
love what I see, both inside and out.

As I looked back at Zane, I realized I needed
him to leave. As much as I want him in my life, I still have a lot
to forgive. He may not see it, but not picking me up almost took my
life that night. I came close, that night, to ending it all for
this guy sitting on my couch.

“Zane, you need to leave…please?” I asked
him.

“Why, Hannah. I thought we were trying here,”
he said. I explained to him that I did want to try, but it was
going to take a long time. Having him here with me, now, was too
much and we had to go slow to get our friendship back. He
understood, and as he got up to leave, he hugged me. He took me by
surprise, and I swear I heard him say “end game” under his breath.
I had no idea if that is what he said, so I ignored it.

“Everyday, until you can forgive me, I will
make it up to you. I swear,” he told me.

“I want to believe you, Zane, and one day I
hope too,” I told him.

As I walked him to the door, we decided we
should take a few days off before we saw each other again. Well,
maybe I decided I didn’t want to see him for a few days.

“I missed you Hannah banana split. You want
to know something funny. My band’s name is Banana Split,” he smiled
at me.

“What the hell is wrong with you Zane?” I
said laughing back at him. “There is no way any one will ever take
you seriously if that is your band’s name,” I told him.

He looked at me, and smiled that smile that
could always make my insides melt. In addition, as I got older, it
also affected other parts of me, but that isn’t important anymore.
We are just becoming friends again, and I was not going to let the
feelings, that are so not friendly, get to me anymore.

“When we had our first gig we didn’t have a
name yet. The guy who was having the party wanted to know what to
call us, and all I could think was if my Hannah banana split was
here she would totally come up with a kick ass name. Then, I
decided since you couldn’t give me a name I was going to use yours.
The guys in the band loved it and it stuck. We have a pretty nice
following around campus,” he said looking right into my eyes. I
swear that “looking right into your soul thing” was happening.
Before I could do or say anything stupid, I pushed him out the
door. He was laughing as he walked out of the building towards his
car.

Chapter Four

Walking back to Rayanne’s room killed me. I had kept
so much from her and now I know that I have to tell her about my
mom. I stopped in front of her door and knocked.

“Get in here bitch,” she said through the
door. I opened the door and it screamed Rayanne. Loud, colorful and
carefree, just like her and like I so desperately want to be. She
was sitting on her tie-dye beanbag in the corner of her room. “So,
are you going to tell me what that was all about? What else don’t I
know about your mom? I know that she never paid you any attention
and always made you feel like you owed her something. Of course
dealing with her being sick must have been hard. So what don’t I
know?” she asked me.

I sat down next to her and let her know what
my mom was like. I told her how my earliest memory is of her
telling me I was a waste of space in the world. How every morning
she would come in my room smelling of vodka and cigarettes and wake
me up by telling me I was a nothing but a mistake. I never once was
told I love you by her. I had to listen to her go on and on, while
drunk, how I was a fat ugly worthless piece of shit. I always hoped
that it was the alcohol and not my mom. However, the truth is I
knew that wasn’t true. She never loved me. I would lay awake at
night and just wonder what the hell was so wrong with me that other
people’s moms loved their daughters, but mine wished I had never
been born. Lying in bed, I would listen to her scream and moan
about how her life was over because she got stuck with a fat, lazy
and ugly kid. She would get in my face saying if I had been pretty
or skinny she would love me, which would honestly just make me eat
more. Then I started to tell her the worst part of all of it. I
stood up in front of Rayanne and lifted the hem of the dress to
show her my stomach. I saw her face wince when she looked at
me.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Cigarette burns, Rayanne.”

“She fucking did that to you!”

I nodded to her and told her about the first
time my mom did this to me. I was ten years old and my Aunt DeDe
had just dropped me off from a doctor’s appointment. She came in
and yelled at my mom about how useless she was and how ashamed she
should be with herself. I needed a physical for middle school and
my mom didn’t care. When the school contacted my Aunt about it, she
ended up taking me. My mom simply got up and laughed in my Aunt’s
face. She told her she didn’t care what a whore thought about her
mothering skills, because I wasn’t a bastard like Rayanne was.
Rayanne’s parents married when Rayanne was four and are still
married today. However, since they weren’t married when she was
born, Rayanne would always be a bastard and my mom called her that
every time she saw her. My Aunt DeDe came, hugged me, and whispered
in my ear, “I love you. I’m sorry.” I never knew if she was sorry
for leaving me with her, even though I begged and begged to go live
with her, or just my mother herself.

I ran up to my room because I knew that mom
would not be happy for having Aunt DeDe take me to the doctor, even
though I had nothing to do with it; the school did. It would still
be my fault. I went straight to my bed, which was the only thing I
loved in my room. My grandma got it for me and let me pick it out,
and it was the prettiest girlish thing in the world. All pink,
ruffles, and I loved it. My mom knew that if she ever did anything
to it my grandma would cut her off, and she couldn’t have that.

Something I still can’t understand is why
everyone in my life, from Aunt DeDe to my grandparents, knew what
kind of person my mom was, but they never tried to take me away
from her or help me. I knew deep down it bothered me a hell of a
lot more than I let on. Why didn’t any of them love me enough to
take me away from her?

I heard my door open and my mom came in with
rage in her eyes, cigarette hanging from her mouth and glass in her
hand. “You fat little bitch!” she screamed at me. “The doctor says
you are overweight. Perfect! One more thing that is wrong with you.
Maybe I should teach you a lesson. For every pound he says you are
overweight, I brand you.”

The next five minutes I kicked and screamed
while my mother put her cigarette on my stomach ten times, for all
ten pounds I was overweight. I cried so much that night I thought,
in my ten-year-old head, that I would run out of tears and have
none for the rest of my life. My mom walked out of my room
laughing, and told me that it felt good to do that. She even said
it might become her new favorite thing to do. From then on,
whenever my mom would actually pay me attention, it usually ended
in a couple cigarette burns. In addition, I learned that you could
never run out tears.

“Hannah, why the fuck didn’t you tell me
about this?” Rayanne asked me.

I honestly didn’t know how to answer her. “I
think I was ashamed of myself, Ray. I mean, it happened the first
time because I was fat and I didn’t want to tell you that. Then it
kept happening, and I knew how hard all of this was on your parents
marriage, dealing with mom. I didn’t want to be the cause of
anything bad happening.”

What Rayanne didn’t know is that I had heard
her parents, on more than one occasion, fighting over me. My aunt
wanted to try to take custody away from my mom, and my uncle just
didn’t want to have to deal with my mother. I heard him tell my
aunt that as much as he loved me he didn’t want the responsibility
that would come from having me live with them. He just assumed I
would be all types of fucked up and have issues he didn’t want. On
some level he was right, because I have issues I know I need to
work on. I also understood why he hated my mom. He has reasons to
hate her. She was a horrible, mean, and vindictive person. He knew
if he crossed her, and took me from her, she would use all the
money she had to ruin him and his car dealership business. I
understood, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt that my aunt didn’t
even try to fight harder for me. I learned to just accept that I
had people in my life that loved me, but never enough. I was just
more of a nuisance in their lives. I needed more. I needed somebody
to love me, for me, even with all of my issues.

Rayanne jumped off the beanbag, hugged me,
and called me a stupid bitch. She cried and told me how sorry she
was that I had to deal with that. Then she asked me if my mom had
only done that to my stomach, and I shook my head no. The truth is,
my stomach and lower back were covered in tiny, little, white
colored burn marks. They were the perfect size of a Marlboro 100,
which was her cigarette brand of choice. I turned, pulled my dress
off my body, and stood in front of her in just my bra and
underwear. I had never done this before. Even with all the
sleepovers, she never saw me undressed. She always thought it was
because I big, which was part of it, but the burn marks were the
main reason.

“Oh my God, Hannah, that woman is even worse
than I thought. I am sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me this. But,
I have to ask…why does Zane know?”

“When I was fifteen he came through my window
and climbed into bed with me. He hugged me one of his great Zane
bear hugs and I cried out. He thought he hurt me, and I tried to
tell him I was fine. He wouldn’t believe me, and just kept asking
me until I starting crying until I showed him the fresh burns on my
back. She gave me those burns because I was late coming home from
school, but I was tutoring. Since I was late, and she didn’t have a
dinner waiting for her at exactly six o’clock, she was pissed. I
got six burns so I would remember she eats dinner every night at
six. Zane held me all night that night while I cried into his
chest. I never in my life felt as safe as I did in that
moment.”

Rayanne stared at me with unshed tears in her
eyes and said, “I get why you hated him so much now. I mean he left
you…knowing what she did to you. I don’t know how you are ever
going to be able to forgive him Hannah. I don’t think you should.
Honestly he doesn’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“I know that your right, but I have to
forgive him. I love him. I have always loved him, and if I can have
him at least as my friend, I need that. I will never have him as
the man in my life, but he can be the friend in my life.”

“What if he starts to like you as more than a
friend, now Hannah? I don’t want to sound like a bitch, but you
look a lot better than you use too.”