Authors: Ally Derby
“You look good, sweet girl.” She hugs me tighter.
I tell her the same back, even though she doesn’t. She has aged a decade since this all began.
“Is Dad here?” I look past her.
“He actually has an interview, a maintenance position at a factory in Ithaca. Health benefits, forty hours a week, and this is his second interview, so fingers crossed and prayers up.”
“Mr. Preston?”
“Yes.” She steps back from our hug. “And Paxton Jamison is here, too.”
“Why!”
“He is trying to help us. He turned eighteen a week ago, and he—”
“No, Mom, he can’t. He doesn’t’ believe me. I don’t trust—”
I stop when the door opens, and Pax walks in, running his hands nervously through his hair.
“Hadley,” he says, then swallows hard.
“I don’t want you here,” I say, with tears immediately flooding my eyes.
He looks behind him to Mr. Preston and starts to chew on his thumbnail.
“Hadley, have a seat.” Mr. Preston uses a firm tone with me.
I sit, then pull my knees up to my chest, rest my feet on the edge of the chair, and bury my head in my knees.
“Paxton called me three months ago with some information he thought may help you. We have been trying to check facts and—”
“Hads, she was sick. Lana was sick.” His voice waivers, and I pull my head up from my knees. “I think so, anyway. She had mood swings and stuff. I mean, not that all teenage girls don’t, but…” He stops when I scowl. “God, this is all coming out wrong, all of it. I am so sorry. I—”
“Paxton,” Mr. Preston stops him, “is here to try to help. His parents don’t know—”
“No.” I slap away the tears. “No. I just want this to go away. I wanted to sign the plea deal six months ago—”
“You can’t! Dammit, Hadley.” Pax kneels in front of me. “Even if you posted that, it doesn’t mean—”
“I didn’t, and I don’t need you here, okay? I just want to get through this—”
He grabs my hands firmly, stopping me.
“You didn’t make Lana take the damn pills, and she didn’t get them from your house.”
“What?!”
“I heard them talking to the District Attorney. She mentioned using your father’s … um … prescription addiction—”
“He was in an accident.” I look away from him and at my mother. “Mom, I am telling you, I want to take the plea. I want to know that I am not sitting here, rotting, just to go to trial and have—” I stop when I feel Pax squeeze my hands.
“Please don’t do that. Please. You have no idea what it means for the next kid who posts something online—”
I pull my hands away, “No.” I will not allow my family to be dragged through any more. I will not let Pax do this, either.
“It’s precedent setting, Hads. Please, for God’s sake, you can win this. You can help so many—”
“I just want everyone to leave me alone. I just want to—”
“Just breathe, Hadley Asher. Regardless of what is to come, you have people who know you would never—”
“You don’t know me! Just go. Please, just leave me alone.” God, I can’t handle him being here. I can’t handle it.
His blue eyes glass over and tears form. “I knew you once.”
Guilt over causing him pain washes over me, but in its wake is clarity.
“You can’t do this. I won’t let you. You don’t get to tell me what to fight for.”
“Don’t expect me to do any different,” he replies, as he stands and turns his back to me.
“My father met Lana and her mom at his practice after my mother died. Lana was physically abused, and Dad convinced them to press charges. Her father was sent away. Sondra and he became close, but Lana and he became nearly inseparable. He was very protective of her. So was I. She needed us.
“When they married, and we moved in together, I could see it, something different. She was so over the top, and then the next day, she was a bear. When we moved to Blue Valley, and Claire pulled her nonsense”—he turns and looks at me—“she became manic. She had said it many times, ‘I should just die.’ Of course, I thought it was just dramatic teen girl behavior until seven months ago. Don’t you see, Hadley, this isn’t your fault.”
“I didn’t push send.” I stand so I can escape his skeptical looks in a room that is only slightly smaller than the cell I sleep in every night.
“It doesn’t matter if you did. Don’t you see that she was sick? She—”
“I. Didn’t. Push. Send.”
“Okay, okay, but—”
I hold my hand up. My emotions are everywhere. I’m mad at him, mad at me; I’m sad for him, sad for me. “I will not be anyone’s hero. I am just a girl who likes to blend in. I want to do my time and go home.”
“It’s not your time to do, Hadley Asher! It’s not your goddamn time!”
I jump when I hear the crack of his fist hitting the top of Mrs. Keller’s desk.
“Paxton,” my mom says in a tone meant to calm.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Asher, but how the hell am I supposed to fight for someone who won’t fight for themself?”
“It’s not your fight to have,” I say.
“Like hell it’s not,” he snaps at me then walks to the door. “I won’t give up on you. You should try to join the fight, Hads.”
When he leaves the room, emotions of all kinds come together inside of me like storm fronts crashing together, and I fall into my mother’s open arms and cry.
“I can’t do this, Mom. I can’t.”
“You don’t have a choice.
We
don’t have a choice.”
Pax comes back in, his face hardened, his demeanor stiff, his eyes not so clear and not so calming. He sits and listens to the adults in the room and looks at me for a long time, saying nothing. Before he leaves, he walks up to me, his eyes shifting between my right and left. I am surprised when he grabs my shoulders and pulls me into a hug.
“I am gonna get you out of this place.”
Before I have a chance to say anything, he pulls away and storms out the door.
“Love you, sweet girl.”
“Love you, Mom.”
~*~
That night, Seanna gets taken to the hospital. She is scared; I am scared. She begs the staff to let me come, but of course, it’s not allowed.
I don’t sleep a minute, but I do pray. I pray for Seanna and the little boy she is so selflessly giving a better life to. For Pax, I pray he can just leave well enough alone because, sick or not, Lana survived the pain of her youth, the sadness in her life. We all have issues, but she was pushed by that video. I pray for my parents to see it isn’t a fight we can win. And I also pray for my soul, because I know what hell I am going to cause them all soon.
~*~
I lie in bed at night with that stupid, old lady who swallowed the stupid fly still buzzing around in my head, and I swear to God, I wish fly swatters weren’t considered weapons and smacking myself silly as I tried to kill that pesky little bastard floating around in my head wouldn’t put me on another suicide watch. For now, I have to let it … fly.
It won’t be long, though, before that fly gets what it has coming to it, and the old lady can just stop the madness of bringing everything in arm’s reach to its demise, scrambling to just undo the moment of stupidity for swallowing the fly.
During the day, we follow the same schedule, day in and day out. At night, I drive myself half insane with fly catching strategies. I have even become angry at people I have no business being angry at: Pax, Lana, their parents, Skylar, and Bee.
My father has a job now. This should make me happy, but secretly, I know that every penny he makes is being sunk into legal expenses.
The holidays get closer without incident, just as I decided it would. I smile for Mom because she deserves it. I act like things are good here because she deserves that, too. I even send Christmas cards to JJ and Bee that I made in a silly crafting class. I send three to Bee: one for her, one for Skylar, and one for Pax.
The day before Christmas, I get a letter from Paxton Jamison.
Hadley,
I got the card. Christmas is not Christmas. How can it be when I am living in this tangled web of death and destruction? Sondra is a mess. Dad is more of a mess. I can’t talk to him. I confronted him about Lana’s issues, and all I get is “not to speak of her in that way.”
I hated seeing you there. I hated seeing what we have done to you: we as a society, a community, a family, and human beings.
The most messed up thing is, I want to talk to you. You have become an obsession, and obsessions are not healthy.
I have skipped school and driven to Jamestown. I have sat in front of the gates of Tryon more than once, trying to figure out how to get you out of there.
I will find a way to get you out, even if it means I turn my back on my family, my community, society. I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore.
Lana in her lucid mind would not want you there, either.
Regardless of how you feel about me fighting for you, Hadley Asher, I will not stop. Regardless of how freaked out you are by my confession of obsession, Hadley Asher, I will not stop. Regardless of whether you ever speak to me again after this, Hadley Asher, I will not stop until I see you walking, uncuffed, unafraid, and unaffected by the hell we have caused you.
I remind myself everyday what you said about breathing because now, sometimes, I forget to myself.
One last thing, Hadley Asher, I
BELIEVE
you. I know the real you.
Truly … regardless,
Pax
I don’t know how this letter got through the very watchful eyes of those in charge, but I have an idea who may have allowed it.
I fold up the letter neatly and place it back in the pocket of my journal where I put it every night after I read it before chasing those damn flies.
chapter fourteen
Two months later …
I sit in the visiting room, looking out the window at the bitter cold, desolate February sky. The days have gotten longer, even in its darkness.
Seanna hasn’t returned. I was fearful something horrible had happened. However, Mrs. Keller told me she is healthy—it’s against policy to tell me any more—right before she pushed a picture to the edge of her desk. It was Seanna, holding a beautiful baby with two people sitting on each side of her.
I see my mother walking up to the door before the visitor desk beyond the shatterproof glass on the other side of the room. Today, I get a special visit because it’s birthday number sixteen, although there’s nothing special about it. It is also the one year anniversary of the gift that landed me here—in hell.
Her shoulders are slumped inward, and her hair is no longer perfectly long and wavy. She looks pale, and I see smudges of mascara under her eyes that she wipes away as she balances the large, cardboard box on the narrow ledge of the visitor window. I hate seeing her like this.
I see Redder take her time getting to the window. The door is cracked, so I hear some of what is said.
“I’d like to give this to Hadley. It’s her birthday today, you know.” Mom’s voice carries the cheer her eyes and posture do not.
“Open it,” Redder says, peering through the glass.
“It’s her favorite cupcakes. I brought enough to share with her dorm mates.”
“Not allowed,” Redder says. “Trash is behind you.”
“She and I will share one then.”
“Not. Allowed.” She enunciates each word, while glaring at my mom.
“Could you ask Mrs. Keller?” Mom pleads. “I’m sure she would be all right with bending the rules for today.”
“Not up to her. It’s in the rulebook. The bending rules mentality is what lands these kids here to begin with. You should really think on that.”
“Do not tell me how to parent. I raised a good, sweet girl. She is—”
“Trash is behind you. Put your bag in the drawer,” she cuts her off, rolling her eyes. “Your visit is half an hour.”
“No, I have special permission for an hour.”
“Not according to this log.”
“Do you have any idea how hard this is for her, for us, for—”
“I said bag in the drawer.”
“You are a vile person, do you know that”—she pauses and leans in, staring at her name tag—“Ms. Redder? I will make sure you are reported—”