Safe and Sound

Safe and Sound

Lindy
Zart

For
Jamie and Joshua

1

 
No one wanted to know about her problems. They acted concerned, but as soon as she began to talk, they changed the subject. Their eyes glazed over. They turned away.

 
Lately
whenever anyone asked
how she was doing,
Lola smiled and said everything was
okay
.
Even if it wasn’t.
And it never was.

 
She blinked her burning eyes and slammed the locker door shut. Kids hurried up and down the hall, eager to get out of the stuffy brick building.
Voi
ces overlapped until it was
one loud buzzing noise
in her ears.
Cologne and pe
rfume and bo
dy odor polluted the air
.
Lola hunched her
shoulders and lowered her head, trying no
t to draw attention to
herself
as she walked down the corridor
.

 
It was a small school, as Morgan Creek, Wisconsin was a small town with a population under
two
thousand. There were
less than one hundred kids
in each grade.
Still enough to make the hallway crowded as she maneuvered her way outside.

 
The thought of going home made her stomach queasy.
Lola sucked in a ragged breath of the cool spring air and
squinted
her eyes against the bright day her pale blue eyes were
forever
sensitive to.
She shou
ld have learned by now to
carry sunglasses with her.
One more thing she couldn’t seem to do right.

 
She was jostled from behind. Lola
tightened her
grip
on the backpack strap and
kept walking.
Tree limbs swayed in the breeze, showing of
f
their new green leaves.
She turn
ed down
the sidewalk
.
Footsteps echoed her own
.
Lola glanced behind her
, her pace slowing
.

 
Sebastian averted his eyes and rushed past when she paused.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge her in any way.
Lola stared after his tall, lanky frame
, wondering why it still hurt
so much. They hadn’t spoken in
close to
a year
, not since
before
her
seventeen
th birthday
.

 
One year
was enough time to move on, to forget the pain, to get over a lost friendship. Why did her chest and throat still tighten every time he brushed by her?
Every time th
eir eyes met and his slid away?

 
Lola swallowed.
The house before her blurred and she
blinked until it came into focus
.
It was a tan ranch-style with brown trim. The grass was overgrown and ready for its first cut of the year.
A
fold-up chair
lay on its side near a towering pine tree.

 
She slowly made her way to the door, her racing pulse at odds with her movements.
Lola went through a mental list in her head, trying to think of what she may or may not have done to cause his anger.

 
Hand on the
cool
door
handle;
she looked over her shoulder to the house across the street. Sebastian stood there, hands in his jeans pockets.
He watched her, his expression blank.

 
The wind ran invisible fingers through his light brown hair, tousling it.
When their gazes locked
Sebastian turned away and went inside. Lola had no choice but to do so as well.

*
**

 
Lola took a deep breath and quietly opened the door.
She wrinkled her nose.
It smelled like unwashed bodies and fried food.
The living room was dark. The television was on, the volume low.
Lola found the remote under an old newspaper and turned the TV off.

 
The house had o
nce been spotless and smelled of
whatever cake or cookies her mother was baking when she got home from school. Now it was dirty except for when Lola cleaned
,
and there was no baking. Other than glimpses
of
and short
ly held
conversations, there was no mother either.

 
Lola took a deep breath against the sharp pain in her chest.

 
She
righted a pillow,
straighte
ned
magazines on the coffee table.
Lola
folded a blanket and put it
on the arm of the tan recliner.
Lola opened
the
windows
to allow fresh air in.
She sprayed fabric freshener on the furniture
and started to vacuum
.

 
“What the
hell
are you doing?” a low voice growled in her ear.

 
Lola jumped and fumbled with the off switch on the vacuum cleaner.
She backpedaled away from
Bob
until her back hit the wall.

 
“
Nothing,” she was quick to answer.

 
Bob
was over six feet tall and burly.
He had a gut that hung over his pant
s from all the beer he drank. His black hair was thinning and he had oily skin
.
His features were plain, but the ever-present sneer on his lips and unkind gleam in his small brown eyes
showed his true nature.
He had on a st
ai
ned white tee shirt and his pale, hairy legs could be seen below his
red
boxers.

 
He
punched
the vacuum cleaner
to the floor
with a beefy fist
. “It doesn’t look like
nothing
.”
Bob
advanced
on her
, the smell of
unwashed skin amplifying
. “
Are you
ly
ing
to me, girl?”

 
Lola shook her head, strands of auburn hair sticking to her flushed cheeks. “No!
I was just…just cleaning.”
She pressed her back flat to the wall, wanting to sink into it and away from him.

 
Bob
put his face
close to hers, his breath hot and putrid. Lola turned her head to the side and
squeezed
her eyes
shut
. “So you
were
lying. You said you were doing nothing and you were
doing something
.”

 
Her stomach turned as his breath hit her.
“Please,” she whispered.

 
Bob
shoved away from the wall.
“Your mother is trying to sleep.
In case
you forgot, she works third shift.
Keep it down.” He shook a finger at her. “No vacuuming.”

 
“No vacuuming. Sorry. I should have known that.”

 
His lips twisted.
Bob
ambled from the room, kicking over a soda can as he went.
Fizzy brown liquid
soaked
through the carpet in an uneven circle.

 
She
went to her knees, anger and fear and relief warring inside her.
She
hated
Bob
; she was also
terribly
scared of him.
Lola’s body trembled and tears seep
ed from the corners of her eyes, dropping to her lap.

 
At
times like this
,
she almost hated her mother
as much
as him
.
How
could she allow this
to happen?

 
A sob escaped her. Lola put a hand to her mouth and
slowly got to her feet.
She took a
deep,
calming breath.
And another.
T
his
time wasn’t so bad. It could have been worse.
With that thought in her mind, L
ola cleaned up the spilled soda.

*
**

 
Lola’s bedroom was her safe haven, the one place in the whole house where she wasn’t afrai
d
.
The room she spent as much time in as she could when she had to be
at 310 Sycamore Drive
.

 
She sat on her bed with the pink and white polka
dot bedspread. Lola and her mother had picked it out together.
Before.
She ran a hand across the soft material
, sadness washing over her.

 
The bedroom was big enough for the daybed, dresser, and computer desk, but not much more. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door.
S
he
and her mother had painted the walls lavender
. The lone window in the room had iridescent curtains that shimmered in rainbow colors when the sun shone.

 
Everythin
g in the room had been done pre
Bob
Holden.
It h
ad been so long ago some days
all those happy memories
seem
ed like they had all been nothing but a dream
.
All the laughter and smiles shared with her mom.
Maybe none of it had ever happened. Maybe it was all i
n her head and now
was the reality and always had
been.

 
Her mother had met
Bob
when he’d started working
third shift
at Ray-O-
Vac
, the factory outside of town that made batteries.
At first he hadn’t seemed so bad. At first Lola had thought everything might be okay. As soon as he’d moved in, he’d gotten mean. And once he and her mother married, he
’d
got
ten
even meaner.

 
It had started out with a teasing comment that wasn’t exactly teasing,
ridicule
, a criticism, and escalated into physical and mental abuse.
A pinch here, a shove there,
a slap across the face,
name calling.
And what had her mother done about it?
Nothing.
She had done nothing and she continued to do nothing.

 
A knock sounded at the door and Lola scrambled to her feet
, her pulse immediately racing
.

 
Please don’t be him.

 
“Lola?”

 
The door opened and there stood a washed-out version of Lana
Murphy;
now Lana
Holden.
She wore a red shirt that went to her knees and black pajama pants.
Her aubur
n
hair was dull and showed gray.

 
Lana’s
pale blue eyes were tired and
shadows had found a home beneath them
.
Her stooped shoulders made her seem shorter than her five feet six inches; her body was thin to the point of
unhealthy
.

 
Lola stood by her bed, keeping her distance.
“Hi, Mom.”

 
It
physically
hurt Lola to look at her mother.
It was her mom, but it wasn’t.
The c
hanges had been so gradual
Lola hadn’t noticed
them until one day
she’d looked at her sad, worn-out mother and hadn’t recognized her.