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Mary is an older woman, with salt and pepper hair, wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and a slight hunch back. Her grandmother built their cleaning company from the ground up, and Mary now in her 60s, has kept the business going. She’s a very stern woman but has a gentleness she preserves just for Ava and I. Ava, Mary’s granddaughter, is following in the family footsteps. She’s only sixteen, with sleek black hair, big doe eyes, and a shy smile. They’ve both always been so good to Ryan and I. And though Mary hates it when I help, she always ends up conceding since Ava focuses on cleaning better when I’m around.
Even after Mary and Ava leave, Ryan still doesn’t speak to me throughout the entire day, and I grow angry. He talks to a few people on the phone, and he’s boisterous and laughs with them. Hands waving vigorously, more animated than a corpse awakened by a necromancer.
Why won’t he talk that way to me? The moment he hangs up, the iciness settles back in, frosting the entire house with his energy. I’m not normally a petty person, but I’m on the verge of burning sage around the house to expel his negative vibes.
A few times, I tried to ask why he won’t talk to me. He didn’t even look at me when he said, “You’re not talking, either.”
Yeah, because you’re giving me the cold shoulder, dick.
He had nothing else to say, and if I pushed, he’d just get up and go to a different room in the house. Even Bilby couldn’t cure my loneliness today. How can two people co-habitate the same house, but it feels like I’m alone? I give up trying, and by night, I’m silently fuming.
We went to bed perfectly fine last night. I woke up from the couch and he gave me a cute sleepy smile. I helped him to bed, and he murmured how much he loves me. He cuddled me all night, up until early morning when he awoke before me.
And now this. We were fine. We were fucking fine. What happened?
I put a movie on without asking him if he wants to watch it. I don’t fucking care if he does or not. I settle into the couch, the buttery black leather comforting me as I cuddle into a soft blanket. The living room is large, with three large couches filling the space, a massive flat screen television with Ryan’s game consoles set up beneath it and expertly placed décor and family pictures along the walls. Ryan’s taste is more modern and sterile, with lots of shades of black, gray, and white. It’s a beautiful house, but it definitely lacks the homey, lived-in vibe that Julie and Matt’s house has.
I’m halfway through the movie when Ryan closes his laptop and pokes me in the thigh playfully. The gesture irritates me, but I’d be a liar if it didn’t also plant that hopeless feeling in me again. Hope. Hope is hopeless.
“Come cuddle with me,” he whines good-naturedly. He even has the balls to give me puppy dog eyes.
I’m sorry, what? I look at him with a mixture of shock and anger. The audacity.
“Oh, now you want to talk to me?” I sass.
He scoffs and shakes his head, as if I’m the one being unreasonable. As if I’m crazy and he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Fine, then don’t. I just wanted to cuddle.” That cold, hard voice is back, except this time, he looks at me like he can’t believe my attitude. He leans away and crosses his arms, the wall erected once again. The small amount of attention he gave me is gone, and now I feel lonely again.
Sadness hits me. He ignored me all day, and he finally is giving me attention, and I’m turning it down.
“Tell me why you ignored me all day,” I demand, unwilling to settle back into silence. He gives me a weird look, as if I just asked him if he’d paint his nipples green for me.
“You weren’t talking, either, River. You always do this. You make things into a big deal when it was just us sitting in comfortable silence and relaxing. Why are you trying to pick a fight with me for no reason?”
My lip trembles. Is that what I was doing? This whole time I thought he was ignoring me when really, he was just enjoying my company in comfortable silence. I feel so stupid.
“Do you want to cuddle or not?” he snaps. He’s throwing me one last bone and I snatch it up like a starved dog. Shamefully, I crawl into his lap. He smiles broadly and circles his arms around me, shifting into a comfortable position so we can both watch the movie.
He intermittently kisses the side of my head and runs his fingertips over my skin. We go to bed the same way we did the night before. He has a smile on his face, and he cuddles me all night, while I lie awake berating myself for ruining the day.
Next time, I’ll do better.
SHALLOW HILL IS A black hole in this state. Normally, anything that goes in, never comes back out. I was one of very few exceptions. Some days, I still don’t know how I managed it. On those days, it still feels like I’m stuck here in this desolate place where innocent souls die.
I walk alongside the river I was born in. Even the river is dead. Murky, still and devoid of life. And quite frankly, it fucking reeks. How I didn’t contract some type of disease from this river is beyond me.
Broken down homes line the other side of me. The windows that aren’t intact are boarded up with splintering, rotting wood. Most of the houses are missing siding panels, exposing the wooden skeletons beneath. And every house has traffic of cracked out men and women entering and leaving. Some belong there, most don’t.
Faint screaming can be heard in the distance. I keep walking until I reach Barbie’s house. Her house used to be white, but now it’s a sickly gray color with broken panels and rust. The closer I draw, the louder the screaming becomes until it’s apparent Barbie’s in another fight with an addict. More than likely because she smoked and injected all their drugs after she fucked them till they passed out.
Slowly, I walk towards the back door. It’s rusty and creaks as I open it up. Barbie and a greasy, skinny man come into view, both screaming so hard that they’re spitting in each other’s faces. They’re standing in the kitchen, with yellowed, cracked linoleum flooring, a mold-infested fridge, and a kitchen table cluttered with cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles and used needles.
Looks the exact same way it did every day for the eighteen years I was trapped inside this dump.
“You fucking bitch! Those were mine!” the man shouts, backhanding Barbie across the face. I don’t even flinch. She grabs her cheek in shock—for the life of me, I can’t understand why she’s shocked—and then rears back and clocks him in the nose.
The crunch comes a second before the man starts howling, holding his bloody nose.
