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“Yeah well, I’m calling her Taylor Jane and you should too. It’s respectful to address a girl by her full name. Besides, TJ is a boy’s name. Taylor Jane is definitely a girl.” The last part he said scrunching his nose up like he smelled something unpleasant. It felt like he was informing us about a decision he was making with finality, and none of us disagreed. I mean, what would we say? It was my name, but I didn’t understand why it was big deal to him.
“I owe you a cookie tomorrow, Taylor Jane.” Hunter got up and exited the table, leaving the rest of us a little confused by his abrupt departure, the rest of the cookie in his hand as he finished it in two bites, dismissing us.
“What the hell was that about? Hey, Hunter?” Damien called out to his cousin, who waved him off, walking out of the cafeteria.
“Your cousin is a little off, Demon.” Kristen sighed and now we were back to our original trio. I liked the way he said my name and decided to let him keep doing it if it meant he would come back tomorrow and sit with us. My art notebook was at home on my desk, it would be perfect for sketching him later.
3
Hunter
Ninth Grade - September
It physically hurt having to get up and pretend everything was normal. This morning, my aunt Ginny came into the bedroom I shared with my cousin Damien to wake us up for school. A week ago I was in Michigan trying to get my shit together mentally. Today was the first day I would be leaving the house whether I wanted to or not. She was a nice enough lady, my uncle Henry too, but I didn’t know this side of my family enough to feel comfortable. My current state of mind was somewhere between a constant itch and a numb void. All I knew about New Paltz was based on my dad’s complaints about this place growing up. Inevitably I would hate being around a bunch of fake happy kids in upstate suburban New York dicking around.
Nothing about my life was normal, including the shit that had happened in the beginning of the summer. There were days I still felt the car skidding across the road as I watched my father’s hand fly out to hit my mother and her hands frantically jerking the wheel from his grip. The resounding slap and shatter of glass as we flipped over and over in the air until we landed haunted me with each rotation of the car getting closer to the painful end. My eyes had stopped crying months ago and my heart never found the words to express my grief at losing the two people I counted on most, even if they were broken themselves. They had been all I had, all I had known. The threat of violence had been my only constant.
Sleeping at night was the worst. I couldn’t stand blankets suffocating me as if I was still trapped inside the car, restrained and caught until the rescue crews had cut me out from the tangled seatbelt. Every night I
kicked the blankets off only to find them tucked around me by morning. Ginny couldn’t help herself trying to mother me. One night I caught her sneaking into the room to brush Damien’s hair back and while she didn’t touch me, she picked up the blanket from the floor and shrouded me like a mummy, pushing the loose corners down around my legs firmly. I didn’t have the heart to tell her not to. It seemed easier to let her think she was helping me and rip them off later, my heart nearly pounding out of my chest in panic by the time she left the room.
My body couldn’t seem to shut down replaying the sights, sounds, and even the smells. Fuck, I didn’t think that would be the part that stayed with me the most. Smelling burnt oil, spilled gasoline at the gas station, or coppery blood from the smallest paper cut made my stomach hurt. My dad used to work with cars and I was pretty sure that was the last thing I want to do, even if he made me his little grease monkey from the time I could walk, handing him wrenches in dirty overalls.
Damien and his parents were from my dad’s side of the family. They seemed all right. My grandparents, my mother’s parents, had come up from Alabama, taken one look at me, and said they wouldn’t have me back in July when we buried my parents at the funeral. My Uncle Henry stepped in and offered to take me versus a resigned aunt and uncle who lived down in Alabama on my mom’s side whom I’d never met either. Dad had made sure we were good and isolated up in Michigan. At least somebody wanted me, right?
Who knew, maybe I’d crave humid sunshine down south come winter and take off to live with them if things didn’t work out in New York. Damien and Uncle Henry drove out to Michigan and took me home without a complaint between them. Before they came I was staying with a neighbor, but school had started and things just weren’t working out when I got into a fight, earning a nice little suspension. That asshole shouldn’t have said what he did about my mom. I shouldn’t have punched him either as I looked down at the faint scars barely healed over my knuckles. I knew right from wrong, but in that case I didn’t care.
I was a spitting image of my dad and everyone knew how he’d treated my mother all these years. He was a real bastard, moving her to Michigan and preventing her from seeing her parents and sister. I was kind of big for my age and I was sure my attitude didn’t help. I couldn’t give a shit what people thought of me and I didn’t want to be like my dad either, so it was best I didn’t get real close to anybody. The heart can’t hurt if you don’t let anybody in.
“Hunt! Let’s go. I’m starved.” Damien pulled me along the hallway into the cafeteria, breaking up the painful memories in my head. My aunt sweet-talked the principal into letting me sit in with Damien in his classes. Technically, I was old enough to be a junior, but I didn’t care about school and nobody here knew me, so here I was in fucking ninth grade, repeating shit I’d learned two years before. My aunt thought it would help being with my cousin around familiar things, and not having to work as hard academically right now. I wasn’t sure it really mattered, but I was given the option to test out of classes that ended up being too easy next year.
“Is the food decent?” We stood in line with trays and despite my stomach growling, I wasn’t hungry for food. A few more classes left for the day and I could get the hell out of here where I’d been nothing but an object in a museum the way I’d been stared at all day. Dudes looked me up and down assessing me as a threat. Girls looked me over contemplating the size of my dick for a completely different reason from the guys. The south was looking better by the minute.
“It’s all right, but my mom packed us some snacks for later, and Mrs. Bryant sent cookies over. It sucks it’s too late for you to try out for football this year. It would have been awesome if we played together.”
My aunt, bless her heart, could have sweet-talked the coach, another friendly neighbor on our street, but I told her I didn’t want to play. Football was my dad’s thing and I wasn’t going to repeat anything else that bastard did. Poor Damien was convinced he could sway me, even dragged me down to the locker room office to meet with Coach Calloway. I might have missed tryouts, but I saw the way he looked my muscles over, assessing my potential. He offered me a chance, but I declined, obviously disappointing everyone as usual. I couldn’t even get a welcome to town meet and greet right. If it kept up I’d play football to shut them up and get them off my ass. Like my mother, I learned pretty quick how to please people if I chose to.
Damien kept talking, and I swore he never shut the fuck up to breathe. He was a good guy, but sometimes I wished he’d keep his yap shut. Right now he was giving me a headache, introducing me to people and explaining shit I couldn’t be bothered to remember right now.
“Yeah, too bad, right.” We got our food and ate quickly while Damien introduced me to every Tom, Mike, and Becky he knew. I wouldn’t remember their names because I didn’t care.
“Hey, I see the girls. Let’s go annoy them.” Damien picked up my tray of mostly uneaten food, throwing it out, and dragged me over to a table on the other side of the cafeteria.
I felt tempted to hit him for taking my food, but I held back, knowing my aunt had packed her growing boys, as she called us this morning, some extra food for later.
He talked a lot, pissing off the girl named Kristen. Damien was always talking about her, so much that you’d think he was jerking off to her constantly. She was pretty if you liked tall, dark hair, and sarcastic mouths on girls. Damien kept the introductions going, and I recognized the second girl from his incessant descriptions during the week I took to settle in at his house. I recognized her from across the street, the one day she was helping her mom bring in grocery bags. She had this dangerously happy energy that threatened my status quo.
Taylor Jane Bryant.
Damien talked about her more like a friend, so I didn’t worry that he had got some kind of boner for her. I’d have to punch him in the mouth if he did. She was a little thing, kind of like how my mom was physically… and blond, very, very blond. She was quieter than either Kristen or Damien, and I liked that about her. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with chatter or ask me a million questions. Her eyes were bright blue and the tension in my chest eased a bit. My mother’s eyes were hazel like mine and the flashback subsided for now.
Her fingers were tapping out a song I knew, watching how her small hands, short rounded nails painted a pale blue color, moved across the table. Green Day was my band and I loved all their stuff. I kind of wanted to grab her hand and help her fingers keep the proper beat, but I held back. She tried effortlessly and like my aunt, it was just easier to let her do it. Her tapping off beats didn’t bother me nearly as much as I liked to think it did. Weird how she picked their saddest song, but it was a good one, and I found that I wanted to ask her questions about what else she liked, and didn’t like, and how she ended up friends with these two yahoos… but I didn’t because that would mean opening up and letting her in, and I couldn’t do that. It hurt too much, and there was no room in my heart for the stuff she might swirl around. My life was finally a calm, clear pool of water living with my aunt, uncle, and dipshit cousin. The last thing I needed was a tender girl kicking up the silt from the bottom and clouding everything up.
4
Taylor Jane
“Hey, Dad!” Unlocking the front door, I ducked inside. Turning back, I waved Hunter off from the driveway, watching him drive down the road in his shiny truck slick from the rain. My best friend hadn’t lived next door with his aunt, uncle, and Damien in years. Seeing him drive away felt like an unexpected, empty hole in my heart with fragile sutures. I knew coming home would be difficult and I had yet to decide if I would even stay past this house project. Almost certain that New Paltz was a layover in my journey, Hunter was a chapter left open and unread.
