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Twenty-Three
Skye
Kurt was adamantly trying to put a dent between Hunter and I. He wanted to destroy any access possible.
He fitted locks on the outside of my window and made sure they were locked before bed. He installed motion sensor lights around the perimeters of the mobile home, an alarm on the front door that he would activate at night, and he had spent a month straight telling me how far along he was organizing my funeral.
This shit was getting out of hand.
“Picking out the flowers today,” he informed me weeks later. “Coming along nicely, Skye. Just let me know what clothes to bury you in.”
It was sort of sick, but I understood his anger. Kurt was protective of me, and he didn’t like Hunter much. In fact, he kept urging me to like “the other boy.”
“Leo Itani is a gentleman,” he’d say. “Always a gentleman. That boy has always dropped you off minutes before your curfew. He doesn’t stare at you like he’s fixated on your every breath—”
“Hunter doesn’t stare at me like that,” I argued.
Kurt’s eyes narrowed. “Girl, don’t tell me a lie like that again.”
“I’m not lying—”
“Then you’re lying to yourself.”
I had already explained enough times that Leo was with me that day at the fish and chip shop, that I had been truant with him and not Hunter, but Kurt was stubborn in his narrative. He convinced himself that Leo would have been truant because I would have left the school regardless of him being there, so he wanted to keep an eye on me.
Kurt had gone mental, acting like an overbearing father who needed to know where I was at all times, going so far as to call the school most mornings to let them know that I was there, and that if I was absent, he needed to be notified as soon as possible. It stopped me from skipping classes with Leo. I felt monitored by Kurt, and it was an ugly feeling that made me want to rebel all the more.
“This isn’t part of your nature,” Kurt would argue every time I came back from my long walks alone, much to his dismay. “You’re usually a good girl, Skye. What’s gotten into you?”
He wanted me to keep being that high-spirited girl he adored so much, but somewhere along the way, that high-spirited girl vanished from me in the night. I didn’t change exactly; rather, Igrew. Life was teaching me about the reality of human behaviour; simply put, I had no desire to be a ditzy dreamer anymore.
I was no longer that naïve, little girl.
I don’t think I missed her, either.
Regardless, it didn’t change anything in the big picture.
Hunter was excellent at lockpicking, so the window was back open within hours. But instead of him climbing into my room, it was me locking my bedroom door (a brand-new installation of mine, much to Kurt’s dismay, but a teen needed some privacy, and Mom backed that up because slapping me suddenly made her on my side all the time). I wound up climbing out of my window and going to his place instead. He didn’t need me climbing into his bedroom window. His mother didn’t care who came and went. She was holed up in her room, the sounds of her movies always playing, her cat Onyx meowing at random intervals of the night. Though, sometimes I did hear a man’s voice, too, but when I asked Hunter, he was vague about it, so I didn’t pry.
The safest times were between 1-3am in the mornings on Mondays and Wednesdays when Kurt worked late shifts breaking rocks at the quarry and came home wrecked. When he crashed hard like that, it was very easy to sneak around.
Some nights Leo was there waiting too, and we’d wind up sprawled on Hunter’s bed, talking shit.
“Apparently, Kat’s been cheating on Jesse,” I muttered once. “With his best friend.”
“Since when are you into gossip?” Hunter asked lightly.
“That wench talks shit about me nonstop,” I argue. “She says I mess with you both, and that I’m a ho.”
“If she were a guy, I’d beat her up,” he replied.
I smiled. “Anyway, I just find it ironic that she was caught sucking AJ’s tongue, and some other sordid things.”
“Like what?” Leo wondered, staring at my profile as my eyes remained pinned on the dark ceiling.
“She had his…y’know, in her mouth.”
“Y’know?” Hunter repeated, a smile in his voice. “Be specific, Skye.”
