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Chapter Five – Giselle
It was official. I was a member of the Playground. Now I just had to muster up the courage to actually go there and do what I wanted. Going slow and steady, trying to overcome the past by taking one step at a time hadn’t done me any favors. It was time to throw all caution to the wind and just do the damned thing already.
I wore a white sundress, my feet in heels. The sun shined brightly, and I took it as a good sign. Maybe tonight I’d go, but first I needed… something familiar. I needed the one thing I could not have, since he was dead. The next best thing, though, was Cypress’s church.
Zander drove us there. As much as I didn’t want him with me constantly, sometimes it was nice not to be alone, to know someone else was there, even if you didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t ask me why I wanted to go to the church, which I took as a small mercy. He had no idea what I went through three years ago, no idea that, if I would’ve had my way, I wouldn’t be here right now. The only reason I was still standing was because of Father Charlie.
What would’ve happened if I would’ve made it to that church a few moments earlier? What would’ve happened if I could’ve saved Father Charlie’s life? I shut my eyes, remembering the night he’d saved mine.
It was late. The sky was angry with the world, hard rain pouring down on me as I walked to the church. My whole body shook. I’d kept it together during the daylight, but the moment night fell—and it fell early tonight thanks to the dark grey clouds overhead—I lost it. I abandoned the house; didn’t even grab a jacket to try to shield myself from the rain.
Let it pour. Let it rain on me and wash all the pain away.
But it didn’t work like that. Nothing in this life worked out the way you wanted it to, and that was the sucky thing.
So I walked in the rain, one step at a time, feeling like I was unraveling, feeling like I wasn’t quite here. Not here, not there; I wasn’t anywhere. I was just… just a body. A body that couldn’t control anything.
I didn’t blame myself, but that didn’t stop the weight of it all from crushing me. The truth was one ugly beast, and it threatened to devour me on this night. Fifteen years old, and I felt so much older than that. So much older, and yet that still did nothing to help me.
The utter feeling of hopelessness, of helplessness, was not something I’d wish upon anyone, because it was one of the worst feelings ever. To not be able to make your own decisions, not be able to say no… there truly was nothing worse, and I hated that it had been taken from me.
Used. I felt used. Every part of me. Every inch of my skin felt dirty, and no matter how long I stood in the shower and scrubbed in an effort to wipe away all memory of those sick, disgusting hands and other body parts, I couldn’t. It was like the sensations were still there, ghostly touches, and they wouldn’t disappear, no matter how hard I wished them away.
I wasn’t the kind of girl who cried, but I cried today. I cried hard, locked away in my room, and in the shower. Hell, I cried right now, as I went to the one place I never really wanted to go—church was always my mother’s place, and she’d been gone for a long time now. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was alive, if this still would’ve happened, or if she would’ve fought for me.
I liked to think the latter, but I guess you never knew.
I was completely soaked from the rain by the time I arrived at the church, and even though the hour was late, I walked right in. The doors were open. It was a church. The main part of it was always open for those that needed guidance from their God at strange hours. Though this city was not the safest—not by a long shot, not with my father basically running everything while the Greenbacks controlled the more lower-scale criminals—everyone knew not to involve the church.
You didn’t put a priest in danger, or anyone praying. You didn’t waltz into mass and brandish a gun and shoot it up. Not here. There might be crime, but at least there was a certain respect. I was as safe in this church as I could possibly be, even if I was Miguel Santos’s daughter.
I walked right up the main aisle, my wet shoes squishing on the long carpet that lined the center walkway. The main lights weren’t on, only a few candles lit on the sides of the church, and it lent to an eerie, almost otherworldly glow. I walked right up to the altar, where the priest’s seat was. It was more like a golden throne than anything else, a high cross atop a pole sitting beside it. In the center, in the far back, a giant wooden cross hung on the wall, a statue of a crucified Jesus Christ atop it.
These people and their saviors. Where was my personal Jesus? Where was the person who would lead me out of this particular brand of darkness, this hell of mine? He was nowhere, because he did not exist. Only men did, and men were as monstrous as they came. Feral and manipulative, liars who wore masks. Men were the demons of the world, and they did everything they could to stay in power.
I hated it. I hated it, and I wished things were different.
Hot, salty tears streamed down my face. I was not a crier, not usually, but ever since that night, I hadn’t felt the same. Everything felt wrong because everything was wrong. I was of the mind that nothing would ever be okay again, and that’s why it all felt so damn hopeless. What use was there in trying, in seeking help when nothing I could do would change the past?
What future did I really have?
My knees grew wobbly, and I fell to the floor. In a way, I was kneeling, only I wasn’t kneeling to pray. I knelt because standing felt like so much work, and I had no energy left. Everything just seemed so… so pointless.
Seriously, what was the point in all of this? I would never, ever be able to escape my father’s shadow.
Some kids might wrestle with their parents, so to speak. They might hate them, not agree with them, and long for the day they turned eighteen and, therefore, were no longer forced by the law to live with them, to listen to their rules and everything they said. Those kids didn’t know how lucky they were.
I couldn’t run. I couldn’t leave. Even when I turned that magical eighteen, I would always be Giselle Santos, Miguel’s daughter, and when your father was a man like Miguel, when his business involved more illegal things than not, you couldn’t just leave. Loyalty was everything. And me? I was always his special bargaining chip. When I got old enough, he could marry me off. It’s what happened to a lot of girls born to families like mine. You were trained to be obedient, to value family above all else.
It was kind of like a cult, really, because what loving, caring father would ever make his daughter do what mine did to me?
I couldn’t say how long I knelt there, my shoulders shaking, fresh tears spilling over my cheeks every so often, but it was a while. A long, long while. And then, even though I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I heard the sound of a door opening and closing further in the church. I didn’t look up; there was only one person it could be.
Father Charlie.
He’d been my mother’s priest. Maybe that’s why I’d come here, why I sought some kind of warmth in this cold, cruel world. You could be tough, you could be brutal, but every now and then you had to be able to lay down and rest your head, relax those walls and just exist. I couldn’t even do that at home.
“What—” The priest’s voice halted the moment he rounded a corner and saw me kneeling there, and in the next moment, he rushed over to me, having no qualms about dropping to his knees with me. “My child, are you all right? Do you need me to call an ambulance, a friend, your family?” He immediately set a hand on my back.
