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“Jackson, you need to go to a hospital or something, not lay in bed and cuddle! Do you want me to call Easton or someone? Anyone?”
“Just fuckin’ come here, would you?” I say with a sharp tone.
She narrows her eyes in confusion but does as she’s told.
Laying in the crook of my arm, I shift to get comfortable and stare at the ceiling. It’s intimidating to know that I’m about to speak on words that have been bottled up for so long. My entire life, really. I’ve always thought this is something that would go to the grave with me. But now with Mom gone, I’ve never wanted to rid myself of the memories as much as I do now.
“I had a sister once.” I say to the ceiling.
Cara gasps, getting up on her elbows and looking down at me. “What? I never knew that!”
I push her back down on the bed. “Shh. Let me talk, okay? Just let me say what I need to say.”
She nods and snuggles back into my side, making me hiss out a breath.
“Shit, are you all right? Am I hurting you?”
“No. Just stop.” I groan.
“Okay, so you had a sister once. Tell me about her.” She sniffles, and I know she’s going to tear in two at this story.
“She was only one, but she was the cutest kid in the world. She would babble nonstop and just started walking. She was going to be a little hellion, I just knew it.”
“What was her name?” She asks softly, laying her hand on my chest.
“Wren.”
“Wren.” Cara whispers, and my heart stops. My little sisters name on her lips does something to me. It heals something and breaks something simultaneously. Cara would’ve treated her like a little sister, and it wrecks me that it’ll never happen.
“My parents went out to the bar one night and made me watch her. I didn’t have a problem with it because I’ve done it enough times. Plus, she was sleeping so I just watched TV and waited for her to cry or my parents to come home.” My chest deflates, and my heart thumps to the same speed my eye throbs. Excruciating pain lances through me, but I carry on.
I should have just fucking checked on her.
“When my parents came home, Wren was still sleeping. My mom went to go check on her and that’s when everything went to hell.”
“What happened?” Cara’s voice fills with panic.
“SIDS. It happens to kids, I guess. Little babies. No one really knows why, but it just does. The day that my sister died is when everything changed. My dad… he uh, locked me in a closet for five days.
“What?” Cara sits up as she roars at me. “Five days? What the fuck, Jackson?”
I stare at her until she calms down. I can’t tell this story if she’s going to get worked up, because it’s only going to work me up in the process. That’s not the point of this. I don’t want to be angry.
I want to be free of this shit.
Cara lays back down, and I continue. “It was horrible. I won’t get into it, but that was the beginning of years of abuse. My dad would leave me in that closet for days at a time. The stench of urine in that room was horrible in the end. I couldn’t leave to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, anything. I lost so much weight, and my mom had to stop bringing me to the doctor so they wouldn’t suspect anything.”
“He started hitting me, too. Just a slap here, a punch there. But it just kept progressing. A month later I was doing the dishes and broke a plate. My dad came over to me with a cigarette and pressed it into my back until the entire cherry went out.”
Cara gasps and lets out a sob. “Your back?” She cries, recalling the hundreds of cigarette indentations on my back.
I nod.
“That became a game to him. He loved to hear me scream out in agony. So, whatever I did wrong, whether it was something big like breaking something, or something stupid like forgetting to turn off the light switch, he started lighting up a cigarette just to put that shit out on my back.”
“What about your mom?”
I shake my head, disgust and disappointment for the woman who couldn’t even raise me. “She became a shell of a human. She didn’t back me up. Too sad and depressed over Wren’s death, she ended up an alcoholic. She wouldn’t stick up to my dad, and he ended up beating on her for random shit, too.”
