Page 8 of Between Never and Forever
Sometimes, I want to be a little more reckless, even just a tiny bit like her.
My stomach twists with guilt while my brain scolds me for being ungrateful, for being blasphemous and immoral. I shove my books in my backpack, slam my locker shut, and walk slowly to the bus. I don’t need to rush. I’ll be riding it alone.
The storm outside gets louder as my window is pushed open slowly, and it startles me awake.
The rain splatters on my floor, making rapid tapping noises, and I sit up quickly. My heart beats fast, but my shoulders relax for the first time in almost two weeks.
I look at the clock. Two in the morning. This is late for her, but I don’t say anything as Savannah crawls through my window, then pulls it closed before slipping her shoes off and scooting them up against the wall.
I kick my comforter off and go to my dresser, pulling out a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt. Without a word, I walk them to where she waits, soaked with rain and creating a puddle on my floor. A jolt of lightning flashes through the night sky, making her glow, and I hold the bundle of clothes out to her. She takes them, sets them on my desk, and I turn around as she wriggles out of her wet clothes and into my dry ones.
Her clothing plops onto the floor, one by one, and when I hear her moving toward my bed, I turn and follow.
Just like all the other times before, she crawls in first and scoots over just enough so I can get in behind her. My bed is a full, so there’s room, but I pull her against my chest, ignoring the way her cold, wet hair seeps through my shirt, and rest my chin on her head anyway.
The first few times she showed up here, I laid stiff as a board the entire night. Afraid to move. Afraid to touch her. I’d stare at the ceiling, reciting Bible verses in my head and listening closely as she’d fall into a deep sleep, and I’d pretend to be asleep when she’d sneak out at sunrise.
Then, one night, she showed up crying.
I’ve never seen anyone cry the way she does. She cries without making a sound. No whimpering, no sniffling. Just constant tears streaming down a blank face. That night, I pulled her close to me and held her. Not because it felt like what I wassupposedto do, but it felt like what Ineededto do. She didn’t push me away, and since then, that’s how we sleep. Wrapped up and silent.
I do the same tonight. I listen to her breathing for a sign that I can let myself drift off, but it doesn’t come. Instead, her quiet, flat voice cuts through the silence.
“Do you think bad things happen for a reason?”
I consider it for a minute. My mother says bad things are God’s will to punish the wicked. I don’t say that to Savannah.
“I don’t know.”
She’s quiet for so long that I think she might be falling asleep. Then she speaks again. This time, her voice is angry.
“I don’t think bad things happen for a reason. I think sometimes life is just shitty, and sometimes it’s shittier for some people than it is for others. And I don’t think there’s any reason behind it besides where you just happen to be born. And you and me just happened to be born in different shit piles.”
I think over her words. They jumble up inside my head, my mother’s voice fighting them with her acid tongue.
“What about God?”
Sav doesn’t even hesitate.
“If God is real, then I hate him.”
I don’t say anything else. I just pull her tighter against me, and we fall back into silence. Soon, her breathing goes slow and steady, so I close my own eyes and let myself fall asleep, too.
A couple hours later, a noise wakes me for the second time. I crack my eyes open and see Savannah near the window, struggling to get back into her wet clothes. I start to roll over, so she has some privacy, but my attention is grabbed by a large mark on her side.
My skin prickles and I stare, hoping it’s a shadow or a trick of light, but the longer I look, the more I want to throw up.
Savannah has bruises often. On her arms and legs, usually. A few times on her cheeks or a busted lip. She always says they’re from falling off her skateboard or fighting at The Pit. I believed her at first, but I don’t anymore. I haven’t for a while now. I keep my mouth shut because anytime I try to talk about it, she slugs me and tells me to shut up or calls me a weenie.
But this bruise is different. It’s ugly, so deep purple in places that it looks black, and it covers most of her side. Stretches from the bottom of her bra to the top of her underwear. Maybe even farther, but she pulls her jeans up before I can be sure. She’s moving so carefully, and now I know it’s not just because she wants to be quiet. It’s because she’s in pain.
“What the heck happened, Sav?”
My voice breaks the silence and Savannah freezes.
She stays still, facing the window, for three whole breaths before looking over her shoulder at me with a scowl.
“Nothin’.”
