November 21st: Just Keep On Keeping On

"Is it true? Is your sister dead?"

"Oh, that’s tactful," I said drily. "Thanks for your consideration, and yes. And while we’re asking subtle questions about the deaths of our family members, why the fuck didn’t you tell me your father is dead?"

Ashley sighed into the phone. "Because it wasn’t your business."

"But it didn’t occur to you that my sister’s death is none of yours?" I sunk onto the living room sofa, staring at the unlit fireplace across from me. "I don’t need you and your pity and your bullshit. And I don’t need you to tell me about what a magical person Peter is. If he’s so fucking wonderful, why does he hit you?"

I saw my mother out of the corner of my eye, peering into the room. I waved her away. "You have no idea what you’re talking about, you idiot," she whispered. "He only hits me when I’ve been stupid. How am I ever supposed to learn what he wants me to do if he doesn’t show me?"

"Oh, god, let me think," I said mockingly. "You could, I don’t know, talk about it? Have a discussion about it? Be somewhat civilized? But that’s crazy talk, isn’t it? Because obviously, such things are easier to understand when he beats them into you."

She laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been expecting her to scream, or hang up on me. But she laughed, a bitter little laugh, and sighed. "You think you know everything about him. You don’t know anything, Colin. You don’t know about his father. You think Pete beats me? You should see what Jonah’s doing to him when he goes home. He’s miserable, Colin. He thinks you’re fucking me, which you probably would be if you had your say, and that’s why he’s always throwing punches at you. His mother ran off when he was six and he hasn’t heard from her since." She laughed again. "Oh, but Colin, you know everything about him. I know you’d never judge him without knowing all the facts."

I thought of a lot of things to say right then, but I couldn’t actually find the nerve to speak any of them. "Just because Jonah hits him doesn’t mean he has to hit you," I said finally, quietly.

"What do you know about it?" she challenged. Before I had a chance to answer, I heard a click. I knew what I had to do. I walked through the family room into the front hallway, grabbed my coat from the coatrack, and pulled a scarf from the closet.

"I’m going out," I called to my parents, and then I was gone.


"What?" An older man, about sixty, with a potbelly and a scraggly gray beard, answered the door.

I gave him a weak smile. "Mr. Blackman? I’m here to speak with Peter."

"Yes, yes, of course you are," he muttered. "Going to go give the boy his drugs, I assume?" I didn’t answer, figuring it was a rhetorical question. The man eyed me, then heaved a sigh. "Go up the stairs and his door’s right in front of your nose. Show yourself out when you’re done."

I nodded, thanked him, and bounded up the stairs. I opened the door to Peter’s room without knocking. The wall opposite where I stood was a row of windows. His bed was under the center one, and he sat on the end, earphones on, his wary eyes focused on me.

"What do you want from her?"

Peter took off his headphones and turned off his Discman. He smiled a slow smile, a serpent’s smile, and cocked his head to one side in mock curiosity. "Why do you hate me, Colin?"

Because you beat her, I thought. Because you make her feel like dirt. Because you’ve poisoned her. Because she wants to die, and it’s your fault. But I said none of those things. "I don’t hate you, Pete," I heard myself say instead. "I just hate the way you make her feel."

He laughed his self-assured laugh, smirking. "I can’t make Ashley feel anything. One man has no way of controlling another’s emotions. She feels what she wants to feel, Colin, just as she dates whom she wants to date. You may resent me because that person isn’t you, but that’s beyond my control."

I stared into his eyes for a moment. He was amused by my anger, I could tell. Just as he was amused by her pain. I clenched my fists, my arms aching with the strain of holding back. I wanted so badly to give him a taste of her pain. But I didn’t move. I didn’t need another fight with Peter. Instead, I grabbed the nearest lamp and threw it. It crashed against the wall and fell to the floor, shards of the lightbulb laying amongst various broken parts. Peter sat bolt upright, his smirk gone. "Stop it, Colin," he demanded. He rose, and seconds later he was in front of me, one hand wrapped around my throat, the other twisting my arms behind my back. "Colin! Stop crying!" His voice was a splash of ice water to my burning rage, but it did nothing to stop the fires. I was embarrassed to be crying in front of him, but there was nothing I could do. I hated him. I hated a lot of people right then, but he was the one who was there, and therefore I hated him the most. I sobbed, hardly able to breathe, and pulled one arm free of his grip. I twisted to the side and punched the wall, my fist plunging easily through the old drywall. Peter knocked me off my feet, pinning me to the ground.

"Are you done?" his voice came, echoing through the hollowness of my mind. Exhausted, I tried my best to nod. He let me get up, watching me as I rose.

"You can’t keep taking shit out on her," I said, my voice trembling. "You can’t keep throwing her on the ground, man!" I could hear myself cracking, not just my voice but my entire being. "You just keep breaking her, over and over, and then you glue her back together and you expect her to be fine! She’s never gonna be fine, Pete. Not after all the shit you’ve pulled."

His eyes were trained on mine, coal-black and intense with his anger. "You think you could do better, Colin? Is that it? You really think you, the piss-poor excuse for a man that you are, could put up with a bitch as wild as that? So I get a little out of it sometimes, have too much to drink, knock the bitch around a little. You don’t hear her complaining, do you? She dun mind, Colin. She dun give a flying fuck, as long as I keep giving her what she wants."

I hated him more, in that moment, than I ever had before, because at the end of the day he was still the one in control. In control of me, in control of Ashes, in control of everyone that mattered. But more than anything I hated him because he knew just how to keep that control. Like the puppet that I was, I swallowed my fear of the answer and put myself right where he wanted me: "What does she want?"

He laughed. It was the coldest, most heartless laugh I’d ever heard. "She wants to be somebody, Colin." He flopped back onto his bed and props himself up on his elbows, again fixing his eyes on mine. "She was nobody before I found her. Just another face in the crowd. And then lo and behold, I showed up. Suddenly she had friends, Colin, real live friends. She had a boyfriend with connections; a boyfriend who was going places. And she was going places too, because good Pete was helping her. Oh, he isn’t perfect," he mocked in a high falsetto, "But he’s the most amazing person you’ll ever meet, Colin! He makes me feel special!"

What killed me more than anything is how much he sounded like her. But I said nothing, as was usual.

"Colin," he says, returning to his normal voice, "You stormed in here asking what I wanted from her, correct?" I nodded stiffly. "I don’t want anything from her. Not a single fucking thing. But she keeps giving and giving, things I never asked her for. And who am I, old Peter Edward Blackman, to say no?" His smirk grew impossibly more snide.

I felt sick to my stomach. How could he think of her like that? How could he take Ashley, smart and beautiful Ashley, and make her sound so naive? I broke my stare, looking instead at my scuffed sneakers on the impeccably clean carpet of Peter’s bedroom.

"I have to go," I told him quickly, and then I ran.


The pebble hit the glass and bounced back at me. I stepped aside and let it fall to the lawn before picking it up again and once more throwing it up. It had taken me nearly half an hour to work out which window was hers. I hoped and prayed now that I hadn’t thought wrong.

She appeared at the window, her face tired. As soon as she saw me she frowned, fumbling to unlatch it. The window groaned as she lifted it upward. "I’ll go open the kitchen," she told me. "It’s around the side. Meet me there."

I ran around the side of the house and peered through a bay window. I could barely make out the refrigerator. I stood there, waiting, in front of her dark house, peering through her window. The moonlight cast eerie shadows on the walls. I ran one finger over the glass. It needed to be cleaned, and badly, but I knew it probably never would be.

Ashley’s face peeked around the corner. I waved. She tiptoed through the dark kitchen and raised the window, biting one lip. The window was level to the kitchen floor, so I was able to hoist myself up and make it through with little problem at all.

"Hey. What are you doing here?" She eyed me warily. "It’s midnight, and I’m not particularly crazy about you right now."

"We need to talk, Ashes," I whispered, closing the window and pulling off my shoes, holding them in my hands.

She raised an eyebrow. "Fine." Ashley looked pretty tired herself, but I didn’t mention it.
We tiptoed up the stairs, as silently as we could, and into Ashes’s room.

She closed the door quietly behind us. "Ardith’s been having bad dreams, and Mom hasn’t gotten sleep in ages." She flopped onto her bed and I took a seat in the chair in front of her window. "I didn’t want to wake her up."

"It’s fine," I said quietly. Then I sighed. "Listen, I came here because I want to talk to you, without either of us running away or hanging up or screaming. I talked to Pete, earlier, and it didn’t get anywhere. I’m trying to understand him, Ashes, and I’m trying to understand you, but... What are you thinking, staying with him? He hits you, Ashley! What kind of insanity does it take to stay with a boy who hits you?"

Ashes stared at me intently. "That’s not fair!" she hissed. "Peter loves me, dammit, more than you ever have! He understands me a hell of a lot better than you! He doesn’t know any better, Colin. His ass of a father never taught him better. You can’t blame him for that! You can’t blame him for acting the way everyone’s always acted to him!" By the time she finished she was shouting, her anger flushing her cheeks bright red.

"Oh, get over him already. You think even more of him than he thinks of himself! So what if his father hits him, you can escape what your family’s done. He hits you and you don’t go around beating people! Obviously there’s something wrong with him, because there are only two people involved here and there sure as hell is nothing wrong with you, except that you’re dating an abusive piece of shit!" It comes out in one long string of words, insensitive and full of held-in rage.

"If there are only two people involved then what are you doing here?" she spat. At that instant, there was a knock on the door that kept me from replying. Ashley’s face went ashen quickly. "Shit," she muttered. "Who is it?"

"It’s Mama, sweetie, are you okay? Is there someone in there?"

Ashes shot me a dirty look. "Nobody, Mom, it’s okay. I was listening to music. I’m sorry I turned it up so loud, I wasn’t thinking. You can go back to bed, okay?"

"You’re sure nothing’s wrong?" Ms. MacFarley’s voice whined, sounding like a scared little girl. I could picture her on the other side of the door, yanking at her necklace.

Ashley’s eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them. "I’m positive, Mom. Now you get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay," Mrs. MacFarley said. "‘Night, Ashley."

"Goodnight, Mom."

Footsteps sounded down the hall, and finally we heard a door open and close. "Get out, Colin."
I turned and walked away, slamming the door behind me. So much for not hanging up. So much for not running away.


I was home by twelve forty. All the lights in the house were on. I found April sprawled out on the floor in front of the television, watching the Weather Channel.

"Ape?" I said tentatively. She turned to look at me, bags under her red eyes. She wasn’t crying when she first turned around, but within a few seconds she was, silent, simple tears.

She sniffed. "I couldn’t sleep until you came home... I was afraid you were dead."

I stared at her. It was amazing what the day had done to my sister. She was pale, sickly pale, and her red rimmed eyes were swollen, with gaping bags underneath. Something about the way she was looking at me was so frightened and earnest that it made me want to cry, too. "Aw, April... You can’t do this to yourself. You just can’t. She’s dead, yeah, but I’m not, Mom and Dad aren’t, and you’re not either."

"I hate her, Colin," April said quietly. "I hate her. Why did she have to die?"

I couldn’t think of an answer. I walked over to her and sat down. She struggled to sit up and scooted close to me, pulling her knees to her chest. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her shaking body in my own trembling hands. I knew it wasn’t much, but sometimes not much is better than nothing. That’s what I had to tell myself about my sister’s life. It wasn’t long, but not long is better than nothing.