The Destiny of Violet & Luke

  I press my fingertips to my temple, the muscles in my arms tightening with my frustration. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You’re sounding like all the rest of them,” she says and something loud bangs in the background.

  “All the rest of who?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

  “The neighbors,” she whispers and then pauses. “I think they’ve been watching me… And there’s this car parked out front… I think it’s the police watching me again.”

  “The police aren’t watching you again—they never were. They just questioned you once for God knows what, you never would tell me.”

  “They are, too, Lukey. They’re after me again.”

  I shake my head and the list of what “medication” she’s been taking becomes shorter because there are only a few of them that bring out her paranoia. “No one’s after you and you want to know why? Because no one cares.”

  “You care about me, though.” Panic fills her tone. “Don’t you, Lukey?”

  I sink down on the bed and lower my head into my hands. God, I wish I could just say no. Tell her I hate her. Rid my life of her. But I can’t seem to bring myself to say it aloud, always bound by that stupid little kid that lives inside me, the one that always helped her, felt like he had to because no one else would. “Yeah, sure.”

  “That’s my good boy,” she tells me and I feel the burn of approaching vomit at the back of my throat. “Always taking care of me. I can’t wait for you to come home. We’re going to have so much fun.”

  I know what her version of fun is—cleaning the house together, having me help her with whatever drugs she’s taking, sit with her, listen to her sing, be her best friend and enter her insane world of drug-induced ranting. I can’t go back and live with her. In that house. In my room. With the insanity. Her telling me she needs me. Needs. Needs. Needs. Just going back for Christmas was enough and I wasn’t even there that much. If I end up with her there I can probably get a job and party a lot just to avoid going home, but in the end I’ll have to go home. I never want to go back. I ran away from all that shit when I was sixteen and I can’t go back. I need to get out of going home no matter what it takes. “I have to go.” Before she can say anything I hang up.

  I toss the phone aside on the bed and rock back and forth, breathing back the impulse to scream and hit something. I know if anyone walked in and saw me like this they’d think I’d lost my mind, but I can’t stop the wave of anger and panic once it surfaces like this. Only three things do it for me. Sex and alcohol and violence.

  I keeping rocking and rocking but the rage inside me rises and mixes with the vile feeling of shame I always carry with me. I feel a wave of rage building and building as it makes it’s way through my body toward the outside of me. If I don’t do something soon I’m going to end up destroying the room. Finally, I can’t stand it any longer. I jump up from the bed and storm for the wall again. This time I don’t stop. I just bend my arm back and ram my fist against the wall over and over again, heat and rage blasting through my body. After the fifth slam of my fist, I’m trembling from head to toe and there’s a fist-size hole in the wall and each one of my knuckles are split open. Kayden was already worried about fixing the door and now the wall’s messed up. I’m really on a roll. I need to get out of here because it still feels like I need to hit something. Kick something. Beat the shit out of something. I need to get the anger building inside me out, before it takes control of me, and there’s only one way to do that and it requires a lot of physical pain and alcohol, but I want it. More than anything.

  Violet

  I’m in a super shitty mood today, the invisible razors and needles I haven’t felt in a long time are back, slicing at my skin as my irritation builds. At first it was a slow-building irritation, over life in general. I tried to tell myself over and over again that it was nothing—that I was just in a mood. But I think it might be something deeper, like the fact that I find myself missing a certain someone.

  I never miss anyone. And all I want to do is turn it off, yet at the same time I don’t.

  It’s confusing and slightly annoying

  As I’m packing my boxes, telling myself to stop thinking about him, my phone rings and the song playing means it’s an unknown number. When I answer it the person breathes heavily and then hangs up.

  “Seriously,” I say to the phone, before setting it down on my bed. I move over to the desk, searching through the papers stacked on it, wondering if any of them are mine. As I’m reaching the bottom stack, my phone rings again, same ringtone, unknown number.

  I glare at the phone as I pick it up. I don’t even get to hello this time, before the caller hangs up. It happens again and again and finally, after the seventh or eighth I tell the person off.

  “Look, if you don’t stop calling me,” I say, “I’m going to track you down and cut your balls off.”

  “What if I’m a girl?” he asks with a hint of laughter in his tone.

  I sit down on my bed and cross my legs. “Then you really need to stop taking so much testosterone since your voice is lower than a normal dude’s voice.”

  He laughs, like I was amusing, but I’m being serious. “You’re funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be.”

  “Well, you are.”

  I shake my head. “What the hell do you want? And who are you?”

  “I’m looking for Violet Hayes,” he says.

  I go rigid. I don’t recognize his voice—he shouldn’t know my last name.

  “Who the hell is this?” I start to grow nervous as I glance around my empty room. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt uneasy with being alone, but the old feelings are emerging, the feeling that someone is watching me, waiting to hurt me like they should have done twelve years ago.

  “The Violet Hayes who was part of the Hayes murder case,” he says.

  I hang up on him and chuck the phone across the room. It dents the wall and I think I broke it until it rings again. I let it ring and ring, then it silences as it goes to voicemail. But then it starts ringing again, until finally I can’t take it anymore. I get up and track the sound of the ringtone to the corner of the room, where I find the phone wedged between the leg of the desk and the wall. I bend down and fumble around until I get a hold of it.

  “What the hell do you want, asshole?” I practically shout in the phone as I stand back up.

  “Is this Violet Hayes?”

  “Oh my God, are you being serious? I don’t want to talk to you, whoever you are, so stop calling.”

  He pauses. “This is Detective Stephner. I need to speak to Violet Hayes.”

  I hesitate as I wander back to my bed. “Did you just call me?”

  “No…” He sounds lost and gives an elongated pause. “I’m calling you to see if you can come meet with me. I’d like to talk to you about your parents’ murder.”

  It takes me a second to answer. “Why?” I ask cautiously.

  “Because I’m reopening the case,” he responds in a formal tone. “And I want to see what you can remember about that night.”

  “Why are you reopening the case?” I ask, wondering if maybe they found something, feeling a spark of hope. “Did you find something?”

  “No, but we’re hoping to,” he says and all of my hope simmers out.

  “Well, I remember what I told the police thirteen years ago, which isn’t a hell of a lot, since I was six and emotionally fucked up,” I say, telling myself not to get my hopes up but I can already feeling the emotions pressing up, the ache connected to the loss of my parents. “So I don’t really see the point of me coming down there and wasting my time, you asking me the same damn questions and shoving the same damn mug shots at me even though I told you I barely saw the killers since it was dark.”

  “I understand your frustration, but answering some questions could help solve your parents’ murder,” he points out and I hear him shuffling through papers.

  “No it won’t,” I say, flopping
down on the bed on my back, holding the phone to my ear. My muscles are starting to tighten just from the suggestion of going down to the police station and chatting about something I’d laid to rest a long time ago. Case closed. They said so themselves and even though I didn’t like it, I accepted it. Moved on. Lived what life I had. “They couldn’t solve it thirteen years ago and you’re not going to solve it now.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d come down,” he tells me, sending me a silent message through his firm tone. You’re going to meet me—it’s not a choice.

  “Fine, but I live in Laramie now, not Cheyenne,” I say in a tight voice. “And I’m in the middle of moving, so it’ll have to wait a few days.” I’m making up excuses on purpose.

  “How about next Monday at seven? Downtown at the Laramie police station?” he asks without missing a beat. “Does that work for you?”

  I frown. “I guess.”

  He says good-bye and then I hang up, lying on the bed. I chew on my fingernails, not liking the emotions tormenting me in the quiet. I’d shut that door a long time ago and now I was just supposed to open it up so I could tell him the same things I already told the police thirteen years ago. I’m sure he has all that in his file, so why is he bothering me?

  I check my voicemail seeing if creepy, deep-voice guy left a message. He didn’t and an unsettling fear stirs in my stomach. For the first few months after my parents died, I had this overwhelming fear that the people were going to come back to finish me off. It was like I constantly felt I needed to look over my shoulder; if I saw a shadow at night in my room, I thought it was them breaking in. But I managed to get myself out of that place and land where I am now. I worked hard not to be afraid of anything and I refuse to go back to that place.

  I barely budge from the bed, drowning in my emotions, and I start to debate my options for a much-needed hit of adrenaline. I have these pills that I’ve taken a couple of times and at the right dose they can put me into darkness and I can still get out. They’re hidden in the computer desk drawer, beside the prescription bottle that holds the stash of weed Preston gave me to make quick sales, right within arm’s reach. Such an easy escape from everything going on around me. It’s not my favorite route to go, because it’s easier for someone to walk in and find me. I don’t want to be found. I want to remain lost because it’s the only thing that’s become serenely and painfully familiar.

  But then Callie and Kayden walk in the room with boxes in their hands, ready to pack up the last of her stuff, and I force myself to shove my bed-binding emotions down and move again.

  After packing for a while, Callie and Kayden start making out with each other. They actually think they’re in love and the concept is ridiculously absurd to me. I sort of feel sorry for them, because one day down the road they’re going to break up and it’s going to hurt. They’ll cry. They’ll become depressed. They’ll eat lots of ice cream or whatever people do when they mourn the loss of a relationship.

  I remember one foster home I lived at when I was about fourteen. The Peircesons, a husband and wife that lived in a townhouse in this decent subdivision where each house was a duplicate of the other. I remember, when I pulled up to it, thinking it was pretty and that worried me because I was anything but pretty. I wore dark clothes, chains for a belt, and I had more studs in my ear than I could count on my fingers. I was going through a misunderstood phase and wanted everyone to know it. The Peircesons were decent, but the husband seemed a little uninterested in having a teenager around. At first, it seemed like my stay there was going to be boring, until I was out back one day on the porch and the next-door neighbor came out, talking on her phone. There was a tall fence, so she couldn’t see me at first, but I could hear her talking dirty to someone on the phone, telling them she would spank them. The conversation got me interested the longer it went on and by the time it was over I was laughing, something I hadn’t done in a while.

  The lady must have heard me, too, because when she hung up she peeked her head over the fence. She seemed a little annoyed at first that I was eavesdropping, but her annoyance turned to intrigue when I showed no remorse for listening.

  After that, I started hanging out with her during the three hours I had between when school ended and the Peircesons came home from work. She taught me how to light her cigarettes for her and told me the ins and outs of men, even though I told her I’d never fall in love. Her name was Starla, although I never really believed it was her real name, but it seemed fitting. She ran a phone chat operation from her house, which meant she told guys she was doing dirty things to herself, playing into their fetishes while they jerked off. She actually had a part-time job as a saleswoman at a car dealership, living a double life. She reminded me of a starlet from the 1940s when she was at home, her blond hair always curled, she wore a lot of silk, and sometimes even a feather boa. She told me she dressed like that because it made her feel like the sexy seductress she played on the phone. When I asked her why she enjoyed talking to men like she did, she told me it was because it made her feel like she had control over them. That she’d had too many heartbreaks and spent too many nights crying over ice cream and this helped her stay away from that. What was amusing about the whole thing is usually she was cooking dinner or reading a magazine, even watching television when she was talking dirty to the guys. She never actually did any of the stuff she said.

  “You like that, Biggie,” she’d said once into the phone as she walked around the living room cleaning up the garbage laying around, while wearing her silk robe and slippers. I was hanging out on her couch, waiting until it was time to return home to the boring Peircesons, watching reruns of My So-Called Life, this nineties television show that got canceled after one season, but I found highly entertaining.

  I giggled when she called him Biggie and she’d glanced over at me, smiling as she rolled her eyes. “Creeper,” she mouthed.

  I laughed again. “Aren’t they all.” Then I grabbed a handful of chips out of the bag on my lap. A lot of the guys liked her to call them their special nicknames and I was guessing this one asked for her to call him Biggie, probably because he wasn’t.

  “Oh yeah, I like that,” she said, picking up a few empty glasses off the coffee table. Then she whisked out of the room and I’d returned to my show.

  A few minutes later, after the guy had probably finished himself off, she’d come back into the living room, smoking a cigarette. “Men are exhausting,” she said, plopping down on the sofa beside me. The whole house was crammed with gold-trimmed antique furniture, none of which matched, and the teal walls were hung with pictures of bands and actresses she’d met. I loved her place because it was different. Every place I’d lived looked pretty much the same as the others and most of those turned out to be crappy.

  “Then why do you work for them?” I’d wondered curiously, kicking my feet up on the coffee table.

  She glanced at me as she reached for an ashtray on the coffee table. “Oh my dear, sweet, innocent Violet. They work for me, honey.”

  She always used endearing terms and it annoyed me, yet I let it slide with her.

  I stuffed a few more chips in my mouth. “You know, I seriously wish you would be my foster mother.”

  She smiled sadly, leaning forward to put the cigarette out. “I can’t be a foster mother, Violet. I can barely take care of myself.”

  I chewed on the chips as I stared at the television screen. I didn’t get it because it seemed like she took great care of herself, no attachments, doing whatever she wanted. It sounded like such a great life, but maybe she was just saying that because she really didn’t want to be my foster mother.

  “So what’s up with the girl with the red hair?” she asked, changing the subject as she reached for the chips. “She seems obsessed with gorgeous eyes right there.”

  “I don’t think she’s obsessed.” I silently shouted at the emotions stirring inside me to shut up, that it doesn’t matter if I have a mother or not because it wouldn’t fix
anything—fix me. “Just addicted to him.”

  “That might be even worse than being obsessed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Addiction is dangerous,” she said and then patted my head as she rose to her feet. “Especially with men.” She’d gone back into the kitchen and moments later the phone rang. I sat on the couch listening to her talk about spanking some guy wondering if she was addicted to guys or whether they were addicted to her. What was the difference?

  Even though my time with Starla was fleeting, since the Peircesons quickly got tired of having a foster kid, I learned a lot from her. Not just about manipulation, but about gaining power. Plus she never gave a shit about what she did, even though a lot of people would have looked down on her if they found out about it. She would say stuff that most wouldn’t and I idolized her for it.

  “Would you guys knock it off?” I ask Callie and Kayden as I stuff the last of my shirts into the boxes. Callie and Kayden are rolling around on the bed together and I swear I’m about two seconds away from getting a live porn show.

  They barely hear me as Kayden lies down on top of Callie and starts sucking on her neck. I give up on making them stop, scooping up the last of my packed boxes. I still have a few more things to box up but I need a break from all the PDA so I head out of the dorm room and carry the last box down to Preston’s car. He let me borrow it this morning so I could get my stuff to the house a little easier and thankfully my ankle’s healed enough that I’m not walking like I need a cane.

  It’s mid-May and the temperature is pushing ninety-something. As I toss the last box into the trunk, I pull my hair up into messy ponytail and then tie the bottom of my T-shirt so that it sits above my waist. I have cut-offs on and my combat boots, the one’s with the broken buckle. It’s hot and I seriously wish that someone would create a law that we could be allowed to walk around naked when it’s this hot.

  Unfortunately if I stripped down and paraded around the campus naked, I’d probably get arrested. Given the right time and my mood, though, and I’d probably be glad to be handcuffed and thrown into a police car. Plus, it might get me out of going down to the police department on Monday.