Chapter forty-two:

 

 

“You can’t keep me here,” Carrie says quietly. Her back is still turned to me, and I can hear her wheezing with every breath she takes. I think I broke something inside her, but I don’t feel any remorse.

“I don’t intend to,” I reply.

“Someone will notice I’m not around,” she says as she turns to look at me.

I snort out a laugh. “Like one of your friends?”

“Yes,” she replies, her chin lifted in defiance.

I shake my head. “Oh, Carrie,” I say, but I don’t say anything else, because she knows, and I know, that she’s talking bullshit. A girl like Carrie doesn’t have friends. And I know she hasn’t got any family.

Her dad is dead, and so is her mom.

Alcohol is a deadly poison, Mrs. Brown. You really shouldn’t have drunk so much.

A knife is a deadly weapon, Mr. Brown. You really should be careful who you piss off.

“You only have Adam,” I say. “Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam who won’t even leave his wife and kids for you. And I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to set the record straight with him so he knows exactly what you’re really about, exactly who you really are, Carrie fucking Brown. Besides, he doesn’t really care about you. I saw his texts. I saw your pictures. He’s using you. You’re just his whore. He has a wife and kids and he loves them, not you.”

Carrie laughs. It’s quiet and slow at first, and I can tell by her wheezing that it hurts to laugh almost as much as it hurts to breathe. Her laughter gets louder as she gets used to the pain, and then she’s full-on laughing. And I know she’s laughing at me. And ‘Fuck you, Carrie.’

“He won’t go near you again once I’ve told him all about you,” I say, feeling my anger rise.

(One African Elephant Walking Very Nicely. Two Australian Coyotes Prowling Through The Night.)

“He won’t leave his pretty wife and his beautiful kids—not for you. And you’ll have no one. Just like I had no one.”

(Three Jungle Cats Slinking Through The Dark. Four Busy Beavers Building Their Bustling Brushes)

She’s laughing and laughing, and no amount of counting is helping me to get through this. I feel the anger in my fingertips. In my feet and my hands and my arms and my legs. It’s red hot as she laughs and laughs and laughs. It’s a volcano inside me and I see the tears of laughter trailing down her gray-white cheeks.

“Stop it,” I say through gritted teeth.

‘Control it, Ethan. You must learn to control it.’

Shut up, Mr. fucking Jeffrey. No one cares what you think anyway!

I stand up and take a step toward her. I am looming over her skinny body, leering down at her. And I am not hard for her now, even though I can see her breasts moving with every laugh. There is rage in my body, filling my legs and my arms my head and my heart. I can’t stop it. There is no counting to escape this.

“I said shut up!” I scream at her.

And the world is black.

The world is dark and rich and filled with velvety fluid rage. The world welcomes me back to it with open arms. The world has missed me, and I have missed it. I am there now, at the point of no control. No turning back from this, or that. No denying what must happen.

Until, until, until…

“Of course he won’t care!” she laughs and screams all at the same time, her voice sounding panicked and terrified and frozen in fear. “He won’t care, Ethan, because no one ever fucking cares! Not one single person ever fucking cared.”

And then I’m sinking, slowly, dripping back down to earth like rain down a dirty window.

“Why doesn’t your mom ever clean the windows, Carrie?”

“She doesn’t want people looking in.”

“But why?”

“She doesn’t want people to see the evil things that happen inside.”

I am opening my lungs and taking a deep breath of clean air.

Carrie is crying and she is laughing too. She is shaking but she is still. She is sad but she is happy. She cares, yet she does not.

And I am so confused by her.

And it.

And us.

Mostly us.

Because we always made sense. Until we didn’t. And now…Now what? Now what are we? I don’t know.

“I cared,” I say. My heart is in a vise and someone is squeezing it. It hurts. It always hurts when Carrie is around. “I cared, Carrie.”

My voice is that of a little boy again.

A child comforting another child.

A young boy consoling a girl.

A teenager consoling a friend.

An almost-man soothing his almost-girlfriend.

“I always cared,” I whisper, and I stagger backwards, drunk with the pain of it all. With the pain of Carrie. Of knowing her, and living her. My steps are clunky and slow. I sit back down on the ugly sofa, and I put my head in my hands and I close my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Don’t.”

“I am.”

“I said don’t.”

“But—”

I look up. “Stop it. I can’t do this anymore, Carrie. You can’t do this to me anymore. You can’t keep lying and using and faking your way through life. You just can’t keep doing that to me. It’s not fair.”

Her face crumples and she looks away.

“You keep saying that you’re sorry, and then you go and hurt me again. You’re just as bad as your dad, Carrie. You’re a fraud just like he was.”

And then we are in silence with neither knowing what else to say. What can be said? What is left to be said? We’ve both hurt each other so much. Too much? Can you ever hurt someone too much that it makes everything else end?

I want to say yes. My heart begs me to.

“You have to let me go,” I say. Because she does. I can already feel myself weakening. I can’t let her go. I’ll never be able to let her go. She’ll always have a part of me. She’ll always have control. I’ll always want her, no matter how much she hurts me.

Because love is eternal.

Love is everlasting.

Love doesn’t let go.

And neither will I.

“I can’t,” she whispers back, and I watch her begin to sob again. “I have no one if I don’t have you.”

“You didn’t have me before,” I say.

Carrie smiles and looks at me, our gazes colliding. “Of course I did. You just didn’t know it. You belong to me, Ethan. You always have. You always will.”

“I don’t want to anymore. You hurt me.” I should feel anger, but I don’t.

I just feel pity.

Pity for her and for me.

But mostly for the children we should have been.

And she’s right. It’s probably the most truthful thing she’s said in three days. “I want to be free,” I say, and I sound pitiful. I want to cry.

“So did I,” she replies. “But I’m still not.”

Finally you decide to be honest with me, Carrie.

“Adam doesn’t want me—not like that. I’m not his other woman,” she says, shame flooding her bruised and broken features. “I really am his whore, Ethan. I traded my dad for Adam. I’m not stupid. I’m not just his mistress, I’m his paycheck too. Hell, I’m whatever he wants me to be. He’s never going to leave me for her. I know that and so does he. And I’ve never asked him to.”

“But then why?”

Because I don’t understand why anyone would do that. Why would you fuck someone that doesn’t want to be with you? Why would she belittle herself like that, and allow him to do the same? How can she ever be okay with that? With coming second and knowing that she’ll never be his number one?

You were always my number one, Carrie.

“I need to pay the rent,” she replies coldly. “He pays me. They all pay me.”

“They?” I ask. But inside I’m begging her not to speak, because I know what’s coming before I hear it. And I don’t want to hear it.

She’s too good for that. Or so I thought.

She’s worth more than that. Or so I thought.

She deserves better than that. Or so I believed.

But I guess I really am the fool in this. I know nothing about this woman in front of me. I know nothing about her at all.