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by L.J. Shen
“My, oh my, how this will ruin your perfect track record. Continuous abuse…” I tsk dramatically. “Exploiting a minor, inappropriate physical conduct—”
“She needed it! She WANTED it!” he screams in my face, throwing a sudden fist into the door. It swings back from the impact, and he slaps it again with his open palm, crying out like an injured animal.
“Your daughter begged for it! Other than the last time, it was always with her consent. She encouraged me. Lured me in. A seductive little siren, a Lolita with big, blue eyes. You’ve already let her down, and I was there to pick up the pieces and guide her through this world. I stepped up when you stepped down.” It is his turn to point at me, spitting in my face with every word that comes out of his mouth.
“I care for her. I worry about her. I moved schools for her. You think I like dealing with teenagers? With an entitled, untalented football team? You’re wrong. I did this for your daughter. I stayed single—for your daughter. I live in this awful, plastic town—for your daughter. Don’t you come knocking on my door lecturing me about morals. Daria feels half-orphaned because of you. I just became who she needed me to be. The only person in her life to care for her enough to give her the discipline she craved. And the spanking?” He stops, out of breath. His chest rises and falls. He is manic. On the edge of falling apart. He wipes sweat from his brow. “When I was young, I got spanked, a lot. It corrected my ways when I strayed from God’s word. And look at me now.” He gestures toward his body with his hand. “In one piece.”
For now, bastard.
I take a step back, steadying my breath. His words cut me like a knife, but what I’m about to do is going to split him in half. I clutch the pearls on my neck, pushing the buttoned-up pale baby blue shirt down to reveal a little recording device clipped to the shoulder strap of my bra. Would this hold up in court? Who the hell knows? All I know is that Prichard is not dumb enough to find out.
“My bad, Mr. Prichard, this makes everything you did okay. I just hope the authorities will find your version of things sufficient, as well.”
His eyes drop to the recording device, and I know this is my in. I have all the evidence in the world to bring him down now. A blatant admission. But I don’t want the messy way out. I don’t want to drag my daughter through court. I want his quiet, silent defeat. Even though nothing brings me more pain than to know he is about to get away with this.
There can’t be a trial.
This can’t go public.
Daria has suffered enough.
“Name your price,” he growls, his eyes darkening.
“Quite simply: your job, your location, and your word. I don’t want you anywhere near kids or teenagers again, Mr. Prichard, and you’re about to sign on it.”
I want to be your everything
Other than one thing
Your past
I thrust the vodka bottle into my glove compartment and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
Great. I’m turning into fucking Rhett. I’ve been avoiding the Followhill mansion since breaking shit off with Daria except for the times I needed to sleep, shit, and shower, and even though I’m jumping through hoops trying not to bump into Daria and Via, every time I do, it feels like they cut me down the middle, dragging my two halves in opposite directions.
Throwing the driver’s door open, I zigzag my way toward the snake pit. It’s too early for the fights, but people are already milling on the bleachers, passing beers, vapes, and cigarettes. I find Gus underneath said bleachers, reading through statistics of fighters, which he writes down with a Sharpie on a clipboard. He licks his finger and flips a page when I approach him, not even looking up.
“Scully.”
“Are we gonna make up and out, or are you going to tell me why the fuck you invited me here?” I hiccup, bracing myself on the side of the blue bleacher we are standing underneath.
Yesterday, Adriana called me and asked if we could meet at the park. Stressed that it was urgent. I said yes because I thought it had something to do with my stepdad. He’s a notorious shit-stirrer in my old neighborhood. In the background, I heard Gus talking, almost whispering, but I chalked it up to maybe her serving him at Lenny’s. Only when I parted ways with Addy and Harper at the park, in which she told me Harper might be running a fever (she wasn’t) did I remember that Addy had taken off to focus on school last week.
Now I’m interested to know just how deep Gus thrust himself into my life without my knowledge. Because if he’s playing Addy and messed around with my sister, who knows what else he touched without permission?
Not Daria, for his fucking sake.
“Aw.” Gus tosses his clipboard to the ground, adjusting his ball cap backward because apparently, he just doesn’t look douchey enough. “Someone’s being a bad sport.”
“Spit it out,” I snarl.
“I just wanted to talk.” He lifts his hands in surrender.
“I have nothing to say to you, other than your team sucks, but actions speak louder than words, so I’ll just remind you of that on the field next week.”
“About that.” Gus taps his mouth with his finger, making a show of it. “I see your little girlfriend didn’t bring you up to speed on our latest convo.”
I rub my jaw.
“Adriana tries to forget you exist. She hates you like the rest of us.”
“Nah. The one you actually give a shit about.”
Daria.
My jaw clenches, and I’m ready to fuck his face up if he so much as breathes in her direction. She’s going through enough—partly because of my miserable ass—and doesn’t need him on her case.
“Leave her out of our beef, or you’ll have a much bigger problem than getting your ass kicked next Friday.” My voice turns to steel, and any traces of the booze leave my system. I’m wide-awake and sober now.
“Too late, lover boy. I got my hands on her journal. Fascinating shit.” He whistles, fanning his face. “This thing’ll blow up the school when it comes out. Spanked and humiliated by her principal in his office like in a bad porn flick, dicked by you in a forest, and basically shitting all over your sister’s and her mom’s dreams. Daria’s been good at being a bad girl these past four years.”
Principal Prichard spanked her? The words burn on my skin, and all I see is red. He touched her. No, worse—he hurt her. Under my fucking watch.
Anger clogs up my veins and settles in my stomach. I am on the verge of detonating under the bleachers all over Gus.
Taking a step toward him, I wrap my fingers around his throat. I can choke him to death in cold blood right now and not even regret it tomorrow morning. The thought scares me because it is real. I was livid when I found out he was messing around with my sister, but apparently, the two parts Via and Daria split me in aren’t that even after all. Daria’s chunk is bigger. I care about her more.
“If this shit comes out…”
Gus tries to swallow without success, producing a sound that’s between a cackle and a gag. My hold on his meaty neck is so firm, I can see his blue veins popping out from between my fingers. His eyes turn red as his blood vessels begin to burst.
“What do you think is going to happen if you fuck me up, Scully? That’s right. Whoever keeps the journal for me is going to print it out and give it to anyone who’s willing to read it. And trust me—people’ll line up for your girlfriend’s shit.”
“What do you want?” Spit flies out of my mouth. I’m losing it. I’m losing her. The air begins to pulse, and the world is a living thing, swaying and swinging, trying to trip me.
“Lose the game, bro. I told her the only way she is getting this bitch back without any repercussions is if your ass lets us win. Everyone knows you’ve been approached by all the big ones. Just take a step aside and let others have a piece of the pie.”
“I still have my teammates. They’re the ones who deserve the pie,” I grit out.
Not everyone has been contacted yet with potential scholarship offers. Kann
on hasn’t. Camilo has scouts eyeing him but has yet to receive a concrete offer. Neither has Nelson. By throwing the game, I’m throwing their futures, too.
Not to mention Coach Higgins.
Not to mention my goddamn morals.
“They don’t have your back, so I don’t see why you should have theirs.” Gus pushes my chest, and I realize I’ve released my hold on him without even meaning to. The red marks on his neck are going to be purple tomorrow morning.
“Don’t talk to me in riddles. If you have something to say—say it.”
He picks up the clipboard and slaps the plastic above him three times. I hear people standing up and circling the bleachers, and less than a minute later, I am standing in front of his entire football squad, sans Knight Cole. His posse is here, arms folded, chests puffed, ready to bring Gus’s point home.
“Throw the game.” Gus jerks his chin up. “Save your princess. She’d do the same for you.”
I stare at him through a mist of rage that’s blinding me.
I get in his face, sneering, too.
“Mark my words, Bauer. I’m going to fuck you over so hard and raw, no college will want to touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
Via stole Daria’s diary.
Via is still banging Gus.
Via also most likely told him where I live.
On my way back home, as I was struggling to pull my shit together so as not to get into a fatal car accident while the adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream, I figured out why Gus hasn’t thrown my sister into his mix of blackmail even though she handed him the ammo against me on a silver platter.
Gus protects Via.
Via protects Gus.
Nobody protects Daria.
I storm into the Followhills’ living room without so much as registering their faces. The only thing I see is my sister’s head peeking up from her homework on the kitchen island. I bunch the fabric of the back of her dress and hurl her outside to the backyard. Bailey lifts her head up from her homework and starts protesting before seeing the look on my face.
“Penn, what are you…?”
“Shut up.”
Surprisingly, it does shut her up. Maybe the look on my face is warning enough that I’m not above locking her in the utility room if she doesn’t cooperate.
“Oh my God! You’ve lost your mind! What are you doing? Let me go!” Via alternates between yelling and begging. “Penn! Wait! I can explain!”
“You can, but I’m done listening to your shit,” I say tonelessly.
My twin is still cawing like a raven when I use the back of her collar to toss her into the deep end of the pool. I watch as she stumbles on the edge, sinks like a brick, then rises to the surface. She shakes off the water and hair plastered to her face. I stand on the edge, watching her. Waiting to feel something more than disdain and discovering I feel nothing at all.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She punches the water, shrieking.
I throw my head back and laugh. “Dropping the F-bomb now, are we? Took you long enough to take off that cheap-ass mask of yours, Sylvia, but now that you have, I’ll give you one thing. I can see your real face now, and it’s pretty ugly.”
She wipes her face and starts swimming toward the stairs. “So I’m Sylvia now, huh?”
“Feel lucky that you are anything at all. I told you not to touch her. We had a deal. A blood oath.”
The day I told Daria to go look for dick elsewhere, I walked into Vaughn’s pool house thinking I was doing her a favor by temporarily breaking her heart. Smug fucker that I was, it never occurred to me that I’d be breaking mine, too.
I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t even think about getting my dick wet, let alone allow the harem of cheerleaders and groupies to do the honor. I can’t breathe without thinking about the girl across the hall. I function solely for the purpose of proving to myself that I still can, and I can’t even look my sister in the eye without wanting to make it black around the edges.
Via climbs out of the pool looking like Samara Morgan from The Ring at the same time Jaime slides the glass door open, popping his head out.
“What the hell is going on?” His voice is an impatient growl.
“Nothing.” I wave a flippant hand. “We need to sort some shit out is all.”
Jaime glances at my sister with frost that wasn’t there before. Mel might have the patience of a thousand nuns, but Jaime knows what’s up, and he is Team Daria all the way.
Via nods at the same time she shivers her way to a lounger. “Thank you, Mr. Followhill. I’m okay.”
Jaime closes the door behind him. I walk toward her, casting a shadow over her figure, and kick her shin lightly.
“Answer me.”
“She ruined everything,” she huffs, her lips twisting in abhorrence. If she thinks she is getting off the hook by crying, she is gravely fucking mistaken, and officially doesn’t know the tin man she created the minute she left. “I hate her so much. And I swear I didn’t know about Gus asking you to lose the game. You have to believe me, Penn. I just wanted to get back at her for throwing my letter out.”
“I threw the letter out,” I yell in her face, stubbing a finger on my chest where the hole is. A hole that had been shrinking for weeks, but has now become bigger than ever since Via came back. I ripped my shirts the day I broke things off with Daria, cutting the holes so big, you can now see half my chest. “I’m to blame just as much as she is.”
“I hated you, too.” She darts up, pushing me and taking a step forward. “Is that what you want to hear? Because it’s the truth. Even before I knew you ruined my letter, I hated you. I hated you for looking at her with starry eyes every time you waited on the corner to pick me up after ballet class. I saw you falling in love with her before you even realized what your stupid ass was doing. And she was the enemy. You fell for my downfall.”
Clamping my mouth shut, I rub the back of my neck. All this time, I thought Daria was a bitch for doing what she did to Via. I never stopped to consider that my sister gave her a run for her money even back then. Via always covered for her shortcomings by being mean. These two were awful to each other, and Daria just happened to stumble upon something big she could ruin for Via.
If Via had found an identical letter, she would have destroyed it, too.
“I’m done with you.” I turn around, walking away. I hear her wild footsteps gaining on me. She’s tugging at my sleeve, falling to her knees in front of me, and I’m forced to stop.
“Penn, please.”
“You’re with him,” I say, not ask. She doesn’t deny it. Just keeps on saying please, please, please. I’m not even sure what she is asking for, but if it’s my forgiveness, she is officially high.
“I’m with him because I need someone. I need an ally,” she admits.
I laugh because it doesn’t matter anymore. I kick off her arms, which are hugging my shins. “Who do you think was my ally, Sylvia?”
“Daria is my enemy,” she moans.
“Gus is mine,” I retort.
I won this battle and lost the entire fucking war. It’s like crawling back home defeated and finding your home burned to ashes once you enter the gates of your fallen kingdom.
I take a few more steps, then stop at the threshold and pivot to her. “My only regret is trying to pacify your sorry ass and breaking things off with Daria. I loved you when no one else did. I grieved for you. I thought you were dead and tortured myself, blamed myself. But my actions never intended to hurt you. I made a mistake. You did all this on purpose. So now I’m leaving you, just as you left me. Only I’m four years too late.”
When my mother was still into poetry (and life in general, I guess), she used to read us passages every night. There was one that really stuck with me for years afterward. Not the entire thing—that shit sucked as a whole. Just the one sentence.
Love is humbling.
Those three words boggled my mind. What could be humbling about love? Love is celebratory. It
is victorious. It is the exact opposite of humbling. Even back then, I understood the definition of the word love but not the meaning of it. Now, as I stand in front of Daria’s closed door for the first time in weeks, after not exchanging a word, or a kiss, or a fucking glance with her all this time, I am truly, devastatingly, shoot-me-in-the-fucking-face humbled.
I knock on the door before deciding it’s a stupid-ass move. A real man would barge in and hoist her up over his shoulder. The man I was at Lenny’s when I still had the confidence I could have her.
But that was before I caved into my sister’s wishes.
Back when I really was a real man.
Fuck. This is hard.
“Come in.” Her voice is throaty and callous and distant.
I push her door open and step in. Closing it, I keep my back to her so I don’t have to see her face and what’s on it.
“Talk?” I ask, still staring at the door. Since when do I use question marks? Since I fucking lost the right to tell her what’s up.
Say yes.
Say yes.
Say yes.
She says nothing instead.
I wait. And wait. And wait. I deserve this. All of it. My phone pings, and I take it out of my pocket.
Talk.
A tired smile finds its way to my lips. We’re still us, and there’s some comfort in that. When you don’t talk to someone you see every day, you start to wonder if they blocked out your existence. But Daria remembers. The Ferris wheel and ballet studio and the woods. The pool house with Vaughn and the locker room in All Saints High.
I text her back, my back still to her.
I’m sorry.
She replies.
So am I.
I text back.
Gus has your journal. He asked me to throw the game unless I want it printed out.
She types back.
Gus is a coward. And good luck to that idiot trying to work a copier.
Chuckling, I shake my head. Daria and Sylvia as I’ve never seen them before. One sacrifices herself for me, the other sacrificing me for herself.