The Corner of Hope and Fear

The Corner of Hope and Fear

by

Moriah McStay Lee

One

Sam

Here’s the trouble with being invincible – when the dust settles and the blood dries, there's only one still standing. She is always alone.

Or in my immediate case, moving across the country with an aunt I’ve never known.

After two days and three thousand miles, I pull into the driveway of my new life. I remind myself that I chose this – the life with a stranger, the fresh start – although I’ve really got no clearer idea of what waits for me here than when we left California. Granted, the Jeep is loud. The plastic windows rattle, the passing road buzzes below the floorboards, the fifteen-year-old engine whines more than purrs, so we had to yell more than talk. And my aunt appears to be as much a conversationalist as I am. All of which adds up to not a lot of conversation.Close enough.

“Thank God that’s over,” Evelyn mutters as we get out of the car.

Everything about her house is square – boxy frame, symmetrical garden, perfect rectangle of grass. A seasonal flag, stitched with a pumpkin and gold leaves, flutters by the front door. Evelyn wipes each foot three times on the mat, gesturing for me to do the same.

The house is small and uber tidy, with ceilings that hang lower than I’m used to. I stretch my hand overhead and cup my fingers over the door’s molding. My heart pangs a little for the rounded Spanish doorways and leaded glass back home.

“Kitchen. TV. Bathroom. Patio.” Evelyn says as she walks down the house’s main hallway, pointing. She stops outside a doorway and faces me. “Your room.”

I peer through the doorway. Images of flowers are everywhere – roses on the polyester bedspread, poppies on the curtains, mums on the pillows. A vase of dried, dusty flowers too far gone to recognize sits on the dresser. A glass bowl filled with brittle, decaying petals is on the nightstand. The room is an homage to the idea of life.

“Okay. Thanks,” I say, walking through the door and tossing my bags onto the bed.

“We’re due at Edith’s in an hour. You can meet the boys,” Evelyn says, perched in the hallway, watching me.

I nod, and she walks away. I unzip the first bag and rummage through it until my fingers find steel. Wrapping my hand around it, I pull the heavy chunk free and sit on the mattress.

The gun rests on my outstretched hand, and I lay my other hand on top of it – a flesh and metal sandwich. I close my eyes, searching through my skin for something other than steel and plastic - something, anything that feels like my father.

But only cool metal rubs against me.

Bending my elbows, I pull the gun toward me in some semi-automatic prayer. I take a deep breath, smell only steel. Giving a quick glance to the door, I stick out my tongue, just lightly touching it to the muzzle. The fillings in my teeth sting with the tang of it.

The clicking of Evelyn’s shoes against tile echoes down the hall. I sigh and lower the gun to my lap, running my finger along the handle, letting my fingernails dip into the grooved plastic. I can just imagine what my aunt would think if she walked in and saw me in this séance with a Beretta.

But the clip is empty, all the bullets stored at the bottom of bag number two. Dad dedicated his life to keeping me alive. Making me invincible. He made sure I was strong and smart and prepared and tough. That no matter what – an obnoxious middle schooler, a would-be abductor, a guy who just wanted to hit someone – I’d be the one left standing. He really believed that nothing – no one – was more important than my survival.

The least I can do is not shoot myself with the handgun.

Dad would have wanted me to take it. Especially since he doesn’t need it any more. Because he is dead. Gone. Never to be seen again.

And I, Samantha Elizabeth Park, am alone.

When Evelyn calls, I shove the gun in the top dresser drawer and meet her out front. I fish my keys out of my pocket, but she shakes her head and says, “We’re going in my car.”

Beige Ford Taurus it is.

I stare behind me before we get in the car. “Don’t you need to lock the door?”

Evelyn looks surprised at the question. “Samantha, this is a small town. No one’s going to break in the house.”

I swear I almost hear my father groan.

While we drive to Edith’s – my dead mother’s oldest sister – Evelyn points out the sights. Mount Gilead High School. Highway Forty-Two. The cemetery. City Hall.

“That’s one of the entrances to Mount Gilead State Park,” she says, her fingers pointing behind her as we pass the park. “It’s about a quarter of the town – it lines up with the southern edge. It’s probably our main tourist attraction. We get a good number of hikers coming to use it. The high school, my house, Edith’s – we all back up to it.”

“The trails are good?” I ask, the slightest glimmer of hope in my chest.

“I assume so. Why else would people come in town for it?”

I look sideways at her. “You’ve never been in it?”

She sniffs and draws her shoulders back. “I’m not an outdoorsy person.”

I watch her a minute and wonder, Who on earth is this woman? How are we going to last two years together? But we pull into Edith’s drive before I can spend much time tormenting myself over it.

At first glance, Edith Caine seems the very opposite of her sister. Evelyn Williams is rail thin and fidgety. I have yet to see her in wrinkled pants or unpolished shoes, even during the road trip. So I am momentarily surprised when Edith answers the door, rolling and slow, wearing a blanket of a dress and slippers.

The houses are different, too – Edith’s old and rambling with chipped paint and weed-covered garden. It sits on acres and acres.

But then I see the similarities. Big fake-blond hair with lots of hairspray. Pointed jaw, Evelyn’s a little more so. Pale blue eyes, wrinkles around them filled with makeup. It’s hard to match them with the memory of my mother – all our pictures show her with slightly wavy long brown hair, wide blue eyes, naturally flushed cheeks. Of course, she was so much younger then.

“Well, come on in,” Edith says, waving a beefy hand at me. “Let me get a look at you.”

She puts her hands on her hips and looks me up and down when I step towards her. “Not much of Libby in you, is there?” she says.

It takes a second to realize “Libby” is my mother. Dad always called her Elizabeth.

Edith doesn’t seem to care that I haven’t answered. “No, you definitely look like your father.”

“Did you ever meet my father?” I ask, taking a step back. Looking down at her, since she’s at least two inches shorter.

“No, of course not. Doesn’t mean I can’t tell. The eyes. The skin. The hair,” she says, pointing to each part of me.

Evelyn clears her throat and says, “We’ve been driving for two days straight. Can we please get past the doorway?”

Edith scowls at Evelyn. “Fine. Samantha should meet the boys, anyway.”

“It’s Sam,” I say.

Both aunts look at me like I’ve spoken Swahili.

We walk through a narrow hallway. The house smells like onions and mothballs. Edith’s thighs, sausaged in pantyhose, whistle as she walks. When we get to the back of the house, Edith steps down into a family room, dingy from worn green carpet and old paneling.

“Luke, Jared, this is Samantha, my sister Libby’s daughter.” Edith looks from the boys to me. Then she nods at her sister and says, “Evelyn, come help me in the kitchen.”

I stare at the two boys a second, momentarily shocked.

I have cousins.

For as long as I can remember, it was just me and Dad – a compact family of two. All of a sudden, my family’s exploded.

Except, of course, where it’s shrunk.

Two

Jared

Holy.

Shit.

I slouch in the chair and stare at the girl that Edith insists – through some warped understanding of genetics – is my cousin.

I rest my hand across my chest, just to make sure my heart hasn’t stopped. Then shove ear buds in my head, so I can’t be forced to communicate in this moment of crisis.

I’m not sure how I get through dinner.

I can’t stop staring at her, even though I’d know that face anywhere.

This girl has haunted my dreams, like a dazzling ghost, since I was eleven.

I never knew she was real.

Three

Sam

When I wake up, it takes my brain a few extra seconds to sputter to the present. And for those blissful moments, I’m still in San Bernardino. Dad’s asleep down the hall. Life is as it should be. But then reality chases me down and tackles me from behind. I face plant into the dirt of my future.

I lay under the blanket of fake flowers, staring at the ceiling. And my brain begins its morning ritual of torture, flashing me with all the memories I no longer want. Hazy images of a swerving headlights and a useless body strapped with tubes. Clearer ones of broken noses, a flopping man struggling for breath, the cold shell of my father on the floor.

Dad’s best friend Carlos told me I could move in with him and his wife. But this is what I wanted, what I chose. A fresh start. Thousands of miles between me and all the people who know who I am.

What I am.

I want to be anonymous – not the girl who killed her mother or the daughter of the crazy Green Beret. Not the girl who should be registered as a lethal weapon. Not the girl who killed a stranger by punching him in the throat.

I can’t take it anymore. If I can’t escape the violence and death, I will lose my mind. I might even go so far to say I will lose my soul, but I don’t believe in those.

I close my eyes and rub my knuckles against them until my eyeballs ache, until the black spots force away the haunting memories. I don’t open them until I feel the armor – the invisible shield between me and the world. What keeps everyone out and the grief in. It traps all the blank, empty spaces inside of me, refusing to let any light into them. Which probably sounds sad and pathetic, but it’s just like I want it.

From now on, I just want the peace. The absence of feeling. Which means no more caring about anyone. Ever.

Everyone around me dies. All I have left is sadness and guilt. It’s how I really know I’m here, breathing.

Surviving.

I take in a breath. Only when my chest feels heavy, weighted down by invisible steel and mesh, do I roll from bed, directly onto the hard wooden floor.

Fifty sit-ups.

Dad is dead.

Thirty push-ups.

Today I start my new life.

Stretch.

Time for breakfast.

On the drive to school, I note the landmarks. Gas station one hundred yards from the paint-chipped propane tank sitting between two small hills. Run down house with five dogs barking out front. Westerly bend in the road right after the post office.

When I pull in the lot, I notice the same truck I saw parked in front of Edith’s house last night. For the most awkward dinner in the history of time. Crazy, fat Edith mumbling the whole meal about Dad and California and liberal America. The food tasting like surrender and preservatives, and Evelyn just complaining there wasn’t enough salt. Luke trying hard to be nice, but I’m not used to eager and friendly, so I’m not sure I handled it well.

And Jared just glaring.

I can’t remember the last time I felt honest-to-God spitting mad, but Edith and Jared dragged it out of me.

I pull up the emergency brake and stare at the truck.

Screw Edith – and Jared. I have lived through – caused – the death of both parents. I am haunted by crowbars, flashing blue lights, whispers in hallways and the wide-open stares of dead men. I am an orphan who just moved halfway across the country to live with relatives I don’t know or like.

They can both go to hell.

Four

Jared

I hardly slept last night, kept closing my eyes and seeing her. Nothing surprising – up until yesterday. Dream about someone for six years straight, and you get to know the face pretty well. How the nose is just a bit off-center to the left. How one front tooth is a little jagged on the edge. It brings a kind of comfort, sleeping with the same beautiful face for years and years.

Not really comforting anymore, now that Sam Park has walked out of my head and through the damn front door.

I get ready for school like a zombie, giving Luke and Edith little more than grunts. Of course, Luke doesn’t care. We pretty much agree on only one thing - the less we speak to each other, the better.

Edith pours some coffee, and for too-long-a-second, I breathe in pure bitterness and consider having some. Breaking my ban of all substances that want to take over my body and make me prisoner. Might as well throw in some painkillers, too. Top it off with some cigarettes and crystal meth.

I settle for orange juice.

When Luke and I get to school, it’s already buzzing. There is fresh meat at Mount Gilead High School. And from the sound of it, a growing list of guys who want to take her down.

I’ve got to say, no one’s going to win an award for subtlety. When she walks by, guys just freeze in the hallway and blatantly stare. Girls stop talking then explode into . . . I don’t know. . . girly whispers the second she’s a few feet away.

It doesn’t seem to bother Sam though – she just walks down the hall, the same pace the whole way. Not looking at her feet. Not smiling nervously at anyone. She actually seems kind of bored. Like she’s used to the attention.

I wonder if she was the hot one at her old school, too.

If it were anyone – anyone – else, I’d probably be just as excited as the rest of the guys. I mean, there’s not a lot of variety around here. We’re just a small town full of white people.

And Sam kind of defies a category. Heart-breaking body – tall and fit and pretty damn perfect. Hair so black and straight it looks wet. Almond-shaped eyes, somehow impossibly wide, thick eyelashes framing eyes so dark they could just be pupil. Bronze-brown skin – the color of a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

I wonder if she’s gooey inside.

Crap, no I don’t.

Because unlike the rest of Mount Gilead High School – or the males at least – I am decidedly not excited. I am one hundred percent grade A freaked out.

And I am staying the hell away from that girl.

I keep repeating my new mantra as I walk into math – stay away from freaky dream girl, stay away from freaky dream girl, stay away from freaky dream girl – only to see the she-demon standing in front of Mr. Sullivan’s desk.

I eye Sam and Sullivan and think they’d make a good pair. Seeing that both were sent by Satan specifically to torture to me.

Sam turns when I walk in and stares me down. We have an alpha dog moment, neither of us looking away. Sullivan clears his throat, throws me the evil-eye, and the moment splinters.

I turn and go to my desk. And stare at the back of Sam’s head for the rest of pre-Calc. A few hairs have freed themselves from her ponytail and hang loose on her shoulders. I have the craziest desire to lean forward and wind the non-captive hairs around my fingers, pulling them tight until my fingertips turn purple.

The urge to touch her hair – to lean forward and smell her – gets so out of control that I’m about to sit on my hands when the bell finally rings. I jump from my desk and sprint for the hall.

But we reach the door at the same time and, damn it, make eye contact. And man, does she give me the look from hell. I mean, it drips with fury.

I think she hates me.

Good – just what I want.

Right.

Five

Sam

Not having fun so far. Stares in the hallway. Annoying teachers. Possibly the most obnoxious cousin on the planet.

I guess it’s not unique to San Bernardino – high school sucks.

I pay for lunch and walk into the cafeteria. Hundreds of teenage voices bounce off the purple and white concrete walls, entombing us all in droning noise. I scan the tables, trying to resolve the new-girl-needs-somewhere-to-sit dilemma.

A clump of younger kids part, and Luke walks through. Next to the freshmen, he looks even bigger than he did last night. Not so tall as The Rude One, but broader. A Mount Gilead Athletic Department t-shirt stretches across his muscled shoulders and chest.

In one hand, he holds a paper bag. Something inside has leaked, leaving a mottled grease stain across it. Holding the bag away from him, he steps closer to me and asks, “How’s it going so far?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Want to meet some people?”

Luke really needs to give Jared some nice-cousin lessons. “Sure.”

I follow him to a table in the middle of the cafeteria. Seated in a long row, like royalty, are the cheerleaders and football players. Luke walks to a spot in the middle, nudges the guy sitting there who scoots over. He sits, looks at me and pats the bench beside him. I step over the bench and sit down to stares and silence.

“Hey everybody, this is Samantha. She just moved here from California.”

“Sam,” I tell him.

“Sorry. Sam . . . everybody.” He waves his hand across the table, looking a little confused, like he doesn’t make introductions often.

I get some nods, a couple of once-overs. Some guys near Luke ask a few polite questions – when did I get to town, what do I think of Mount Gilead, what’s the football team’s record from my old school. But I can’t hold up my end, just give quick answers. Eventually the football players give up on me, and the conversation eventually turns to last weekend’s game.

When lunch is about over and everyone else has pushed from the table, Luke turns to me and asks, “So, what’s your schedule?”

I pull the paper from my back pocket, flattening it on the table. Luke leans in – he smells like a chemical version of trees. “We don’t have any classes together,” he says, looking at me with a frown. “You’ve got study hall next. It’s in the library. Do you need me to show you where it is?”

“No thanks,” I say, folding up the schedule and sliding it back in my pocket. “I saw it earlier. I can find it.”

Luke stands, grabbing his now-empty greasy bag. I follow him with my tray, we dump our trash. “Okay,” he says, studying me a little. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure. Thanks.” We stand together another awkward second – what is the appropriate parting for cousins? – before I give a lame half-wave and leave.

Like the rest of the school, the library doesn’t have a lot of character. It’s just low, boxy and utilitarian. With its wide halls, shiny lockers and still-gleaming linoleum, the whole place can’t be more than a few years old. It still has a freshly-installed smell, like a new car.

In the library, fake-wood rectangular tables follow the line of gray metal bookshelves. The tables can easily fit twelve, but only about one or two students sit at each one. The ones sharing a table sit far apart, like they fear disease. Turning pages, a ticking clock and out-of-sync breath are the only sounds in the well-distanced silence.

I walk to the nearest table, letting my book bag slide off my shoulder onto the seat beside me. The only other person there – a girl – looks up at me briefly, gives a weak smile then bends back over her book. Light brown hair falls around her shoulders, her perfect part exposing a scalp of shocking white. She looks like a roly-poly, how she folds her shoulders forward into a ball. Folders and books form a messy pile beside her with the name Taylor Sampson markered across the thick pages of a few.

As I sit, I take another look around the library, feeling a combination of relief and sadness at these gaps between everyone. Maybe Luke with his table full of jocks is an anomaly. Maybe lots of people around here don’t have friends.

Which is comforting, since I won’t either.

No sense killing anyone else.

***********

After study hall is English. Where the irony of my life is front and center.

Because even though I have pledged to let no one else in my life, I am a sucker for love stories. Specifically in the form of poetry.

Dad diagnosed my romantic condition when I was twelve. When everyone else in my grade was engrossed in Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, Dad and I were plowing through Keats, Wordsworth and Frost. When he read Rilke’s lines “again and again the two of us walk out together under ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky” I cried.

After I introduce myself to the teacher, she hands me a reading list. The whole year is all English authors spanning Beowulf to Keats. I bite my lip to keep the goofy grin off my face.

Mrs. Gill asks what Shakespeare I’ve read, and I tick off the list with my fingers. “Most of the sonnets. Romeo and Juliet. A MidSummer Night’s Dream. The Merchant of Venice.”

She frowns slightly and says, “We’re just finishing up a selection of sonnets. We’ll start Romeo and Juliet next week, and then do Hamlet. Even though you’ve read some already, hopefully you’ll get something out of it.”

I assure her I’ll be fine – and don’t tell her it will be my fifth time with Romeo and Juliet. I have a love-hate relationship with that play. After all, they are the ultimate romantic couple. But in the end, it just makes me sad. Because true love is supposed to keep you safe, not kill you.

Sigh.