Brighter Than the Sun (3 page)

Instead, I go see her every chance I get. To feel her light on my face. To see the shimmer in her eyes. I lie back and fall into her world for hours at a time. Earl gets mad. Tells me to snap out of it.

But he’s never been to her world.

I used to ask Earl every day if I could go to school. He always said no. Said we move too much. And, boy, do we. Sometimes, I get to know a few of the neighborhood kids when we move in. Some I like. Some I don’t.

I have to prove myself again and again. The girls want to kiss me. Several of the boys want to kiss me, too. The older girls have something else in mind. Their eyes roam to my mouth. To my shoulders. To my stomach. But that only makes the older boys mad even though their eyes roam, too. It’s a pretty even split between desire and absolute hatred.

I got in my first fight when I was five. Three boys from middle school tried to bash in my face with a rock. The leader was crazy as hell. Which figures. He’s going to hell for shooting a man in the car next to him at a stoplight, but not for several years.

The actual fight didn’t last long. They tried to hold me down while the leader balanced the rock over his head. I pushed one’s face with my hand. Elbowed the other. And simply kicked one of the leader’s arms. The rock crashed down onto the top of his head, and that was that.

He was in the hospital for two days. The boys told the cops I attacked them. Thankfully, I was five and they were eleven and twelve. I told them my dad wasn’t home. I didn’t lie. Earl is not my dad. I’ve known that for a long time. He cowered in our apartment while I told the cops he ran to the store. While they were talking to the other parents, Earl threw our stuff into an old suitcase and a laundry basket and we hightailed it out of there. We’ve never been back to that apartment. We’ve never been back to that side of town.

The apartment we’re in now, we got only because Earl flirted with the landlady. He even dated her a couple of times. I heard them having sex. They both faked it, and the relationship fizzled fast. But we have a shiny new apartment, complete with a washer and dryer that stack on top of each other. The dryer doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I’m just grateful for the washer. We’ve never had one actually inside the apartment.

Earl is always happy when we have a new place. But happy is not always good. He cooks for Kim and me. Dotes on us. Sends her to bed. Calls me to him.

I think he knows Kim and I are leaving soon. He starts locking us in again. Doesn’t let us walk to the store or go to the library. But we’ve learned to sneak out of most of the places we stay at. There’s always a weakness in the structure. Always.

When I was a kid, we had a house once with an access panel in my room that led to the attic. In the attic was a vent. I could push the vent aside, crawl through, jump down onto a pile of logs, and make my way to the library. Not quite as good as school, but close. As long as I was home before Earl, I was good. The couple of times I wasn’t, I paid a hefty price. But it was still worth it.

7

As I’m growing up, I feel myself being drawn to Dutch more and more. Lured. Usually, I go to her. I watch her. But sometimes her emotions are so powerful, I’m actually pulled toward her by an invisible force. Like a magnet. I have to go. To see if she’s okay. Which is ridiculous, I know, since she’s not real.

The first time that happens, the first time I’m drawn to her, I’m seven. Her emotions tug at me. The strongest is anger. An anger that only Dutch can feel. She is powerful, and her emotions, even at four, are a force to be reckoned with.

She is sitting in a car with Denise. She calls her stepmom Denise, in fact, and it makes the woman so mad, her face turns red. But Dutch has figured out Denise doesn’t love her, and no matter what she says or what she does or how she acts, the woman probably never will. So she calls her by her first name instead of “Mommy” like Denise wants. Denise doesn’t even want it for herself but for Dutch’s dad. To make everything seem okay on the outside, no matter how messed up things are on the inside.

But Dutch wants her dad to know how she feels. How distant Denise is. How unloving.

I realize Denise’s face is red for a different reason this time. Her father has died, and Dutch is trying to tell her so. She’s trying to give her a message from him, but Denise is shaking, she is so astounded.

She glares at Dutch. Her hand twitches, she wants to slap her so bad. She decides a good berating will do the trick. “Charlotte! How dare you say such a thing.”

Dutch doesn’t like being called Charlotte. She likes “Charley” better. It’s what her dad calls her. And her uncle Bob. They are her two favorite people in the world. She likes her sister, Gemma, okay, but because Gemma is Denise’s pet, Dutch keeps her distance for the most part.

Denise doesn’t believe her. Dutch repeats the message, trying to get her to understand. Something about blue towels. I don’t get it, but it seems pretty important to the dead guy talking to Dutch from the backseat. He looks over his shoulder at me. His eyes widen, but I’m more interested in the reaction of Dutch’s stepmom. Of his miserable daughter.

“I can’t believe you would say such a horrible, horrible thing.” Denise grabs Dutch’s arm and jerks her closer. “You are a horrible child. I’m going to tell your father what you just said, and I hope he makes it hurt for you to sit down for a week.”

A flash of anger takes my breath away. I hold back. I want to kill the woman for the hundredth time, but I don’t. Still, it’s my dream. Surely I can get rid of her somehow.

They are behind a bar that Dutch’s dad frequents. It’s a local cop hangout. She unbuckles Dutch’s seat belt and pulls her across the seats and out the driver’s door with her. Her fingernails bite into Dutch’s skin. I feel the pain as they tear through several layers. But more than anything, I feel the humiliation when she drags Dutch inside and deposits her roughly on a bench just outside the kitchen.

“You sit here. I’m going to get your father.” She leans down until her face is mere inches from Dutch’s. “And then we’ll see how much he thinks of his little angel.”

She stomps off as a waitress offers her a sympathetic glance. Dutch wants to crawl under the bench and disappear. Humiliation and anger surge through her.

Denise finds Dutch’s dad, Leland, at a table with his brother, Robert, or Uncle Bob, as Dutch calls him. Denise is throwing a fit. He shifts in his seat, embarrassed by Denise’s behavior. Almost as humiliated as Dutch is until he hears the words, “She said my father just died.”

He glances around. Stands up. Ushers her toward the door.

“She said he died, Leland. How dare she say such a thing!”

“Denise, honey, please calm down.”

“Calm down?” she screeches. Really loudly.

The other people in the bar, mostly cops, are either amused or annoyed. Some of them don’t like Denise. One of those is Leland’s brother. He glares as Mr. Davidson tries to lead Denise away.

“Here you are, drinking with your buddies in the middle of the afternoon, and your daughter is telling me my father died.”

“We were having lunch.”

She leans forward until her face almost touches his. “She is evil.”

Mr. Davidson clenches his jaw. He is angry and she is making a scene in front of his colleagues.

I want to rant. To rave. To get their attention. Dutch is so hurt, she crosses her tiny arms over her chest and whispers, “Fine. I’ll just run away, then.”

If only I could go with her.

She pushes past the heavy back door and does exactly that. She runs. As fast as she can. As far as she can until she trips and slides into the street, scraping her knees and elbows.

She looks around but doesn’t recognize anything. I feel confusion take hold. A slight sense of panic until a man comes over to help her up.

“What happened here?” he asks. He lifts her up and shuttles her out of the street before a car runs her over.

“I can’t find my dad.”

He smiles. “I’ll help you, honey. I think he’s this way.”

He holds out his hand, but Dutch hesitates. “You know my dad?”

“Sure do. He’s looking for you.”

“Oh.”

He’s lying. He’s lying! And she knows it. She can feel it. She has to feel it. But she places her hand in his anyway. Lets him lead her away, and I know the emotion leaching out of him. I’ve felt it hundreds of times. The hunger. The desire.

His name is Ethan and he committed the sin that branded him for hell years ago. He is old. Like forty or something, with hairy shoulders and rolls of fat hanging over the waistband of his pants.

I appear in front of them. He can’t see me, but Dutch can. She looks up. Starts to slow. But he tugs her along behind him.

“He’s right over here,” he says to encourage her.

Fortunately, he is actually headed back to toward the bar, but she doesn’t know that.

When she tries to wrench free, he says, “Everyone is looking for you, honey. You are in a lot of trouble. We have to hurry.”

I go back to the bar. Denise is still berating her husband. Robert bounds out of his chair, almost toppling it over, and stalks out.

He goes out the back door to see to Dutch, but she isn’t there. He looks around. Tears through the kitchen. The restrooms. Nothing.

“There it is,” Dutch says, pointing to the back of the bar.

The man hesitates. Scans the area. Probably knows it’s a cop hangout.

When he sees no one, he says, “Yeah, but your dad is in that apartment building over there. Knocking on doors. Looking for you.”

“Oh.”

She looks toward the bar longingly as they walk right by it and into the apartment building behind it. She lets him lead her inside. Shudders when the doors close behind them. Chews her fingers when the building swallows her whole.

Robert finally goes back to the table, grabs Mr. Davidson’s arm, and says, “Maybe you should help me find your daughter instead of bowing down to your sniveling wife.”

Denise gasps but Mr. Davidson snaps to attention.

“What do you mean, find her?” He looks around and rushes out the back.

Uncle Bob follows him and they check everywhere.

I try to think of a way to lead them to her. The man is taking her up the stairs, and the emotion radiating out of her is almost foreign to me. She isn’t scared of anything. Ever. Except me. When she sees me out of the corner of her eye, a small tingle of fear laces down her spine. But in all the years I’ve been dreaming of her, I’ve never felt fear off her for any other reason until now.

She knows there is something wrong. She knows she should’ve said no. Should’ve run from him. Dutch is like me. She can feel emotions, too. And she knows the emotions coming off this man are not right. They are not in her best interest.

His grip is growing firmer with every step. He’s getting excited. I can feel the blood pumping through his veins. His heart beats speed up. And Dutch feels it, too. She pulls her bottom lip through her teeth. She feels fear, true fear, possibly for the first time in her life. And she doesn’t like it.

She starts to struggle against his hold. He locks thick fingers around her wrist and almost drags her to his apartment. When she struggles more, he picks her up and carries her. She’s wearing a dress. Denise made her. She likes making Dutch wear things she doesn’t want to, like it’s a way to torture her or to control her. The man feels her panties when he picks her up, and almost comes in his pants. I feel a slight sting of excitement burst from him.

I want Dutch to scream, but she just pushes against the man. Against his face and shoulders. When he locks the door behind them, she pulls at his hair and kicks and bites. She’s more of a handful than he expects, so he throws her on his bed and wraps her in a blanket.

I know what is about to happen. I’ve been on the receiving end for as long as I can remember. But it’s my fucking dream. Why can’t I stop him?

I’m trembling and tears are blurring my vision.

She is kicking from under the blanket. He holds her down with his arm. Hard.

Her heart is racing when he lifts the blanket over her legs. She kicks some more, so he presses harder. Almost crushes her windpipe, but still she fights. She tries to push him off her. She scratches and claws at him, but he is lost. He runs his fingers along the band of her panties. They are pink with tiny flowers on them.

I am shaking so hard, I almost throw up. I can feel those same fingers on me. Pushing. Pinching. Invading.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

She manages to get the blanket off her face and she sees me. I feel it the moment her gaze lands on me. I’m in my cloak, though. She can’t see my face, but she’s even more afraid. Why? I’m not the one who wants to do bad things to her.

But that doesn’t matter. She has stopped fighting and is staring at me, her eyes, like raw gold dust, large and shimmering with unspent tears. He doesn’t pay attention. He is mesmerized by her panties. By her slim legs. By the V they create at her crotch. He pushes her knees apart. She lets him. She’s gone completely limp, but I know what he is going to do next.

Vomit creeps up my throat. This is my dream. This is my dream. Not his.

He pulls her panties down, and something inside me breaks. I can’t see him do this to her. He’s been slated for hell for years, but he doesn’t go for a long time.

So maybe he doesn’t die just yet, but that doesn’t mean he should be able to hurt people. Especially not Dutch. Not my Dutch.

If this were a video game …

My cloak billows around me like a deep black sea. The cloak that I created with a single thought. What if—?

I reach behind my back as I would in the video game at the laundry mat, wrap my fingers around the hilt of a blade, and unleash a wicked sword. It’s hot like it just came out of a fire. Smoke drifts off its razor-sharp edge. An edge that’s serrated with wisps of curves and hooks, very much like the markings on my shoulders and back. And I know it’s from hell. Like me.

I wrap both hands around the hilt. I have no choice but to do this in front of Dutch. Her gaze is locked on to me. My every move. My every emotion. She no longer even notices where his fingers are. How he has violated her.