Light through the Cracks
REBECCA A. RAYMER
Light through the Cracks
Published by Rebecca A. Raymer at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 Rebecca A. Raymer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4661-1390-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011907314
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com.
For Jonny
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank – in no particular order- Jonny Raymer, Wesley Thompson, Jonah Raymer, Kristin Griffin, Allie Butler, Joshua Allen, Kimberly Raymer, and the rest of my wonderful family and friends for their fine editing skills and amazing support.
I love you!
PREFACE
Lucy froze as a low, drawn-out moan rose from the floor in the hallway outside of her room. Her father’s steps were heavy and slow and deliberate, and the sound immediately turned her body to stone. She considered for a moment that she imagined the noise, but knew from the way everything in her mind seemed to tilt a little to the left that he was there. She knew he was making his way to her door, creeping like a cat toward an unsuspecting bird.
Lucy was not a bird, and she was not unsuspecting because she was awake and intensely aware of her surroundings. Falling asleep at night was not something that came easily to her. She regularly pulled her covers over her head and read by flashlight long after her mother insisted she went to sleep.
Reading her books carried her through the days, and very slowly and softly eased her into sleep at night. Her father’s presence outside her bedroom door terminated this process, and Lucy was immediately at full alert, the stillest and most awake she could possibly be. She wanted him to believe she was sleeping, so did not turn her flashlight off or close her book or roll over into a proper sleeping position because sleeping people did not do that.
She strained to hear the noises in the floor to determine where exactly her father was going in the middle of the night. It was not uncommon for him to wander the house at all hours, or to raid the pantry, binging on entire loaves of bread and entire jars of jelly and anything else he could get his thick, calloused hands on. He would then often fall asleep wherever he was sitting, usually on the couch in front of the television downstairs.
Lucy did not like it when he slept on the couch, exposed and out in the open. She always recoiled from the sight of his bloated and hairy belly, of his mangy white briefs, and of his hair sticking up all over his head on the mornings after his nighttime gorging forays.
She liked it when her father stayed in her parents’ bedroom, or in his home office. These were his designated areas of the house and as long as Lucy did not disturb him, he mostly stayed put, deeply engrossed in whatever it was that he did.
Regardless of his intended destination, the sound of him moving about in the middle of the night was cause for alarm. As Lucy sat perfectly still under her blanket, she heard the soft metallic sound that her door handle made when someone was trying to turn it. She was immediately grateful for her recent insistence on locking her bedroom door.
Her mother told her that she could not keep her door locked because the firemen would not be able to get her out if the house went up in flames. Lucy did not tell her mother that she had more immediate concerns than being trapped inside a burning house.
Her father’s steps lingered in the hall. The flimsy lock on her bedroom door delayed his entrance, and also sounded a tiny alarm to warn her he was trying to get to her. Lucy knew he could easily get through her security system, but she also knew that it would be noisy if he did.
The only way he could get her door open without too much clattering was if he went into the bathroom across the hall and retrieved the tiny flathead screwdriver that fit perfectly into the groove that sprang the lock on the handle. But this would take at least a full minute.
Earlier that summer, Lucy took to leaning outside of her room through the dormer window after the smoldering sun went down, and observing the predictable life occurring on her suburban street. On each occasion she did this, she removed the window screen, much to her mother’s irritation. She initially replaced the screen each time she pulled herself back into her room, but quickly ceased going through all of that trouble and instead left it tossed aside on the roof of the front porch.
This allowed her to open her window and quickly spring from inside her room and out onto the top of the porch without hindrance, which is exactly what she did once she was certain her father was trying to get into her room.
There was a sweet gum tree that grew quite close to the house, and Lucy easily leapt into its waiting branches. She then shimmied down the trunk, unaware that her nightgown kept getting snagged along the way, but distinctly aware of the scratches being scraped into her inner thighs.
Lucy clung to the tree with her toes and fingertips to slow her descent. The moon was bright and the night was still and she fled into it. Her bare feet did not hesitate at the transformation between the end of the grassy yard and the beginning of the wooded area dividing her house from her neighbors’. And although she continued to feel branches and bark scratch her face and arms and legs, the stinging pain made her feel strong.
Lucy ran until she reached the neighbor’s side of the woods. Years before they curiously built a small wooden bridge arcing over a shallow ditch that rarely, if ever, channeled any substantial amount of water.
Lucy liked the bridge – it was just the right distance from her own house that she felt far enough, but not too far, away. These neighbors did not have young children, and on the rare occasions they noticed her in their back yard made no attempt to discourage her from being on their property.
She became quite familiar with the bridge as she grew up. As far as Lucy was aware, her parents never knew she spent so much time beneath it, or if it was even there at all. Although they were neighbors for years, there was never any love lost between the owners of the bridge and the adults in Lucy’s house, and therefore no concern over small changes to each other’s property.
Lucy felt as though the space below the bridge belonged to her only, and retreated there often. She felt safe there, and that is where she went to escape the madness back in her bedroom.
It did not rain much that summer, and Lucy was pleased to discover that she did not feel any sign of wet mud seeping through her nightgown as she sat down in the ditch and crossed her legs and brought her knees to her chin.
She gingerly felt along the stinging bits of her skin, determining whether or not there were anything other than superficial wounds on her legs, feet, arms, face, chest, and neck. She found and felt nothing alarming, and having caught her breath after her sprint, Lucy again became perfectly still.
She had to sit slightly hunched over in order to fit under the bridge without banging her head, and her back began to ache after a minute or two. Lucy did not move, though, and acknowledged the pain in her back as just another of the discomforts that went along with any standard escape.
She continued holding perfectly still, because as she made her way across the roof, down the tree, through the yard, into the woods, and finally under the bridge, she imagined her father close on her heels.
Now she listened for him.
She heard frogs and bugs. She heard mosquitoes buzzing and felt them finding satisfaction by sucking her blood out through the tiny straws on their faces. She heard an occasional soft rustle of the trees as a light breeze passed over their tops. For a few moments, she heard her own heart beating in her ears, but that subsided as she continued to remain still.
Finally confident that her father – or anything else - did not come after her, Lucy scootched her bottom down and leaned back against the curve of the ditch, her face parallel with the underside of the bridge.
The bridge was wooden and old. Over time, parts of it splintered off and dissolved into dust. Other parts were separated by the elements and were in the slow process of falling and dissolving, too. There were even a few nice-sized chunks completely missing from the boards, knocked out and taken by the effects of nature over time.
The earth below the bridge held her firmly and gently. It was cool and dry, and as she rested her eyes on the weathered wood above her head, the tightness in her neck and chest and back fell out of her. Beams of light flowed from the moon and between the cracks of the bridge and onto her upturned face.
CHAPTER ONE
Lucy pulled her head back inside her room. She was leaning out the window, trying to determine if it was too hot to climb out and sit on the roof. It only took her a few seconds to make the determination that it was definitely too hot. It was early in the afternoon, on one of the listless days in the last weeks of summer before her sophomore year of high school.
She left her room and went restlessly down the stairs looking for anything at all that might distract her from the clock’s slow ticking. She found her father in his home office.
Lucy said hello to him. He sat at his desk, his silver hair combed straight back toward her, his hulking shoulders hunched forward.
He was working at his computer on only God knew what, and he did not turn in response to his only child’s greeting. As a self-proclaimed genius, Lucy’s father demanded complete solitude in order to access his brilliance.
He owned a multi-million dollar manufacturing company that he started years before in the garage of that very house. Why his family remained in that very house, rather than upgrade in accordance with the progression of his business, was something beyond Lucy’s realm of consideration, as she was not really even aware of how much money her father made.
When Lucy was in elementary school, he came home early one afternoon, backing a boat trailer – with a boat on it – up the driveway. Granted, Lucy and her parents used the boat quite often to go water skiing on nearby Lake Arbortown, but there was no preliminary discussion of the purchase of a boat.
Lucy’s mother was not altogether pleased about it, and although she enjoyed the luxury aspect, resented her husband’s lack of consideration of the time and energy it took to maintain a nineteen-foot ski boat. Lucy’s mother also resented the fact that he made no effort at all to assist her in doing so.
Over the progression of their marriage, Lucy’s mother learned that her husband did what he did when he did it, and that he lived staunchly according to the philosophy of “my way or the highway.”
He had a very different relationship with his daughter than he did with his wife in that Lucy always knew only he was in charge. Lucy’s mother was petite and beautiful, intelligent and well put together and took pride in the notion of maintaining intellectual independence from her corpulent and wealthy husband. Unfortunately for Lucy, and for her mother, this notion only existed on a superficial level, one that did not penetrate Lucy’s father’s conscience.
The household was a battleground of constant manipulations, albeit in a very quiet way. The only one of them ever to raise her voice was Lucy, and the immediate response to that was stonewalling by both her mother and her father, a technique that hurt and frustrated Lucy immensely.
Rage became Lucy’s friend at a young age, and although she feared physical violence, had no qualms about inflicting it upon herself. Lucy’s self-harming behavior began at four years old with a violent tantrum. She pitched herself onto the kitchen floor and beat upon it so fiercely that her mother picked her up out of fear that Lucy would fracture her forearms.
The bruises lasted for almost three weeks on Lucy’s little arms, but her father ended up using the stonewalling technique on his wife for breaking his cardinal rule of giving no heed whatsoever to irrational behavior, even from a four year old.
Lucy never stopped trying to break down her father’s stone wall, though. As she entered his office on that morning, she dismissed his dismissal of her greeting, and sat down in a chair behind him. His desk faced the wall, and so he faced the wall, which was quite a difficult space for his wife or daughter to put themselves when they wanted his attention.
“So, what are you working on?” queried Lucy, using her interest in his work as bait, which was generally the best way to go when trying to engage him.
“A new project in Africa. A deal with one of the smaller country’s governments.” He still did not face her, but continued to stare at the computer screen.
“Which country?” Lucy was genuinely interested in the different places her father travelled in his work. They were primarily unheard of to her, and seemed quite exotic.
“I’m sure you haven’t heard of it.” Even this monotone, generic shutdown of Lucy’s attempt at interaction warranted no eye contact, or even a turn of his head. She walked out of his office and went back to her room.
Lucy loved her room. It was not very big, but the window overlooking the roof of the front porch was one of her favorite places. She recently began to smoke cigarettes, and the roof was a perfect evening spot for this new hobby.
Both of Lucy’s parents smoked when she was younger, and she hated it. She learned in school the dangers of smoking and how it made your lungs turn black. The thought of her mother’s lungs turning black was frightening, but the biggest reason Lucy hated her parents’ smoking was the way her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Winship, flinched in disapproval upon smelling the stale cigarette residue on Lucy’s winter coat.
Lucy asked Mrs. Winship for help getting her coat off because the zipper was stuck, and Mrs. Winship took a big breath through her nose in order to muster up the energy to yank the zipper down. She almost immediately recoiled in disgust from Lucy and her jacket.
“Do your parents smoke?” Mrs. Winship asked, in a pretentiously kind and condescending voice as she stepped dramatically away from Lucy and her stinky coat.
“No. They quit smoking before I was born.” Lucy did not quite plan the lie, but it pretty much just jumped out of her mouth, and once she said it, she was not going to be taking it back. Besides, she was not going to give Mrs. Winship, the meanest teacher she ever had, the satisfaction of criticizing her parents.
“Lucy, are you lying? Because I think you are lying. Do you know why I think you are lying?” Mrs. Winship spoke out of the side of her mouth, and raised her eyebrows and lifted up a little bit on her tippy toes at the end of each of these questions.
“No.” Lucy crossed her arms over her chest, indignation dripping from each of her balled fists.
“Because you smell like cigarettes. Your coat smells like someone smokes cigarettes around it, and I can only presume it is your parents who smoke the cigarettes.” Mrs. Winship gave a satisfied little nod to finish off her closing argument.
“Maybe you smell cigarettes because you smoke them. I saw you smoking cigarettes outside in the parking lot bent down next to your car.” Lucy was very proud of this rebuttal, and spoke loudly and clearly to enunciate her confidence, for this part of her argument was true. She forgot her lunch on the school bus one morning, and when she went back out to get it, saw Mrs. Winship crouched beside her car smoking cigarettes.
Lucy expected Mrs. Winship to bow her head in shame and apologize for making such accusations against Lucy’s parents when it was, in fact, she who was the cigarette smoker. Mrs. Winship did not do what Lucy expected, but got flustered looking and told the class to get to work on their assignment.
For the rest of the year, Mrs. Winship was not hard on Lucy, but she was not kind, either. Lucy hated her.
Lucy never imagined she would one day be doing something as stupid and dirty as her parents and the frigid Mrs. Winship. Her friend Katie gave her one of her grandmother’s cigarettes during a sleepover the previous year, and Lucy was a little surprised she smoked it.
However, she was also strangely excited by the forbidden nature of it.
Lucy loved smoking, and loved having the secrecy of the indulgence. On the roof outside her window, late at night, Lucy loved the solitude of her smoking time, and the slight nod a nicotine buzz gave to her state of mind. Especially in the summer, when the world was dark and soft and warm, and belonged to her, and she to it, and she felt safe.
But it was not night yet, and Lucy had the rest of the blistering summer day to get through before she could wallow in her aloneness.
Her mother was home, and gave Lucy a list of daily chores: clean the hall bathroom, weed the flower garden out front, fold laundry – all mundane, all boring, all supporting Lucy’s theory that the only reason her mother had a child at all was so that she would someday have free housekeeping services, as she did now.
Lucy actually did not think it was a bad idea, and looked forward to the day when she could have a child old enough to clean her own house.
The inside chores did not bother Lucy so much, but the yard work was earnestly culminating into her personal version of hell. It was stupid and boring, and she had no communion with plants the way some people do.
She also did not have any pride in outdoor work. It was her parents’ house, and she gave no consideration to what anyone would think if the grass grew longer than six inches, the length at which a city ordinance deemed “too long.” Lucy felt laws dictating how long grass could grow were silly, and she was almost as smothered with disdain for her hometown as she was with the July heat.
Thinking of the word “July” –“Julio” in Spanish - while sweating and freckling in the flower garden, Lucy thought of the time when she was in Junior High and her father said they would all need to learn Spanish, because they were moving to Costa Rica for a year for some business project.
While Costa Rica sounded like a great place to visit, Lucy was not interested in moving anywhere she did not have friends. And as much disdain as she had for Arbortown, it was where her few friends – her refuge – were, and the only place she really knew.
About a week after her father’s announcement of the big move, Lucy’s mother asked for a timeline, and if they were going to fly out in advance in order to find some place to live. Lucy’s father laughed, because he already forgot about the whole thing, and said it was not going to happen.
While she was relieved by the knowledge that she would still be living in Arbortown, Lucy flushed with embarrassment at the distress she suffered anticipating her going away.
Katie especially was very upset when Lucy told her she was moving for a year, and even began to plan a sit-in on Lucy’s driveway so the moving van would not be able to leave. Lucy was touched and heart-broken by Katie’s distress, and spent every night crying herself to sleep from fear and the anticipation of missing her friends.
When she heard her father scoff and treat the whole situation like a big joke, Lucy felt very foolish.
It was a common theme in her home, in her life, to be humiliated by her father. It was kind of like a sport to him, and Lucy could only conclude that he had to have some type of hobby. She hated his games, and she was terrified of feeling that humiliation, especially in public, and even more especially at school.
There were a couple of times growing up that she relaxed enough in class to assert herself socially, but felt she was made fun of by one kid or another, and this taught her to just keep her mouth shut and her head in a book. It was a wonder she had any friends at all.
Of course, she could be very social once she got to know people, which was a process further hindered by her tendency to be quite aggressive and intimidating, although these were not qualities of which she was aware. She was aware, instead, of the way people sometimes clammed up after she spoke, and gave her what she felt was the cold shoulder, and assumed this was because they did not like her.
Since she was raised under the prevarication that there were plenty of qualities not to like about her, Lucy did not find this terribly odd, but it was quite lonely at times.
Loneliness was a burden for her to bear, and she accepted it. She knew she was different, that there were no others nearby, if any at all, who were like her. It was something she detested and simultaneously cherished; she felt it set her apart from the bland sea of the general public, but she was still very lonely.
Lucy surmised it was the price she paid, though, to keep the balance struck. Her father explained this reasoning to her for as long as she could remember, telling her she was like him in this way, and that they must stick together, because only she could understand him, as only he could understand her, a philosophy that made Lucy feel significant.
Lucy did not cry in elementary school when she was not invited to birthday parties and sleepovers. She had books to entertain her, and the certainty of her specialness to bolster her in such times. She loved to read and spent hours of each day doing so.
She was only three when she learned how to read, and could remember vividly calling out to her mother from the back seat of the car to tell her what each sign, each billboard, each plate-glass window read as they rode by. It was a game for her, but also something she needed. She needed to know what those words meant, how to put the letters together, and then string them all into sentences that told a story and made sense not only to her, but to everyone.
Because not much that made sense to her made sense to everyone, and a lot of things that seemed to make sense to everyone, such as Barbie Dolls and cheerleading, made no sense to Lucy at all. Lucy longed for things that made sense, and she loved to be in the pages of those books, and thereby in those worlds – because that was what kind of reader she was, the kind who starts to read and gets completely lost in the story.
And those worlds, full of simplicity and complexity, of joy and pain, of love and hate, of peace and violence, everything of which those worlds consisted was fascinating to Lucy primarily because it was not her world.
As the weeding went on and Lucy’s mind continued to wander, the sun got a little lower, and the mosquitoes found her ankles and the backs of her knees and her thighs, and she thought she would go insane with each bloody little bite. Although insect repellant was invented long before Lucy was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, she always, always forgot to spray it on until after she was covered in angry welts.
Many times it was also more important to her to finish whatever it was she was doing before she made the effort of applying the repellent, as it was at this moment when she was almost done with the weeding. Efficiency was important to her when it came to tasks she disliked, and so getting done with the weeding was a priority over her own comfort.
She fantasized about the popsicle she was going to have the minute she was done, and then about the cool, stinging feel of spraying entirely too much insect repellant all over each inch of her exposed flesh, and then of the heavenly feeling of swaying gently in the hammock out back in the shady section of the yard while reading her current novel, and possibly even dozing off for an unguarded moment or two.
Lucy pulled the last of the ugly little bastard plants by its pathetic roots and tossed it into the pile. She stood and grimaced at the feeling of dirt spreading across her face and mingling in with the sweat she was wiping off her forehead.
She knew she now had little mud smudges on her face, but decided they probably made her look as though she was working hard, and it pleased her to know she had something to show for her efforts aside from the dozen or more new mosquito bites.
Unfortunately, no one passed by at that moment to see this evidence and to appreciate her hard work, so Lucy went in the house via the garage, where she replaced the garden gloves in their proper spot on the metal shelving, and then went inside for the popsicle.
After her delicious and satisfying icy treat, Lucy went upstairs to take a cool shower.
She disrobed in her room, then wrapped a towel around her for the trip across the hall to the bathroom. Once there and safely behind the locked door, she stooped to run the water, and then dropped the towel and glanced momentarily at herself in the mirror.
The stark difference between the tanned and very white skin was what she always noticed first. Her natural skin color was paper-white, and she was not fond of it. Dissatisfaction with her appearance, and with her body as a whole, was not a foreign awareness for Lucy.
She wasted no more than one and a half seconds examining her naked reflection. Lucy was always a little shocked at the differences her body experienced in the last few years, and she could not say she was happy about them.
On the one hand, she was glad she did not look like a child anymore, and felt proud about the rites of passage she went through, because they were the same things other girls her age experienced, too. However, she was not at all comfortable with the idea of herself as a “woman.” She did not even like the word as it did or did not apply to her.
As with the many things in her life over which she had no control, she viewed the maturation of her body as inevitable, and accepted it; but also as with many things in her life, she did not necessarily like it.
In the semi-cool shower, Lucy rinsed the dirt from her face and shampooed and conditioned her hair. She shaved her legs, as she did every day, because there was always the chance someone might brush up against her and she was mortified at the thought of the feel of her legs being anything but smooth.
Actually, she was mortified by pretty much all body hair, but was too self-conscious to shave anywhere but her legs and under her arms. When she first got the beginnings of the hair between her legs, she mentioned it to her mother, who seemed to need to know such landmarks, though certainly not in any detail – just enough information to determine if Lucy was maturing on course, which she was.
But when Lucy mentioned the hair thing, her mother inexplicably became alarmed, and with a horrified look on her face, lambasted, “You don’t shave there … do you…?”
Lucy, feeling something akin to a fifty-cent whore, blushed deeply and vehemently denied any such act. Apparently, shaving one’s privates was a disgusting and deplorable thing to do, and even though the gradual covering of that area by that weird, thick, wiry strangeness made her feel dirty, her mother’s look of horror at the thought of shaving it made her feel even dirtier.
So there the hair stayed, and the bikini-brief underwear Lucy wore covered it all up. Out of sight, out of mind.
After her shower, Lucy dried herself, thankful that the mirror was fogged and left only her blurred image exposed, revealing no detail. With the towel, she went over and over the little nicks in her legs around her knees, ankles and shins, where her shaving removed bits of skin.
Lucy literally could not recall a single shaving of her legs that did not include at least one nick to the only part of her body with which she was comfortable. It was maddening, and it seemed as though the slower she went and more careful she was with the razor, the deeper and longer the cuts it produced.
Still, her mother’s electric shaver did not get her legs nearly as smooth, and her one attempt at a chemical hair remover ended up in hours of agonizing, burning pain. So the razor it was, and so too was the putting up with the little nicks.
After going over them three or four times with the towel, they stopped bleeding. Lucy then generously applied lotion, satisfying the thirst of the raw skin. Her legs were the only part of her body she actually enjoyed taking care of, and she loved to wear very short shorts, even though her father hated them and said she looked like a slut.
After brushing her hair and pulling it straight back wet (it was too hot and too humid to make any effort, and it always ended up being ridiculously frizzy and unruly regardless of the time she put into it), she pulled on her bikini-briefs, strapped the largely unnecessary bra over her practically nonexistent breasts, and put on one of her many pairs of very short cut offs.
After her religiously thorough application of antiperspirant/deodorant, Lucy put on her softball shirt from when she was in elementary school, and it was skin tight, just how she liked, even if she did not have any sort of chest to show off.
She took her novel from the floor beside her bed, which is where she left it the last time she slept at home two or three nights before. Lucy could not keep track of how often she slept in her own bed during the summer because she spent the night out at Katie’s house as often as possible.
But now she was eager to get back to the tragic novel and the misery that was not her own. She forgot to bring her book with her on her last leg of overnight visits, as she usually did wherever she went, which was the exact reason she carried large handbags.
But this time out, she forgot to pack it, and while she was fine without her book for those few days, the separation made it even sweeter to get her hands on it now.
Lucy went to the screened-in back porch and took the aerosol can of insect repellent and sprayed it liberally all over her. It really, really stung the recently exposed skin on her legs, but it felt good in a weird way, a way that was in accordance with Lucy’s belief that the only things worth having were those that hurt you to get to them.
She walked out the screen door, down the cement steps, and into the back yard. She cautiously climbed into the hammock, although she never fell out of it, because it felt so precarious until she got to the exact right spot where the rope would all balance out and hold her securely enough to swing back and forth.
She undid the loose tie of the bit of ski rope she attached to the top of the hammock, with the other end around a nearby tree, so that she could pull it and easily swing herself back and forth until she got so involved in her book that she no longer noticed the lack of movement.
Lucy fell hungrily, yet softly, into her book, and as she did, everything real slipped away.
When she was about seven, her father taught her how to hold her breath for long periods of time under water, and she practiced this religiously. When first submerged, the calm and cool and muffled sound of underwater was very peaceful, and Lucy welcomed it. But the longer she held her breath, and she eventually was able to hold her breath under the water for well over two minutes, the more difficult it became to relax.
Even as she knew she could easily emerge from under water for more air, she felt her body begin to panic as more time without fresh oxygen went by. With her determination to go as long as possible without taking a breath, Lucy waited until her lungs felt as though they were being crushed before she slowly eased her way out of the water.
That first inhalation of sweet summer air was a freedom from the pressure and the pain and the fear of death by drowning, and this is what Lucy felt when she left her world for whichever one happened to lie between those two covers of a book.
***
Lucy began the second semester of her sophomore year of high school in the same way she spent the beginning of every second half of every school year she had so far. She was a little excited about seeing her few friends again, and to show off the new clothes and shoes she received for Christmas, but mostly she was disappointed she was back in school.
Lucy actually always was a very good student. She was in mostly gifted classes her freshman year, but dropped them to be in the classes with her friends for her sophomore year.
She enjoyed getting good grades, but not enough to actually study for tests and do the other extra work necessary to pass a gifted class. Passing was the main priority, because it was all she needed to get to the next level, and the closer she was to getting the hell out of that place.
It was strange how much she grew to hate school, because before the second grade with Mrs. Winship, she really loved it. She loved the order and consistency of each day, and how all she was required to do was be quiet and sit still, and she was treated like a princess. It never even occurred to her that school work was in any way difficult – she always did very well in each of the subjects, and was placed in the highest groups when it came to math, and of course, reading.
She really loved it. However, as she progressed through elementary school, she got angrier, and as she got angrier, she was less likely to sit still and behave as was expected of the good little child she once was.
Lucy’s fourth grade teacher really should not have been teaching young children at all, as she was very intolerant, and even somewhat shocked, at any wayward action, such as looking out the window instead of paying attention to what was being presented to the class.
Lucy took an especially high interest in looking out the window for long periods of time, although she sincerely did her best to pay attention.
It simply did not happen – the window, although just a glass-covered foot-wide slit running from the ceiling to the floor, was the porthole to fresh air and no walls. Not that Lucy particularly loved being outside, which she did not when the weather was uncomfortable, or when it was for the purpose of playing any type of sport that involved running.
It was more that she felt so heavy and chained down in the classroom that she longed for the opportunity to breathe in the outside air.
It was during one of these window-staring moments that Lucy was startled by a sharp pain between her neck and shoulder. She was shocked to find her teacher standing over her, pinching her.
Lucy did not even see the teacher coming, she was so wrapped up in her daydream, and was startled terribly. As her teacher continued to pinch, which really hurt, she whispered through clinched teeth that Lucy better pay attention at all times or she would be going to the office.
Lucy was petrified. She did not really love her fourth grade teacher as she did other teachers, but she never expected to be physically hurt by her, either. Her only response was to stare, stunned, as her teacher released her grip and returned to the front of the room to continue class.
That incident changed Lucy, broke something in her, some fundamental trust of adults, especially the ones who held positions in which they were assumed to protect others. There was a shift in how she thought of school, from it being a place of safety and predictability to one more arena in which she was powerless and at the whim of whoever was in charge.
It was very scary, and in response Lucy began to put up her walls and to take preemptive measures against another sneak attack like that one.
She began to “act out,” according to the school administrator who first called Lucy’s mother in for a conference. Lucy was sitting right outside of the door while they discussed her “defiant behavior,” and could hear every word they were saying, even though the door was closed.
The administrator indicated that Lucy suffered from an “oppositional defiant disorder.” That label fell heavily on Lucy’s shoulders, as if an official diagnosis of “bad kid” was etched onto her. She did not like it, and was shocked once again at the idea of not only being seen as bad, but also defined so succinctly as such.
Lucy’s mother apparently did not think of her daughter as bad, either, but noticed she behaved differently than other children her age. Her mother did not know what to make of her daughter’s strangeness, and when she was told Lucy had a type of disorder, she was actually relieved to have a name to put on whatever it was that made her child so different.
Lucy’s mother grasped that diagnosis, and ran with it, and that was where her mind went whenever Lucy did anything disturbing or upsetting.
What Lucy’s mother did not know was that Lucy did the same thing.
Her mother was not aware that Lucy overheard that conversation with the administrator, and afterward she never addressed the disorder thing with her daughter. Lucy took that as a cue not to ask about it. However, whenever she was frustrated or feeling as though she had skin made of lead, and needed something – anything – to break the monotony of that deep abyss, Lucy thought of her disorder, and so became defiant.
She defied all kinds of things and people and laws and social norms. She still did not like violence, though, and so stayed primarily under the radar, except when she threw things, and especially except when she threw things in classrooms.
Lucy started throwing things in her eighth grade Social Studies class. She did not like the teacher, was not terribly interested in the subject, and generally found it very difficult to pay attention to her school work or the lecture.
One day, the Social Studies teacher, apparently fed up with Lucy’s blatant not-paying-attention behaviors (she was reading a novel in class at the time), spat out Lucy’s name in the middle of a sentence. Lucy was again startled, then angry, and then she threw her book at the teacher.
It was only a paperback, and did not hit her, but that teacher was pissed off all the same. And Lucy, who was previously terrified of any conflict or punishment or general negative attention, felt a type of thrill hit her belly when she realized what she did.
She threw a book at a teacher while in class. It was kind of a crazy thing to do, but damn did it feel good. All of the irritation that squeaked out of that idiotic teacher’s mouth and into Lucy’s brain evaporated, and was replaced with a warm, calm sense of power. It was awesome.
What was not awesome was in-school suspension. In-school suspension sucked. However, Lucy found that she was very productive while in ISS, and read entire novels and wrote entire research papers, and did more school work in that condensed period of time than the rest of the year combined.
A pattern emerged in which Lucy would have one of her outbursts and get ISS for three days or so. Following that, she would get A’s for a month. The good grades were not really a good trade-off for her isolation though, because of the fact that while she was trapped in a cubicle in the ISS room, everything went on as normal just on the other side of the door.
Her friends, her classes, and pretty much her life went on without her participating in any meaningful way. It took quite a toll on her shell of sanity, and that shell already had a lot of cracks in it.
When she started high school, Lucy consciously reserved the right to throw things at teachers in only the most extreme instances, limiting the time she spent serving in-school suspensions.
She never did anything to warrant an out-of-school suspension. That was a line Lucy was not willing to cross because it would necessitate too much of her parents’ involvement, and that was something Lucy attempted to avoid at all possible costs.
Her father usually did not acknowledge much concerning Lucy, good or bad, but when she got into really big trouble, as out-of-school suspension would have inevitably been considered, her mother became overwhelmed and handed Lucy off to him.
Lucy’s father loved punishments. He took great pride in thinking them out, seeing how creative he could be, analyzing what unexpected action might provoke what desired result, and what he could add to his already long résumé of exceptional parenting skills.
He actually believed he was an exceptional parent. He believed so deeply that Lucy believed it, too. As much as she hated and feared him, she loved and revered him, too, and if anyone criticized him to her or even within earshot of her, she became very defensive about it, even if she agreed with the criticism.
But she definitely did not want to be in his line of fire, and by the second half of her sophomore year of high school, Lucy already accumulated the limit of in-school suspensions allowed in a year before she got out-of-school.
Therefore, on the first day of the second semester, she was trying to be on her best behavior, which she was finding difficult during English Lit because she already hated the teacher. He was young and full of promise and wanted to change the world and relate to kids, and was basically a jackass.
There was a new girl in the class, a very small, very cute, very obnoxious-looking girl. Lucy knew immediately she was new because she was in school with the same kids her entire life, and new people, even in a school as big as hers, stood out like sore thumbs.
And this girl definitely stood out. She had a drippy southern drawl that definitely did not originate in Arbortown, Georgia, a town founded forty years before when a bunch of real estate developers from Ohio got together and set up camp.
This new girl also wore very preppy clothes, a lot of makeup, and seemed to flirt just by breathing. Lucy decided she hated her. However, when the class broke for lunch, the new girl walked straight up to Lucy, who was sitting alone, and sat down.
Her name was Darla. Lucy initially thought the girl was making that name up, but Darla pulled out her Mississippi Driver’s License, which she already had because fifteen was the legal driving age over there, and showed it to Lucy, who promptly burst out laughing.
Darla was not fazed in the least. Lucy was impressed, and intrigued. She never before met anyone even remotely resembling a real Southern Belle, and here was one right in front of her. A ballsy one, too.
Since there was not another soul in their English class Lucy wished to have anything to do with, she decided she was going to break the mold and be nice to the new girl for a change.
Lucy and Darla had a very contentious relationship. Darla drove Lucy insane. She was very pig-headed and feminine, and had very deeply rooted beliefs about manners and other things of that nature. She was critical, but did not blink a single curled eyelash when Lucy told her to fuck off, which was often.
Lucy appreciated this, as she tended to run people over pretty easily with her straightforward, too-honest approach to conversation. It did not yet occur to Lucy to make a stab at acquiring some tact, and she figured there were just very few people in the world who could handle being friends with her.
Darla could definitely handle it, on top of the fact that she was more entertaining than any television show Lucy ever saw. Lucy supposed it evened out, although she found herself almost daily questioning why or how she could possibly be friends with someone who fit much more closely into the stereotype of people Lucy hated: normal people; flouncy, bubbly, sporty, cheerleading normal people.
For example, Darla was the “manager” of the football team. Lucy had absolutely no idea what the hell that meant, but it kept Darla occupied on a regular basis after school, so she and Lucy’s relationship primarily consisted of English Lit and lunch, although they did exchange phone numbers.
Darla’s only free day of the week was Sunday. She was involved in so many activities at school, Lucy did not know how she could possibly maintain her sanity. Lucy’s only day of the week when she was not free was Sunday.
This was because she did not participate in any school activities (unless smoking cigarettes in the parking lot counted), and because she was routinely forced by her parents to attend their church’s Sunday morning service, and the Youth Group gatherings on Sunday evenings as well. Her parents both taught adult church classes on Sunday nights, and so it seemed they spent all day and all evening every Sunday at church, which was one more thing Lucy hated about her life.
Lucy did not always hate church – well, she did always hate Sunday school, because all of the other kids seemed to have some sort of standard uniform of frilly dresses and pseudo-suits they wore every week, and Lucy had only bland and conservative clothes her mother picked out for her.
The other kids also naturally distanced themselves from her, as was the practice in elementary school, but they did not all go to the same junior high or high school as Lucy, and therefore never realized she became a sort of legend because of the whole throwing-things-at-teachers thing. Having missed out on that reputation-changing event, the church kids maintained their disinterest.
She did not mind youth group, though. She started attending the youth group meetings for high school-aged kids when she was fourteen, and she was very fond of the youth pastor.
His name was Joe, and he was about ten years younger than her parents. He was hired by the church to start the youth group program a couple years before, and singled Lucy out before she was even in high school. He approached her one night at a dinner type of church gathering, and said,
“You’re Lucy, right?”
She was very flattered that he knew her name, as she truly believed she was one of the plainest wall flowers that existed in that group of beautifully adorned and shoe-shined kids. He was very straight forward, and also was immediately and completely non-threatening, and Lucy felt very comfortable around him almost right away.
The night he singled her out, he only introduced himself, said he looked forward to seeing her at the youth group meetings the following year, and moved on. But he still remembered her name when she did get into the youth group program, and he picked her regularly to participate in the very goofy and entertaining activities he conducted at each of the meetings on Sunday evenings.
Under his wing, Lucy began to feel confident about herself in a group of people for the first time without having to do something shocking and that would get her in trouble.
It was a strange situation to Lucy, but she thrived in that group. The other kids often made her uncomfortable, but with her newfound acceptance of herself, she was able to interact and relax, and generally have fun. She never laughed more than she did at those meetings, and even enjoyed the occasions on which Joe played his guitar for sing-a-longs because he was so goofy about it, and the music he chose was from a collection of old rock songs that Lucy loved.
The youth group thrived with Joe as their leader, and they took ski trips and went hiking, and did things Lucy really enjoyed.
And she cherished being a part of Joe’s inner circle, one of the core groups of kids in the program. Joe also somehow knew when Lucy was not doing so well at home, and it was on those occasions that he would take her aside and ask if she was okay.
She never spoke with him about any of her worries or concerns, but was comforted nonetheless, because he told her he would be there if she needed him, and she believed him when he said it.
After her freshman year, though, Joe tried to become more involved with Lucy’s family. She did not realize how easily he recognized that her home life was not so great, because she herself did not realize it. She simply believed her parents were stricter than most, especially her father, and that being unhappy was a normal part of childhood.
Her father was not wildly violent; he was always very controlled and calm and methodical in carrying out the physical elements of his punishments, and rarely, if ever, left any marks on her body. Her mother was not doped up or drunk all the time, either, so Lucy had no cause to believe there was anything exceptionally wrong in her home.
Joe believed there was something exceptionally wrong in her home. He came over for dinner one night, and after the meal, stayed to speak with Lucy’s parents.
This was not unusual in her house – often men from church came by to see her father. He successfully portrayed himself as some sort of sage, and glowed when men from the church came to seek his counsel about their wives or children or jobs. It was not unusual for him to sit around the kitchen table with these men, sometimes talking for hours.
But it was unusual for her mother to start screaming in the middle of one of these sit-down sessions.
Lucy said goodnight to Joe and retired to her room to read before going to sleep, and was comforted by the thought that he might become close to her father, and maybe be around more. She did not anticipate that her father would threaten Joe with a baseball bat while insisting vehemently that he get out of their house, which was the scene she arrived at upon running down the stairs after her mother started screaming.
Joe looked shocked and hurt, and was asking Lucy’s father to please just talk to him, and that he was not trying to hurt anyone.
Joe and Lucy’s father were about the same build, which was big and thick, and Lucy was terrified of what her father might do to Joe with the unfair advantage of that bat. But Joe quickly saw that Lucy’s father was not going to be doing any more sitting down and talking that night, and he backed away, and left though the front door, looking very sad.
He did not see Lucy crouching at the top of the stairs on his way out.
Not long after that, Lucy and her parents left that church.
They actually triggered quite a split in the congregation, because Lucy’s mother and father somehow accumulated a loyal following, although neither held any official church position. Lucy suffered the fallout of this split whenever she saw anyone around town that remained with the original church.
She deeply resented the accusatory looks, as if she had anything whatsoever to do with what happened, which she may have, but not in any way she could be blamed for. It was her asshole father’s fault, and she knew that better than she knew her own name.
Nonetheless, Lucy was heartbroken. She loved Joe and the normalcy he brought to her life and to her view of who she was, and his ability to make her laugh and laugh and laugh. As with the incident in fourth grade with the teacher hurting her shoulder, this broke something in her, and Lucy hardened up a little more.
Ever since she was a small child, there were occasions when Lucy would try to go to sleep at night, but instead would cry and cry and cry. She never really knew why she was crying, only that it needed to come out, and after the incident between her father and Joe, these occasions increased in frequency.
A large number of the members of the congregation that split, led again by Lucy’s parents, joined up with a small, budding church and made it big, too.
In response to the rapid growth, the new church moved to a new building that would hold the larger numbers of people, who on Sundays passed around brand new brass-plated platters that would hold the larger amounts of bills in the weekly offering.
Joe’s success at Lucy’s old church inspired a kind of youth-group revolution, and the programs were being started in most, if not all, of the other big churches in town.
Lucy’s new church hired a youth pastor, who was a complete dork, and Lucy tried to give him some benefit of the doubt, but it did not hold. And she really, really did not like going to church, or to youth group, or to anything else that had to do with being good and learning how most of her thoughts and actions were sins.
One Sunday night at the church, Lucy’s parents hosted some sort of event in order to accomplish something Lucy had no interest in, but was stuck being there anyway. She sneaked into the church office to call Darla, since it was Sunday, and Darla’s free day.
Lucy was initially just looking for something to do, and figured talking on the phone to someone interesting would pass the time, but when Darla answered the phone, Lucy was surprised to hear Darla was trying to track her down.
Darla, being the “manager” of the football team, made some pretty strong acquaintances with the players. One of those players was at her house at that very moment, and had one of his friends with him. Darla’s parents were out of town, and she was looking for someone to hang out with the football player’s friend so the football player could turn all of his attention to her. Lucy asked who the friend was, and it turned out he was someone she knew, an older guy from her old church.
Lucy was immediately intrigued, because this guy was very cute, and being a few years older, very exciting. Lucy turned the wheels in her head and figured out a story for her parents, as she knew they would not knowingly allow her to go hang out with boys at someone’s house unsupervised.
Her parents ended up being busy enough with their own function to not pay too much attention to what Lucy was doing anyway, and her mom agreed to let her go as long as she was home by nine that night.
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