“Like me?” I asked, unsure if I was one of those girls. The girl that hides her voice because she can’t cope with one more harsh word said against her… because it could be the one to finally break her, to make sure the next time she held a knife to her wrist, she’d see the suicide through.
“No,” Levi pushed, “Not like you. You’re a fighter, you’ll push through. Look at how much you’ve changed since being here, with me.”
“Because of you,” I said, and smiled.
But Levi shook his head. “No, because of you.”
I closed my eyes, but I shivered in the cold water. “Come on,” Levi said, and pressed a kiss behind my ear. “Time to get out.”
I let Levi help me from the water. I let him pat me down with the towel and wrap me in a robe. I let him lead me to bed, lights off, but for the jar by my side, and the plastic stars twinkling on the ceiling.
The minute we were in the bed, Levi wrapped me in his arms. “Do you know what I wish for, Levi, what I hope and pray for all the time?”
“What, bella mia?”
“That people have one thought, one instinct: Be kind-hearted. Simply be kind of heart.”
Levi exhaled into my hair. “It’s a good wish to have for people, baby.”
“But it won’t come true. Just look at my mom, look at me, now look at Clara. It never ends.” My heart physically ached at that truth. “Why can’t it end?” I swallowed, my throat raw from tonight. “Words are the worst kind of ammunition. Physical pain fades in time, but bullets of cruelty forever penetrate the soul.”
Levi didn’t say anything in response. What was there to say to this sad truth?
As we closed our eyes to sleep, I heard my mom’s voice: there’s no place for us in this world, baby girl. Even as I lay here in Levi’s arms, safe and adored, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been right.
I wasn’t sure I could live with this fear anymore.
I was sick of hiding my voice.
I was sick of the power people had over others.
… To victor cruelty, not hope…
Chapter Fifteen
Levi
I opened my eyes, my head banging like I’d been hit by a truck. I stared at the wall beside my bed and immediately felt my stomach drop. I’d hardly slept all night, too busy holding Elsie in my arms, my mind circling with what she’d told me, how she’d opened up… and I felt shamed. Shamed that I hadn’t seen those scars, never questioning why those cuffs were around her wrists. And those girls at the dinner? Those cruel bitches…
I gritted my teeth, my blood boiling with rage. I took a deep breath, and turned in the bed, my arm reaching out to pull Elsie close. I frowned when I felt her side of the bed was empty. I sat up when I felt the linen beneath my palm was cold.
Throwing the comforter off me, I searched the room with my eyes. “Elsie, bella mia?” I called, but there was no reply.
I looked to the clock on the wall, and my eyes widened when I saw it was nearly midday. I’d slept in. I took a deep breath. Elsie was probably in with Lexi. After losing Clara I wondered if she’d gone to the center.
I threw on a Huskies Football sweatshirt, sweatpants and my chucks and ran across the yard. The day was dry, completely different to last night.
I entered the kitchen through the back door, only to see Lexi with Dante and Austin sitting at the table with coffees. I quickly searched the front room.
“You okay, Lev?” Austin asked.
“Is Elsie in here?”
Lexi and Austin looked to each other with questioning glances. “No,” Austin said and got to his feet.
My pulse kicked into a sprint. I looked to Lexi. “Could she be at the center?” Lexi lowered the spoon she was feeding Dante with.
“I’ve just been there, Lev. I’ve been with Celesha all this morning taking care of Clara’s family and all the paperwork for what happened.”
“And she wasn’t there?” I affirmed, dread setting in my chest.
Lexi shook her head and I ran my fingers through my hair. “You can’t find her?” Austin questioned.
“She ain’t in my room. I slept in. I got no sleep last night after dealing with Elsie…” I shook my head, “the shit she told me… what she’s been through.” I looked to my brother, then Lexi who had stood and was by her husband’s side. “Last night, what those girls did and Clara too. She’s lived that. She, she nearly died, Lex.”
“I know,” Lexi said quietly and all my breath rushed from my lungs.
“You knew?”
Lexi’s face fell. “I checked on her records, Lev. She was a runaway. She ran from a group home after she’d been in hospital for attempting to commit suicide. I saw the scars the first night we brought her back here when I cleaned her up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t my story to tell. You know how I feel about forcing someone to talk about their past. It normally does more harm than good. I know this first hand.” Austin wrapped his arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer. Dante squirmed in her arms and she kissed him on his chubby cheek. “Lev, I didn’t know what she was dealing with, if it was something she’d moved on from or whether it was still part of a struggle.”
“It’s a struggle,” I rasped, thinking back to her numbness last night, of her haunted stare and sad voice as she told me about Annabelle and her suicide attempt. “A real struggle. And after last night…” I turned away, panic setting in. “She wasn’t right. She told me about trying to kill herself, and she told me how she’d wanted to die.”
I stilled. “What if last night brought it all back? What if…” I trailed off unable to finish that sentence.
Austin gripped my arm. “Don’t, Lev. Don’t fucking do it.” He pushed me toward the door, back to the pool house. “We’ll find her, come on.” Spurred on by Austin’s words I ran back across the yard, briefly stopping at Lexi’s craft shed. It was empty.
When I was back in the pool house, I rushed to the bathroom, finding it the same with nothing moved. Next was the closet. Most of her clothes were there, but I saw her jacket, scarf and hat were gone, as were her Uggs. And my hoodie. The hoodie I’d given her that first night she came into my room, returning my stolen rosary. It had gone from the hook on the door.
“Anything?” Austin asked as he stood the center of the main room. I shook my head, wondering where the hell she could go when I looked to her bedside table.
“No,” I whispered, my eyes shutting as reality hit.
“What?” Austin pushed and I met my brother’s eyes.
“Her jar’s gone.”
Austin’s expression was of confusion. “Jar?” he questioned.
“Her lightning bug jar, like the one’s in Dante’s room.” I felt my face heat. “I made her one. She didn’t like the dark, and I told her about Mamma and how she’d make us real ones.”
“Fuck, Lev,” Austin hushed out and came to pull my head in his arms.
“She’s gone, Austin. Ain’t she? She’s fucking gone.” I pulled away from my brother to look into the small pot where her jar’s glow sticks were held—gone.
All gone.
“We’ll find her. You know where she used to go before she came here?” I shut the drawer and nodded my head. Austin slapped me on the back. “She probably just needed some air, Lev. Shit, she went through a lot last night. She won’t be gone. She won’t have left you.”
I wasn’t so sure. Grabbing my keys from my desk, I looked at her side table and raced to its drawer. When I opened the drawer and found her poetry book was gone, along with the book I’d gotten her for her birthday, a part of me knew, it just knew, that she hadn’t just gone out for air.
She’d gone for good.
“Lev?” Austin pushed, waiting by the door. “Let’s go.”
I followed him out of the door, my hand in my pocket as it ran over the wooden beads I always had with me. And I prayed, I prayed on every single bead that we’d find her and that she hadn’t done anythin
g to hurt herself.
I climbed in my Jeep and pulled out onto the road. The tension in the car was thick. I couldn’t calm. I just kept seeing her tortured eyes. Kept feeling her limp in my arms as I washed and held her in the bath.
I’d known she was hurt, was broken, but I never thought it ran this deep. I never imagined bullying could have been this soul destroying until Lexi opened the center. It made me realize how vicious some people’s words could be.
Austin stared out of the window as I drove to the alley I’d found her in. “You ever seen anyone get bullied, Aust? Like, real bad?”
Austin shrugged. “I saw kids get beat up or roughed around, but I think the kind of bullying Elsie went through is the kind that no one sees, yeah? The kind that fucks with your mind?”
“Yeah,” I rasped, remembering her telling me how Annabelle cornered her, imitated her and laughed in her face.
“Do you think her voice is different? Elsie’s, when she speaks?” I shifted in my seat. I could feel Austin’s eyes narrow.
“She does sound different, Lev, that’s a fact. But fuck, it ain’t nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s not too prominent. And even if it was, who the fuck cares?” Austin paused. “Why? You think it is bad?”
“No!” I snapped, anger filling me. “I don’t hear it. I don’t see what people picked on her for. And at our age too. I never thought people did all the bullying crap past high school.”
“I think you can be bullied at any age, Lev. Age don’t have nothing to do with insecure fuckholes picking on others to make themselves feel better.”
I shook my head. “I just don’t hear her voice being different. I love it. I love nothing more than hearing her laugh, and speak… to say my name aloud.”
“It’s because you love her, Lev. You don’t see her imperfections, and if you do, you love her more for them.”
“I…I…” I stuttered, my face blazing with heat.
“It’s okay, kid,” Austin said quietly. “It’s okay to admit that you love her. It’s okay to open yourself up to allow yourself to love. You’ve fought getting close to anyone for too long. Elsie fucking smashed through that wall.” He huffed. “Funny for someone so timid and shy, for someone who doesn’t make a sound, to finally plow through your heart.” I stayed quiet, my heart beating too fast.
“I just want her back and safe. I ain’t sure I know what life looks like anymore without her in it.”
Austin’s hand landed on my arm as I parked up near the alley. “We’ll get her. Just see.”
Austin paid the meter as I ran into the alley, my feet pushing pavement, my eyes searching every inch. Hope sprung in my chest when I saw someone hunched at the far corner. “Elsie!” I called and picked up speed.
I heard Austin enter the alley, and I crouched down, recognizing the blankets I’d bought her. “Elsie,” I called again, placing my hand on the body. The person’s arm flinched and they woke up, an old man’s face looking up at me through fearful eyes.
I jumped back, standing straight with my hands in the air. “Sorry,” I apologized. “Have you seen a young girl, nineteen, with blonde hair in this alley?”
“Fuck off,” the man grumbled. I closed my eyes, losing faith, having no idea where else she would go. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out some cash and laid it before the man. He snatched it in his hands and I walked away, Austin shaking his head.
“She isn’t here?”
“No,” I replied, leaving the alley and running my gaze over the busy street. “I have no idea where she might have gone.”
“You brought her out for the day a while back, yeah?” Austin questioned.
“Yeah, we went all over Seattle.”
“Then we’ll retrace your path. Maybe she’s following those footsteps?” Austin stood before me. “It’s worth looking, Lev. Let’s just keep looking for your girl.”
I nodded my head, deciding to start at the original Starbucks. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the boat cruise, she wasn’t at the space needle. She wasn’t at the Ferris wheel, or the Italian restaurant, or even the poetry coffee shop. We searched for hours, until darkness set in and anywhere I thought she could have gone had been exhausted.
With nowhere else to go, I drove the Jeep home in total silence. I was tired and aching from trudging around the city, but more than that, I was devastated, devastated because I knew in my heart that she’d gone. But worst of all, I didn’t know if she’d simply ran away, or whether she’d done something worse, something I couldn’t save her from. I pictured the scars on her wrists and I couldn’t breathe.
What would I do if she’d finally gone through with it?
I pulled to a stop outside of the house and Austin went to speak. I met my brother’s dark worried gaze and I shook my head. “Don’t,” I rasped. “I just can’t, Aust.”
Austin sighed and ran his hand down his face as I got out of the car and walked through the back gate. I prayed on the final bead on my rosary that she was sat on the bed, waiting for me. When I opened the door there was nothing here.
Just darkness.
No lights were on in the room, but I looked up and the plastic stars were shining, but not the jar, not Elsie’s light. I was drowning, fucking drowning in worry.
In pain.
After staring at that bare side table, the missing damn stupid glow stick splattered jar, I turned on my heel and needed to get the hell away. I ran. I sprinted as fast as I could to my Jeep, ignoring the sound of Austin yelling from the front door, ignoring my cell when he tried to call.
I had one place I wanted to be. The only place I ever felt at peace.
It took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes and the start of rain to reach the warehouse. Keeping the rosary in my hand, I entered the warehouse, walking straight to the angel and ripped off the sheet. My breath hitched as it always did when I saw her glowing face, the side of the angel where she had risen from the ashes.
Tears pricked my eyes and I held up my rosary to her face. “Ciao, Mamma,” I said, my voice too loud in the huge room. “I got your rosary with me,” I went on and ran the beads through her marble fingers. I sucked in a deep breath and slumped to the floor, my back resting against her legs.
I inhaled, and fighting my emotion, said, “I found her, Mamma.” I sighed and looked up at my mamma’s happy angel face. “The one you always said I would, the girl you wanted for me. I found her.”
I closed my eyes, my memories taking me back to that day in the trailer, the day when the thunder and lightning had me running into mamma’s room…
… You are different from Austin and Axel. They are alike in so many ways—hot headed and tough, hard on the outside until they let you in. You are the timid one, the gentle brother—inside and out. You are the one to carry his heart on his sleeve. You are the one who watches silently from afar and loves with all his soul… Whoever you end up with, my son, whoever claims your heart, will be a very special girl indeed… So much love, mia luna. You will love with your whole being, and it will be forever. You could not love in any other way…
I allowed the tears to roll down my cheeks as the memory played like a movie in my mind. And I replayed my response. The response I thought would be true, my young self not knowing what bumpy road lay ahead…
And you’ll meet her, Mamma. You’ll love her too. Yeah? You will love the one I marry too. She’ll be like a daughter to you. And she’ll love you too…
“She did,” I whispered to my mamma in the empty room. “She came here and met you, Mamma. And she loved you. She held your cheek and she loved you, I could see it in her eyes.” I smiled a weak smile. “You would have loved her too. You’d have loved her so much, my silent girl. Bella mia.”
I blinked through the blur of my tears, and looked up at my mamma’s face. I gripped my rosary tightly and asked, “Why does everyone leave me, Mamma? Why does everything have to be so hard? For everyone? Why did we have to have the pop we did? Why did you have to get sick? Why did Axel have to go to pr
ison? Why did Lexi nearly die? Why did Austin have to look after me when he was practically a kid himself? And why did I not get to know you like my brothers did? Why did you get taken away before I truly knew you, and you knew me?” My tears poured down my face. “And why did my Elsie get her shitty life? Because she’s perfect, Mamma. So beautiful. She’s been through so much, yet she has the kindest sweetest heart I’ve ever known. But those girls tore her down. How can anyone tear anyone so fragile down? My Elsie, my girl?” My throat clogged and I hushed out, “And why did she leave me? Where has she gone? I… I love her, Mamma. So much. I love her so much…”
I dropped my head and brought the rosary to my bowed head, praying and praying that she’d be safe.
I didn’t hear the shuffle of feet until two people sat beside me. I wiped at my eyes, only to see Austin and Axel sat on my either side.
My face heated with embarrassment at what they might have heard, at seeing me fall apart. But they didn’t say anything. Austin rested his head back against the angel and I suddenly found myself against Axel’s chest, his big hand on my head as he pressed a kiss into my hair.
I tried to pull back, but he held me still. My big brother wasn’t letting me go. Letting it all out, I fisted his sweater and fucking broke apart. Axel’s arms held tight, and nothing was said as I purged everything I’d held back for years. All the damn pain. But most of all, the heartbreak that was killing me at Elsie being gone.
When my eyes ached and my throat burned, I turned my head, breathing in the cool air, and said in a croaky voice, “Thanks, Axe.”
Axel dropped another kiss on my head. “I heard you, Lev. We both did, and let me tell you something now, kid, the best days of your life are in front of you, you just gotta wade through the shit to get there first.”