Paper Dolls Read online

  Just don’t think this letter is easy for me. Being in jail is easy. Here, I’m not tempted. Here, I can’t be bad. Knowing I’m a sort of tame monster among worse monsters is all fine and sadly good for my ego. Hurting you though? That’s the worst of it. Being free will be worse than this. I know it’s true. So, please leave me. Pretend I’m not real. And please DO NOT feel bad.

  Be you. Be smart.

  Be beautiful.

  Yours Forever & Always,

  Benjamin

  I couldn’t even allow myself to keep the words. As soon as I read them I wanted to drown them out with loud music or obnoxious laughter or anything at all that could make them go away.

  All his words crashed together and made a muck of my mind. For whatever reason, I immediately thought of that traffic scene from the film Falling Down where the dissatisfied protagonist sits in a gridlocked sea of cars right before he completely snaps.

  The heat, the noise, the hopelessness. My mind was busy and I was trapped.

  I could grab a gun and run and take it all out on someone else but it wouldn’t fix this. This was my world.

  It was real. Dirty, gross, and real. If I didn’t deal with it I’d be eaten up by it.

  Coping was important. I needed to find a way.

  I’d been right all along. Sadly, that gave me no satisfaction.

  Ben hadn’t been playing a goddamn game.

  He’d been real and he’d been sick, living life spliced like all true heroes and villains.

  I didn’t want to know his soft side anymore. It’d be easier if things were just black, one color, one dimension. Before Avery, all I knew of him was soft.

  I hated myself for having feelings for him. I’d always had an affinity for Ben and he’d always had that too. But how could I?

  I felt so sick.

  I reached for the nightstand and grabbed the drawer, pulling it out until I found matches.

  My hands shook hard as I pushed the box open and knocked out several sticks on accident in a desperate attempt to just reach one and grab it.

  The flick of my wrist lit the match and I moved to pull it to the edge of the paper.

  I hadn’t noticed Avery just there at the door. Like a flash, she lunged across the room and took the letter from me. I’d lit the corner but she fanned it out fast.

  “Baby, no,” she said, her face sad and hollow.

  “WHY NOT?!” I yelled, sick with it. I wanted it gone. I wanted to be able to muddle it up and forget it like that talk I’d had with him that even now seemed a corrupt dream more than anything else. It was gibberish.

  “They can use it in the trial,” Avery explained.

  “No,” I cried. “No.”

  She was right. I dropped the used match from my hand and knew she was right.

  My body fell into the bed and I crawled up onto it, burying my face in the pillow. I felt so heavy now. I was soaked in his memories and thoughts. If they’d been kerosene you could light me up and I’d burn through and through, every last broken piece.

  But Avery had read that…

  So Avery was soaked…

  If I read that alone I would’ve just destroyed it right after. I would’ve kept it all from her. I never would’ve said one thing. It wasn’t important. It was strange but unimportant. He was asking me to forget him and that was supposed to be good.

  But she had read that. And the things he said…

  I felt her crawl up onto the bed behind me and reach out to hold me in her arms.

  “It’ll be okay,” she soothed. Her voice was strained.

  “I can’t believe you read that,” I cried. “Why’d you read that?”

  I couldn’t stop thinking it. Couldn’t stop myself from talking either.

  “I had to know what he said to you.”

  “You didn’t,” I gasped. I was too upset to be worried about hurting her more. She’d done enough damage to herself.

  “I wanted to know. Now I do.”

  What if he did know she would read it?

  I cried into the pillow and tried to drown it out but the words still echoed.

  He loved me?

  How could he love?!

  And he dreamed about me? Even now?

  It’s sick.

  It’s sick because I know if I’d never met Avery I’d probably be delusional enough to believe he was some classic fucking prince.

  I didn’t like to fucking think it. But it could be true.

  And what if she left me? Would I just keep writing him? Would I keep on poking the bear? What did that all say about me?

  “He’s not here,” Avery said, pulling me closer.

  Goddamnit…

  I turned to face her and touch her face. “He’s not here,” I repeated. “If he were here you’d know. If he were here I’d have a knife in my hand.”

  “No,” Avery said. “I know you feel like that and you would but you don’t need that on your hands. He’s not worth it.”

  Even before, at the lodge… Soon as he saw I was upset with him, he left us alone.

  That letter only confirmed my thought that he wouldn’t touch us.

  If I loved Avery he wouldn’t touch her again. I knew that now. But I still had to think about the fact that Ben would get out.

  “Jail will not keep him,” I said shakily. “He’ll get a sentence but it won’t be long.”

  I wasn’t scared for me. I was scared for her.

  What if he was out. What if he was here? What would she do? What would that do to her?

  My head hurt so fucking much. I felt it pound. It was like I was wearing a tight helmet and it was pushing in on my skull, all the blood restricted and pulsated.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, pushing to move away from her and stand.

  I COULDN’T DO ANYTHING! I COULDN’T FIX THIS!

  “WHAT can I even FUCKING do NOW?!” I half-yelled, turning to look at her.

  I needed to calm the fuck down.

  Avery flinched and took a shallow breath. “He’s going to be in prison for at least three years.” She looked at me, raw, her eyes overlaid with criss-crossed redness from crying, a visible grid of her very thorough pain.

  “Fuck,” I said, calming. I don’t think he ever intended for her to read that. Not that he would give one flying fuck that she did but I would never have let her see that thing if I’d known what it said. “Baby, I’m- I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I pushed my hand up onto my forehead to try and stop the pounding, my swelling brain, as I crawled back onto the bed and took Avery’s hand desperately. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just really mad.” I couldn’t even breathe. That’s how mad I was. Often, I found, that Avery insisted on taking my private choices away.

  “I know,” she replied. “I was too. How he talked about you made me sick. I threw up by the pool and then I just ran to the closet and hid.”

  “You shouldn’t have read that,” I cried quieter, weaker. I laid down and curled up into her.

  All he said about me were nice things. It must’ve been the love stuff. The thought of him touching me. Things like that couldn’t bother me. I don’t know why. I guess I was different than her. Even now I’d probably let Ben touch me. After he tried to hurt her at the lodge I pounded my fists against his chest and I let him comfort me with his arms and hands. I was weak and dumb. All my thoughts were backwards too.

  Just like the monster in the cell. My reactions and my intentions were mixed up. Making sense of myself was hard.

  “It’s okay.” Avery moved her body to tuck in around mine. “It’s good that I read it. It makes it easier to testify.”

  “No,” I said. It wasn’t good. It was unnecessary. “The things he said…” What she said, how could it be true?

  “I know but I was wrong,” Avery explained. “He really did feel whatever sick version of love he has for you. I’m so sorry you had to see that in his handwriting.”

  Strange as it seems, I could never be mad about a genuine love. He was delusional but his love was
a positive thing that probably kept him knowing he was guilty and unworthy and unkind. Ben had balance. That comforted me. How could I explain that to her? My mind separated things, sliced them up. I couldn’t explain it to her.

  It would not compute.

  The entire task would be fruitless.

  Events like this made me so aware that Avery didn’t know me.

  We were going to be married soon. And I wanted that. But- she was somewhat blind to my reality just like Ben. I was still separate from them. Both of them.

  I feared the most that he knew me more.

  How could she really love me if she didn’t know the true me?

  “Baby, why are you apologizing to me? Stop. Stop it.” It bothered me too much.

  What he said about me was weird.

  What he said about her hurt more. He didn’t even use her name. He didn’t even credit her with any form of care. And when he mentioned bleeding out and being punished he had to know what I’d think, what Avery had confided in me, yet he used those lines for romance.

  Which was sick.

  I mean, that part was all about her.

  “That’s what I kept thinking while I was reading it. How upset you would be but I knew I couldn’t keep it from you because we could use it. I thought about other things too but that was what kept coming back. That and the fact that he invaded our space.”

  “Avery, the reason I’m upset is because I know you read that. I wouldn’t be even half as upset if I didn’t know that. You don’t understand.”

  “What he said about me wasn’t anything new. Those were all things he told me more than once face-to-face while he was-”

  “He was so wrong, baby,” I wept, clutching her hand. “He’s so wrong about you.” I couldn't stand her thinking otherwise.

  “He picked me because he knew I’d believe it. He knew he could train me.”

  Oh god, those words…

  I held my stomach and tried to calm it down. A thick writhing snake of shocking girth may as well be inside.

  “Funny, the knife thing,” Avery went on. “He likes knives. They hold some kind of symbolic place in his head but he always used little knives. Art knives… What are they called… Whatever.”

  “Xacto…” I muttered. “Whittling knives…” Just thinking it made me go dead inside.

  I thought of the selling bee. Definition. Pronunciation. Sample sentence.

  Whittle… To reduce or pare down… To take away by degrees… During the night, in the dark where no one could see, Benjamin Bradford whittled away at Avery Lockhart’s remaining strength.

  My head thumped.

  “Xacto knives. Yeah, that’s it,” she said with a dull voice. “They’re really sharp which, come to find out, is a good thing. Dull knives hurt more.”

  I couldn't help it, I had to swing my legs over the side of the bed and bend my torso over my thighs to keep myself from wanting to throw-up.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she looked over to the side of the bed. “That was dumb.”

  I looked back at her and shook my head.

  “You just read that and I made it worse,” Avery worried. “I need to stop. How can I help?”

  “I already told you,” my voice shook. “I’m more upset because you read that. It’s easy for me to take his advice Avery. It’s easy for me to know he’s a bad man, a sick man, a wrong man, a person I should forget.” His confession of love changed absolutely nothing for me. All it did was confirm a thing I already knew.

  “Yeah. I’d just rather think about you than me.”

  “Oh,” I said stupidly.

  Fuck…

  “He had to figure I might see this but it was meant for you. He wrote all of those contingencies in to make sure he didn’t say that he did it. He knew you or someone might give it to the cops or the court.”

  “He knows I’m smart,” I said, looking up at her and feeling like the stupidest fucking human on the entire fucking planet.

  Skylar was right. Sometimes I was like an abused puppy. I was an idiot.

  “I’m okay,” Avery defended. “I’m just drained and I feel sick. I didn’t really have anything to throw-up earlier since I didn’t eat and I need to at least drink something.”

  I just wanted to crawl up into a hole.

  I laid my body back down on the bed away from her and rest there. There wasn’t anything I could do.

  “Hey.”

  She pulled my arms out and used them to scoot me closer.

  “Look at me.”

  I didn’t want to…

  “Baby,” she moved my chin with her hand so she could see me.

  “We’re good. We’re together. I’m okay and this will get better. It has to.”

  I shut my eyes up tight and breathed through my nose to try and rid myself of all my frustration.

  Last night I was spinning my wedding ring, probably subconsciously nervous that we wouldn’t last…

  Now we had this…

  “I didn’t sleep enough last night,” I explained.

  She wanted me to see some silver-lining that wasn’t there.

  “You want to sleep?” Avery asked.

  “I do,” I said. And wouldn’t it be grand if that’s all I ever needed to say ever?

  “Okay,” she rolled onto her back and put her hands on her stomach, her elbows on the bed.

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “I just can’t think right now. I can’t talk. I can’t breathe,” I tried to say it but I felt it more. My words barely formed as they left me.

  “I know,” she replied, covering everything.

  I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face again, feeling the few convulsions that instantly came with the tears and the hurt that still somehow needed to try and escape.

  To whittle…

  That was all I could think.

  I let the tears flood my vision and strangle my throat as I kept my face in the pillow and felt buried but nowhere near buried enough.

  Chapter 2

  Avery

  She doesn’t think I can see but I can. I tried to get her to not think or talk about the fact that I’d read the letter but of course that’s what really upset her. She will never fully get what happened with Ben. He changed me. Under that care I was molded into this mess and now I’ll always carry that with me. He made sure I would never be totally rid of him.

  When I broke free I took that with me. A part of him will always be down there, buried until it boils to the surface and causes me to do things that Olivia could never understand. She was so scared that I’d hurt myself or that I’d go away and not see her.

  How could I tell her that she wasn’t seeing all of me? That would make her feel even worse. Sometimes there were glimpses. The anger I’d felt over Natalie. In those moments where I wanted to strangle a person that I actually liked. All the times I’ve wanted to die in a moment of flashbacks. The dreams that I don’t tell her about.

  I rolled off the bed and grabbed my phone, walking toward the living room and out onto the patio. I sat on one of the padded, patterned chairs that faced each other and brought my phone up.

  Avery: Hey, how are you? Did everything go okay after you left?

  Skylar: Hey, you! How are you? Yeah, things went good.

  Avery: So… You and Natalie?

  Skylar: Okay, fine… Ignore me. No big… Yeah, we sort of hooked up. Did Olivia tell you?

  Avery: Things aren’t great right now. I’m not going to be all depressing though. Your life is a way better subject. No, she didn’t tell me. Was it a one-time thing or are you going to see her again?

  Skylar: Are you okay? Do you wanna meet?

  Skylar: I’m pretty sure I’ll see Natalie again. Unless you don’t want me to. I’m worried about you Avery…

  Avery: Good. She’s a good person. Skylar, it’s your life. I have no desire to tell you what to do and I like Natalie. It might not seem like it but I do. She loves Olivia and she’s been really great. She could have been a to
tal bitch and messed things up but she has been nothing but supportive.