A Script for Seven Years: Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Cal

The noise of the cafeteria hits me like a physical blow. I push the lettuce around my plastic tray with a fork. I'm not hungry. My chest is tight with the secret of what happened that night, threatening to crush me.

I know what the skeletal trees in Alex's dream mean. I know why the sky is purple, bruised. It matches the bruising on my own conscience—and the lock on the basement door at home. Seven years ago, I followed my father out to the edge of the woods. I was supposed to be asleep, I wasn't supposed to see anything. I watched through the wet pine boughs as my father buried a silver locket, hands caked in wet soil, whispering threats into the empty air while Alex's mom vanished into the shadows. I kept it a secret to protect Alex. If my father found out that I remembered, or that I was the one who found Alex shivering in the dirt, his violence would turn on her completely.

Across the table, Lucy is chattering away, completely oblivious. Beside her, Alex looks pale and sickly. The dark circles under her eyes more prominent now, in the fluorescent lighting. She's wearing my old sweatshirt, the one Lucy doused in her perfume yesterday, but it doesn't seem to offer her any comfort today. Alex is drowning in her own mind, and I'm the one holding the anchor.

"Cal? Earth to Cal." Lucy's voice breaks through my thoughts. She is leaning forward, her bright eyes moving between Alex and I, entirely oblivious to the suffocating tension. "Are you guys even alive? You've both been acting like ghosts since first period."

"Just tired," I lie smoothly, forcing a tight smile. It's a script I've practiced for the last seven years.

I glance back at Alex, she's staring blankly at the table, her hands still shaking against her water bottle. The dark blonde strands of her hair fall forward like a curtain, hiding her from a world that has no idea how broken her reality actually is. She doesn't look up when Lucy speaks. She doesn't look up at all.

"Tired doesn't even cover it," Lucy sighs, throwing her hands up in dramatic exasperation. "You two look like you're waiting for an execution. Come on, we have the history project due tomorrow and we haven't even started. If we fail, Mr. Harrison is going to flay us alive."

Lucy's words—execution, flay, alive— bounce off the walls of my skull, settling with a sickening weight. She uses them so carelessly. She has no idea what real violence looks like. She doesn't know the sounds of my father's heavy boots coming up the basement stairs, or the groan of floorboards under the weight of a man who keeps a silver locket buried in the dirt at the edge of the woods.

I look down at my tray. The cafeteria noise swells around us again, a chaotic symphony of laughing teenagers and clattering silverware.It feels entirely surreal. How can they all eat and laugh while Alex sits here, literally shrinking into my oversized sweatshirt. The scent of Lucy's perfume still clings to the fabric, sweet and artificial, trying and failing to mask the cold, damp scent of fear radiating off of Alex.

"Cal," Lucy prompts, tapping her fingers against the plastic tabletop. "Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah," I say, my voice raspy. I clear my throat, trying to channel the normal, dependable Cal they've known for years. "Yeah I'm listening. We can work on the project at my house after school. I'll drive."