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“She’s a fucking lunatic, Mam.” “Don’t you dare call your sister that word.” “Why not? It’s the truth. Half the time she’s a mute, and the other half, she’s screaming her head off and attacking anyone who gets near her.”
Breaking down in front of him, my sister covered her face with her hands and screamed, “I wish I was dead!”
“I don’t want to be me anymore.” “Why would you say that?” “Because I’m bad.”
I had to make my family love me. If I didn’t, they were going to send me away. “Stop fighting it,” a voice in my head commanded, and I flinched when the watery image of a woman’s face flashed before my eyes. “Just give in. It’ll all be better then.” Oh no. The voice was back. The scary voice. The one that made me wet the bed. The one that made me fight.
I had to make the voice go away.
“What’s a lunatic?” “Someone who’s crazy and hears voices.” Caoimhe sighed. “That’s why Grandad drowned in the river when Dad was a kid. The voices told him to jump in.”
“I wish she was dead!” Me too.
“Get her out of here, Darren,” she screamed. “Please get her the fuck away from me before I kill her myself!”
“I’m going to take some pictures of you, munchkin. Special pictures just for me, okay?”
OH GOD.
“I know a secret tickle,” he whispered, moving his hand up higher. “Do you want me to show you?”
SHES FIVE. FUCK YOU MARK.
“We are still a family,” Sadhbh repeated in a sterner tone. “Our family just looks different to how it used to.” “Yeah, because you broke it!” Gibs choked out, backing away from his mother. “You and your asshole boyfriend.”
“I’m still your mother.” “Well, I wish you weren’t!”
“You’re different, Lizzie Young.” “I am?” She nodded and smiled. “You’re special.”
“But Joe Gibson will always be the original Gibsie.” “And has been since we were children,” Mam agreed with a chuckle. “Which makes his son Small Gibs
“You’re a scumbag.” “Yeah,” Joey agreed with a dangerous chuckle, closing the space she put between them. “But I’m a scumbag that’ll tear your fucking world apart if you touch my sister again.”
I knew she had one, I even knew his name—Hugh—but Claire told us he was stinky and looked like the troll on the cover of storybook The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Claire told a lie. Her brother did not look like the troll.
“Your face is red.” He shifted in discomfort. “So is yours.” “I know why.” I beamed back at him. “It’s because I give you the hots.” “Uh.” He looked surprised and his face turned even redder. “I, uh…” “It’s okay.” Grinning, I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my cheek. “See? You give me the hots, too.”
“He’s got brown eyes and he’s tall, and he smells like soap and strawberries, and he doesn’t look like a troll at all.”
“I don’t think I like you, Lizzie Young.” He looked out the window when he whispered, “I know I do.”
Nobody had ever said that about me before. But Claire did. She said she wanted me.
“Don’t forget the babies, Claire-Bear,” Gibsie chimed in from his perch beside her, while he too inhaled his stack of pancakes. “We’re having ten babies, aren’t we?” “Yes, Gerard, but the babies come after the honeymoon,” my sister reminded him. “When we do the smooching and you give me the special hug.”
“That’s not how it works,” Feely informed everyone at the table. “Bulls have balls like boys have, and cows have vaginas like girls have.” He then proceeded to clear his throat, armed and ready with enough farm-life knowledge to shatter their innocence. “The balls store sperm, and the sperm has to shoot out of the penis and go into the cow’s vagina to impregnate her.”
When I reached the lounge and locked eyes on the familiar, dark-haired teenage boy sitting on my couch, with my sister on his lap, a wave of unease washed over me.
EW MARK GET AWAY
“Keith’s a fucker.” That made him smile, so I racked my brain for more curse words. “Keith’s a stupid, son-of-a-bitch, fucker pup.” Now, he full belly laughed. “He is a fucker pup.”
YES MA’AM
Mark didn’t fix me this time. Hugh did. And he didn’t have to hurt me to do it…
But if the ocean wanted Gerard Gibson, then it was going to have to take my arms with him because I would never let go of him.
“My baby! My baby’s in there! We can’t leave her!”
“Bethany! Joe! No, no, no, don’t do this. Don’t leave them behind!”
In that moment, I vowed to never sit back and do nothing. I would never be a statue like Mark or incapable like Sadhbh and Keith. For the rest of my life, I would help. I would save people. I would bring them back to life. Like my father brought Gibs back from his watery grave. Like my mother brought his heart back to life.
“I love you.” My heart thumped like a drum in my chest because this was the first time he said those words out loud. “You do?” Nodding slowly, he stroked my cheek with his thumb and exhaled a shaky breath. “I just thought you should know.” A shiver racked through him. “In case anything happens and I don’t get to tell you.”
BRO 😭
If boys only did that to girls they loved, did that mean Mark loved me? Because I didn’t want Mark to love me. I wanted Hugh to love me.
“You make me feel good in my belly.” “That’s the flutter-cups,” he replied with a grin. It wasn’t the flutter-cups. It was something else. It was the other feeling. The one he put in me.
“Anyone who hurts children is a monster in disguise.”
I have an angry father in denial, a batshit crazy sister, and a mother who’s had cancer so many times, she probably won’t see me finish college, so maybe I deserve to feel a little bitter.”
Yeah well you kys soooooo...
He was not taking her away again. Over my dead body.
“You’re nine!” His eyes were glowing red. “Why are you getting your fucking period when you’re nine?”
Okay but I was also nine
“She’ll come around again. Lizzie’s like a boomerang. She always comes back to herself.” Yeah, but what if she didn’t?
“Gerard said he was sorry, Hugh,” Claire said, defending him for the hundredth time. “He’ll find another hammer. You’ll see.” “Where?” I shot back, still annoyed. “In his ass?”
“He looks like Thor with his hammer!” “Did you hear that, Gibs?” Feely called out with a chuckle. “Lizzie thinks you look like a superhero!” Grinning wolfishly up at us, Gibsie winked and immediately starting flexing his nonexistent biceps. “Oh yeah,” Liz encouraged, cheering him on. “Show us those guns, Thor.”
OMG THIS IS WHERE HE GOT THE NICKNAME
One of these days, the grown-ups are going to see your true colors, and when that day comes, I’ll be right there to watch your fall from grace.
what could I tell him? That I was plagued by the monsters my own imagination had conjured up to terrorize me? That I was tormented by sickening images and horrendous thoughts that made me want to die? Or how about telling him that I was filthy, impure, and defective? Which one was I supposed to tell him about? Which sin would be the one that drove him away?
“I’ve missed you.” “You saw me two days ago, Liz.” “I know.”
“Joe Gibson is past tense.”
“You mark my words, Biggs, one day in the future, when you’re all grown-up, I’m going to hunt you down, and I’m going to put a bullet in your head.”
I knew deep down that I was never going to be able to get enough of this girl, and that was a terrifying concept. Knowing she held so much power over me made it hard to breathe.
“…Shut the fuck up and let me fix this.” “No, no, no, please!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, thrashing violently as I tried to fight him off. “Please! Please, stop! It hurts!” “Stop fighting me on this!” he snarled, ramming the coat hanger deep inside of my body. “Relax, okay? I know what I’m doing. I watched a video.” “It hurts!” I screamed, ripping and tearing at my hair as the pain threatened to take me under. “I’m dying!” “Yeah, and I’ll be dead if that belly of yours gets any bigger.” He shoved a pillow over my face. “Scream into that if you have to…”
WHAT
I squeezed out, attention riveted to the plum-sized glob of blood that had fallen out of my body and onto my bathroom floor. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t my period. It looked like a clump of veins. It looked like a monster.
OH MY GOD
It was her period.
HUGH THATS NOT HER PERIOD
“I’m not going anywhere with you, you fucking pedophile!” “Don’t call me that.” “You raped your stepbrother,” Caoimhe screamed at the top of her lungs. “You’re an adult. Gibsie’s a child. You defiled his body. I saw you with my own eyes. That’s called being a pedophile!”
Monster. He was a monster. The monster was real. Mark was the monster.
