All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

by Bryn Greenwood

“I broke everything that made...

Even more than I wanted food, I wanted his flesh. I wanted to touch the places where he was hard, and the places where he was soft. He didn’t like his soft places, but I wanted them the way I wanted mashed potatoes made with real butter. I had nothing on my body like the warm damp crease between his tits and belly. Nothing like the muscles that bulged in his arms when he used the pulley in the shop ceiling to hoist engines out of cars.

Summer had so many tricks. The nights lasted longer than the days, even though the angle of the Earth’s axis meant that was impossible. The night couldn’t be longer, but summer made it seem that way. Summer sneaked time for me, taking a minute from February, three minutes from English class in March, ten whole minutes from a boring Thursday in April. Summer stole time to give me another hour under the stars with Kellen. The only time summer slowed down was for the two weeks at Aunt Brenda’s house. Time stolen from me instead of for me.

My sister glared. Like the girl who stole her lifeguard, that’s how she seemed to Leslie.

Lol

Wavy let Kellen touch her.

I wanted to smell something nice that wasn’t sadness. I pulled my shirt up over my nose. It smelled like Kellen’s sweat. Safe.

I hated hearing them talk about me like I was broken. Mama was dead, but I was fine. I knew what “rape” meant and that wasn’t what Kellen had done.

She usually wrote to Donal after she finished her homework in the evenings, and she always signed the letters, “See you soon. Love, Wavy.” See you soon. See you soon. Donal didn’t come for the summer that year. Or any other. Wavy’s sophomore year, her last letter to him came back stamped: NOT AT THIS ADDRESS. NO FORWARDING ORDER.

I felt dead. I woke up in the mornings surprised my heart was still beating.

That was what I imagined it was like being dead. Feeling empty with the taste of dirt in your mouth.

Feeling dead was better than when my heart hurt. Sometimes I thought it might burn through my ribs while I was asleep, and smolder in the sheets until the whole house caught fire. The only thing that made it hurt less was moving my hands.

All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

In the meantime, the things that hurt other people healed me.

Damn, that’s deep

In the meantime, the things that hurt other people healed me.

Damn, thats deep

I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less.

It made them go to church more, hoping God would comfort them. I didn’t think God could comfort anyone, but I was content to go and sit in the sanctuary. People stared at me sometimes, but they had to follow the rules and I didn’t. God made everyone else stand up and sing, sit down and pray, stand up, sit down, pray, sing, pray. God didn’t seem to care if I read novels or knitted scarves.

I feel this

Either God was stupid or Charlotte was confused, because my temple was clearly designed for that.

“But your deposition.” I kept coming back to the Gospel. Wavy spoke in Apocrypha.

Gospel = deposition apocrypha = what actually happened (ie; they didn't have sex)

Tiny sparks leapt like lightning in a petri dish meadow. Wavy sighed and shivered and hiccupped. After sharing a room with her for three years I was used to the sound of her masturbating. I never got used to the sound of her crying.

And I loved Angela.

Amy's gay?

I’d been afraid of so many things: sex, graduating, college, leaving home, falling in love. Life. Now I’d fallen in love, gotten my heart broken, and had meaningless sex. Those scary things were over. In three months I would leave for college. There would be other things to be afraid of later, but lying there, drunk and hurting all over, I wasn’t afraid.

Did she still have things to be afraid of?

Some days I was sorry. Other days I was only sorry Liam got himself killed. Another few days and Wavy woulda been my wife. Before my parole hearing the two things were about equal, the same number of days feeling each way, but when the door never opened and Wavy never walked in, the scale tipped. If she wouldn’t come see me on the one day she could have, I’d done a terrible thing.

You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.

That was the year I did something so stupid I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. With me, that’s saying something. If it’ll make people pay attention to me, I’m perfectly willing to humiliate myself.

LMAO!

The quizzes helped Renee empty her heart, and she filled it so quickly with the wrong things, it was no wonder she needed to empty it.

Renee ate in darting little bites and without chewing enough. The same way she filled her heart. Too quickly, and with too much talking and not enough feeling.

Whatever you want to be true, it is.

Renee looked like she was going to gag, but she swallowed. I felt so angry I had to dig my nails into my hands. All that delicious food spoiled in Renee’s stomach. Mrs. Dale was as dangerous as Val. She might as well have put her fingers in Renee’s mouth and pulled the pie out. She might as well have shouted, “Don’t eat that! That’s dirty!”

He approached food the same way he approached kissing: slowly, thoroughly, and with concentration.

Viewed from my bed, he was a distant constellation. From Alpha Centauri, we were twin stars, side by side.

The winning letter mentioned “Mrs. Brenda Newling’s callous indifference to my personal comfort.” That was how Wavy referred to her aunt in letters to the lawyer. Like she was a cruel stranger. It also made reference to her “special dietary needs and the difficulty of satisfying them in a communal living environment.” Another way of saying she had an eating disorder. Mostly she ate in secret and stockpiled food, but when she was really stressed out, like during finals, she ate out of the trash. Like a raccoon. Special dietary needs: other people’s discarded pizza.

Those letters seemed so wonderfully tragic to me. Each one a message he would never get. A note in a bottle, bobbing on the ocean. Lost.

Wavy had said, “Stay,” and I stayed. She’d said, “Hold on tight,” and I held on tight. I knew I oughta let go of her. I couldn’t.

I had this proud Mom feeling. She was coming out of her shell! She was blooming!

Wavy shook her head and waved her hands at me in baffled horror. Under stress, she still defaulted to silence. While I waited to see what she would do, I had several unkind thoughts. If Joshua was attracted to fragile, ethereal Wavy, I’d never stood a chance with him. The nicest things I’ve been called are exuberant and earthy. Anyway, I was the one who invited him to the party. Where did he get off coming around to see my roommate?

“Do you know what it’s like being me?” I honestly didn’t want to know, because she was pretty fucked up. I liked to play at tragedy, but she drank it out of her baby bottle.

Renee thought recklessness was the same thing as bravery.

What was I supposed to say to that? I’m glad you like my name. The man I love gave it to me. That probably wasn’t what Renee meant when she said I had to try. That was me being impossible. Aunt Brenda said that about me. You’re impossible! Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.

He wasn’t. We were going to find him. At last, I wasn’t just a fat college girl watching a soap opera.

I was part of the drama. I was going to rewrite the third act and change it from tragedy to happily ever after.

Not empty, not burning. Alive.

His eyes weren’t soft. They were hot and frightened. He was afraid of me. I was afraid of me.

“Are you real?”

Kellen was in me everywhere. Inside my nerves.

I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with.

Did it make me less of a pervert that twenty and thirteen looked the same on her? When I had her in my arms, none of that mattered.

Or just long enough to mess up her life again?

“I was selfish to wish for you,” I said. All I’d ever thought about was how much I wanted him. Needed him. I never thought of what it would mean for him. “You’re not selfish, but you’re better off without me. I made nothing but trouble for you.”

He pulled my hand away, and his soft eyes said everything was broken. I’d broken him.