fast

by Millie Belizaire

Later on in life, I would come to understand that trauma unlocks parts of the mind that sometimes need to stay locked.

When your mind makes you pay attention to every little thing, you get into the habit of counting just about everything.

People aren’t like numbers—they aren’t predictable. People lie. People pretend. People don’t always make much sense.

That’s what Shaun was to me. My inspiration.

you let Marcel touch you?” I froze up, my back going straight. Let? Like… did I want him to? Did she think I asked him to do it? Did she think I was bad?

It didn’t matter if he never touched me again, anyway. What mattered was that he already had. There wasn’t no going back from that. It was burned into my brain now, and so no matter how much Gracie promised to keep me safe, all I could think about was how she couldn’t do it in the first place.

She was pretty like an angel. It kinda made you want to check for wings.

Her head slowly turned in my direction. I’ll never forget how absolutely chilling it was to hear the words that came out of her mouth next. She looked at me square in the eyes, blue and red colored lights shining over one half of her face, and told me, “I’m not crying because I’m sad.”

Somebody somewhere once said, ‘Time heals all wounds.’ My only question to that has always been… how much time?

time makes you forget the things that never mattered. However, when things are serious—traumatic, maybe—time has a way of painting unforgettable images into your memory. Trauma is like cement; time only makes it more solid. Sometimes you can fool yourself into thinking you’re “over” something. Then you catch yourself saying things, doing things, avoiding things, realizing you never truly got over anything. You just set new boundaries so that the same thing couldn’t happen to you twice. Time doesn’t heal most wounds. If you’re lucky, time distracts you long enough so that you can forget.

Even though I didn’t tell her to call the police, even though I didn’t tell Marcel to have that much weed, even though I was just a child when all this went down… Gracie blamed me. Something about seeing her son in handcuffs made Gracie forget all about what he did. All that anger that she had for him? She turned around and gave it to me the day of his sentencing. When I was a child, I thought Gracie loved me. And maybe she did. But, despite everything, she surely loved Marcel more.

From what I gathered, Marcel was having a very tough time on the inside. Over the years I put clues together, using what I’d learn about prison, and I figured someone on the inside was doing to him what he once did to me. I thought imagining it would make me happy, but it didn’t. I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on anyone. Not even Marcel.

That was the thing with girls and me. Caprice would say I go through girlfriends like I go through shoes, but that’s not actually true. Shoes have never pulled me to the side and said, ‘Look, it’s either me, or your socks. Choose.’ Caprice has no idea that none of my relationships worked because girls don’t like the fact that my best friend is another girl. Even worse, a pretty girl.

In life, there are certain things that you just need. I needed food to eat. I needed air to breathe. I needed water to drink. And I needed Caprice.

“Well?” I waited. “Answer the question then. Will we still be friends when I’m twenty-five?” His answer was whispered, like he was saying it more to himself than to me. “I hope not.”

Shaun was sincere when he promised, “It’s you and me. Till we’re old as fuck.”

What else could I possibly want? Caprice didn’t understand what I had meant when she asked me that. I didn’t want a “what.” I wanted a “who.”

My mom liked Caprice more than she liked me. I didn’t take it personally, though. Caprice was very likable.

“Girls like you—beautiful girls. Girls who are so pretty without even trying. Teenage girls love to sink their nails into girls like you at the first opportunity. And your hair is beautiful, cutie. Don’t think I’m trying to say it’s not. But I remember what it was like to be young. Girls love to compare, and since I know most of them can’t say a damn thing about your face, I bet the first thing they go after is your hair.”

In the hood, women don’t go to therapists. They go to their hair stylist.

You wanted me to see you, Butterscotch. Don’t front.” She broke into the happiest smile I’d seen on her in a while. “Well?” “Well, I see you.” And you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. All I said out loud was, “And you look nice.”

“Make a wish.” I stared at the dancing flame, feeling Shaun’s eyes on me as he waited. I wished for the same thing I always wished for. Happiness.

was crying so hard for someone who was so happy. “I didn’t do anything to deserve it.” “First of all,” Shaun started matter-of-factly, “that’s not how love works. And second, even if that was how love worked, you would still deserve it. You would still deserve mine.”

How ever much he desired me, I knew he would never take anything I wasn’t willing to give. With him, I was safe.

We went back and forth about it for a hot minute and then she said, “I just want to have one perfect day, Shaun. Just me and the person I love most. Please don’t think about who is spending what. Just be here with me. Just one perfect day. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. You and me. Disney World—The Happiest Place on Earth. I want to go to The Happiest Place on Earth. And I want you to come with me.” And it was the way she said it.

She was broken, so I was broken, too. Only Caprice Latimore could make me act this way.

She explained, “I’m a minor. But not you. Not anymore. You’re the only person I know, who’s a legal adult, who won’t say no. I have to get out of here, Shaun! And you have to help me. Please, please help me! I will kill myself before I have to go back to that house, Shaun. I mean it. If you love me, help me.”

“What does that even mean?” “It means I’ll sleep here every night if it makes you feel safe. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re good. If that means doing it your way first, I’ll do it,” he told me, but just before I could feel some kind of relief, his tone darkened and he promised, “But the second I suspect some shit—Caprice, I’m not gonna ask for your fuckin’ permission to keep you safe.”

“I’ve always been asked to either choose them or choose my best friend.” He laughed again and added, “And like you said… I’ve kept you the longest.”

“So, if I was your girlfriend, would you keep choosing me?” Shaun kissed the sensitive skin behind my left ear, and then in it he whispered, “I will always choose you.”

She told me all that, practically shaking by the time she got the last word out, and when she was done, she asked me if I still loved her. Like I would’ve stopped because somebody else hurt her.

Some sick ass piece of shit ripped her innocence out of her little eight-year-old hands and to this day, didn’t have enough shame to leave her ass alone even now. That didn’t make her gross. That made him gross. Gross as fuck.

“I love you. That won’t change. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I’m gonna get you away from those people. You are not gross or damaged or dirty, so get that shit out of your head, okay?

A person would have to move heaven and earth to make me let Caprice go.

“He’s all I have.”

As a child, you can’t pick your family. When you get older, you surely can.

The best thing Gracie ever did for me was let me leave it.

Dr. Caprice Latimore, MD.

I didn’t think I was better than anyone.

Everybody got the same respect from me, whether their title was doctor or nurse or neither.

“Sanaa, you’re my best friend! You’re supposed to be on my side about this!” “Aht-aht, I’m your best friend, not your yes-bitch. I don’t have to agree with everything you say.”

There’s a big difference between loving someone and having love for someone. When you love someone, you love them for who they are. When you have love for someone, you love what they can do for you.

To make it easier on her, we were going to have the re-proposal done on my boat. What I was doing was fucked up, really. I was proposing for the second time to a woman I didn’t love, on a boat I named after the only woman I ever truly cared about. The only woman I’d ever given my heart to.

Caprice Alicia Latimore. She took my heart, and then disappeared with it.

Every child needs to be protected.

You can never win against someone if you don’t ever want to see them lose.

Almost losing my mom didn’t just scare me to death because I love her, it scared me to death because I realized if she died, I’d have no one in this world. What is a life if you have no one to live it with? Sure, I have other relatives—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents—but it wasn’t the same.

When Arielle and I first started out, of course there were things about her that I liked. Over the years, just watching how her personality changed depending on her audience, I would often wonder if I liked Arielle, or if I liked the character she played in our relationship. How she behaved changed so often, I could never really be sure who the real her was.

“The kid wants to hear my survival story, in exchange for his, and I’m just like… Is it that obvious that I am a survivor of something, too? Like… I thought I was fixed.” My mother paused a bit before saying, “First of all, Caprice, being fixed isn’t real. You can overcome, you can grow beyond the past, but trauma cannot be undone, sweetheart. Second, even if being fixed was real, you still wouldn’t be fixed.”

“How will I know when I’m finished?” “Well, for starters,” my mother said. “You’ll never really be finished. Mental health is an ongoing job, you have to keep working at it forever.