Welcome to Gaia! ::

Yeah, she cares enough to get him beaten up...when he told her not to...she cares enough to listen and to actually get involved HERSELF instead of just telling other people to do it stare

The means do not justify the ends in this case. Not from Evan's POV. He's baout to kick her a** if you ask me.

Someone kick my a** into writing that again. I've been having a mini-block....probably Miyazaki withdrawal.

I did get a couple of cool ideas though.

Errmm....

Sorry that I forgot about this story for....um.........about a year.

But...I'm writing it again!

Let it be known that I am uncreative and can only recycle old s**t! I rewrote a little of this, I don't like how boring it is, but this will do for now. enjoy!

~

24

The answer to that was that Victoria had gotten in the way. But I was about to fix that grievous—even fatal—error.

I’d just have to recover first.

It took me all day Wednesday; I didn’t really get much longer than that. But I had Kahmè. It was enough.

I think that’s when I woke up, and really started appreciating her. In later years, I saw the closet incident as necessary; otherwise I would never have realized just what kind of person Kahmè was. Normal people would have run away long ago. Or told. Or taken advantage of my frailty, holding things over my head to make me do as they pleased. A normal person would have, that night, called a hospital or the police, or left me alone entirely, assuming I was fine; no one I knew would ever have shown me that kind of gentle concern, would have respected me so much. At the very least, anyone else would have wrinkled their noses at the smell.

Not Kahmè. She really was an angel.

Even not telling, which might have been best for me—I still don’t know—was an honorable thing to do; Kahmè didn’t know better, I think, than to do what I said, ignorant of the way my world worked, but she never gave up on any idea that might help me—and most amazingly of all, she asked my permission to call 911, every time, and never attempted to do so without my assent. That, to me, was the highest level of trust and respect anyone could ever give me. It was stupid, but to me, it was incredible.

And she decided not to upset me by criticizing my dad, not to antagonize me by forcing me to eat or run away or tell someone, not to scare me by panicking…they weren’t the conventional things to do, and they weren’t very sensible, but from that, I knew she trusted me. And that meant much more to me than my own personal safety.

That night, I had awful nightmares about darkness and suffocation and evil things reaching for me (while Victoria laughed in the background); but when I woke up, several times during the night, Kahmè was right there, and I knew it was only a dream. I nearly cried with relief when I saw the bright, unassuming yellow of my lamp and felt her touching me—sometimes sleeping beside me, sometimes holding my hand or stroking my hair—every time I opened my eyes. Horrible things had happened to me, but with her around, I felt that it was all right; it was over. It would never happen again.

When I woke up fully, I felt something cold on my stomach; I looked and found that Kahmè was working diligently on the wounds on my chest, rubbing a small piece of aloe vera on the bruises and what looked like Neosporin on the cuts. This didn’t surprise me; ever since I had used Neosporin and a Band-Aid on a cut she’d gotten in February, she’d been fascinated by what she thought were American instant healing methods, kept secret from outsiders for centuries. Really, she was just a fast healer, but I hated to disappoint her.

I watched as she opened a Band-Aid wrapper with her teeth and stuck it carefully onto my side, layering another one on top of it. I noticed that she’d given herself a Band-Aid, right across her hand. To the average white person they were probably considered skin-colored, but to her, peach was an actual color in the spectrum, and caramel (her skin color by then) was not, just like the opposite was true to me. She kept looking fondly at it, poking it every once in a while to make sure it stayed on. In some ways, she was still like a little kid. But in others, she surpassed even my maturity level….

She saw me awake and smiled at me. “Hi, Evan,” she said—which probably meant that it was too late to say “Good morning”. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” I said hoarsely. “And hungry….” Or at least I thought that was the word. I had no appetite, but my stomach was aching for food.

“Thought so,” she said brightly. “I hope you don’t mind…I got you a present….”

She reached onto the bedside table and showed me something very scary-looking; a cream-colored watery mess with brown strands swirling through it.

“What is it?” I asked her doubtfully.

“Ice cream!” she said brightly. “It’s good for you. Chocolate stuff too, very yummy. It melted, but that’s okay, it’ll be easier to swallow and you need some sugar, I think…but first, you gotta drink some water, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed; I was thirsty too. She went into my bathroom and filled the glass beside the sink with fresh, cold water; then she made me drink the entire thing. I did with zeal; water was my new favorite food, and I didn’t even have an old favorite. Then I ate most of the ice cream; it actually tasted pretty nice, very sweet and cool, and my stomach loved me for it. Then Kahmè made me drink more water.

“What’s real important,” she lectured me as I drank, “is that you get lots of water…’cause if you get dehydrated, everything’ll just be worse than it already is…gotta have water, Evan….”

I drank until she was satisfied; then I sat up. It made me dizzy, but I was surprised that I could. Kahmè gave me a stern look.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Bathroom,” I said innocently. She frowned.

“Let me help you…you gotta save your energy…first chance I get, you’re getting chicken soup…and bread…and mashed potatoes, and orange juice, and eggs and milk and vegetables and—“

I groaned as she helped me to the bathroom door. “C’mon, Kahmè, I can’t eat all that…even if I wasn’t sick….” Sick? Was that the word?

“Bread then,” she insisted. “And soup. No arguing.”

“Just don’t make too much noise, I guess,” I muttered, and shut the door.

It was still a bit difficult for me to move; my stomach throbbed, and my head spun. But I could do it; I was almost well enough to go back to school. For that, all I needed was the ability to walk a couple of miles without fainting….

As I was washing my hands, I thought that the cold water would feel great on my sweaty face; I splashed some onto my cheeks, delighting in the burst of cold and doing it again and again. But then my fingers touched the lump on my forehead, making it burn. Why that hadn’t healed was beyond my knowledge, but it still stung; I scowled, regarding it as nothing more than a very large zit. However, I then touched another sensitive spot—a bruise—and noticed how odd and sore my nose still felt…I really must be a mess, I thought, and before I could stop myself, I looked at the mirror.

What I saw shocked me; I hadn’t done more than glance at my reflection for years. I had a completely different image of myself than the one I saw now, a much less horrifying one….

The haircut I had received months ago, at one point the only part of me that I worried about, had grown out for the most part; but when I took one look at my reflection, it suddenly became the least of my worries.

The person in the mirror was very skinny, very pale, and had very large eyes. The skin of his thin face was stretched tightly over his cheekbones; his cheeks had shallow hollows in them. One bruise stood livid against his cheek, violently purple; the rest were in the yellowy stage, where on a normal person they might have been invisible, but on him they were obvious and grotesque. His sweatshirt drowned his figure, his two big, long-fingered hands standing vividly out against the black cloth. His clothes were too big; he was too small.

His eyes were not only the most prominent features, but the most striking ones; not so much what they looked like, but the expression in them. The irises, so dark that they blended seamlessly with the pupils, reflected memories of ceaseless horror, permanent isolation, unspeakable pain. A very small, very helpless, very desperate boy knelt behind those eyes and begged, pleaded, screamed for help.

That image stuck with me for life; whenever I thought of myself and what I looked like, the vision of my thirteen-year-old self in the mirror came to mind. Needless to say, from then on, I avoided mirrors entirely.

But right then, I couldn’t look away. I was horrified; sickened. Was this really me? No wonder…no wonder my teachers were so worried, no wonder Kahmè was so protective, no wonder Victoria guessed that I was abused, no wonder…. Even I couldn’t see how anyone could ever mistake my appearance as healthy, my expression as happy. Even my smile looked fake and pained.

I stared at myself. And stared. And stared. For the longest time, all I could do was stare. Was this emaciated little wretch an actual living person? Was it really me? The eyes I saw reflected my emotions, first shock, then pain. It WAS me…I…I was…I was HIDEOUS…!

I bit back a flood of tears and ran out of the bathroom. Kahmè caught me and steadied me, sitting me down on the bed; I started to sob, hard, unable to get that image out of my mind.

“What’s wrong, Evan?” Kahmè demanded, alarmed. “Are you hurt?”

I couldn’t talk yet. I just cried. She sat beside me and hugged me, letting me go, rubbing my back as she tried to calm me down. Finally, I recovered enough to choke out, “H-h-have I always…looked….”

“Looked at what?” she asked me, hugging me even tighter.

“Looked…like…like THIS!” I wailed.

“Like what?”

“I…look at me! I….” My voice cracked as I practically shouted, “I GLOW IN THE DARK!”

I shoved my hands in her face, my eyes wide with something close to fear. She took them and inspected them, confused. “Well you are kinda pale, Evan, but that’s okay, what’s wrong with that?”

“I’m ugly!” I sobbed. “I look terrible! Is this…this is why….”

“You’re not ugly!”

“I AM!” I shouted. “LOOK AT ME!”

“Calm down,” Kahmè whispered. “What’s this all about?”

“Looked in the…mirror and…and…I’m ugly, Kahmè, I look awful, is that why all the bad stuff’s been happening? Is that why?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Kahmè said firmly. “You’re just sick, Evan, you’ll look different—”

“No! I….” How could I explain? “I haven’t looked…I didn’t know I…I looked like….” I broke into even harder sobs. “Is this why Victoria…and everyone…they….”

“Oh, Evan,” she said soothingly, grasping my hands tightly in hers. “It’s okay, you’re just a little sick…you don’t look like that all the time….”

I didn’t believe her, though that did calm me down a bit. I cried until I felt dizzy; around then, I managed to ask her what was really on my mind.

“Kahmè?” I said quietly. “Is…is that why…does my dad…?” My voice broke. “Does he…hate me, because…I’m…?”

“No, Evan!” she insisted at once, alarmed. “No, not at all, that isn’t it…that can’t be it…don’t cry anymore, it’s okay…here, lay down, I’ll get you some water, you can’t be crying all the time like this….”

She tucked me firmly in, then refilled the water glass and made me drink it all. I was bewildered—she had only just now become so worried about me. What had I said?

She rested her hand against my cheek. “All that crying, you’re all hot…you need to go back to sleep now,” she said sternly. “It’s okay, I’ll be here…you’ll be all right….”

I let my exhaustion pull me toward sleep. Kahmè kept murmuring things to me, most of which were very standard and repetitive responses…only one thing she said really stuck with me. As I was drifting off, I felt her softly push my hair from my forehead, heard her say, “No, that can’t be it at all…you know what, Evan? I bet he doesn’t hate you at all…he doesn’t, he just can’t…he doesn’t hate you, Evan, you hear me?”

But I couldn’t believe her tone. In half a second, I was fully convinced.

My dad hated me.

And I would never figure out why.



“I hate blood,” I muttered as I scrubbed the carpet.

No one was there to hear me. Kahmè was probably taking a walk; Dad was in the living room watching TV, probably exhausted from the strain of dragging me out of bed and yelling at me. I groaned quietly to myself, swearing at my stupid skin for allowing itself to bleed. Not only did it make me sick, not only did it suck my life away when it left me, but it was also so ******** hard to clean off.

I had been scrubbing for maybe have an hour, and it was getting me nowhere. Maybe it would have helped if I wasn’t so weak and tired; I had to stop and rest every couple of minutes to gather my strength again.

“Stupid ******** blood….”

I lost all reserve and scrubbed furiously at the rug for almost a minute straight; then, panting, I looked down. It was still there. I threw the brush down and flopped onto my side, coughing; the air felt much too cold to me, and even in sweats in the middle of May, I was shivering. My head felt heavy; it would be hard to get up again, but I needed a nap.

I’d have to pull out the bleach, I decided, even though it would discolor the carpet. It was better than a bloodstain, right? Maybe I would try the steam cleaner. That would help, perhaps…did it still work? It had been a while since I’d had to clean up blood, and I’d forgotten my method.

I sighed. Closed my eyes. Counted to 1000; then forced myself to stand up. I was starving, but Dad hadn’t exactly given me permission to eat, and anyway I needed to get this done. When the blood was gone, then I would eat.

Half an hour later, only a faint brownish stain remained where the blood had been. Satisfied, I went to the kitchen and heated one of those drinkable soup containers, pulling it out and blowing on it before I could swallow the first tomato-flavored sip. Remembering Kahmè’s advice yesterday, I ate some French bread with it too, poking out the inside and tossing the crusts into the backyard. I ate until my stomach felt like it was going to spontaneously combust.

And then I fell asleep. Which in retrospect was not the best idea.

I was awoken, as can only be expected, by my dad smacking me in the head with some kind of plastic utensil. “Wha?” I murmured, looking up—he whacked me with it—a ladle—once more. I flinched.

“WHAT THE ******** IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he shouted at me, punctuating each word with another blow. I winced and buried my head in my arms—it didn’t exactly hurt, but it wasn’t a pleasant sensation. “WHO—THE—HELL—SAID—YOU—COULD—SLEEP—?!”

He yelled for a minute or two, the ordered me to get (my a**) up and clean the (********) house. I was still, unfortunately, a bit stupid from sleep—a total dumbass from sleep really. Quite honestly I don’t know what came over me.

“’B-but Dad,” I murmured sleepily, blinking hard as I reoriented myself. Nothing is more confusing than being beaten awake in a place you weren’t supposed to be. “I….”

Dad had had enough; he tossed the ladle aside and slapped me hard in the face. THAT hurt.

“Oww,” I said stupidly, raising my hand to touch the sore spot on my cheek. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“YOU THINK THAT ******** HURTS?” Dad yelled, and then he punched me hard on the same spot, so hard that I fell from my chair and onto the floor. Only to be expected, just like the shouting that ensued and the final kick before he stormed away.

Alone in the kitchen, I whimpered. I didn’t know why it should hurt worse than usual. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been beaten for almost a week. Maybe I was just a pansy. I dragged myself up and started to clean the kitchen.

It was Thursday afternoon. I’d slept for twelve hours straight before Dad had come in and started to yell at me. And now I was cleaning. Believe it or not, that was just how things worked. Only my stupid ******** brain had any problem with it.

I thought as I cleaned; there was a lot to think about. For starters, when was I going back to school? Would anyone miss me? Would I have to make up a lie, or had Dad already called? How much homework was I going to have to make up? Bleh. It sounded like a nightmare. Good thing summer was almost here…for everyone else, anyway.

But no, I would have to wait until next week to go back. There was no way I was going to turn up at school looking like this…imagine what Victoria would say…. I sighed. Healing had been slow since Dad had let me out….

Something else to ponder: why I didn’t die. And as usual, I can attribute that to Kahmè, and only Kahmè. She told me the entire story during my current definition of awake: the annoying hours between naps. Apparently after we had spoken on Monday, she had stayed with me until my dad got home; then she had waited a minute, snuck outside, and rung the doorbell. Dad had answered; she’d asked politely where I was. He’d said something rude; she gave him her best innocent face and said, “But don’t you know, sir? I haven’t seen him for days!” Dad had blinked; then he’d muttered something and gone away.

“I thought it would remind him,” Kahmè had told me. “’Cause you know…he probably forgot. ‘Cause why else would he’ve left, huh?”

But I knew the answer to this: he didn’t care. In fact, he hated me. And that was a fact that I had to resign myself to…or else, I knew, it would tear me apart.

Still, I didn’t want to think about that. I tried to concentrate on the smell of cleaner, the pattern of the walls. I would not destroy myself; I would let the rest of the world do it for me. After all, what else was it going to do? It wasn’t going to protect me, nothing was—I would have to do it myself.

Slowly you must go! For writer's block have I, and write that quickly I cannot! O.o

Still gonna draw me something? <3

I don't know.

Everan and Kamile kind of...died though :/ ooh. I know. Have you read the thing on the front page titled Excerpt? It's a rewrite of Ametris's predecessor, it's inspiration in some ways--I never had any art for that before :/ maybe? yes?