Brightly Burning Bridges by Ivy Wild
Past
Two weeksafter my gut-wrenching loss (still not saying it), two things happened. First, my father still hadn’t appeared at home and second, Skyler finally convinced me to return to school. She’d insisted on catching me up on everything I’d missed over the weekend, and on Monday she showed up at my house way ahead of schedule and reminded me that “this was good for me.”
It didn’t feel good for me.
It felt like torture.
And I was unaware of torture being classified as “good.”
But, for whatever reason, Skyler always had a way of getting me to do things I didn’t want to do, both good and bad. So, I dragged ass out of bed, managed to shower and put myself together and drove our asses to school. She offered to get out and walk the last block to school if I didn’t want to be seen with her, which again, made my chest feel really fucking empty.
I shook my head and told her that that shit didn’t matter to me anymore.
Of course I was wrong.
I was always wrong.
And I wish I had agreed to her request. Because if I had, maybe things would have turned out differently for us.
My Beamer was white with a bright red leather interior. Basically, the definition of flashy. It got noticed and therefore we got noticed as we walked in together.
To be fair, with Skyler’s white hair and complexion, she was noticed everywhere she went, she couldn’t help that. I generally had to work to get noticed.
Oh, the irony.
She hated the attention and it’s all she got.
I craved it and had to grovel for it.
Hushed whispers, giggles and outright laughs filled the hallways as we walked into the Academy together. Skyler’s hand brushed mine and I looked down before meeting her gaze. She’d done it on purpose to get my attention and her eyes were kind and told me that everything was going to be fine.
She was so fucking trusting.
Nice.
Naïve.
She must have forgotten who she was walking next to and even worse, who I’d become. There was a black hole in my chest the size of my mother’s love and I’d paid attention in science class enough to know that those things sucked harder than a five dollar hooker and were just as crushing.
And standing this close to me, it was only a matter of time before Skyler became my collateral damage.
Morning classes were a snooze fest. No surprise there. After doling out one or two deadpan looks to teachers who tried to call on me, I was generally left alone for the rest of the class. People in the school seemed to be avoiding me, too, which was odd. I knew that I was being as sour as Warhead candy but that usually didn’t stop people from at least approaching me or trying to associate.
What made matters even worse was the new transfer student, Var—whatever the fuck his name was, still seemed to be after me. It’d started since he’d arrived at the Academy and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I was even on his radar. As far as I knew I hadn’t said two words to the fucker but he seemed to make it his goal to rag on me. For the most part, I chalked it up to him trying to take on the biggest dude. Like the way guys get to prison and pick a fight with the toughest guy just to make sure they don’t get ass-raped later. But for whatever reason, he was really grating on me today.
When the lunch bell rang, I made my way over to Skyler’s locker. We had agreed to meet up there in the morning before we parted for classes. Her locker and the windows were still sporting some obvious signs of white paint and feathers. It was the first time I’d been this way since the incident and seeing it up close, it made me feel even more like shit. My walls came up and I leaned my back against the metal and tried to look the other way.
“Hey,” Skyler said softly, closing the locker and looking at me with those big lavender eyes.
“What’s up?” I asked, trying hard not to look at her.
“I’m proud of you for coming to school today,” she said.
I had to look at her now. Everything about me felt numb at the moment. I was just cold from the inside out. Skyler was like a 1980s heater fan. Scorching hot and totally devoid of safety mechanisms.
“Awesome,” I replied, brushing off her comment. I was acutely aware of the looks we were getting and I hated admitting that it was starting to get to me.
“So are you two an item now?” The question rang out over the hallway in a thick accent and I looked up to see Vartan strolling down the corridor. A hush came over the entire wing, everyone itching to watch new drama. Our school was like the fucking Bravo channel. Tacky, but trying to convince everyone it wasn’t.
“What’s it to you, douchebag?” I yelled back at him.
“Si, don’t.” Skyler tugged at my sleeve, but I brushed her off.
“I just wanted the whole school to know whether you and Miss Skyler are dating.” His stupid face was smiling smugly because he knew he’d caught me in a trap. If I admitted to dating Skyler, or even being friends with her, I’d lose clout in the school rather quickly. Something like this wouldn’t have been such a big deal. I’d hung around people who were not popular when I wanted to in the past, especially girls. I didn’t discriminate.
Issue was—I’d made Skyler out to be public enemy number one. To do a flip flop and suddenly act like we were friends would make me look like a pussy. And trying to come up with some excuse that made it look like Skyler and I were just hooking up would do more to hurt her and embarrass her than anything.
“Who the fuck cares, man,” I said, trying to sidestep the question while I came up with a plan.
But this Vartan guy wasn’t an idiot. Fuck, I hated him. He was so goddamn irritating. He made my blood boil in a way that made it hard to think straight.
“I care. Because the whole school tells me you hate this girl and that you told everyone they should hate her too. But now here you are. We all just want to know why you get to set rules for us but not follow them yourself.”
Backhanded murmurs started to rise amongst the people watching and a larger and larger crowd seemed to gather around us. Everyone was staring at me and Skyler at the end of the hall, the evidence of our hatred for one another still painted clear as day across the windows.
For most of the day, I’d walked around the school seeing what it felt like to keep my mask off. I didn’t try and smile at people, I didn’t try and put people at ease, and I tried not to care what they thought about me.
And for a brief moment, I thought I could do it.
Be myself.
Not pretend.
Not be fake.
But as I stood there, with everyone staring at me, really staring at me, it was too much. I couldn’t handle the judgment in their eyes. I was too raw, too hurt and too damaged to let them see the real me. It had me slamming the mask back over my face so quickly and sliding back into my comfort zone.
I took a step away from Skyler and she looked at me sadly, like she knew what was about to happen. I hated myself so fucking much as I said the words. “I was just down here reminding her not to walk through the halls until after the bell rings, since she weirds everybody out. Like fuck I’d date a chick that looked like her. Maybe bang once just to be able to say I did, but even then I’d have to be pretty hammered.”
The words left my mouth and I felt absolutely sick.
The one person in my life who actually seemed to give a damn about me and I had to piss all over her feelings. All over my own feelings. Shit, I was such an idiot and I hated myself.
The crowd laughed and Vartan crossed his arms over his chest, looking strangely pleased with himself, which wasn’t what I’d expected of him. This entire time I thought he wanted to catch me in a lie and admit that Skyler and I were friends—or more. I thought I’d bested him, but his face looked as fucking smug as ever.
I heard the door to the stairwell behind me slam shut and I laughed and pretended to cry. Having got what they wanted, everyone started to disperse, including Vartan and as soon as no one was around, I darted down the stairs, taking them two at a time to chase after Skyler.
I’d messed up—bad and this time, I didn’t know if there was a path back from this. I knew where she was going to be and I ran behind the school. The tree limbs grabbed at my clothes, as if nature itself was trying to say I wasn’t worthy of seeing her.
I knew it was true, but I still pushed through the underbrush. When I broke through the tree line, she was sitting on the old, splintered bridge. Her feet hung over the edge and her backpack was thrown off to one side.
Even from where I was standing, I could see how red her eyes were against her pale skin.
Fuck, I’d made her cry. Like, really cry.
“Hey,” I called out to her.
She turned to look at me and wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. I started to walk towards her but she stood and yelled “Stop!”
Her outburst stunned me. “What the fuck?” I exclaimed before I could even process what I was saying.
“You what the fuck, Silas!” she screamed. “How could you do that to me? In front of everyone?”
I looked down at the ground, kicking the dirt beneath my feet. I already felt like an asshole. She was the one person I’d always been able to be myself around. But, with her screaming at me like this, it had me reaching for my mask in defense, even around her.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, putting forth one last ditch effort to save whatever it was we had between us. I threw it out there and it landed like a wet rag. I wanted to run to her, tell her I loved her. Tell her I was sorry and that I was broken and that I needed her in my life. Tell her that I couldn’t get through the pain, the grief, the loss without her. But when I tried to take a step, she recoiled and moved backward.
“You can’t just go around being nasty to people, say sorry and then just act like it’s going to take the pain away, Silas!” Tears were streaming down her face and the wind blew through the hole in my chest and made me shiver. “I told you I loved you! I do love you! Can’t you understand how badly your words hurt?”
Of course I did. I wasn’t an idiot. But, what she didn’t seem to understand was that I said those things because I was hurting that much and more. I was the walking embodiment of the phrase “misery loves company.” Skyler’s mother might have said, “the fiercer the hate, the deeper the love.” And maybe that was true for most people. But for me, the saying went “the fiercer the love, the deeper the hurt.”
I hurt everything I loved. Not on purpose, of course. It was just the way I was made. Born under a fucked up star called self-loathing.
I fished my joint and a lighter out of my jacket pocket and lit up.
“Oh, real nice, Silas. Add the illegal use of drugs to another thing on your list of shit for the day.”
I couldn’t understand why she was being so nasty to me. She knew what I was going through. She was the only one that knew what I was going through. I knew my walls were coming up fast. I could feel them building brick by brick around me, my natural defenses trying to keep myself safe from a world that had long told me the real me wasn’t good enough.
The only person I’d been good enough for was dead and burned to ashes.
And it made me want to watch the whole world go up in flames along with her.
I took a puff and let out a long exhale before flicking my joint towards the brook.
It landed on the bridge, instead.
And my wish came true.
Remember that shit saying, “careful what you wish for?” Yeah, it’s fucking accurate.
Cause that rickety old bridge lit up like it had been dipped in gasoline. The splinters that had dug into my feet and hands when I’d walked on it, the planks where I’d sat when Skyler told me she loved me, all of it, lit up in an eerily beautiful inferno.
Skyler screamed and ran to the other side of the bridge.
Away from me.
Away from us.
Alone.
I stood and watched the blaze. There was nothing that could be done now. Red and orange and yellow swirled together as the bridge served as our friendship’s funeral pyre. At some point, Skyler ran off into the trees and I sat down and let the heat wash over me until I watched the charred remains of her favorite place crumble into the brook.
It was the one place she loved.
And I’d destroyed that too.
Present
I’d spentthe entire weekend with Silas, trying desperately to concentrate on the hundreds of documents we needed to go through. He didn’t try to seduce me again. Apparently one rejection was enough to last the whole weekend for him.
I shivered in my thin, brightly floral printed coat. I should have worn something heavier, but I still hadn’t moved all of my clothing into the new apartment. It was like I was holding a part of myself back. The last trip I’d made was a few weeks ago and I hadn’t thought to bring my winter coat back with me. I think a part of me doubted this whole thing with Silas would last that long.
I hated D.C. winters. Everything was gray, washed out and dreary. There was no color anywhere and it just made the whole place feel more depressing than usual.
The towncar Silas and I were currently seated in slowed to a stop and I looked out the window. It was an odd section of town we were stopped in and Silas seemed to sense it too. “You sure this is the right address?” he asked the driver, irritation coating his voice.
“Yes sir. I double checked it myself when I saw where we were headed.”
We were on the other side of the river in Anacostia. It was an historic area of D.C. but lately, it had struggled with increased poverty rates, gangs and violence. It was a lot of things, but a business hub was definitely not one of them.
I peered through the window at the supposed building we were headed into. From the looks of it, we were in a residential neighborhood and our destination was a white brick rowhouse. The paint was faded and chipped and the entire street was dead.
A seriously bad feeling washed over me and I suddenly felt like Captain Hook, hearing the clock ticking everywhere I went.
Silas seemed to sense my hesitation because in an uncharacteristic move, he reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s gonna be alright. The area’s not as bad as it seems and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I nodded my head and tried to give him a small smile. It wasn’t the area I was worried about.
He told the driver to stay put and we exited the car. The cold air gave visible form to my somewhat erratic breathing patterns, condensing in front of me. Silas’ hand reached down and grasped mine again. He turned to me and hit me with one of his lazy smiles. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get this over so we can reclaim the weekend we lost.”
I hiked the bag of documents I was carrying higher on my shoulder and nodded my head. “Okay,” I whispered in a small voice.
We’d spent the entire weekend pouring over his financial records. Everything seemed to check out, which made sense. Bob, his accountant, was an extremely dedicated professional. Plus, Silas made enough money that he really didn’t need to worry about trying to defraud the government. When you had as much as he had, paying a fraction of it in taxes didn’t really impact you.
Leaving my condo this morning, I’d felt good about how this meeting was going to play out. Now, I was a nervous wreck.
Silas’ hand didn’t leave mine as we climbed the cracked cement steps up to the front door of the building. There was no doorbell so we knocked. When no one answered, he turned the knob and found it open. He looked at me, shrugged and pulled us both inside.
This entire situation felt wrong. So had all the correspondence from the IRS in the first place. I’d pointed it out to Silas over the course of the weekend. None of the letters were signed, no agent had been formally assigned to his case, and no addresses were included on the letterhead. It was strange and unlike any other audit he’d gone through. But then, he didn’t seem overly concerned by it.
But that’s probably because he didn’t know what I knew.
He didn’t know what I did.
And he didn’t know what I didn’t do.
“Hello?” Silas called out. I looked around. The home appeared to be set up as a small office, which was a bit comforting. A receptionist desk was along the front wall and further back I could see the kitchen. The front sitting room appeared to be a lobby and a narrow staircase was to our right.
“Come on up,” a voice called out from upstairs and Silas started pulling me upstairs. I hesitated, tugging at his hand.
“Don’t you think we should have them meet us downstairs? By the door?” I whispered frantically.
Silas twisted his features in confusion. “Why?”
I fiddled with the hem to my jacket. “Just to make sure it’s safe?”
He shook his head and smiled lightly. “Sky, it’s fine. Whatever this is, we’ll get it settled in an hour. I’m not concerned.”
He was never concerned.
And that concerned me.
“Okay,” I said, relenting to his confidence despite my better judgment.
I allowed him to lead me upstairs and he didn’t let go of my hand the entire time. The steps creaked under our weight, adding an eerie soundtrack to the already odd morning. We reached the top of the landing and there were three rooms surrounding us. One to our right, one straight ahead and one to the left.
“In here,” someone called out from the room straight ahead of us and Silas and I walked hand in hand to what I was fairly certain was our doom.
