Down the Darkest Road

8

“You’re not supposed to go anywhere, Leslie,” Leah said. “Daddy grounded you. I heard him. The neighbors probably heard him. Everybody in town probably knows it by now.”

Leslie gave her a nasty look from the corner of her eye as she stood primping in front of the bathroom mirror.

“Daddy’s not here,” she said. “And Mom’s not here either. They won’t know.”

“I’m here,” Leah said. “I’ll know.”

Leslie rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be such a little Goody Two-shoes? I’m just going to a softball game. What’s the big deal?”

“You’re grounded,” Leah said, not understanding why Leslie didn’t think that was a big deal.

Leah had never been grounded in her life—nor did she ever plan on being grounded. Getting grounded meant you broke the rules, and if you broke the rules, Mom and Daddy would be disappointed in you. Leah couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing her parents.

Leslie heaved a sigh. “You’re such a child, Leah. It’s not the end of the world if you break a stupid rule. So what if Daddy’s pissed off? He’ll get over it.”

Leah frowned her disapproval, but tipped her head down so Leslie couldn’t see it. She didn’t like to disappoint her big sister either.

“You’re not telling, are you?” Leslie asked.

She assessed herself in the mirror. She had very carefully dressed in khaki shorts and penny loafers with a lightweight, off-the-shoulder, oversized black sweater over a hot-pink tank top. She had smoothed her long dark hair into a ponytail with a pink scrunchie, and made sure her bangs were just so to frame her big blue eyes.

Leah said nothing.

“You’re such a baby,” Leslie declared. “I’ll be back before they get home.”

As she watched her sister ride down the street on her bike, Leah secretly hoped that didn’t happen. She hoped Leslie would be hours late for dinner so she would get in even more trouble than she was already in.

Leslie became smaller and smaller as she rode away, and then she was gone.

She never came back.

Leah sat up in bed, gasping for air. She had left the light on, as she did most nights. She had never been afraid of the dark as a child. Now she dreaded it for the dreams it would bring.

Tears streamed down her face as she pulled her knees to her chest and pulled the covers up to her chin. The guilt felt like she had swallowed something that was too big for her throat.

She knew logically that she hadn’t wished her sister away, but that didn’t change the feelings. She was almost the same age Leslie had been that terrible day, but in the wake of the nightmares, she felt like the child her sister had called her.

She wanted desperately to cry, but not alone. Crying alone was one of the most miserable, depressing things she knew. It only left her feeling even more empty and abandoned than she already felt, as if the earth had opened up a huge black hole for her to fall into all by herself.

If Daddy had still been alive, she would have gone to him and asked him to hold her and comfort her, but she didn’t want to go to her mother. Both her parents had been devastated by the loss of Leslie, but they had reacted differently.

Where Daddy had seemed sad and lost, her mother’s emotions had been raw and angry. Her mother had needed to fight against the pain, where Daddy had gradually let it crush him. It made Leah angry sometimes that he had given up and left them, and at the same time it made her all the more sad that he hadn’t thought she was reason enough to get up and fight. Had he loved Leslie so much more that he couldn’t bear the thought of life without her?

The tears welled up and balanced on the ridge of Leah’s eyelashes. She felt so alone. She didn’t want to go to her mother, but she got out of bed just the same, and went out into the hall. She could see the light shining in the study where her mother was working on her book. Slowly, reluctantly, she made her way toward the door, holding herself tight, being so careful with each step not to make noise.

When she got to the door, she stopped, holding her breath. She didn’t want to knock. She didn’t want to say anything. She was trying so hard not to cry that her eyes felt like they would explode. What she really wished was that her mom would have come to her bedroom to check on her and realized that she needed a hug. But that hadn’t happened. It hardly ever did.

A fresh, bitter feeling of despair pressed down on her as she heard her mother crying on the other side of the door. Leah could tell she was trying not to make noise as she did it, just as Leah was trying not to make noise as the tears spilled down her own cheeks.

As she leaned back against the wall for support, she pulled the bottom of her T-shirt up and covered her face with it, and cried into it.

She couldn’t go to her mother. Her mother had her own grief, her own guilt, her own struggle to deal with her feelings. Leah wouldn’t add the weight of her own pain to her mother’s.

She wished she could, but she couldn’t.

Instead, she tiptoed carefully back to her room, where she grabbed a pillow off the bed to muffle her sobs as she curled into the upholstered chair by the window and let the emotions go.

She sobbed for herself, for her loneliness, for the feelings that she wasn’t important, that she didn’t matter. She sobbed in grief for the father she had lost and for the sister who had left her alone. She sobbed in grief and in pain and in anger. The emotions were so huge and overwhelming she felt both crushed by them and stuffed with them. The pressure came from within and without, inescapable. She didn’t know what to do with it. She thought—as she had thought many times before—that she might die from it.

Desperate to put a stop to it, she threw the pillow aside and opened the drawer in her nightstand where she kept a paperback book she had been pretending to read for almost two years now. She grabbed the book and went into her bathroom, where she pulled down her pajama bottoms and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

Thin, dark, angry-looking scars ran in inch-long horizontal lines across the otherwise smooth, soft skin of her lower abdomen. Each scar looked exactly the same as the one before it, above it, below it. There were many—some old, some newer, some had been healed over and reopened. She had stopped counting them long ago.

Buried between pages deep inside the book was a razor blade. Leah removed it, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. Looking at it, the anticipation of the relief it would bring instantly calmed her. As she looked at the light gleam against the blade, her breathing slowed. Her heart rate slowed. She placed the steel against her skin and drew the next line.

The physical pain was bright and sharp. The sight of the rose-red blood that bloomed from the gash was mesmerizing. The emotional pain seemed to burst out of her with it, like a bloodred scream. The terrible feeling of pressure in her chest deflated like a burst balloon.

The relief was enormous. It left her feeling weak and light-headed, and breathing like she had just run a hard sprint.

But, as always, the relief was also short-lived. After the sick, familiar euphoria washed through her, it was followed by shame and disgust.

What was wrong with her that she did this sick, disgusting thing to herself? If anyone found out, they would think she was a freak. If her mother found out, she would be so disappointed that Leah couldn’t even stand the thought of how she would feel.

But despite the feelings of shame, she knew she would do it again . . . and again. Because the yawning emptiness and self-loathing she felt afterward was nothing compared to the terrible emotions that pushed her to do it.

Exhausted by the vicious cycle, Leah cleaned the cut and covered it with a Band-Aid, then cleaned the razor blade and returned it to its hiding place inside the book. Then she crawled into bed and curled into a ball, hugging her pillow as if it was a teddy bear, and tried to fall asleep.