You Can Only Blame Your Problems on the World for So Long

Ava always made it a point to tell me I was her first time. That was important to her for reasons I didn't always understand.

Since I was old enough to get it, I always assumed her aunt's husband was her first real sexual encounter, whether she wanted him to be or not. Sure, we went all the way for the first time, but I assumed he'd introduced her to other things. 

But she always insisted and I never asked. I simply just wondered.

It wasn't until just over a week before I turned nineteen that she finally confessed what happened with him the night that she ended up in the hospital.

And part of me wondered if it had been her plan to confess all along when she invited me out the creek with her.

We arrived on the banks with four bottles of beer, two lighters, and a strange tension between us.

Her family was back in town, visiting for Thanksgiving and she didn't want to see him. The man that turned her childhood into a nightmare was staying with her grandmother and she was almost as angry as she was terrified. 

She didn't want to see any of her family. She didn't want to go through that again.

That's why we were hanging out. She lied about having plans with me so she wouldn't have to go see them.

So we went to the creek like she asked. It reminded me of the night she let me be her first, except colder and brighter and we weren't tangled together.

The only thing that hadn't changed was how much I loved her.

That would never change.

After I built the fire I handed her a beer and she took it from me, forgetting that she didn't drink.

That night she drank like she actually liked the taste of alcohol. She acted like she loved being cold and distant from me.

I sat on an old, dead tree that had fallen sometime in the spring. The bark was fragile and sharp, falling off in clumps wherever you'd touch it. Although I offered a seat next to me, she declined. She sat on the ground with her back against the tree and her gray jacket quickly became spotted with the black crumbs of bark.

Once, as she was hugging her knees and shivering into her gray jacket, I asked if she wanted my coat. She just shook her head, the blonde waves tangling in the tree.

I leaned down and kissed her out of boredom, tasting the alcohol on her lips, wishing we could have a replay of the night that had happened almost two years ago to the date.

But she wasn't interested in sex. She was interested in the fire. She was interested in reaching her hand up between my knees and rubbing my thighs with her long, cold fingers.

She was interested in drinking beer and teasing me.

Always the little tease when we were alone.

We talked for a while, ignoring the fact that something was obviously bothering her, until I'd downed my first beer and cracked open the second.

I asked her how long she was going to ignore her family. When was she going to talk to them again?

She smiled with her pretty pink lips and shrugged the angles of her shoulders. "Dunno," she answered, swirling the beer in her still mostly full bottle. "When they stop being assholes, I guess."

Maybe it was the alcohol talking. I'll never really know. My filter must have been gone too when I asked what she'd say to her aunt's husband.

I should have known better.

And she should have known not to drink the beer.

Ava admitted she'd thought a lot about what she would say. She'd had a lot of time to think, too. They hadn't spoken since that night he'd left her in the hospital.

Yet she still didn't know. Or, at least, she didn't want me to know.

We went silent for a moment with only the crackling fire popping in the cold night. Sparks of ash shot into the dark blue, almost black sky like shooting stars. The limbs we'd gathered rustled and collapsed in on themsevles as the flames bit them in two, the same way Ava was biting at her bones.

And then, suddenly, she just started talking. The words flowed endlessly, spilling out of her mouth like a river carving ou the mountains of her insides and littering the crevasses of the night with salt. All those years she'd spent biting her tongue must have left the taste on her cheeks and the stain of red on her teeth. She just wouldn't stop talking.

She couldn't.

When she spoke her voice was almost a laugh. A bitter, distant laugh. "Y'know that was the only time he ever had the balls to actually fuck me and he didn't even do it right? He'd never put anything in me 'til that goddamn stick."

Her gray eyes were cold as she stared into the fire, trying to become the smoke. More than anything she must have wanted to just disappear. I wanted her to become the haze so she'd have somewhere to hide. If only she could be a ghost the way she had been when I was sick. Then she'd be okay. 

Again, she was trapped in her body and she hated every second of it. No haunting for Ava. She was too real.

She hated being twisted in the memory of the night she always pretended she couldn't remember.

Angrily she took another sip of the beer in her hand.

"He always acted like he was gonna finger me, but he never did it right. He didn't know how to do it like you," she said. Casually, she slapped her knuckles against my shin as though she were rewarding me for a job well done.

The rings sent a metallic clap into the stars and a quick slap of the black hairband followed it.

Heat was radiating off her from all the anger she was releasing. We didn't really need a fire after the amount of power she began throwing into the atmosphere. The fury was burning through her skin and searing my legs where she had touched them.

Never had I seen her so irate. This was a new personality for her and I wondered how genuine it was. Was this the side that put on all the faces? Or was this just another costume for the masquerade?

Truth kept slipping off her pretty pink lips, mixed with nasty words and poisonous tones and I tried to imagine all the venom running through her veins, replacing her blood with hate. I could almost hear her heart pounding in her chest and I wanted my ear next to it. I wanted to feel her heat up close and personal.

She took another huge gulp of beer and wrinkled her face in disgust before continuing. "You ever had a fucking stick shoved up your ass, Carter? Your grandpa's goddamn walking stick?"

She leaned her head back against the tree, letting her blonde waves tangle with the dry, crumbling bark. They twisted and knotted and became almost as big of a mess as her life.

It was like she was filled with emptiness. Angry, black emptiness.

I looked into her gray eyes wondering just how drunk she was. Some of it was a charade, I was sure. Maybe she was a lightweight that had never been able to handle her alcohol, but she'd barely just started nursing that beer an hour before and the bottle wasn't even half gone.

There was an edge of sobriety behind her words, but I never called her on it. She wanted to be honest and she needed alcohol on her breath to be comfortable. If she wanted me to think she was completely wasted, I wanted her to think I believed the act.

But she wasn't drunk. She was just starting to sway off the edge.

She was buzzed.

I shook my head no.

"And that fucking duct tape. God. Remember how papa put tape on the handle? It felt like he was pulling my insides out, y'know. That shit will tear you up."

Her words made me sick.

She took another gulp before throwing the bottle on the ground and watching it shatter into hundreds of little pieces. The rest of the alcohol splashed out in a spray of brown mist, making the fire swell and crackle.

Each little sliver of glass sparkled and blinked like the stars in the sky and I half expected to see her reflection in them. But no matter how long I looked, I couldn't find her. Those cold gray eyes and pale lips weren't painted on the jagged edges of the shattered beer bottle. There was no haze hiding her blonde waves and forced grin, and I didn't feel like I was being haunted by her.

I simply couldn't see the picture of her.

Because glass doesn't reflect itself.

When she spoke again it was almost a shout. "And y'know, I'm actually pissed he couldn't fuck me right." She laughed once, humorlessly.

"I mean, c'mon. You don't just throw a little girl across't your lap and shove her grandpa's walking stick up her ass when you won't even put a finger in her. What kind of sick fuck does that?"

With great discomfort, she ran a distressed hand through the blonde waves, pushing them back from her forehead. Then she smoothed them back over her shoulders, hiding her face again.

"I was just a little girl and he wanted to touch me, but he wouldn't do it right. He wouldn't do it the way you do it, Carter. He wouldn't do it right."

I shifted on the tree, suddenly very aware of the bark digging into my legs and her temple casually slamming into my knee like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Back and forth. The acid dripped off her tongue and the countdown continued.

Back and forth.

Quietly, I picked at a blonde wave crawling down her back, but she didn't seem to notice. Weaving it through my fingers, I watched the way it turned silver in the moonlight and red in the firelight before dropping it to become limp and blonde on the tree.

Ava kept fidgeting.

She didn't know what to do with her hands now that the beer was gone and she was left alone to carry her words. Over and over she popped her knuckles and punched her thighs. As she spoke, she chewed on her fingernails, slurring her words and letting the poison seep into her skin.

Then something inside her broke and all the things she'd always thought about came pouring out before she could stop them. They were sick. They were strange. But they were so real.

"What was so wrong with me that he couldn't even fuck me right? He could screw himself just fine, so why not me? Why wouldn't he do it right, Carter? Why couldn't he do it right to me?"

The fire cackled as though she were joking and the broken beer bottle shined. We were just the audience. She was the poet.

"I didn't want him to do it. I didn't ask him, but why? Why, Carter? What was so wrong with me that he couldn't just finger me like a fuckin' man? Like you do it. Why couldn't he do it?"

Her words started coming faster and faster until suddenly she wasn't shouting she was crying. She let out a caged wail and a mixture of spit and beer rolled out of her pretty pink lips.

"Why did he do that to me?"

Sobbing louder than ever before, she slammed her hands into her lap. The broken beer bottle stopped sparkling.

Not sure what else to do, I slid off the downed tree and put an arm around her. Without hesitation, she laid her head on my shoulder and let the tears fall and paint my shirt a dull, soggy gray.

"Why did he do that to me, Carter? Why?"

I squeezed her tiny arm and kissed her blonde waves before resting my chin on her head, just like in the movies. But this wasn't a movie. If it had been a movie she would have been okay.

But in real life, that kind of thing didn't just fix her.

I told her I didn't know why. Sometimes life just wasn't fair.

Ashamed of the tears streaming down her face, she pulled her sleeves over her fingers and wiped them away frantically. She was always a strong girl so it killed her to come apart.

It killed her to let people know that she wasn't okay.

"Why do bad things always happen to me?" she asked.

I thought long and hard, but there was no good answer. Again she let out another choked sob before letting her fingernails dig into her arm. The porcelain skin flashed pink and red like her face.

I took her hands in mine and thought harder but no good answer would come.

So I said what I'd always thought.

I told her it was because she was brave.