Happier Without You

 

I’m happier without you. I’m happier without you. It pulsed in my head like a heartbeat. It pounded along with the hammer on my driveway, breaking property that did not belong to me. The hammer would bash against the concrete, and then come down in time for the other half. Happier without you. Happier without you. I couldn’t get the voice out of my head. It lingered and tore and poisoned everything. I thought I had been empty before this. How could I have lost so much when I had nothing to start with? Without you. Without you.

I stood and looked at the hammer in my hand. I got flashes of bringing it down on a head over and over again. Death, death would have been good. It would have been lovely. But what did it make me to decide that I wanted him dead? After everything, what kind of selfish, petty bitch did it make me to hate someone who loved me?

Petty felt fucking great.

I chucked the hammer through the air, letting it slip out of my hands before I knew what I’d done. I gasped, covering my mouth as it flew like Bullwinkle. That beautiful bastard landed in a back windshield of a car that did not belong to me. The alarm rang, I squeaked, and then took off running.

When I slammed my body into the yellow slide at the park down the street from my house, I grunted, and let myself sink into the woodchips below. I panted like the chunky monkey I was, regretting the third McDouble I had for lunch. Screw that, I didn’t regret it, and now I wished I’d gotten one of those cinnamon rolls too.

I rested my head against the slide and tucked my legs up to my chest. It wasn’t a big deal. Windows broke all the time, and I got away fast enough. It looked like rain anyway, and maybe we would get lucky enough to have some hail. Surely a massive piece of hail could break a windshield…and leave a hammer on the driver’s seat…

My phone rang in my dress pocket, and I screamed like a little bitch. The Super Mario ringtone let me know it was my dad calling.

“Hey,” I said when I answered. “What’s up?”

“Um, not much. Can I ask you something, kiddo?”

“Sure.”

Dad sighed. “Did you happen to throw a hammer through Mr. Leigh’s windshield?”

“Uhh,” I breathed. “Why do you ask?”

“Don’t know. I was just sweeping the kitchen and remembered your love of violence.” The humor left him. “We got a knock on the door saying a hammer with the name Walsh carved into the handle, was inside of Mr. Leigh’s car.”

I cursed. “Why the hell does Mom think she needs to mark all the tools?”

“Because she’s paranoid, honey. Would you like to tell me why you were so offended with a windshield that you destroyed private property?”

“No.”

“All right then. Can you come fix it please?”

I agreed, and we hung up the phone.

I made the long and slow trek back home, with my head hung and worry that my neighbor would scold me for breaking his car a little bit. I guess I had it coming, but whatever.

Dad and Mr. Leigh stood in front of the car, chatting while Dad held the hammer I stole. He hit it on his hand and glanced up at me with hazel eyes that perfectly matched mine.

“Sorry, Mr. Leigh,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to break the window.”

The man put his hands on his sides and sighed heavily at me. “I’m sure you didn’t. Do you mind?” He nodded to the car.

At least he seemed more put out than annoyed with me. It didn’t take long for the people in my life to notice that I had been all messed up this last month. He cut me a break that I needed.

I turned to the shattered back windshield and focused my power on it. The glass vibrated in the seats and floated back home. I watched the glass mend itself on my command, each piece changing into what it started as. In seconds, the glass looked like it had never broken in the first place.

“Thanks,” Mr. Leigh said. “Might I suggest you get a punching bag, or maybe a voodoo doll to play with?”

I had to try not to glare at him. “Sure.”

Dad put his arm around my shoulder and brought me inside the house. We stopped in the living room, with toys scattered everywhere, and the distant sound of children screaming in joy at whatever game they played. It sounded like Orny had a one up on Tuney, and I hoped they kept their insanity far away from me.

“Clover,” my father said, his big hands on my shoulders as he made me feel a lot smaller than my five feet and two inches. “We need to talk.”

I broke eye contact, staring at the floor. “I’m fine, Dad.”

“You’re not fine, and you haven’t been fine for a while. I didn’t realize you’d ascended to hammer chucking levels but that sounds like a red flag to me. Me and your mom are really worried about you.”

I believed him, but that was the thing. He worried about me, but it would be fleeting. In five minutes, when my siblings came running in here like a tornado, they would take all of our father’s attention. It wasn’t their fault, but it was true. In five minutes, I wouldn’t matter.

“I need time,” I told myself, because that was what everyone said. In time, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I would be fine if I got through this rough patch. They all thought that was the magic answer. Why did no one listen to me when I said it was always a rough patch? One after another? I’d never hit smooth sailing, so why should I have put so much faith in this pointless cure-all?

“I know,” Dad said. “But you threw a hammer through a car. If you need me and Mom to send you to talk to someone, or get you help—”

“No,” I said. “That’s insane. I’m not talking to a shrink because a douchebag hurt my feelings.”

Dad patted my head, and then crossed his arms. “I’ll let you do what you want, but if this kind of stuff keeps up, you’re seeing a doctor. You can’t let yourself make stupid choices because you’re hurting. You—”

And so came the tornado, in the form of a seven-year-old, and a nine-year-old. They screamed, and ran around us, continuing their game like I wasn’t trying to talk to Dad.

“Dad!” Tuney yelled, running up to him. She batted blue eyes up, and he mussed her dark blond hair. “Can you take us to the park? The birds are out and we wanna chase them.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m talking to your sister.” When he turned to me, he started again. “If you want, we can spend a little time together later. Your mom should be back from work in an hour. We can make dinner as a family.”

I knew what that meant, and I wasn’t interested in trying to scream over kids. “I—” was all I got out.

“Dad! Look at this!” Orny screamed, and Dad looked over to the floor.

My little brother had set up some Legos, and when Dad gave him attention, he smashed them while roaring like some monster in a show he watched. Dad laughed and complemented his style.

I took my exit.

When I closed my bedroom door, I locked it behind me. It didn’t do a thing for me, but I wanted a barrier between me and the people on the other side of it. It didn’t even block the loud peals of joy that hurt my ears. All they ever did was scream, and it only seemed to bother me.

I sat on the edge of my bed, unsure of what to do with the rest of my Saturday. I normally would have spent it with Peter, following him around wherever he wanted to go. It didn’t matter to me, because we got to be together. Now, I didn’t have anyone to spend my time with, so I got to sit here, alone.

I stared at the dresser in front of me, and the little wooden carvings that had been given to me as presents. I had one for every holiday, two birthdays, and one anniversary. They should have been thrown away or burned a month ago, but I couldn’t bear to toss them. I’d watched Peter shape them from nothing, not even having to touch the wood to carve into it and change it into something familiar. I did the same for him, making little glass figures that I was sure he’d gotten rid of by now.

Lying back, I stared around my room, for lack of something better to do. I would have cleaned, but that got taken care of three times this week. All of my books were organized, by size, then series, then color. They sat perfectly on the shelf, as well as every other thing in my room. Not an item out of place, or a crooked picture. It had always been like that. One constant in my life, though I wasn’t sure what it did for me. I felt the same no matter what my room looked like.

Someone knocked on my door, and I grunted as I got up to unlock it. Mom stood on the other side, still in her work clothes. I pointed to the burn mark. “You all right?”

She looked down at her overalls as she pulled her scrunchie off. “Yeah, the blowtorch got a little uppity. I hear you were trying to break our driveway with a hammer.”

Of course Dad told her. “I wasn’t trying to break it.”

“Like you weren’t trying to break the windshield?”

I stared at the wall. “Long story. It’s fine now; I fixed it.”

“Because you got lucky. What if you did something else? Something that wasn’t fixable? This is getting out of hand. You don’t do anything at all, and when you do something, it’s this.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. That was stupid of me, but I won’t do it again.”

“Mom!” Tuney called. “We’re going to the park! We want you to come!”

Mom looked over her shoulder. “Give me a second. I’m talking to your sister.”

I crossed my arms, waiting for her to take off. Then they would all go to the park, and have a great time without me, because I guess that was a common thing. Even if my parents invited me, I knew how it would have ended. I would have sat on the bench, while they all played together. On the rare occasion my parents tried to talk to me, the kids would swoop in—through no fault of their own—and make sure it didn’t happen.

Mom turned back to me. “If you need to talk about anything, I’m here.”

I nodded. “I know, Mom. Thanks.”

The truth was that Mom had a busy life, and I didn’t fit in. It would have added more stress if I came to her with every hurt and tear. As a metal worker, she was in high demand. A life that Orny would have when he was old enough, since he had the same magic as she did. I guess I got lucky, as well as unlucky. At least Dad and Tuney had useful abilities, both being able to work more natural elements, earth and wind respectively. I took after Grandma.

“Maybe we can spend some time together later,” she said, echoing my father. “You and I can go see a movie.”

“Sure,” I said as my brother yelled for her again.

“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “He’s going to keep bugging me until I listen.”

“I know. It’s fine.”

She gave me a hug and patted my back. “You’ll be okay. Chin up, and don’t spend so much time letting that jerk make you sad.”

Right, because it worked like that. “I’ll see you later.”

She kissed my cheek, and then I was all alone in my house, staring at the wall again.

 

 

I pulled at orange curls until they straightened out, and then I let them snap back to my head. I’d been at it for about twenty minutes, since my last hour of the day was for homework, and I had none. I always used my time in class to get it finished, and this hour only existed for the students who would have rather talked with friends, than worked. Since I didn’t have friends anymore, it left me with all this time.

Our teacher had checked out mentally, so I took my phone out to see if I had texts. A habit I had, that I should have broken by now. Peter had been the only one who ever texted me, except for a rare one from my parents. Mostly asking me to do a chore when I got home or letting me know that they were going out with the kids, so I would be on my own for dinner. Those were the nights I stayed out with Peter, doing nothing but sitting around and talking. It made doing nothing feel like something important.

Everyone else chomped at the bit for the bell to ring, but I couldn’t have cared one way or another. After this, I would go home, watch TV, and do nothing else. Really, nothing at all. At least I was out of the house here, and it stayed quiet in some of my classes.

The dull buzz in the room allowed me to whistle to myself, without anyone noticing. Why I did it, I didn’t know. It passed time and distracted me a little bit.

My phone vibrated with an alert I should have deleted a while ago. It reminded me that lacrosse practice was today. Normally, I would go and sit in the bleachers, waiting for Peter to finish up. Then we’d get something to eat, and he’d bring me to my house. Now, I had nothing to do with my after-school time. I’d never liked that stupid game, but it brought me so much joy to get to see him play. It served as a break for him in his miserable life. A life that he used to tell me I made a lot better. I had been the reason he could handle it, he’d told me. Now, it felt like that had all been erased.

I could still go… Sneak over to the field, take a peek, and then head home. I hadn’t said a single word to Peter in weeks. What if he was upset and I wasn’t there to comfort him? He didn’t have all that many people he talked to, and I’d been his closest friend for the time we dated, and even before. What if he needed someone, and was too nervous to ask me? On the one hand, good. I wanted him to suffer. On the other hand, if I didn’t make him feel better, no one would have.

Fine, so I could stop by for a few minutes, and see what he looked like. I would know if he was upset, with one look at his face. I didn’t even have to talk to him. If he seemed fine, then I would go home. If not, then we could talk for a little while.

My heart raced while I waited for the bell to ring, and it told me I made the wrong choice. I needed to go home and spend some time alone. The boy didn’t want to be with me. I’d accepted that, but something in me kept fighting with logic. This was a disease, and I kept tossing away my antibiotics. It would bite me in the ass sooner or later.

When the bell rang, I let everyone go out ahead of me. If I got to the field too early, then Peter might have seen me. The goal was to be sneaky here. While it wasn’t a skill of mine, I wanted to try anyway.

Though I kept my head down, I felt like I had a hundred eyes on me, all knowing what I had planned. The eyes in my mind judged me, telling me how pathetic this all would be, as if I didn’t already know that. When I looked up, of course no one had been looking at me. They were all busy with their own lives and wanting to get home. Why would they have cared about what I had planned?

I took my time at my locker, putting all of my books away, and organizing them by size. Once I finished, I decided I could head out. Slowly, I started walking through the hall, and to the exit of the school.

The players had already gotten out of the locker room and gathered on the field for a quick talk with the coach. A few people sat on the bleachers, and my gaze homed in on the row of cheerleaders. I only knew a couple of them, but my stomach still turned when I saw Kelly sitting there, watching the boys on the field.

Kelly… My body burned with hate for her, and it always would. She’d been Peter’s first girlfriend, but that ended more than six months before we got together. They dated from thirteen, to about sixteen. She decided that Peter’s baggage was too much for her, so she took off. I knew in my head she didn’t want him, but it still poked at me that he might have wanted her. Never did he give me any kind of indication that he wanted her back, or that he’d messed around on me. She didn’t give me that indication either. They were friends, who barely talked. Still, I wanted her to fall down the stairs. Before, I’d hated her for hurting him. Now, I hated her for what my mind decided about her and Peter. Now that we weren’t together, he could have gone for it again. It had been a while, and she could have changed her mind. She was prettier than me. Blond hair, green eyes, and a body without baby fat. I looked down at myself, and the set of hips I got from my mother. Peter always said he liked it, but I didn’t remember that when I looked at the tall and slender Kelly.

I ducked behind the cars atop the hill leading down to the field. If I didn’t have orange hair, then I would have blended in better. But thanks to the colors and quantity, I had little hope. After I tied it back in a ponytail, I covered myself behind a red VW Bug, and glanced around the parking lot. Everyone who stuck around, had already gotten there. That added up to boyfriends and girlfriends of the players, for the most part. A few kids doing homework while they waited for a ride or something like that. They all had a place, and I hunched behind a damn car.

My eyes found Peter in a second, like I’d been programmed to do so. He stood tall, with his lacrosse stick in his hand, while his arm rested on the top. I stared at his curling blond hair, wishing I could have seen his eyes. Most of his face was hidden from me, so I couldn’t tell how he looked. Then the coach went to sit down, and the boys broke off to start practice.

I should have left before they began to run around, yelling and throwing that damn ball in the air. I should have been home by then, reading or sleeping. Yet I lingered, and watched the boys play a game I didn’t care about. And I watched Peter as he moved like a bullet across the field. He got three goals in the first ten minutes of the game.

He looked fine. He was in the middle of a game, sure, but he looked fine. Not bothered by anything at all. More so when he high fived a teammate after a goal. They laughed about something in an exchange that I couldn’t hear, and my body heated.

That fucker was fine. Smiling, and playing like he always did. How could he not have been a little slower, or not have a harder time smiling? He cried when we broke up and told me he was sorry. How could he have felt like shit then, but be so gleeful now? He wasn’t ever gleeful before.

Happier without you, happier without you, pulsed in my head, reminding me. I guessed I was some kind of dark cloud that must have dampened his moods. Though I knew him for a little while before we got together, and he never seemed happy. Something had always been wrong, and he used to tell me I made it better. When did that change?

They took a break, and I realized I had been there for too long. Almost an hour, when I checked my phone. I really, really should have taken off, but my feet stayed planted on the ground. I kept on watching Peter, though the last thing I wanted to see was his face.

He went over to the bleachers, and Kelly separated from her fellow cheerleaders. Peter stopped in front of her, and the two chatted. Peter smiled again, and Kelly laughed at something he said. The two didn’t touch at all or move closer than the three feet between them. Still, my chest hurt when I saw it.

I really, really needed to get out of there. My stomach turned, and I wanted to throw up all over the car I leaned on. The owner would probably have been upset if I did that. I stood up straight and decided that I didn’t need to hurt myself anymore today. I could go home and eat a box of Cheese Nips, and everything would have felt a lot better.

With one more look at Peter smiling the day away, I put my forehead against the Bug, and wished I’d gone the hell home when I had the chance.

I didn’t notice the car starting to roll until one of the tires ran my foot over. I yelled, and the car kept on going. Everyone on the field stopped and turned to see what was happening at the top of the hill. I would have freaked out about that more, if I didn’t have to stop the car.

It traveled fast, thanks to the incline on this bad idea of a parking lot. I couldn’t have caught it with my bare hands, obviously, but I tried something else as a girl screamed from the lacrosse field. I called on all of the glass attached to the car and told it to stop. I hoped that it would have made the car come to a pause, and I could have pulled it back to me. That did not happen.

The glass popped and shattered in and out of the car. I flinched back when it flew out in my direction, doing the opposite of what I wanted.

I watched the car keep rolling down the hill, gathering speed as it went. A girl flew up the hill in my direction, but I didn’t look at her for more than a few seconds. The car smashed into a streetlight, the pole destroying the trunk like it was a boulder falling onto playdough.

“My fucking car!” the girl at my side screamed. “What did you do to my car!”

I stared at her; my eyes wide open. The people on the field below now all looked up at the two of us, and my skin tingled when I caught sight of Peter, his eyes right on me. I didn’t look for long, because I wanted to pretend I didn’t know he looked. This sick thrill rushed through me, knowing I got his attention as I acted like he didn’t have it. That same thrill made me feel nauseous, wishing he would look away.

“I didn’t mean to,” I spat out. “I… I leaned on it, and then it started moving. It had to have been in neutral.”

The girl—Tammy I thought was her name—shoved me. “Are you really blaming me for this? You destroyed my car!”

I still had no clue what I was meant to say here. A fucked up car sat at the bottom of the hill, twenty or thirty people stared at me, and I couldn’t have defended myself. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry!”

“I—I don’t… I didn’t know it would happen.”

Tammy’s fingers locked in her blond hair as wild eyes went from the car, to me, to the car again. I thought she was about to try and choke me to death, which would have been justified, of course. One of her friends came up and put her hands on her shoulders. It didn’t seem to calm down Tammy.

“Breathe,” the other girl said, and then she glared at me. “You’re paying for this, you little moron.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know. Hold on. My mom is a metal worker. She can fix this.”

I pulled the backpack off of me and started digging around for paper and a pen. My hands shook violently as my legs got all wobbly where I stood. I heard Tammy growling at me, and her friend calling me names to make her feel better. Letting it go, I kept looking for paper. I grabbed a notebook, and wrote out an address and the name of the shop my mom worked in.

“Just take the car in,” I said, handing over the paper. “Anything wrong with it, they can take care of no problem. My mom can have it looking like nothing ever happened. I promise.”

Tammy didn’t take it, and instead, glared even harder at me. “You’re really fucking stupid, you know that? Maybe don’t touch other people’s cars. What the hell were you doing anyway?”

I glanced down at the field again, where most of the players still watched me. Some had moved on, getting back to the game and calling the others. Peter wasn’t watching me anymore, because I must not have been that interesting.

“I was…” I started. “Someone called me, and I stopped to check my phone. I wasn’t paying attention, and I leaned against the car. Then it started rolling.”

Tammy wouldn’t look away from me or take the paper from my hand. I didn’t want to lower it, and make her think I took the offer back, so I got to awkwardly hold it as I waited for her to try and murder me. I hoped she made it quick.

“Do you even care?” she asked. “Do you care that you ruined my car, and my day? Because your dopey ass face makes me think you just wanna get the hell out of here so you can get back to your life.”

I didn’t want to tell her that was true, so I stayed silent. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, it was more that my brain didn’t quite register what I had done. So mustering up a reaction face wasn’t all that easy for me. I wasn’t expressive, even on the best of days.

“Well?” her friend asked. “She has a point. Do you go around being this careless all the time, or are you in a mood today?”

What else could I have said? It wasn’t like I’d set out to break a car when I woke up this morning. I said I was sorry and offered to have it fixed. My people skills didn’t stretch enough for me to properly have this taken care of.

Tammy’s friend took the paper from my hands, ripping it from me so fast that it sliced my finger open. “Thanks,” she snapped. “You really need to get your shit together.”

Yeah, I really did. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

Tammy stared daggers at me; her fists tight at her sides. “I don’t even know what the hell to say to you. This is, like way too much for me today. I don’t want to look at your face anymore. You might as well leave.”

I put my backpack on again and took a step backward. I wanted to be as far away from this place as I could have gotten, running and hiding from the world, and the eyes, and everything that hurt inside of me. I could only escape halfway. “I… When you call, ask for Zinnia Walsh. She’ll take care of it.”

I stared at the field one last time, seeing if Peter had taken up interest since I’d last looked. He had gotten back to his game and caught the ball a few seconds after I glanced over at him. He had a big smile on his face and called out to one of the other players as he chucked it through the air. Life went on, as I saw in front of me. Kelly cheered for Peter, and he turned that smile right to her. He used to look to me in the crowd when something like that happened. I would wave him on, and that smile made me feel like I mattered. Those days were behind me, and I knew I had to accept that.

Kelly waved both of her arms at Peter and yelled so loud for him that I actually heard it. He stopped on the field and called back to her. Every word stung. He couldn’t have been bothered to come see what happened with me, but he could stop the game to wave to his friend. How did I go from mattering the most to him, to not mattering at all? To not being worth a couple minute’s effort?

“Thanks,” Tammy echoed her friend, the word sounding harsher somehow. “I’ll be sure to tell her how stupid her daughter is.”

I turned and started to walk away. “She already knows.”