Chapter Seventeen: The Bad Times
River Jenkins

A look of pure surprise washes over Myles’ face when he sees me entering his full bar that night. He was surprised because I left here not long ago, but when I left, the bar was quite empty and no one really paid me attention.

His black shirt’s sleeves were rolled up. He was busy polishing beer glasses with a clean cloth when I sat down on one of the surprisingly empty stools.

Beer and bar food fills my nostrils and even though the aromas of hot wings and fries smelled delicious, especially since I didn’t eat anything the entire day, I couldn’t stomach any food right now.

What my aunt said to me tore a hole inside my heart, even though her words were right: I was to blame for how I was acting. I was pushing everyone away who was trying their best to help me, but I was so broken that I don’t think I can ever be healed to my full potential ever again, and therefore I keep thinking and making myself believe that I’m beyond repair.

Myles sets the glass he just polished onto the counter before picking up another one. He looks at me with a frown settled between his brown eyebrows. “What happened?” He asks.

I hated the fact that he knew something was wrong even though I sat down with an empty expression. I came here wanting to avoid the question, but with a guy like Myles who monitored my every move and who examined my every emotion very carefully, it was quite impossible.

I shake my head slowly, drumming my index finger against the bar’s counter. “I don’t want to talk about it, Myles. I just need a drink. Specifically that fine whiskey of yours like the last time. Make it a double.”

I get a few strange glances at the request and I wanted nothing more than to flip them off for not minding their own damn business, but I was so tired that I couldn’t even get angry this time. I just felt… empty, and emotionless.

I didn’t think that anyone’s words could have such an effect on me, but what my aunt said, that I was acting this way out of spite, really got to me. She made it sound like I was acting this way because I wanted to act like this, like I wanted to be this heartless asshole that bit everyone’s heads off.

Myles laughs it off, looking at the customers sitting a few stools away from me—to the customers who heard my request. “He’s obviously joking.” He says, flinging the cloth he used to polish the glasses over his shoulder in one swift movement. “I would never serve a minor alcohol.” He smiles sweetly.

The customers just shrug it off and returned to their conversations.

“What’s going on?” He asks, leaning toward me so he could talk to me in a whisper. “Did something happen?”

I sigh, shaking my head at myself. “I wasn’t joking about that whiskey, Myles.”

“I can’t just pour you a drink in front of everyone here, River.” He says. “Those people are already suspicious.” He jerks his chin toward the assholes who stared at me strangely a few moments ago.

“Fuck them.”

Myles gives me a disapproving look.

“Make it a diet coke then!” I throw my hand up into the air before running it through my dampened hair. I forgot how relaxing a night jog could be, but I preferred to fight over jogging, but I wasn’t even in the mood to fight.

He nods, turning around to grab a diet coke from the fridge. He walks back over to me, setting the can of coke down onto the counter in front of me.

The can was already starting to sweat from the humidity inside the bar.

I prop the can open and take a long swig from the can, imagining the liquid to be a shot of whiskey, and not some diet coke that tasted too stale on my tongue like it has been sitting in the refrigerator for days. It was Myles’s bar; it won’t surprise me if it has been sitting in the fridge for a while.

Myles starts to wipe the counter with another cloth to rid the counter from cracked peanuts and alcohol that has been messed. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” He asks, looking at me with his left eyebrow raised.

I trail my finger over the rim of the can.

“I wanted to come here to forget, not to explain what happened so I could be reminded of it again.” I tell him. “So no questions, please. I just want to forget.”

“You cannot come to my bar, demand a drink and not tell me what got you in such a mood.” Myles says, nodding at someone once, telling him that they were leaving. He diverts his attention back to me. “I told you to come here whenever you needed someone to talk to, so you came here and I assumed you needed someone to talk to… So, talk to me, River.”

I release a sigh, looking at the only guy I could actually tolerate in this world. “My aunt said some things that hurt me, I guess.” I tell him. “She got fed up with me, basically. I think she had enough of my moods.” I take another sip of the stale coke. “She blames me for acting this way, like I want to be like this.”

“We both know that she didn’t mean it like that, River.”

I lift my shoulder in a shrug, lifting the can of coke to take another gulp from it. “She said she didn’t mean it, but I know she did.” I tell him. “But she doesn’t understand that I just want someone to really ask me how I’m doing, Myles. I’m not acting like this out of spite. I became like this because he made me like this.”

“You know how people get when they’re angry.” He says. “They say things they don’t mean.”

I squash a water droplet against the metal can with the tip of my finger, trying to make sense of what he was saying; if she meant it or not, but I know deep down that my aunt did mean the words she said to me earlier.

I was being a nuisance to her.

I was getting too much for her to handle.

And it was my fault.

• • •

“River! Where have you been? I was so worried about you!” My aunt asks the second I entered the house. My uncle wasn’t sleeping on the couch anymore; my aunt probably told him to go to bed after I left the house.

She was sitting on the couch, looking concerned.

She probably thought I was out fighting again, so she expected me to be all bruised up and bloodied, but even though my hands ached for some punches, I wasn’t in the mood to fight tonight.

I ignore her and climb the stairs to my room.

Once I entered my room, I closed the door behind me and walked over to my bed with glass scrunching underneath my boots.

The mess I made earlier wasn’t cleaned up; the memories I had left were still lying on the floor like it meant nothing at all.

I spot a photograph just lying beside my feet and picked it up, smiling when the memory of that day came to me.

It was a photo of Beck and I, smiling happily at the camera.

His right arm was draped over my shoulder, trying to stand on his tip toes to look taller than me, but he was still a few inches shorter than me, even on his tip toes. My aunt took the picture when we visited her house years ago.

I actually forgot I had this photo, but I realised why: the glass was dirty, no one could really see through it anymore, and I didn’t really bother to clean it over the months.

I didn’t want to look into his eyes and feel the pain all over again.

We looked so happy in the photograph, but deep down I knew what was to come the second we would arrive home that day, but I still had a smile glued onto my face anyways, hiding the pain from all of them.

They were so oblivious. But so was I.

I hear knocking at my door.

“I am not in the mood.” I tell my aunt.

She didn’t care though; she still entered my room and walked over to the bed by the sounds of glass scrunching underneath her feet. She sits down at the foot of my bed, near my feet that were dangled off of the edge of the bed. “River, can we please talk? I am begging you.” She says and I see her looking at me even though my eyes were focused on the ceiling. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier… you know that I would never mean something like that. You have a right to feel what you feel. It’s just…You refuse to get help, and you can actually stop feeling like this if you get some help, River.”

“I refuse to get help because professional help won’t bring them back!” I yell, out of frustration. “I deserve to feel like this because I wasn’t there for them when they needed me the most, Aunt P. I was supposed to be the big brother. I was supposed to protect them, but I wasn’t there for them, and now I’m living with the guilt and I refuse to feel anything else because I deserve to feel like this.”

She shakes her head, wiping a tear that rolled down her cheek. “You don’t deserve to feel like this,” my aunt says, shaking her head repeatedly, “you don’t deserve to feel guilty. What that monster did… it wasn’t your fault.”

“I wasn’t there to protect them.” I tell her again, sitting up on my bed and looking at her. “So it was my fault. I could’ve prevented everything from happening. If I’d just known sooner, I would have been there for them.”

“You couldn’t have known that it would happen, River.”

I did know, but it was too late. I found out too late.

“It happened to me.” I nod, slowly. “It was bound to happen to them too.”

The memories of Beck and what happened was like a wave pulling me away, and no matter how hard I tried to fight it, it was already too late, I was already too far away, and the memories comes all at once, and fast.

The memories are slowly starting to kill me, like the wave pulling you away. I was slowly slipping away, and I’m drifting too far away from the shore, and I was afraid that t no one would be able to bring me back to the shore.

A person can only handle so much pain before it becomes too unbearable for them to handle, and I don’t think I can bear the pain of losing them anymore. It was too unbearable.

“Please don’t blame yourself, River.” She begs. “Please. You shouldn’t suffer for what he did. You don’t deserve it. Please, River.”  She takes my hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. She cups my cheek with the other, smiling when she looks me in the eyes. “You have her eyes. It always reminded me of the ocean in the evenings, when the moon would shine onto the water. You’re a spitting image of her.”

“I was a spitting image of her, you mean.”

“She will always be your mother, River.”

“I know.” I tell her, swallowing hard. “I just miss her so fucking much.”

I feel my heart constricting inside my chest, feeling it break every time I thought of them. It was on the verge of breaking, but I welcomed the pain.

• • •

“Why isn’t the grass cut? And didn’t I say that you should wash my car?” He asks in an angry voice, the one I know so damn well.

Of course he made sure that I was alone first to confront me.

“I have homework to do. And I have to study for a test on Friday.” I tell him, seeing him ball his fists into tight fists.

He then grabs the pen from my hands and throws it against the wall. “Did you just talk back, boy?”

“No. I just said that—”

He grabs me up from my sitting position on the bed and pins me against the wall. My head hits the wall from the force of his arms on my shoulders and it wasn’t long after he grabbed me and shoved me against it again. He grabs my shirt, pressing me against the wall harder. “I asked you a question and I expect you to answer without sarcasm.” His breath reeks of alcohol when it washes across my face, making me gag.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic, dad.” I croak out.

“Good boy.” He says, patting my shoulder after he released my shirt. “Now get on with it. I need my car spotless for tonight.”

I take in a deep, shaky breath as I watch him leave my room.

All I could think of was that I needed to be his punching bag before he does it to them too. I’ll rather walk with broken bones than watch them suffer too. I’ll then be his punching bag, gladly, any day.

Beck and mom, they were important to me and I swore that I’ll protect them until the day I will blow out my very last breath.

“I hate you.” I mutter under my breath, looking down at my ruffled shirt before I smoothed it down.

“Who do you hate?” My brother Beck asks when he waltzes into my room.

“Math.” I tell him, lying between my teeth.

“Anything I can help with?”

I shake my head, walking over to my bed so he won’t see my ruffled shirt I failed to smooth down.

“I know a thing or two about Math.”

“It’s fine, B. I will manage.”

He shifts from one foot to the other, biting his lip.  

There was something he wanted to ask.

“What’s up, Beck?”

“I wonder if dad would play ball with me.”

“No!” I quickly said without thinking. “He’s busy with work stuff. I’ll play with you later. I just need to wash the car.”

“Okay!” He smiles brightly. “Thank you, Riv. You’re the best big brother in the entire world.”

I woke up in the middle of the night with sweat running down my forehead.

“You’re the best big brother in the entire world.”

I wish I believed those words, but I didn’t.

“I failed you, little brother. I failed you and I am so sorry.” I whisper the words to my ceiling, hoping by some miracle that he’d hear my apology—wherever he was.

I shake my head.

I was so clueless back then.

The signs were there, but I believed it every time he said that it was just a football injury, but Beck was just like me, he made up lies so that he could protect me and mom, just like I lied to him all those years ago. I protected him by keeping him in the dark about what my dad did to me, and he did the same by lying as well.

In the end I wasn’t there to protect him like he tried to protect me.

I was too busy avoiding home to even notice what was going on, until I found his notebook lying underneath his bed one day.

At first I thought that he was being bullied at school, but it was only after the second week of reading his entries when I started to connect the dots.

Drunk. Angry. Abusive. Bruises. Crying. Pain. Our dad.

I thought I was being my father’s punching bag to protect Beck and my mother from his wrath, but it resulted in my father getting bored with me.

So he moved onto them next.

Two new targets that wouldn’t fight back like I did.

It was my mom first and then Beck because he begged my dad to leave her alone, so he endured whatever she would’ve endured just to protect her.

Beck wrote it himself in the notebook, in the poem he wrote, the last poem he has ever wrote in the notebook. He wrote everything down so I could find it, and when I finally did find the notebook, it was already too late.  

I was too late when I realised that the bully was our dad this entire time.

And the worst part is that I should have known that he was, but I was clueless, and I wasn’t there. If I was, they would have still been here today.