11. Poppy Wells

11

Poppy Wells

A ll my thoughts were consumed by the one person I didn’t want to think about. His face, his words… everything . It was all a drug I couldn’t stop taking. Jasper was the one who held me that night in the surf school. Jasper was the one who carried me upstairs and took care of me—even gave me his surf jersey…

I couldn’t breathe .

When I went down to the beach, I didn’t want to fight him. I went to thank him , but somehow, he managed to get under my skin, and I just snapped . I was angry at him—angry for letting me believe it was Nate who helped me, angry for taking care of me when he shouldn’t have because now it made it ten times harder to hate him.

I hated myself for thinking it could’ve been different this time.

I hated the world.

I hated him .

But no matter how much I tried to convince myself of the latter, my thoughts itched to trail back to him. Fingers clutching tightly to the fabric of his jersey, I held it close to my face, breathing in. Back pressed against my door, I gripped onto the remnants of him with everything I had, not wanting to fall away into the darkness. My cheeks were red and swollen with dried tears and Call your mom by Noah Kahan played through my headphones.

I was just as scared of the dark as I was comforted by it.

I missed all my classes this morning because of my mom. She had a huge destructive episode. Locked herself in the bathroom since two this morning and I had to break the door down with a baseball bat to get it to open. She was lying down, body draped half-conscious over the bathtub. It took one glance at the empty bottle of vodka at her feet and the just-as-empty pill bottle spilled open into the sink to know what she had done. I spent my entire morning taking care of her, making sure she was alive , before returning to my room, comfortable enough to leave her but scared shitless in case she did something, and I wasn’t home to help her.

Each night, I ripped myself apart trying to find the cracks in my skin. To find the flaws they whispered about. The imperfections . The errors . The broken pieces that could not be put back together again.

That was how I ended up here—clutching onto Jasper’s jersey, letting the hints of lavender calm the nausea and dread that had worked its way through my entire body, leaving no inch unscathed. I remembered what he said to me—about how his mom used to spray his pillows with a lavender mist so that he could fall asleep without being caught by his nightmares.

Bitterness arose in my throat, but I swallowed it back down.

I wished my mom cared enough about me to do that.

I wished she cared about me at all.

“ Poppy !”

I jumped to my feet, yanked my door open, and ran down the hall to where my mom called. Her thin, gray frame stood at the stove and a pan was propped up above a flame with pieces of spaghetti sticking out of it. I walked over and turned the gas off immediately before the place caught on fire.

She turned and swatted my hand away. I flinched.

“No, don’t do that,” she said, brows scrunched. “Sit down, will ya? I’m trying to make your favorite mac and cheese. The one I made you secretly before practice because he wouldn’t let you…” Her voice trailed off into the silence that surrounded us.

My heart ached as I breathed out, waiting for her to move—she mentioned his name and now I had to be there for her when she crumbled.

I had to hold her above the waves when I was already drowning.

Neither of us moved or even breathed.

“Sit, Poppy.” She said after a moment, turning around to grab something from the fridge that had been open the entire time.

I perched myself onto a kitchen stool and watched as she made the cheesy sauce. She cooked slowly like each small movement was a struggle. I wanted to watch her like I did when I was little, giddy with anticipation about the secret meals we shared together. I wanted to see her through the eyes of the little girl who adored her—who wanted to grow up to be just like her.

But I couldn’t because all I saw when I looked at her was the hollow skeleton of the woman she used to be and the shadow of the mother I knew now. I watched each movement carefully, hoping to catch any trigger that could have her launching into another depressive episode. I exhausted myself but if I didn’t do this and something happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. She might’ve been a shadow of the mother I need her to be but she was the only family I had left, and without her?

I’d be completely alone .

A fact she delighted in reminding me about.

Lifting the pan off the stove, she poured the mac and cheese into a small white bowl. I raced off my seat to turn the gas off, again. With a frown, she looked at me, almost puzzled, before her face relaxed.

“Oh. Silly me,” she mused, turning back to the food .

Sitting back down on the stool, I watched as she placed the bowl down in front of me with a spoon and a small smile.

“Just how you used to like it.”

I nodded slowly.

I still like it now, mom.

Instead, I said nothing, just picked up the spoon and put the pasta to my lips to blow softly. When I tasted it, the pasta was soggy and hot and had way too much sauce, but it was all masked by the memories.

When I ate it, I was a kid again, hurriedly blowing on it and scoffing it down before he walked in and commented on how I didn’t need the extra carbs. He’d grab my cheeks between his fingers, squeeze, and turn to my mom and tell her to stop feeding me crap because I had to be in the best form for the comps. She’d stare at him blankly and blink once before taking the bowl off me and scooping it all into the bin.

I put my spoon down, my appetite gone, despite having not eaten in two days. It was funny how the human mind worked sometimes. How a single memory could ruin something.

That was what you have done to me.

You have ruined me.

Broken me.

Picking up the bowl, I scooped the rest into the bin hurriedly like he was standing behind me and watching over my shoulder. He may be gone now but his words lingered in my mind like a tattooed kiss. I chased the shadows of him through the halls, left alone to pick up the pieces of the family he’d shattered.

I knew from the first hit that I had always been too young for this.

Years I spent trying to figure out why he was different, why he was like that, but each time led to another beating, and I quickly learned that answers were never going to be a luxury I could own. Because when he hit her, she hit me. And the cycle never stopped.

I cleaned everything, dried it, and placed it back in the cupboards. I did the same with the pan and the spoon. There was no trace of it ever having existed .

Just how he liked it.

“What’s this?”

I turned to my mom and fear washed over me when I spotted the surf school flier in her hands. I stepped backwards, back pressed tightly into the counter.

“It’s nothing, I swear. I found it outside, I just forgot to put it in the bin.”

She couldn’t know I have a job. The last time I made that mistake, she spent all my pay checks on drugs and starved us both for a month. We had no money to pay for the electricity bill, and some nights, I even sneaked into my middle school late at night to sleep behind the bookshelves at the back of the library just to make sure I would be at school on time.

Half the time, I had no idea what time of day it was or what fucking day it even was. Everything blended together—the hours, the days, until I could no longer tell them apart. It was a huge blur. I think it was my brain blocking out the memories. Half my childhood was erased because it was so traumatic my own mind thought I couldn’t handle knowing the truth.

Ignorance was bliss , after all.

“Did you apply to work there with Daniel?” she asked, voice nothing more than a distant whisper.

My brows crossed. “Why?”

Anger started to flame in my chest. I needed to get out of this house before it killed me. Or before I killed her. Daniel had been more of a parent to me in five minutes than she had been the last five years. He said he knew me when I was little, but I didn’t remember him at all. It was probably my dad. Or my mom. Hell , my entire family was so broken it could’ve been either of them.

If I didn’t escape this house, I would end up just like her and I couldn’t let that happen.

But perhaps I was already too broken. Perhaps this was my only future.

“Because he’s dangerous , Poppy. Your father didn’t like him, and we don’t associate with him and that wife of his. Stay away from them.”

With that, she limped slowly to her room, slamming the door in my face as I followed her. I banged my fists against the door, shouting at her to open it but it was like she didn’t exist beyond that point. That once the door was closed, my mother was gone, and the depression was all that was left of her.

I wanted to scream. Rage buzzed in my blood as I grabbed my old hoodie from the edge of my bed and hastily tore my headphones from the pocket, flinging them over my ears. I flicked through my playlist, skipping over all the sad songs. I didn’t want to cry or to pity myself—I needed to scream, to release this anger inside me that was eating me whole.

Settling on my favorite playlist, I ran down to the beach and did not stop. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to just stop for once, but I couldn’t . I couldn’t stop running. I couldn’t stop the pain because deep down, I deserved to feel it. I deserved to suffer. I deserved it all.

I caught the distasteful gaze of people walking down the street, but I didn’t care. I ran down the street until the pavement turned to sand. When I could feel the waves crawl up the beach to kiss my skin, I finally stopped running. I felt like I’d been running my entire life. From my home, from my problems, from my own thoughts . My life moved at a million miles per hour, and I was getting steamrolled in the process.

I wasn’t surprised that I had ended up here—I always did. Someday, I wished to be as free as the ocean—unbound to anything tangible but a great force to be reckoned with. The smell of the ocean always had the power to draw me in and I willingly gave my soul to the waves it withheld. All I wanted was the ocean. The sea spoke to me in a language that only I understood. It knew my body and my heart and my soul. It was merciless and rough and uncontainable, and every time I stepped a foot into it, I was completely and utterly at its mercy. I respected the waves and overtime they grew to care for me too. It was the truest place I had ever felt home and that would never change.

Heat crawled up my spine, painting my cheeks, despite the harsh winds coming off the sea. I felt like someone was watching me. Spinning around, I gazed over my surroundings—to my left, the cliffs trailed upward, getting steeper and steeper. I knew some of the local teens liked to cliff jump off them.

Though, like everyone in this small town, I had heard the rumors of the boy who jumped. His body washed up on the rocks a few days later. The police released a media statement concluding that the young boy had jumped with the intention of never coming back up for air. They said he died a slow painful death; he drowned, lungs slowly filling up with salt water since the rocks cut him up but not enough to kill him outright.

Ever since then, they supposedly monitored that spot and placed up tape to stop people from following his lead. It was a long time ago now.

Salt water bathed my toes, and I felt myself instantly relaxing. Here was where Daniel said the surf school practiced. I had to admit, it was a good scheme they had. I wished something like that had existed when he was still here. Maybe that way, Oliver would’ve known what to do when the rip caught him. I shook my head, freeing myself of that thought. I had moved on from that. There was no point worrying over it anymore.

After a moment, I stepped closer into the waves. I didn’t stop until the salty water brushed past my hips. The surf was small and light right now and I knew the direction of the rip the second I stepped foot into the water. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt it in my bones, my soul, and that was good enough for me. Surfing was a ruthless sport and you had to know how to trust your gut—which waves to pick, which ones to back out of…it was a constant guessing game of chances, but after years of being out here, I trusted my gut more than any other person in my life.

My running shorts were damp, and the edges of my throw on top were skimming the surface of the water. My phone was clasped tightly in my hand, the wire of my headphones barely above the waves. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I needed this—this calmness, this sense of home.

I didn’t know how long I had spent there in the water until the Scuba-duba-do-boo-boo of Music for a Sushi Restaurant crashed through my headphones. The one thing I wanted in life was to travel—to go everywhere and anywhere. To see the entire world and know that I wasn’t alone in it. That there was something more than this town, that I was destined for something more than this town.

But seeing Harry did come in a close second.

What a fucking dream that was.

But sometimes, a dream was more than enough.