Cecelia Ahern - Flawed

I’m nervous about arriving at a party with people I don’t know, but it’s more of an excitement. I’m ready to do something new. I’ll be there by 8:00 PM. Two hours of being young again ahead of me, because I don’t want to be home late. I want to be home well ahead of Mary May’s arrival, so there’s no doubt that I have not broken any rules. Two hours is perfect. New friends, new beginnings.

Despite my parents’ nerves about my going, they are both delighted that I’m doing something that a seventeen-year-old should be doing. That I’m not holed up in my bedroom crying as I have been the past few days. But mostly one of the reasons they were so open about my coming here was that they know Logan’s parents. Not personally, but they know of them. Everybody does. They are both pastors, a husband-and-wife team. Because of this, they get a fair amount of media attention, and they have been upstanding citizens. I feel this is probably why Logan reached out with the olive branch. He lives in a house that encourages understanding and forgiveness. He knows what it’s like to be perceived as being different, to be watched by others and analyzed and dissected until there’s nothing left of you but to feel raw and naked.

We follow the directions in Logan’s invitation to a modest white house with a pretty yard. They even have a picket fence. Mom and I embrace, and Mom holds on to me tight, too tight, afraid to let go, but she finally does, eyes teary.

“I’ll be here at ten. Call me if you need me to be here earlier. Or call about anything. Even if it’s small. If someone says something stupid or nasty or—”

“Mom!” I laugh. “I’ll be fine!”

“Okay, okay.” She grins, finally letting go.

She watches as I make my way to the front door, and it reminds me of when I first rode my bike without training wheels. I look at her in the car, terrified of letting me go, terrified I’m about to fall.

For a party, it is remarkably quiet, but perhaps that’s how the son of pastors has to party. There is a car in the driveway, and I recognize it as being Natasha’s car. This makes me nervous, and not in an excited way. I don’t get along with Natasha, not that we’ve ever spoken, but she has been vocal about my presence in the school, particularly in swim class on the first day I went back. She won’t be happy about my being here. I know Logan and she are close, so perhaps he can convince her to change her mind. It occurs to me that I may need to do more mind-changing tonight than I’d thought. Perhaps tonight won’t be fun. It will be an icebreaker, and the next night can be fun. Baby steps … I walk up the driveway, my legs wobbly in my sky-high heels. I ring the doorbell and wait. I turn around to Mom and wave at her to go. She gives in and takes off down the road, leaving me alone finally.

There is silence inside, and when I look through the side panel of glass, I see a single simple wall-mounted Jesus on the crucifix. His head is dipped, covered in a crown of thorns, his hands and feet nailed to the cross. It is a most vivid piece, stronger than I have ever seen before, and the hairs go up on my arms. My antennae suddenly up, I take a step back—right into a person standing behind me.

I yelp with fright. And then a bag comes down over my head and I can’t breathe.

FORTY-FOUR

“SOMEONE GET HER hands,” I hear Logan hiss as my fists land another blow to his face. I know it’s a face because I feel my finger poke an eyeball and land on a tongue to be quickly snapped at by teeth.

I don’t need anyone to grab my hands. I am genuinely still after I hear the sound of his voice. In the few seconds that I have been struggling, battling against the arms trying to restrain me, I had this crazy thought that if I screamed loud enough, Logan and his friends would hear me and save me. It hits me now that this is the act of Logan and his friends. My blood turns cold. I lose something and can’t figure out what it is until I realize my hands are tied tightly behind my back and pulled in one direction: It’s my faith, in absolutely everything and everyone. Desire to pick up my life and try to live as normally as possible is punched out of me right there. I surrender to my Flawed life; they have won, and I have lost.

It’s difficult to breathe in the bag over my head, which is tightened beneath my chin, around my neck. And panicking is sucking up all the oxygen I need, but I can’t stop gulping in air and screaming for help. I stop allowing them to pull me along and fall to the ground in protest, banging my knees on hard concrete. I cry out.

“What the hell?” Logan snarls again. He’s trying to keep his voice down; we’re in his neighborhood. If anyone sees this, they’ll know. I scream louder, wishing my mom had stayed, but a blow in the stomach knocks the wind out of me.

Somebody picks me up and carries me. I gasp for breath and can’t struggle any more.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt her.” I hear a girl’s voice, and it chills me.

Colleen.

In retaliation for what? For not saying hi? For what happened to her mom’s fingers? Is that all my fault, too? A scapegoat for society and now a scapegoat for everyone else who knows me. All their problems are all my fault. Nothing to do with their own decisions, their own mistakes, their own doing. Sheep.

“What do you want me to do? She’s screaming the place down,” he says angrily, and I know now that Logan is the one carrying me.

I kick my legs as I’m carried along, and I hear laughter.

“She sounds like a pig.” I hear Natasha’s nasty laugh.

A car door opens. “Get her in, quick.” Another male voice I don’t recognize. How many of them are there? Fear engulfs me. What are they going to do to me?

“You didn’t say anything about killing her!” Colleen says suddenly, and I whimper.

Logan swears.

“She will die in there. She won’t be able to breathe.”

“Fine,” he snaps.

Colleen manages to talk Logan out of locking me in the trunk of the car. Not because she’s so convincing but because he seems eager to get inside, and he’s probably not sure it’s a good idea anyway. I’m thankful when I’m set down and shoved into the car. I whack my forehead on the frame of the car and I’m dizzy instantly.

“Oops.” Logan chuckles.

I fall in, and somebody helps me into place more gently. Colleen. She sits beside me. Logan crushes in on the other side. Natasha is driving. The fourth person sits in the front. I think it’s Gavin, from my chemistry class. Never spoken to him in my life. I don’t know anything about him, but here he is all the same, ruining my life for his own enjoyment.

“Watch it, man,” Gavin says.

“Are you a killjoy, too?” Logan snaps.

“You can’t humiliate her if she’s knocked out,” comes the response. “What’s the point?”

Logan is quiet. My head pounds from where it hit the car, and it feels sticky. I’m hot under the bag, and as the sweat trickles, it stings my head. I think I must be cut. They want to humiliate me? My heart races.

“I can’t breathe,” I say, and it comes out a sob, a terrorized mumble beneath the sackcloth. The sweat tastes salty on my lips. My stomach aches from the punch or kick or whatever part of Logan’s body he used to knock the wind out of me.

They tell me to shut up, but the sack is loosened around my neck, and I can see down to my lap. The air rushes in, and I gulp it down, trying to calm myself. They won’t kill me; they can’t kill me. It will be something else, but what? I see that my dress has risen, revealing my full thighs, and I want to pull it down, but I can’t, my hands are tied behind me. This alone is humiliation enough for me. I don’t know if they’re looking at me right now, making faces, laughing, judging, who knows.