Stowaway: Chapter 6

It’s Thanksgiving, and we celebrated by having a Thanksgiving Madness at Jess and Coby’s. Thursdays are hard for all of us, so we decided to just be together. Jess made the turkey, after Coby wrestled it everywhere it needed to go, and stuffed it. He made the mashed potatoes, too. Christian peeled apples, because he wanted homemade apple pie. Nathaniel and Cary brought sweet potatoes and stuffing. Morgan and Jon made scalloped corn according to Emily’s instructions. And me? I made a quick batch of strawberry fluff, which is a dessert my mom always makes on Thanksgiving. But since Nate can’t have strawberries, I also made cookies and cream. Both are basically made with Cool Whip, vanilla pudding, and their main ingredient - either Oreo cookies or strawberries. After we ate, I decided to take advantage of the fact that everybody was off from work and introduce a project.

Libby had thought about making masks since Halloween, when she, Emily, Jess, Coby and Christian all wore corresponding-colored Mardi Gras masks. These, though, would be big enough to cover their whole face and have two sides. The front was going to be public perception and the back was to be their inner self. She had made her own mask already, as an example. So, before Morgan, Coby, Jon, Jess and Cary settled down to watch the Patriots play the Lions, and the rest spread out around the house to take naps, Libby intercepted them.

“Who wants to make a mask?” she asked as everyone was cleaning up.

“I want to make a helmet!” Christian said loudly.

“Too much fluff for you, kid,” Jonathan remarked.

“Well, I don’t know how to make a helmet, so do you want to make a mask?!” Libby asked, mirroring his excited tone.

“Sure! Come on guys! Let’s make masks!” he called.

Libby smiled to herself. Christian was her secret weapon. She knew if she got him on board, everyone else would follow suit. She knew they wouldn’t necessarily feel bad disappointing her, but disappointing Christian was another thing, altogether.

“I will,” Emily volunteered, and just as Libby thought, everyone slowly agreed.

Libby had already planned it out and asked ahead of time for permission to use the room off the sanctuary where Emily often waited to talk to congregants. So when they got there, she covered the floor with newspaper, and set out all her supplies. She’d had everyone take their I-Pods, and she had plans to play Christian’s favorite, Kidz Bop Halloween CD in the CD player she brought.

“This is the mask I did,” Libby said, showing the piece of card stock. It had holes for eyes, but everything else was drawn or painted. She showed the front side of her mask, which was decorated with pretty glitter-glue fractures. Red fabric indicated wounds, and blue bits of tissue paper were tears. She had drawn bad test scores to indicate her test anxiety and her brother’s obvious belief that she was stupid and needed to be watched.

“This side is my public face,” she said showing it, making sure everyone could see. “People in my life, my brother, my parents, the news, they all see me as broken. No matter how much strength I try to present, it doesn’t matter, they still see this. My eyes are hollow but they don’t notice because everything else is a distraction.

Then, Libby flipped the mask over. “This is my inner self,” she said quietly. This side of the mask was covered in stars, and music notes, peace signs and happiness.

“While I was making this, I thought back to when it started. To the first time she had needed a mask to go out in public, and it was earlier than I thought.”

It had been. She had been three years old and Liam had been seven. Even then, he had been charismatic and a bit of a troublemaker. They had just moved to a new house in a new town, and Liam was introducing her.

“This is my little baby sister,” he had said, even though Libby had known she wasn’t a baby. She could do all kinds of big-girl things, like play dress up. She knew all the words to I Love You, You Love Me, and He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands, but from that moment, no one cared about what she could do.

All of Liam’s friends and all of her parents’ friends she got introduced to didn’t say what a big girl she was. They said she was cute, and a few years later, when she was molested for the first time, that strong confident child really was gone forever. She was broken and it had taken years to put herself together again. She was different now, but she was whole.

She didn’t bother telling them that she had purposely waited until no one else was around at Jess and Coby’s so that she wouldn’t be overheard. That the entire time she painted her mask, she screamed profanities at her brother for the years of feeling inferior, and at her abuser for taking her childhood. She didn’t tell them what happened when she was done. That she had wept for close to an hour, remembering everything, good and bad. She didn’t tell them that after all that, she finally felt at peace.

Libby took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind. “So think about that as you do this. Think about the first time people judged you or saw you a certain way, or the first time you could take it off and be you.”

They got started, each at a different table. Christian insisted on sitting at the only desk in the corner of the room. “So, what do I do?” he asked, looking at his blank piece of card stock.

Across the room, he saw his mom and dad at a table. They were sharing the earphones of their I-Pod and it made him feel a little jealous that he couldn’t have one. But he guessed it was okay, because Libby gave him a CD player with his favorite CD inside.

“Okay,” Libby said, getting down at eye level beside him. “One side of this mask is going to be what people see when they look at you. What do you think people see when they look at you?”

“Like who?” he asked, confused.

“Just anyone,” Libby encouraged. “People at school. Your mom and dad. Us.”

Christian took a brown marker and made a line down the middle of the mask. “At school, they think I’m just a brown kid, and the teacher thinks I’m a troublemaker,” Christian said, his tone matter of fact. He colored in half the face brown, and in one corner, he made a horizontal black line with a small vertical line extending from it and a little blob.

He felt a little bad inside, even though the kids didn’t mean it in a bad way. It was kind of like that was the only thing about him, and that made Christian feel sad. He was more than brown.

“That’s the railing of the whiteboard, and that’s the piece of tape and me without any tickets left, because I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”

It wasn’t just that he didn’t have any tickets. It was that everybody else had all of theirs. That when he had to go take one off, everybody stared and talked to each other, and the teacher told them to get back to work. When they did, she came up and yelled at him in a quiet voice. It happened even when he was trying to do something good, like start his homework for reading group. “Nobody else was writing, they were listening,” she would say, in a voice that made him feel like crying. Christian blinked a bunch of times, trying to make the tears go away.

Lucky for him, Monster Mash came on the CD right then and Christian smiled. Then he started making the other side of his mask. He made a big red heart for how his mom felt about him. And another heart for how Coby felt. And then he counted all the people in the room. He made blue hearts for Nate and Cary. Green hearts for Jonathan and Morgan. Purple hearts for Emily and Libby. Last but not least, Christian made a brown heart for Snoopy and a black and white heart for Linus, because he felt bad leaving them out, and Christian was sure they loved him, too.

“Okay, that’s good. Now the other side is going to be how you really are on the inside,” Libby explained. When he said he understood, she left him alone to work.

Christian looked at his mom’s heart, which was the biggest, and took up the most room, and he remembered when he saw her heart note to him hanging on his bathroom mirror. He hadn’t talked to her about it, just read it, and thought about it for a long time. She said she was still scared, but that love made her better. Since his fear was yellow and his love was red, he turned the mask over and found some orange paint. He learned all about primary colors last year at school, and knew if you mixed them, they made other colors. So, he figured love and fear made orange, and that’s what he was inside.

--

Jess had come prepared. Actually, she was never without the things she brought with her, so technically, it hadn’t been on purpose. The thing was, she had lived so long with so little that was truly hers, Jess couldn’t let go of carrying the most important things with her at all times. She still lived as if she was scraping by financially, though she wasn’t. Living poor was a hard mindset to shake.

Honestly, though, Jess was excited about this project. She had gotten over her hesitance to create in the shed with Libby. Now, she couldn’t wait. So, after listening to Sweet Child O’ Mine (which had been a hot song, when she was one,) for a few minutes, she drew away from him and found her own corner of the room, sitting down on the floor and taking out her purse. Inside, she had her public face.

Carefully, Jess started gluing newspaper headlines to her mask.

LOST TODDLER FOUND WANDERING NEAR ANOKA THEATER
November 20, 1989
A child was found wandering outside a local liquor store near the Anoka Theater on Saturday.

She had found the article accidentally when she was nine years old. It was in the drawer of her dad’s bedside table. For a long time, Jess hadn’t even known what month it was when she had disappeared. However, it made sense now, how often she would end up ruining the Thanksgiving holiday with her starting a fight, spilling something or smacking someone. It made sense, but it hadn’t stopped. Though Jess’s heart hurt at the memories, she was also grateful to have grown up. Though she still had the feeling of being scared and out of control for days before Thanksgiving, she dealt with them. She talked to Coby. She cleaned house, and she parented Christian the way she wished she’d been. She disciplined him when he needed it, but she also encouraged him, read with him, and loved him fiercely.

SINGLE MOM, 20, CLINGS TO LIFE AFTER HIGH CITY SHOOTING
November 6, 2007
Jessica Gray, a single mother and student at High City University in High City, Minnesota, is still clinging to life after being shot in the head by Melville Hamilton, the gunman in the latest school shooting.

Jess shivered, affixing this article to the mask. She seriously had almost no clear memory until she had been at the rehab hospital for a few days, which meant there was a week of her life that was a complete blank. Jess was grateful there wasn’t a picture with this article. She felt confused and empty to this day, wondering who exactly this man had been, and why he wanted to hurt them.

SHOOTING VICTIM, JESSICA GRAY, RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL
December 1, 2007
A month after being shot in the head, High City shooting victim, Jessica Gray, is heading home.

Smiling, Jess put this one on, so that it covered pieces of the other two. She remembered this day clearly. Coming home to her girls, and her son. Visiting with Libby. Seeing Coby for the first time, and falling asleep on his shoulder. She remembered him carrying her to bed, and feeling safe in a man’s arms for the first time.

SHOOTING VICTIMS, JESSICA GRAY & JACOB WALKER, WED
May 16, 2009
A year and a half after the shooting that nearly took her life, Jessica Gray did something no one thought possible: she walked down the aisle, and said vows to her future husband.

Sighing happily, she held this article in her hands. At the time, it had annoyed her that their home newspaper felt the need to document every big moment of her life, but she was grateful for it now. For the kindhearted piece the journalist had written, for the picture, reminding her how handsome Christian had looked in his tux, walking her down the aisle. For the picture of herself and Coby, smiling, on the other side of so much heartache.

Her life, it seemed, could be measured in headlines. Her mother leaving her. Clinging to life after a brutal shooting. Getting released from the hospital. Getting married. Jess covered the front of the mask, placing the headlines and excerpts in a mishmash. A headline where her mouth should be, another across her forehead, a third across her eyes, etc. They covered her entirely. Jess highlighted words like Lost Toddler, Single Mom and Shooting Victim. Jessica Gray, she put in quotations.

Then, she turned the mask over, and pulled out her purse again. She began to paste pictures of herself - actual photos - not newspaper clippings - on the inside. The picture of her as a baby, all wrapped up and coming home, with her dad smiling down on her. A picture of her staring blankly at the camera just after her mom abandoned her. Her dad had been so happy to have her back. A picture of her and Legend dressed up as the genie and the lamp from the movie Aladdin at Halloween when they were six. Jess had been the genie, and Legend the lamp, because Jess wished she was all-powerful and could make magic happen, because she felt trapped, and because she only truly felt at home with Legend.

These pictures made Jess feel everything, but she was grateful she had them. Looking at her little self being held by her dad, she saw the love in his eyes. It was, in fact, proof that she had been loved once, even if she was too small to remember it. She could still remember staring at the camera just after her dad brought her home. How she had refused to say cheese or smile. How she didn’t know what she felt, only that it was too big. She had been happy with Legend, on Halloween, though. They had trick-or-treated and gotten candy that Legend’s parents had checked to make sure it was safe.

Now, Jess moved on to other moments.

Here was a picture of her at a party when she was 14, getting drunk and smiling too big for it to be real. At 15, pregnant and miserable. And at 16, holding Christian, and looking scared as she’d ever been, but with such obvious love in her eyes.

These were the difficult years. She barely remembered the parties, only feeling like death afterward. She remembered being high at breakfast and her dad not looking up from his eggs. She remembered giving into Christian’s father when he pressured her to have sex. He promised to always be there for her. He said he loved her. So, she had given herself to him. When she learned she was pregnant, Jess was sure that had been the biggest mistake of her life. She had been sick for months and was sure it was some kind of punishment for being so horrible that her own mother would leave her. However, Legend’s mom and dad had been there. They helped her stay clean, helped her get counseling, and prenatal care. By the time she had Christian, named for the change Jess had experienced in her life, Jess knew he was the best thing that could have happened to her.

Then there were the pictures from when they moved in together in college. All the girls and Christian, smiling at breakfast. Everyone at the first Monday Madness. A candid picture that someone had taken of Coby staring at her while she twirled her hair and tried to study. There they were when Jess was home from the hospital, when she had fallen asleep on Coby’s shoulder. There was Christian walking her down the aisle. There she was with Coby at the reception. In front of their new house. On their first vacation to a bed and breakfast in Stowe, where she now worked, cleaning rooms. Finally, she, Coby and Christian sitting in the yard full of leaves. This one would be their Christmas card.

Jess would cherish these times forever. This side of the mask, with all its pictures, made her proud to be where she was. Jess hoped that when Coby gave Libby her new studio, he would hang the masks from the ceiling, so both sides would show - a tribute to their healing and strength.

--

Coby felt heaviness inside him as worked on his mask.

On the front were carefully drawn red bricks. They extended to all sides and so it looked liked they went beyond the mask. He was Stowe’s handyman. He built and fixed things. But he was also firmly hidden behind his profession by a wall that he, himself had built.

He thought of all the moments when he hid himself: At thirteen, when his mom moved out. At sixteen when they got back together, and his little sister was born, because Coby knew the reconciliation wouldn’t last. His dad didn’t like fat women and his mom wouldn’t be bullied. She would leave, and she had. His dad kept custody of him, eight-year-old Blake, and new baby, Riley. But Coby had raised them. Coby who had taught them to swim. Coby who influenced Blake to make his own bad choices. And at twenty-four, Buddy had ripped his life apart. Instead of letting himself grieve it, Coby had lost himself in booze, only emerging when he realized he couldn’t hide anymore.

He turned the mask over, and there he drew the wall falling. Quietly, he interrupted Jess, asking her to trace her hand. He did the same with CJ. When Coby went back, he went to work transferring the images. He could have approximated the sizes, but he wanted them to be authentic.

The reason? His family had broken down the wall.

With only the base of the wall remaining, Coby worked on the hands. His own, and those of his wife and son. He added fingernails. Jess’s wedding ring. The scars on her arm that suggested she had once been burned. His own ring. Then he drew the bracelets. On his wrist, he carefully drew the black fabric band and the silver letter blocks. He did the same for Jess. Then, finally, he did Christian’s.

Coby wasn’t an emotional guy, but he wept like a baby when it was announced “that the minor shall henceforth be known as Christian Jesse Walker” and that Coby had all the rights and responsibilities of a natural parent. On the day they had gone to the courthouse and made everything official, Coby had presented Jess and Christian with their bracelets and he wore his own. Coby’s said FOREVER, Jess’s said FAMILY, and Christian’s said MIRACLE. They had yet to take them off. Coby knew for a fact that Christian and Jess showered with theirs. The hands met in the middle. Jess’s delicate but hard working, Coby’s callused and strong, and Christian’s small and perfect.

Becoming a husband had changed Coby’s life, and becoming a father had changed him even more.

Looking at the picture, Coby nodded, satisfied. His family was who he protected, and his family was who he could always count on.

--

Cary’s mask was the easiest thing he had ever made. On the front of it. He painted a huge red letter A, with red paint dripping off of it. If Libby read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the meaning behind it would be clear enough. And if not, well, she might have to do some research. Cary drew so many blue men, holding hands with sad faces, that he lost count. On the inside, he painted the mask a midnight blue, to signify the endless night that only Nathaniel had ever seen. Cary remembered it like it was yesterday. It was only months after they had met.

Cary had sometimes wished for it to be daylight 24/7. That way, he wouldn’t be stuck enduring the nights alone. At that time, though, nothing was going his way, and that was just fucking depressing. He generally wasn’t a depressed person, but just lately every pressure Cary had seemed to be weighing him down.

Of course, he had Nathaniel. And Cary loved being with him. He liked being the protector. The one to take care of and shelter Nate when the demons he fought became too much to bear. But every once in a while, Cary wished that the roles could be reversed without him feeling totally selfish and stupid.

Nathaniel was the one who had gone through hell less than a year ago. He needed all the care and attention that Cary could offer. How is it that Cary could really go to him and say that everything seemed darker and more hopeless at night?

He tried going out more. Partying. But that only helped so much. Sure, it made him feel better for a few hours, but in the long run it did nothing but make Cary feel like the biggest loser there was.

Plus, Nathaniel was kind of shy. Though he liked social drinking, especially a nice glass of red wine with dinner, he wasn’t a fan of loud, dark parties, or bars where hands could grope in the dark. Frankly, Cary didn’t mind any of those things, and spent several evenings out, losing himself in the smoke and the alcohol and the men.

It was on one of these nights that Cary stumbled home long after midnight, intent on passing out on the bed, and sleeping straight through the weekend.

The last thing he expected to see was Nathaniel waiting up for him.

He was sitting on Cary’s couch, with a cookbook open in his lap, and he glanced up when the door opened.

Cary braced himself for the Where Were You lecture that Nate was fond of giving, followed by the Don’t Numb Yourself lecture that he learned from Cary himself.

But Nate said nothing, only looked at Cary with questions stirring in his brown eyes, and patted the spot on the couch beside him.

Still, Cary couldn’t let himself off the hook.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he muttered, his blue eyes bright and cheeks flushed with the drinks he had consumed. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

“It’s okay,” Nate answered easily, pulling Cary down, so his head was in Nathaniel’s lap. Quietly, Nate played with Cary’s jet-black hair, drawn to the strands with purple or blue. He paid special attention to those, twirling them through his fingers.

“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel asked softly, staring into Cary’s eyes. The pain in them was barely masked by whatever he’d had to drink at the bar. “You can tell me.”

“No, I can’t!” Cary exploded, sitting up so fast he got dizzy. Overwhelmed, he held his head between his hands. “I can’t tell you anything. I have to take care of you.”

“I can’t take care of you?” Nate asked honestly, scooting closer to Cary, and putting an arm around his shoulders.

“You shouldn’t have to…” Cary admitted, his voice breaking.

“What if I wanted to? Would you let me?” Nate insisted, taking one of Cary’s hands in his own and threading their fingers together thoughtfully.

“No,” Cary said harshly, biting off the word. “So, just leave me the hell alone.”

But Nathaniel held tight to Cary’s hand, letting himself be pulled into the bathroom, where Cary fell on his knees in front of the toilet and vomited hard.

“It’s okay… Whatever it is…” Nathaniel soothed, rubbing the back of Cary’s neck. “If something’s wrong, I want to know what it is, so that I can help, okay? So, I can be there for you?” he coaxed, as Cary was sick again.

Sweat had broken out on Cary’s face and it rolled down his back as he threw up. Nate was making this too damn hard, and it wasn’t fair, with him drunk like this.

When he was finally done, Nathaniel helped him up, and guided him by the shoulders until they were both sitting on the couch again. This time, Cary’s ear was pressed against Nate’s chest. Nathaniel draped a blanket over both of them. He stroked Cary’s hair and pressed gentle kisses into it.

“I can’t do this…” Cary objected drowsily. “I can’t keep being strong all the damn time…” Tears stung his eyes, and Cary moved to sit up. To angrily brush them away, but Nathaniel held him fast, so Cary was stuck listening to the heartbeat of the man he had grown to love more deeply than anyone.

“Listen to me,” Nate said gently, and Cary felt the vibration of the voice in Nathaniel’s chest. “You don’t need to be. Okay?”

“I feel like such a selfish asshole when things are bad for me,” Cary confided, biting his lip as his stomach lurched.

“Do you think I’m a selfish asshole when things are bad for me?” Nate challenged gently.

“No. You have a million reasons to be upset. Real ones. I’m just pissed because I got more literature from my parents…”

“What kind of literature?” Nate wondered, intrigued. He was practically living here, but never touched Cary’s mail, even if it looked interesting.

“…Trying to turn me…” Cary muttered darkly.

“Straight?” Nathaniel guessed, incredulously.

“Mmm…” Cary mumbled. “It’s over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the stack of papers and envelopes on the desk across the room.

Warily, Nate stood and crossed the room to the manila envelope with various scripture verses, programs, camps and personal messages from every member of the family implored Cary to be the man God apparently created him to be before Cary got rebellious and turned his back on the church.

“My brother and sister joined the forces in trying to convince me to change my lifestyle… ‘…A gay man is not a man…’” he quoted, remembering the picture that seven-year-old Avery had colored. A man drawn with pink crayon, then the message, then a man drawn with blue crayon. The pink man was sad. The blue was smiling.

“’Turn back to God. Be the man He meant for you to be…’ Archie gave me that little piece of advice. “He’s fourteen and he sounds like a sales pitch for their ridiculous church that prays the gay out of people. Or the demons. Or the sadness. Like it’s our fault, and not the way we were made.”

“How long has this been going on?” Nate wondered holding the drawing done by Cary’s sister gingerly. He wondered how parents could raise their children to hate.

“Seven years…ever since they kicked me out at sixteen…” Cary sighed. “But this is the first time they’ve gotten the kids involved…”

“I’m sorry…” Nathaniel murmured. “I had no idea…”

“No one does. I deal with it.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Nate insisted, his eyes darkening. “This is a bunch of shit!” he exclaimed, shaking the envelope menacingly. “You know what this is?”

Cary sat up, always interested when his man let his temper show. “What?” he asked, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, despite the fact that he felt like absolute shit.

“This. Is confetti,” Nate decided, shaking out papers and ripping them in half, quarters, and eighths and throwing them into the air.

Because watching the colored paper fall to the ground made Cary dizzy, he closed his eyes, listening to Nate rip, littering the carpet with scraps.

When he didn’t hear anymore destruction, Cary opened one eye, watching, impressed, as Nate gathered up all the pieces, shoved them in the envelope and put it in the garbage furthest away from both of them, buried beneath the other trash.

Cary waited, silently, until Nathaniel came back. He gathered Cary in his arms, covering them both with a blanket.

Then, together, they waited for the dawn to break, to end Cary’s endless night. And Cary knew, at that moment. If Nathaniel loved the sinner his parents thought he was, and him at his weakest point, Cary knew Nathaniel was the right one for him. Because he loved both sides - red and blue, and everything in between.

Cary turned his mask to the blue side again, and added millions of silver stars shining in the sky. His inner self might have been dark and sad, but Nathaniel was like so many stars, lighting up his darkness, and making it beautiful.

--

JUST A PRETTY FACE.

This is what Nathaniel scrawled across the public perception side of his mask, in black felt-tip pen. He had heard it often enough when he was growing up.

“What a cute little boy you have,” people would tell his mother in the store, and Nate would press himself behind her.

And later, too. Afterward, on television programs, he heard the hosts speculating on why he may have been a target. Nancy Grace had been the first to say it, and then it had been everywhere:

“Everyone is asking why one male student, Nathaniel Barrett, was a target in this attack, and no one is being honest. Let’s just admit it. He’s too pretty. It’s the same reason the girls were attacked. The man couldn’t resist him.”

Nathaniel had made decision then to dress worse. Though he could manage to wear sweats and tee shirts instead of jeans and nice tops, he found that he couldn’t stop showering. That phase had not lasted long, but the comments always stuck with him.

On the back of the mask, he wrote:

I am Nathaniel
I am somebody’s husband, somebody’s son, somebody’s brother
I live in Vermont, where I choose to be.
I choose to surround myself with good people
I choose to love myself
I know what happened does not define me
I am more than a victim
I am more than a survivor
I am more than who I choose to love
I am more than what you say
I’m more than just a pretty face.

He didn’t decorate it. He didn’t have to. He just handed it to Libby and walked out, with his head held high, feeling somehow vindicated, and somehow set free.

--

Emily’s face was a broken mirror, with cracks from the center to the outside edge. It looked like a firework had exploded. In the broken pieces, Emily drew pieces of her features. Terrified brown eyes. Dark hair. Her jeans, knees to feet, the way they had been when she was cowering beneath the table. And, though she had not worn a red shirt that day, Emily cut a tiny red shirt out of fabric and attached obvious pieces of it all over her broken mirror. It looked like a strange Picasso style piece. All awkward features and no order, but that’s how everyone saw her. Too damaged to even attempt to set right.

When she had moved home, she was this way, one-hundred percent. Scared all the time. Hitting the floor when a car backfired or a door slammed. Having nightmares every night, to the point where she had to sleep with her parents. Those months were the worst of her life - almost worse than the attack itself because nobody tried to help. Nobody talked to her about anything. There were no rules anymore. She broke curfew all the time, and didn’t eat a normal meal for the entire time she was home. Instead, she subsisted on Mountain Dew and Swiss Cake Rolls because they made her feel good, in the moment, but sick for days. Emily added the word RULES to her broken mirror because they were broken. She felt her stomach twist with a familiar ache. She had lived with an upset stomach for months. Emily took a few deep breaths to calm herself down.

Then, she flipped the face over. Her private self included all the weird pieces, but now they were reassembled the way they should have been. The cracks were still there, but Emily was putting herself back together again. She drew The Beast in one corner. The church in another, and the window in the guest room that she liked to look out of and pray. In the last corner, around her put-together self, Emily added a dining room table, because she loved coming together with her friends.

Those were the most important things.

Now, she felt together. That was important, too.

--

Jonathan was listening to Garth Brooks play list. Right now, he was singing about Calling Baton Rouge.

“Operator, won’t you put me on through, I gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge! Hurry up, wont you put her on the line, I gotta talk to the girl just one more time!” he sang. He liked getting lost in the music so he didn’t have to focus quite yet on the intense art project. He liked the idea of healing but he wasn’t much into creative stuff.

Jon felt a sharp poke and looked up sharply to see that Morgan stabbed him in the arm with a feather. Apparently, her I-Pod wasn’t doing a good enough job, because she could still hear him. He grimaced at her, and she waved it again, meaningfully. He could read the look in her eyes clearly enough: “Shut up. Sing in your head if you have to sing.” She had told him often enough.

The next song started, and Jon got busy. His public self would be easy enough. He painted a huge red scar on one side of his face. While the paint dried, Jon got to work looking through the boxes of odds and ends until he found what he was looking for: black thread. This was how he looked after they had stitched him up. It was all he could see when he looked in the mirror the following day. Since he put so much stock into his looks back then, his reflection had pretty much crushed him. His girlfriend had broken up with him. His family wouldn’t even sit on the side of the bed where the scar was. For a few seconds, Jon let himself remember. While he watched the paint dry, he let himself feel the physical and psychological pain of his injury.

When his scar was dry, though, Jon moved on. He went to work, crisscrossing the thread over the scar, so it looked gruesome and freshly stitched. The pain of that had been horrible, even with the local, and Jon still couldn’t decide if it was getting the stitches or having someone right up in his face, like Buddy had been. Jonathan thought about adding something else, but decided against it.

How many times in the weeks and months afterward had come up and asked dumbly if that was where he got cut. If he knew it was coming. If it still hurt. At least here, people generally minded their own business. At least now, the scar had faded.

Carefully, he flipped the scar over, and on his inner self, he drew himself again. This time, Jon thought of what he used to draw as a child, when he had school assignments like this. He drew two eyes, a nose and a smiling mouth. Some yellow hair. There. That was him. And that was enough.

It had taken him a damn long time to get to this point, but he was glad to be able to look in the mirror and not see a scar, but a man, doing the best he could to live each day the best he could. Now that he saw that, Jon imagined that other people might too.

He breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of this burden finally, and the power he had let Buddy have over his life. That was over.

Jon had the power now.

--

It didn’t take long for Morgan to realize that listening to music in here wasn’t going to happen. It was right around the time she stabbed her loving boyfriend with a feather so he would stop embarrassing himself and distracting her. Just the fact that this was a room with tables, walls and a closed door was enough to have Morgan angling herself in its direction. She always wanted a way out, and she wanted to hear what was going on around her.

After a few minutes, though, she settled down to work. Flashbacks and anxiety were never easy to deal with, but they were routine now. She breathed and counted and focused on who was with her and where she was. What she was in here to do.

It helped when she moved to a corner of the room, and sat on the floor. She wanted privacy and peace of mind. Down here, she would get it.

Morgan cut her mask into a Mardi-Gras style and covered it in brown feathers on the public side. She knew, to them, she was average and ruined, and dirty like those feathers suggested. Surely, Liam felt that way about her, and after his interview, Morgan was sure the rest of the people did too. She was dirty, used, and unreliable. An addict. A liar. Unremarkable.

Liam had said as much to her many times.

A recent text after his interview said: “Sometimes, I still wish we were married, because we would have been by now, if everything had gone right. But then I remember that I wouldn’t be your first. That pain is still immense and I wish it had not happened to us.”

Morgan had deleted the text and hadn’t told her friends. They were upset enough as it was. She knew that his behavior was a reflection on him, not her, and put her mind to focusing on other things. Positive things. She helped Coby move weight equipment out of the spare room. She helped Christian add three-digit numbers. She and Jon had a random dance party one night and sang karaoke style along with the songs on TV because they had closed captioning. She helped Emily at youth group. Morgan watched Linus for Nate and Cary when they went out on a date, dog sledding. And she sat down and listened when Jess needed an ear. She painted what Libby said was the most amazing representation of addiction she had ever seen, for Libby’s gallery.

It was a mirror, surrounded by tendrils of thick black smoke. But the mirror didn’t reflect her. Instead, there was a rainbow of pills. Marijuana. Alcohol. Each had a price tag attached: Jess’s Trust. Christian’s Safety. Jonathan’s Trust. My self-respect. My body. My life. Morgan had wept as she painted, remembering pieces of that horrible time. Stealing from friends and lying. Once she was kicked out, it was worse. Selling herself and nearly starving for her next fix. Libby had typed out a little label that read: Addiction by Morgan Davis and attached it to the painting. She promised to hang it up someday, when she had her own studio.

Morgan hadn’t given into her sickness, though. Instead, she poured herself into other people’s lives, but not at the expense of her own healing. Morgan was still working her program and had found herself counseling nearby. It was a little hard to swing financially, but Morgan made it work, since for her, this was an essential expense.

Thoughtfully, Morgan turned her mask over. She began gluing without hesitation. Vivid blue, purple and green feathers to her inner self.

There was a time when Morgan knew without a doubt, she would have reversed the colors, making her public self vivid and pretty, while her inner self languished - brown and disgusting. But Morgan knew that certain things were true now, after years of counseling and two turns at rehab. She was beautiful. She could transform her life.

And right now, Morgan knew one thing for sure:

She was a peacock: a symbol of beauty and transformation no matter which side was showing.