Madison pt. II

Pete's POV

You should go talk to Rob, I guess,” I said when we got back to the motel.
            “What? Why?” he asked, panic filling his tired eyes.
            “When we left, he said, ‘See you later’. You know, like he wanted to talk to you?”
            “Oh yeah… I guess I should,” he relaxed a little. I figured he was just jumpy from withdrawal. I figured now was as good a time as ever to finish what I was going to say to him earlier that day in the lobby.
            “Ryan,” I touched his arm before he turned towards Rob’s room.
            “Yeah?” he asked softly, turning to face me. He looked down towards my lips, so I leaned in and kissed him.
            “I love you,” I said quietly. He made a small noise in the back of his throat and leaned his forehead against mine.
            “You too,” he whispered. I felt a little disappointed with his response, but I brushed it off.
            When I got back to my room, Madison was sitting in the middle of the bed Indian-style with a cigarette between her lips. She held her lighter in front of her eyes, flicking it on and off. She wore nothing but an oversized Misfits tee shirt, and I could see her leopard print underwear. I was startled when I saw her.
            “How the hell did you get in he-“
            “I have some things to say,” she interrupted me, her voice small and scared.
            “Okay…” I said, walking over to the armchair, ready to be attentive.
            “I know you don’t really care… but I need to…” she was shaking now, and when she looked up at me, I saw helplessness- she looked so scared. I nodded, a little scared myself.
            “I was so perfect,” she began, her eyes brimming with nostalgia, “I was so f*****g perfect. I had friends that loved me more than anything in the world, and who I would have given up everything for. Oh, and I had everything. I was so beautiful,” she smiled, and I could see her remembering the way she looked, seeing herself in the mirror years ago.
            “Boys liked me, girls liked me- people respected me. They really f*****g respected me. I think I might miss that the most,” She sniffled, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, cursing herself. “I could see things and just see them. I saw beauty in everything. The world was a great place to be when everything was simple and beautiful… when I was simple and beautiful.” she swallowed hard, and looked away from me to the opposite side of the room.
            “One day, I was walking home from school…” she started up again. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to maintain composure. “…I saw some kids in this alleyway that I passed to get to my house. They looked at me, but I tried to hurry past them. They looked pretty sketchy to me back then, you know? One guy was sitting on the ground, smoking a cigarette and counting a bunch of cash. That was the first time I ever saw Rob McCormick.” she stubbed her cigarette butt into the ashtray on the bedside table and lit up a new one, rubbing her eyes.
            “He called me over to him… he was really polite. He asked me what my name was. He introduced his friends to me. He introduced me to Kalin. Then, he introduced me to weed. We started hanging out with each other, smoking together… you know how that is. People started talking, and my friends found out. They never wanted anything to do with me ever again. I started skipping school a lot, and failed a lot of classes. As of a few weeks ago, my parents suddenly got sick of all my s**t too. I lost all motivation to… exist.” I saw a tear fall from her eye, but she brushed it away very quickly. “Of course, I got into harder drugs. I started stealing a lot of money from my parents. When that wasn’t enough, Rob and I swapped drugs for blowjobs, handjobs and eventually, I ended up trading my virginity for 4 little pills of LSD. That’s how much I didn’t care about myself anymore.” she shook her head and put her hand to her forehead momentarily before continuing.
            “The days I wasn’t high, I did this,” she showed me her left wrist, covered in long, horizontal scars from vicious self harm. My eyebrows knitted together as I looked up at her face, but she looked back down at the comforter quickly.
            “Kalin noticed- he cared. He’s good at that: caring. He’s good at everything. He’s a superhero. He took care of me. He was the only one…” she trailed off as a wave of muffled sobs came over her. “He was the only one who cared anymore,” she wiped the tears from her face and looked back at me. “So I had sex with him,” she said very bluntly. “I had a lot of sex with him- a lot of great, beautiful, exhilarating, unprotected sex with him. And then I missed a period, and another, and another…” she bit her nail, seeming as though she was contemplating if she wanted her story to go any further than that. She looked over at me, as if for approval. I nodded a little, and she began again.
            “…and I never told him. I was terrified. I didn’t tell anyone. But then… my stomach started to hurt. Like, burning, sharp pains,” she clutched her stomach, remembering the feeling. She shook her head again.
            “I… walked into McDonalds, because… Kalin was working there at the time. I was so scared. I didn’t know what else to do. It all happened in this fast, horrible, disgusting flash. I ran to the bathroom… and I… I miscarried,” she bit her lip hard, trying not to let another wave of sobs wash over her. “Kalin came into the bathroom… it was a mess. He saw all the blood… and I told him. I told him everything. He took me to the hospital, and they told me a lot of things. But mostly they told me… that I can never have babies…that I was broken on the inside. They had to cut everything out of me- all of my womanly stuff. Then, they just sent me on my way. They told me to see a therapist for a few months, and threatened to send me to rehab, but I never went back to the hospital after that,” she took a deep breath. I sat there with my mouth gaping like an idiot.
            “So there you have it Pete- maybe I did want to get married and have a family, but I fucked that up too. Maybe I did want to have a future, but it’s ruined. I fucked myself over, I killed Kalin’s baby, I can never un-f**k Kalin’s mind… all because of that one day walking home from school.”
            “S**t, Madison,” I said.
            “So, that was freshman year,” she said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.
            “Holy f**k-“
            “I wanted to blame Rob, you know? But I know it was me- my choices. My stupid f*****g choices. I knew what I was doing. It was like walking through fire and expecting not to get burnt,” she said. My mind flashed to the conversation Ryan and I had just had in the van… what he said about getting burnt…
            I nodded my head, still having a hard time processing any of this. “Kalin? L-like, the guy in the next room?” I stuttered, gesturing to the next room through the wall. She nodded. “And it’s not weird? Or awkward?” I asked.
            “We don’t really talk to each other that much. There’s nothing else that needs to be said. It is what it is. I was just a giant waste of time in the grand scheme of his life,” she said.
            “I hardly believe that,” I said. Kalin and I weren’t the closest, but I knew him well enough to tell that he would never view anything or anyone that way. Madison just shrugged.
            “Sometimes we just look at each other- just a quick glance to let the other know that we still think about the other. Otherwise, I don’t usually give myself enough time to think about what we could have been. Especially because of…” she looked in my eyes, anger swelling inside of her, but she remained silent for a few moments.
            I thought back to the first time I had ever met Kalin, at the party in Madison’s basement. The first words he’d said to me were: “Madison sure is somethin’,” Come to think of it, he’d sounded a little sad when he’d said it. He and I had watched as Madison downed 2 unidentifiable blue pills with a swig of whisky, and made out with Rob in the middle of the room. I wondered if Kalin was angry about how things had ended up. Had he and Madison ever really broken up, or did they just stop messing around? Were they ever actually together? My thoughts were interrupted as Madison finished her previous thought.
            “I met someone else… Someone who brought hope and happiness into my life for the first time in a year and a half,” She turned towards me again. “Ryan Lane,” his name fell from her lips with so many different emotions behind it: sadness, rage, love, hatred, desire…
            “Ryan and Rob showed up at a party together, summer between sophomore and junior year. When I looked at him,” she smiled to herself a tiny bit, “I kind of felt like I could see the beauty in the world again,” I felt extremely awkward hearing her talk this way about the boy I had literally just had sex with, but I remained silent.
            “Looking at him was like looking directly into the light at the end of the tunnel. And then I heard him sing… and his voice is just so clear and unique,” she glanced up again, “You know,”
            I nodded, “I do know,” I said very quietly.
            “We started talking, drinking together… after junior year, we got really close, getting fucked up together. He was- is- a lot of fun to party with. He gets it. We party for all the same reasons: to forget. But then he started leading me on, kissing me all the time, making me feel like I was really something special. When we had sex, it was because he was bored, but I wanted him… I wanted to mean something to someone again,” she said. The tears were back again, leaving shimmering tracks down her face.
            “I wanted to mean something to him, but… you took that. You took him away. He was all I wanted,” she started laughing quietly then, like the comedy and tragedy masks morphed together. “He was the only one I wanted to mean something to,”
            “Madison… Ryan is, I mean, he’s always been-“
            “I know okay? I knew it then, and I know it now- that doesn’t change anything! That doesn’t make it any easier! Do you know how f*****g stupid I feel? Do you know how much of a joke that f*****g f*g turned me into? How do you think it feels, Pete? Huh? To be in love with someone who doesn’t even like your kind? What’s even worse is, I might as well be a boy, because I can’t even do the one thing that every girl is supposed to have! I’m f*****g worthless,”
            I stared blankly at her as she caught her breath, wiping away angry tears. I stood up, and she did the same, turning to leave. As she was walking toward the door, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a hug. She didn’t pull away. She stood in my arms and held onto me, finally letting her tears flow freely.
            “Thank you,” she whispered into my shoulder. I rubbed her back and said, “You’re welcome,”