Forgiving Eve: A Novel Read online

  Forgiving Eve

  A Novel

  Kathryn Hewitt

  Copyright © 2020 Kathryn Hewitt

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians or therapeutic professionals. The reader should regularly consult a physician or therapeutic professional in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

  Cover design by: http://selfpubbookcovers.com/SFcovers

  Printed in the United States of America

  “Are you in or are you out?

  Leave your things behind

  'Cause it's all going off without you

  Excuse me, too busy, you're writing your tragedy

  These mishaps

  You bubble-wrap

  When you've no idea what you're like

  So, let go, let go

  Jump in

  Oh well, what you waiting for?

  It's all right

  'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

  So, let go, let go

  Just get in”

  –Frou Frou (Let Go)

  One

  I’d only been here a week but I had to admit that I felt comfortable. Well, as comfortable as one can be when they really have very little concept of comfort. There was a certain poetry to the monotony. I could retreat into my world of numbness and still be able to make it through the day, keeping to the schedules and staying under the radar.

  Leila, the first girl I’d met here, had been desperate for us to become Best Friends and thankfully, I actually sort of liked her. Kind of. I didn’t usually do girlfriends…or friends in general. And here I was, thrown into a new routine, a new life, and all of a sudden I had a friend. A very enthusiastic girlfriend, for that matter. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but nothing had for a long time. Easier to go with it than use the energy required to fight. I’d rather be the pebble that was carried over the waterfall with the current than the boulder that the water parted for and flowed around.

  On my second day there, after the first one where I’d been sequestered in a day’s worth of instructional meetings and therapy, Leila got her claws into me. She’d just marched right up to me, looked me up and down, then linked her arm in mine and leaned in to whisper in a voice loud enough to be heard from across a large room, “Welcome, Daniel-san. We have so much to do and I have so much to teach you.” Then she pulled away, her face splitting into a huge grin. “Oh, we are going to get along Smashingly-?” Then she looked at me expectantly. I just remained silent, staring at her blankly. Finally she just sighed, then looked at the embarrassing name tag I’d been forced to don. “We’ll get along smashingly, Eve!” Then she laughed and dragged me off, remembering at the last minute to toss out, “Oh, I’m Leila.” I had no idea what to make of this entire situation so I just tried not to trip and this tiny girl took over.

  Eventually she led me around, pointing out the lay of the land. “The Mannies hang out over there, the border patrol tend to keep to themselves, the Deepers like that area over there in the shadows, and the Schizzie Lizzies are too paranoid to venture out much so we don’t see them as often,” she explained, referencing several diagnoses I was fairly certain were inaccurate or just plain made up. “The Subcats are harder to detect. But don’t worry about any of it. Why bother? We’re all a screw loose and a buck short.” Apparently Leila wasn’t one to mince words. I noticed she didn’t include herself in any of these colorful descriptions and personally, I didn’t care. I mean, how long did they spend trying to disassemble my brain to figure out what neat little box I fell into? I couldn’t just be messed up, no, that would be too…messy.

  I was maxing out of the system, a system I had little to no experience with, in 6 months. But for the deal to stand, I had to stay until I was 19 or until, “I had proven my stability and expressed appropriate remorse for my actions.” I thought I should be bothered by this, since I was essentially being held against my will, but it was by far the more appealing option. The judge had been kind, but there had been no way around it: Juvie until 18, and then probably several more years in a state facility. Unless I found some compunction, then perhaps I’d get out drastically sooner. I wouldn’t have been holding my breath. So I opted for the far favorable offer.

  Here I was, being punished while simultaneously rewarded. When I hit 18, I’d unceremoniously be switched from “camper” (they liked euphemisms around here) to “participant”. Nice how that term implied actively choosing to partake. Essentially, I’d become overly supervised slave labor, therapy still non-negotiable. Not much detail had been discussed about my responsibilities once I hit that point, but there had been hints about my involvement in art or music classes. I had no short abundance in talents, which had once been my salvation, but that were now just things I happened to be undeservedly good at.

  two

  Leila and I were leaving the dining hall after yet another meal of culinary inspiration when I heard a voice behind us. Leila had been bouncing around, regaling me with her tales. Even I had to admit, her enthusiasm was contagious.

  “Hey Lei!” The deep sound made Leila stop in her tracks, turning and grinning as she ran in the direction of the sound. Her enthusiastic jump into a waiting pair of arms successfully caused me to be curious as to how the recipient was still standing. Granted Leila was super tiny so she probably had the impact of a flying squirrel. I just stood by, watching. Mostly because I felt like I should be interested, but knowing I really just kind of wasn’t.

  She was hugging a dude, but do to her incessant well of energy, she didn’t stay still long enough for me to actually get a look at him. Or maybe I just wasn’t exactly trying too hard. Maybe Leila had a boyfriend I hadn’t met yet. Good for her, I guess. “I’ve missed you,” she squealed, as she threw her arms back around his neck. Yep, definitely a boyfriend.

  Finally admitting even to myself that my shoelaces couldn’t be that interesting, I looked up. He’d gotten himself disentangled from Leila and I was able to get a glimpse of him…sort of. He seemed pretty tall, probably six feet and was dressed as casually as the rest of us, in jeans and a t-shirt. He also had a ball cap pulled down so low I could barely see his face.

  I could make out a strong jaw with a smattering of dark stubble, and lips that appeared torn between a smirk, that appeared overly comfortable on his face, and a half smile. Nice lips though….hey, I wasn’t dead. Forcing my attention away from said lips, because staring was So not me, I then took in his beat up high top converse, speckled with what looked like paint, and some kind of pendant around his neck that hung from a black tether.

  Leila was busy jumping back and forth, switching between feet, unable to quell whatever excitement this mystery guy was inspiring in her. Leila had taken me under her wing, despite my steadfast desire to stay as far away from acceptance and social norm as possible, but deep down her persistence must have broken something inside of me because I found myself not hating her company. I may even admit on a weak day, a very weak day, that I appreciated it. She had bright red hair with a thick black streak…like a squirrel? No, definitely like a punk skunk? I cracked a smile at the thought and got the feeling that BF noticed. He took nothing away from it though, I was well schooled in the art of warfare: complete faci
al blankness, ultimate stare downs, and absolute expression camouflage. Go me.

  He probably cocked an eyebrow at that point but I wouldn’t know seeing as I still couldn’t see above his upper lip. As if reading my mind, he gave his black cap an ineffectual tug down. Definitely a smirk, the half smile had lost out. I wish I cared why Leila’s boyfriend was being all incognito while casting me amused, yet slightly derisive partial expressions, but I’d stopped caring a long time ago. Truthfully, I’m not sure I ever cared…maybe for Gideon but I was doubtful.

  “Jack! I’m so stoked you’re here. Why were you gone for so long? How were you gone so long?” Ball cap boy, grunted and then suddenly he was smiling. Shit, that was a smile which even a walking dead person like me had to describe as dazzling. And I try not to let adjectives like that even enter my memory, let alone my present consciousness. Damn him for making me feel…anything.

  “Lei, you know I never reveal my secrets.” Then he laughed, a low rumble, throwing his head back far enough that had he been wearing his hat like a normal person, it would have abandoned ship. “You also know that I am as interested in inquiring as to the identity of this new girl as she is at being inquired about. So turn off that brain of yours, Lei.” I’d say ouch but I was fairly certain that he was right on the mark with that last statement.

  “Too late,” Leila quipped and before either he or I could anticipate her brain jettison, she leaped up and snatched the cap right off of old Jack’s head. Harebrained, I mused. Leila was a little rabbit-esque in her frequent hopping.

  Oh, and yeah, no clue why he was hiding that under his hat. I looked away, reminding myself that just because Leila’s boyfriend was ridiculously good looking, I didn’t care. How could I care that he had a chiseled face with high cheekbones, what looked like a natural tan, and thick black wavy hair that matched his thickly arched eyebrows? Who could care? Yeah.

  I feared that Mr. Hottie was going to be pissed off that Leila had just done what she’d done, an act that he’d seemed to practically see coming but come up just short in the timeframe of, but instead he just laughed again. And dammit, against every iota in my being and against all I stood for as…well, me, I risked a glance and was practically blinded by his sapphire eyes. I guess his smile wasn’t the only dazzling characteristic he possessed.

  Thanks to all that is holy, I did not lock stares with this…boy. He was just a boy, I reminded myself and returned to staring off as disinterestedly as I could muster.

  “Ahh, I see we have another fully damaged one on our hands, Lei. This one seems to lack all personality in general, or is she just painfully shy? Another dynamic addition, I see.” A normal person would be offended. I, on the other hand, felt like I was being commended for the first time since before, complimented for the first time since…Gideon.

  I bit my lip to prevent myself from smiling at this stranger who smacked of kindred spirit.

  Leila just smacked his arm, which he rubbed, though I knew she hit like a blowfly. She smacked me all the time. “Jack,” her tone not chastising in the least. In fact, I almost thought I picked up on excitement, edged with lunacy. I knew there had to be one characteristic we shared, and it certainly wasn’t excitement. Jack then just stood there, as if in contemplation. I quickly realized he was just bored and absently reaching for his abducted hat. Shit, this dude was growing on me…and he was Leila’s boyfriend.

  “No Jack,” she sang as she lithely danced out of his reach. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he couldn’t get the cap back if he’d actually wanted to, but I also recognized that actions like that required just that…actual want. Apathy, how I adore you. Still buzzing, Leila continued, “No. Eve is totally fucked up, just like us. I mean, Christ, her freaking name is Eve.”

  I smiled. I actually smiled and I knew I had a manic gleam in my eyes and from Leila’s pleased expression, she saw it too. I also felt an energy shift as Jack reassessed me, this time with our gazes clashing, his fiery blue with my own dove grey ones. Well I tried to keep them grey but I had the feeling that the little fissure in my façade had allowed them to flash silver. And Jack liked it.

  And like that, I lost interest.

  “Well don’t make her mad,” Leila muttered.

  As if sensing the affect our unspoken exchange had on me, Jack returned to disinterest. “Pleasure, Eve,” he said dryly, lazily reclaiming his baseball cap and stuffing it back onto his head, once again pulling it low so as to cut off any more accidental show of emotion between the two of us. I appreciated it. I also appreciated how his longish hair had escaped out from under the back of his cap, curling around his neck and ears. Too bad I was too far gone…and he wasn’t Gideon.

  “Oh, don’t mind Jack. He is just as messed up in the old noggin as we are.” Linking arms between the two of us in a macabre impersonation of the wizard of Oz, minus a member and with the addition of some seriously questionable decision making skills, she hauled us towards where a small group of campers about our age had congregated around a smoking bench. “We are going to get along smashingly, us three!” With that she pulled away and began badgering a boy for a cigarette.

  “Want one?” she called over her shoulder to me.

  Shaking my head and glaring at my only friend, the ground, I muttered, “My fire starting days are over,” as I stalked off.

  I heard a low whistle chase me but when I glanced back, Jack was looking in the opposite direction, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans and his cap still pulled low.

  THREE

  There were 7 of us older than 16, and despite 4 being boys, we were all in the same cabin. Unorthodox perhaps, but considering this place was run off state money and headed up by hippies, one couldn’t be surprised. They assumed that the younger kids would get into more trouble sleeping coed than we would, or they just didn’t care. I think they figured that enough of us were so medicated that whatever sex drive teenagers had was long ago obliterated. Since I was still having a hard time remembering myself as ever having a sex drive period, I certainly was not a threat.

  I know I’d been attracted to Gideon, we’d fooled around. We’d had sex, but not often, and in retrospect I suspected he’d just felt it had been expected of him, or that he was obligated to do so by simply belonging to the male species. I never really got the whole thing anyway, and I could feel, back then.

  And if you want to know what Hippies do to maximize a space entirely too small for 8 teenagers, one would only need to look into our room. Co-sleeping came to mind, as did padded cells. Oddly, the latter did not make me shudder like the former.

  The beds were laid out in two groupings, a quad of pallets each. The mattresses were fairly thin, reminding me of the cushions of lawn furniture, and although discreet, the only real barrier was a raised 6 inch high border that ran through the center of the pallets, horizontally and vertically and crossing in the middle. Like Tic-Tac-Toe but someone forgot half of the board, or a giant plus sign. As in, positive for crazy. Several feet of hard wood floor surrounded each quad, as well as separated the two groupings.

  We weren’t sleeping together but you learned quickly not to roll too much or you’d wake up with a hell of a back spasm, having slept the night with one of the partitions embedded in your back. Leila tended to roll, thus her frequent muscle aches. I tended to sleep unmoving, which Leila had once said was one of the first things that she admired about me: I slept like I was dead. I didn’t feel the need to tell her that I was.

  The other girl in our cabin, and subsequently our quad, was a mousy girl named Nancy. Nancy not only never talked, she would never even look at you. I liked to think of Nancy as the Ghost Mascot of our cabin. If she came in after we were in bed, we wouldn’t even notice. Everything she did was silent as she ghosted through life. While all four boys were somewhat boisterous, luckily they tried to avoid us when we were in the bunk. It was a little weird to be sharing living spaces with not only the opposite sex, but the opposite sex of the crazy variety.

  T
hat night, as we got ready for bed in the girls’ bathroom (the hippies weren’t that nontraditional), Leila appeared at the sink in a set of her signature long john onesies. This one was covered in unicorns.

  “I love these PJs,” she volunteered. Uh huh. “They were part of a inventory set that were seconds…see how the print is off and their tongues are blurred and off center, so it looks like their hemorrhaging from their mouths? Totally awesome.”

  “Major Unicorn Zombie Apocalypse,” I replied dryly.

  Despite us all knowing that we’d had to come here under court order, and that clearly none of us had anyone who cared enough for us to be placed here and not somewhere privately owned where money could make everyday a little easier, we never really talked about why we had ended up here. So we shot the shit and pretended to get to know each other, but we all knew that we had too much rotting away inside of us to ever actually have any room left over for anyone else.

  Feeling especially disinterested in whatever she was now rambling about, I spit out my toothpaste and asked a question that had me wishing there was such thing as reverse vomiting. Especially when Leila responded with a cackle and grasped her breast like she’d lost the ability to breath. I’d just wanted to know how her boyfriend had been allowed to visit. It was an innocent enough question, it’s not I like I was fishing for information about how to get my boyfriend to visit. But this was sort of a closed facility…or “camp” as they chose to call it.

  Finally regaining her ability to speak, she half gasped and half sputtered out her answer. “What boyfriend? Oh my god, you’re even better than I thought,” she exclaimed as she clasped her hands together in exaltation. “Oh Evie, a life where you can have as many imaginary friends as you’d like? You are SO lucky.” She really thought I was lucky, if I saw people who didn’t exist.