Roundabout Year, Chapter One: Gone

A suburban home in Littleton, Colorado, 1998

Something wasn’t quite right.
Something about this room was strange, and unkind, and Kate couldn’t put her finger on what it was.  Usually, it was just a bedroom.  A place where she slept, and got dressed, and watched TV, and did other mundane things.  But right now there was something uncanny about the way the overhead light cast a clipped shadow of the dresser onto the wall.  Or something about the way that even though there was bright light on the inside, the darkness seemed almost to push in through the crack in the curtains.  Or the way the curtains didn’t whisper in movement even with the antique ceiling fan insignificantly humming, and sending its blades in circles, pushing air around the room as if trying to help her relax.  She couldn’t relax.  Something was nagging at her.
         She had been sitting upright on her bed, and now she moved herself back so that she was leaning against the headboard.  She scanned the room with watchful eyes.  A secret was hiding among the sharp corners of this room.  A dark secret.  And she could find it, she was sure, if she looked hard enough.
This room held a lot of memories.  It reminded Kate of her mother.  The walls had always been white, and the hardwood floors had always been clean.  Whenever Kate would do something to taint it, for anything that couldn’t be initially corrected, Mom would call in the polishers, the painters, to line with polish, or roll paint over the mistake, no expense spared.  Anything considered imperfect had been immediately perfected, from the dust on the dresser, to the spiders in the windowsill which she’d like to watch for a time, seeing them skitter back and forth, or weave extravagant webs of mysterious silk.  Then Mom had seen them, and had vacuumed the windowsill clean, so that not even a speck of dirt remained. All the furniture in the room matched sweetly; it was oak brown and off-white.  Mom had picked it all out, of course.  It had irritated Kate, having no creative control over her surroundings.  There was a mirror hanging above the dresser, and she caught sight of herself and gazed into it.
“Oh.  Hi,” she said to her reflection, batting at her hair.  “Fancy seeing you here.”
She had always seen the person in the mirror as rather bland, not like the person she felt she was, who was emotional at all the wrong times, and indifferent at the wrong times as well.  She didn’t find her appearance to be much of a summary of her personality.  Sometimes people assumed that it was, though.
         She had a small build, which was just the way she was born, and a lean figure, which simply came from all the outdoor activity she enjoyed—walking in the woods, climbing trees, riding her bike, things of that nature.  Kate straightened, sitting erect on the bed, and put her hands around her waist, so that she could see if anything had changed.  She was 14, going to be 15 in a week or two, and she still was practically built like a boy.  She let out a breath through puffed cheeks, losing posture, in defeat. Kate stared blankly into the mirror from her bed, doing her best to ignore the ornate, finely carved ovular frame (which seemed to be screaming the contrast between itself and the looker’s face).  That face seemed simpler to her, and plainer, than she would like people to think. 
“I look like a kid,” she muttered.  She turned her head sideways both ways, to get full view of her face, then faced forward again.  Kate had a boyish, child-like face, which she thought had some beauty in there somewhere, with skin with a healthy, light flush, spotted by a few tan freckles.  Pale blue-gray eyes, framed by long, curling blonde lashes bored into the looking glass.  She had what she considered to be a short, stubby nose, also with some freckles here and there, and her lips were small, also with a little extra flush in them that made her look even more juvenile.  These were things she couldn’t change, whether or not she was always pleased with them.  Something that she felt like she could control was her hair. It was dark blonde, cut short so that it fell a little lower than the ears, and the bangs would get in her eyes sometimes.  Even though she occasionally wished she could seem a little more grown-up, she never wanted to grow her hair out.  It was too much trouble to keep styled, and it felt uncomfortable at the back of her neck, as if it shouldn’t be there.  She looked up, above the mirror.
There was a photograph in a frame above; it had been from last year’s school pictures.  She hadn’t liked it.  She still didn’t.  Her mother had made her wear makeup for that shot, and a white blouse with a low neckline.  Mom had thought that any young lady growing up had to wear makeup, or they just wouldn’t make it in today’s society.  But it had stopped mattering quite so much after the car crash, and Kate had thrown out her own pictures of her mother and never seen her face again.
It had been sudden.  When Kate had found out she had felt like she was experiencing the shock of the collision, and then the brutal pain.  But it was short, and then the numbness came.  Life had to go on.  And it would.  It wouldn’t affect her.  She had other things to worry about.
She had school.  After Mom had died, with only one paycheck, Dad hadn’t been able to afford to pay for her private school anymore.  That had been a year ago.  Another drastic change had been the last thing she needed.  And school had been a drastic change.
It was a public high school, mostly made up of rich white kids from upper-class suburbia, built off of blonde chicks and cliques, boy’s sports and progress reports.  Kate’s pastimes before public school had been odd, and not exactly embraced at her private school, but at least accepted.  Kate had liked to ride bikes with the boys in her neighborhood, just one of the guys, watching them with their skate tricks.  That had been in the summer of 1997.  It was November of 1998 now.  It had taken so long for her to realize that she wasn’t one of the guys anymore.  She may still have been built like one, but when those boys entered into their freshman year it was suddenly forbidden for them to be seen with her.  They never spoke to her inside school.  It seemed that her schoolmates got a kick out of telling her day after day that she needed a perm, or, for a guy, faking out a high-five.
Kate drew her knees up to her chest, and closed her eyes and thought of Mom.  Then there was a shock, a jolt in her mind that came at the speed of a flash of lightning, and was gone just as quickly.  Suddenly, everything came flooding in.
“Oh God.  Oh God.  Oh God.”  She shook her head and hid her face in her knees, rocking back and forth on her bed.  She could feel her face contorting and that prickly feeling one gets that tells one tears are coming was spreading in her nose and eyes.  She grimaced and bit down on her left forearm, which was hugging her knees, trying to focus on that instead of the tears that were trying so hard to flow from her eyes.  Then the air grew thin, and her breathing became labored.  Her breaths were short, and rapid, as though what there was to breathe on was fading away.  She raised her head slowly above her knees, looking around with wide, fearful eyes.  The vision was blurring, her head swimming, and the light floating surreally.  Her surroundings, the furniture, the floor, went in and out of focus with each heartbeat, outlines becoming vague.  Also with each heartbeat the walls moved in, then receded.  Thump, thump. Back, forth.  Thump, thump.  Thump, thump.
So this was what was wrong with her room.  It was wicked somehow.  It had something against her and was seeking revenge for some crime she’d committed against it.  Maybe it was the spiders.  Maybe she should never have paid attention to those poor spiders at all.
It came to her that her mouth was dry and her throat was sore from tension, so she carefully removed herself from her bed, putting each foot deliberately on the floor beneath her, which was very far away.  Head still swimming, feeling unbalanced, she walked, step by cautious step, down the hall to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
She flipped the light on, and the darkness scattered, and, lingering in the doorway, she squinted at the sudden brightness. After hesitation, her bare feet padded onto the tile as she went for a drinking glass, her head hung low so she wouldn’t have to look at anything. 
She was holding a glass to the automatic ice dispenser when she got this really strange feeling that something was advancing on her.  She thought she heard footsteps coming down the hall, but they were drowned out by the sound of blood pounding in her ears, and though some part of her knew the beating of her heart was rapid, suddenly everything seemed to slow down to half its normal speed.  Slowly she turned her head towards the doorway, slowly she saw her father enter.  He was a tall man, standing at around six feet, clean-shaven, with tan skin and dark hair that fell on either side of his brow.  He was built with a thickness and width to match his height.  He looked like everything Kate was not, with the exception of two pale blue-gray eyes, the color of storm clouds, with a blank look about them, and, if you looked hard enough, a distant pain.  He looked grief-stricken, even more so usual, and as if he was going to break down at any moment.  But when her father broke down, it was almost the opposite.  She had come to realize that the way he dealt with pain was anger.  If there was a breakdown, it would be an explosion.  She would do her best not to trigger one.  But. 
He was heading right towards her.  And all at once she knew that if he touched her, everything would go all wrong, and that human touch was more terrifying than the thought of something hiding in her room, more unjust than all the happenings at school. There was something about experiencing physical contact that seemed invasive, dangerous, deadly.  Like something was powerfully colliding to the point of violence. 
Like a car crash. 
As he moved toward her, each footstep on the tile a pounding of blood in her ears, she stood frozen, eyes wide, feeling as though her muscles, skin, and bones were drawn taut.
She saw his mouth moving, but didn’t hear the words.  She saw the brow creasing and the lips moving downwards, and the mouth moving again, this time with a distant rumble, but still she did not respond.  Once more, with a look of something beyond irritation, he said something, meaningless, hollow, and took a step towards her.  He moved to place his hands on her shoulders, purposefully.
Oh no.
Her hands opened.
The next thing she knew there was a horrible crashing of glass on the tile, and she had been jerked back to reality; nothing was slow anymore, everything was fast, and the shards of glass jumped and skipped across the floor, and her father’s deep voice roared, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
         She darted nimbly under his arms and skittered back to her room, where she slammed the door shut and crawled under the covers of her bed, trembling and shuddering.  In her panic she realized she was bleeding, and the breathing quickened again, and she tossed off the blankets and put her right foot on her lap, where she found a shard of glass the size of a quarter embedded into the arch of her foot.  Somehow she hadn’t noticed before.  She winced, shaking, and put her fingers to it.  She closed her eyes and pulled quickly.  “Gagh!”  Blood began to flow generously from the wound. A red stain blotted onto the bedspread.  She stared at the piece of glass in her hand and the blood on her fingers, then looked blankly down at the place where the glass had sliced her skin.  Suddenly her father was outside the door, and he threw it open, knob hitting the wall with a bang.  Here it came. 
         He stood menacingly in the doorway, shoulders hunched and feet set firmly apart.  That look of pain was gone.  In its place was a look of animosity, that emotion he must be feeling surely about to fly out and wreak destruction.  Kate, sitting on her bed, clutched her foot, unable to stand.  She fixed her father with a contemptuous glare, as her left eyebrow quivered slightly from the pain.  There was a moment there where they remained motionless, one sitting tense on the bed with her right foot on her lap and hand holding a piece of glass suspended in midair, the other blocking the doorway in almost a battle-ready stance, and the two exchanged grimace and glare for scowl and stare.  Then the silence burst like a pin put to a bubble floating through the air.
         “What are you, crazy?” he said angrily.
         That was what did it.
         She stood, quickly, favoring her left foot, but attempting to stand tall, strong, unaffected.  Whether or not he had seen the cut, or the glass, she didn’t know, nor did she know if he cared.  But she didn’t plan on showing signs of weakness.
         “I am not crazy,” she said quietly.
         “Coulda fooled me,” he countered loudly.
         “You’re pretty easily fooled, though, aren’t you?” she challenged.  She didn’t know why she was doing it.  It wasn’t her way to talk back to her parents.  But now, with only one left, it didn’t seem to matter what she said to the remaining one.  She couldn’t see the logic behind this, but stood blindly by it.  She crossed her arms, because she realized she was shivering.
         “Say that again,” he snarled, looking livid.  Kate stood silent, not sure what else she should say, not backing down, but arms still crossed and trying to stop the shaking. Suddenly he threw his hands into the air and shouted a swear.  He grabbed hold of a blue porcelain case on a tall brown shelf to his right and, with a short, powerful pitch, slammed it against the clean, off-white wall.  With a chunk a three-inch-wide dent went into it.  The shattered pieces of porcelain chinked and fell, some onto the shelf, falling among a row of china dolls, some on the floor at her father’s feet.  He kicked them aside.
         “SAY THAT AGAIN!”
         “Get out of my room!”
         Her father was beside himself.  He was turning red in the face now. “THIS IS MY HOUSE AND I WILL COME AND GO AS I PLEASE!”
         “You never please!” she spat.  “You’re never happy!  You try to cover it up!” She thought she heard her voice growing desperate.  “You don’t have to cover anything,” she continued.  For a moment she thought she was going somewhere sympathetic.  Then she shifted the weight on her feet, and the pain redoubled, and she found herself shouting, “JUST FEEL YOUR PAIN AND GET OVER IT!”
“DON’T YOU TELL ME HOW TO FEEL ABOUT MY OWN WIFE, KATHERINE!” he roared.
“YOUR DEAD WI—”
She knew she shouldn’t have said it halfway through the last word, and she stopped herself, but too late. He had swept forward, and he saw a blur of a fist swinging and a bludgeoning impact on her left cheek, and she staggered, tripped over her ankle, and fell to the floor.  Her eyes watered as she pushed herself gradually upright.  Her cheek burned ferociously, and started throbbing.  Katherine, she thought.  I don’t ever want to be called that, ever, ever again…
“Some way to honor her memory,” she groaned, and through the watering in her eyes she thought she saw a look of shock on his dark features, and that distant look of pain was back in his eyes, and he was gone.
Kate drew up her legs, wrapping her arms around them, and put her head to her knees.  Her eyes were watering still. 
“No really, they’re watering,” she said to herself, and she found even the smallest spark of pride to know this was true.  If any of the guys ever saw her like this…
She put a hand to her cheek, and the other, lightly, to her foot, still bleeding, as if she’d forgotten it was there.
“Ouch!”
There were a few minutes when the watering in the eyes almost turned to flooding, but she fought the feeling off by setting her mind to be like stone.  After sitting awhile longer, eyes boring at the fragments of the broken vase near the doorway, she thought it’d be best to get up and do what she could to take care of herself.
“I’m not going to be a baby about things anymore,” she said aloud. Then, turning onto her knees and gripping her elaborate bedpost for support, she stood gingerly and limped, stumbling occasionally, towards the bathroom down the hall.  She returned to her room with a gauze bandage wrapped around it, and around the ankle as she’d seen done on TV, and her hands clean and free of blood. 
She walked, forcing herself not to limp despite the sharp pain in her foot, to her closet, and opened it quietly.  From the other room she could hear a loud and angry blare of a television.  She caught a single word amidst the senseless news reporter’s chatter: Blah blah blah blah…criminals….blah blah blah blah. She shook her head and bent to pick up a pair of woolen socks and a pair of hiking boots she had worn, outside the house, only when her mother was busy with work and excessive housekeeping. She struggled and put these on while standing, and when done, straightened again. Also from this closet Kate removed a windbreaker jacket, both sleeves of which she pulled onto her arms.  Her wallet was in the right pocket, with her school I.D., and some money, and a key to the house.  Out of the left pocket came a stocking cap, and she purposefully scruffed up her own hair and put it over her head.  She reached for the small backpack hanging on the closet doorknob. It looked out of place in this room.  No more.  She ripped the mouth open and starting throwing drawers open, stuffing things into it.  Two t-shirts, underwear, two pairs of socks, and from the back left corner of her bottom drawer, a box of kitchen matches.  She twirled around again to her closet, and dropped down to retrieve a single left Converse brand sneaker.  From this she pulled a small roll of twine, a thick roll of crumpled dollar bills, and a small Schrade pocketknife.  She flipped this open, ran her thumb lightly over the edge, peering down at it.  She began to press her thumb to it more firmly, then let up and snapped it shut.  She put it on her left inside pocket, and in the other inside pocket that roll of bills, the money she’d been saving since a month after Mom died. 
Finally, all ready.
In the mirror she caught sight of herself, one last time, and she felt unsure what to do, or say, as if she were saying a last goodbye to someone she’d known for a long time. 
Not like anyone she knew.
After a few moments of awkwardness, Kate nodded in acknowledgment at her reflection, then grabbed the backpack.  She climbed onto her bed and stood, the window beside her.  She threw aside the curtains, unlocked the window and wrenched it open. Cold air embraced her.  She kicked out the screen, watched it fall.  Then, without a look over her shoulder, she climbed out.  And was gone.