Chapter 2

ELAINE BARKER, MATTAPAN.

  People are right sometimes when they say women are blind. Too blind to see the red flags in a relationship. That one time when your boyfriend holds your hand a little too tightly infront of other boys or the time he says it will only be one drink and eventually comes home reeking of alcohol or the time he yells at you for spending too much time with your friends then there is first hit or slap. Before what happened to me I had always wondered how wives stay with abusive husbands but I now know that they are powerless or it could be Stockholm syndrome who knows anyway how the human brain works.

I didn't face such problems though because I didn't have a boyfriend. No one would date the daughter of a clergyman and an elementary school teacher. The same daughter who was considered the black sheep of the family because I chose to dress different and because of the rumours that the cheerleaders were spreading I was the laughing stock of the school. Every time I was walking through the halls there were always whispers. I had no friends. There was Vicky who had tried to befriend me but I didn't want to rope her into all my troubles.

  Nobody was there for a girl like me so my only refuge was the church where my father worked. The old Victorian building that was cracked in some places. It's interior was wall papered maroon with old artistic paintings of various scenes of the Bible.  I  would go there after school and during school when it became too overwhelming. The backyard of the church was my serene place it was a well trimmed lawn that stretched into a forest that was planted by the church in a bid to conserve the environment where birds and squirrels had colonized the trees. I would go out and watch the squirrels fight over nuts or even participate in one of the noisy clan meetings of the dicky birds.

  This one Saturday when I  went to the backyard I realized that it wasn't mine anymore. He had tainted my serene place. I should have told my dad what I saw the time I was there. The cutting and skinning. I had watched him in horror my jaw literally on the floor as he skillfully peeled off the squirrel's skin despite it's screaming protests then he burnt it in a trash can fire. His eyes as bright as the orange flames and heart as dark as the smoke that filled the air. That was the  first red flag that I noticed about him.

 Indeed love is blind.

He saw me and panicked. He pleaded and cried and I promised to keep his secret because I loved him. I don't think the cutting, skinning and burning ended as much as he became conspicuous about it.

Red flag number 2 was when he started to visit my room. After all he was the apple of my father's eye who would stop him, he was the altar boy of the church, my dad's successor and therefore he was granted a free pass into my room. Who knew it was that easy to get into the room of a priest's daughter.  He indeed maxed out the free pass as he came in day and night.

The real problem  and the biggest red flag was at my sixteenth birthday when he had clearly made his intentions known.  He had grabbed my dress and cornered me against the wall of my room then he had said that my dress had made him crazy with lust. I was extremely scared. Fortunately, my sister, Elizabeth had walked in all ten years of innocence and naivety with her bouncy brown hair arrested in a long ponytail. She asked if I had seen her comb, oblivious to all that had just transpired before. He had been spooked and blamed alcohol and I was stupid enough to believe him and he ran away. He didn't come back to my room or my house ever again. We only saw each other at church and he was a changed person. He even apologized. 

Two years later, standing at the pool at Vicky's house staring at his bloodshot eyes and sweaty face, the white knuckle grip he has on that baseball bat, I know there's no taming someone's bestial appetites.

   You want to know one thing that I regret so much. I regret going to that party. More so I regret agreeing to Vicky's pleas for me to go swimming. What I regret most though is meeting Evan.