BROWN SKIN | BOOK 1

|| C H A P T E R . 24 || PART III

Sometimes I say terrible things when I'm afraid or scared. I don't mean any of it. I never do. It happens when you keep everything bottled up and once the frustration is shaken to its plateau, it explodes.

I can't help it. Once those ugly words are said, I know they're meant to be low blows because I was given mean insults and phrases before to break me. I promise I'm still a sweet girl. I never changed, still quiet and vulnerable, I can't suddenly interchange into the angry black woman the way I'm illustrated in a perfect society. We can get angry, feisty, or fearful when we're challenged. I'm still introverted Ebonee. I still shed tears and stay sensitive when my emotions want me to be.

But those words don't hurt, no.

Because sometimes they were buried truths to hurt the ones already damaged.

My eyes watched Beau play sparklers between two uni-colored wire. They played a small circuital surge through his fingers and he winced under his breath to draw back from the electric current. To ease the pain, he kissed his fingers once, to correspondingly clamp his teeth down to tie the wires together in a knot in enthrallment. The deed was done, as he dusted his fingers and I watched him close the hood, completing his task of operating on the heart of the vehicle. He tried to fix things that were permanently broken.

I thought the sky would weep out loud and collect angry clouds to shadow over the pretty jewels at this time. We didn't know if the night was getting younger or older, but a similar pattern of darkness dawns for hours we spent out here. Shadows. Dark. Broken glass. Dark. Under a spell of unconscious. Dark. Statue-like posture with an empty mind. Dark.

My cheek took in the cool of the car window and released heat back, exchanging temperatures to benefit myself from freezing over. My brown eyes were stationary like heavy boulders and the fatigue loomed over me in the most haunting way possible. My body sank so deeply in the seat, it ate me alive, engulfing what's left of my soul. The seat had my spine slouched in an awkward state and every bone in the shoulders tipped over. The painful sensations that crept around had to come to rest when Beau slides into the driver's spot and created more tension than there needed to be. He sits there staring off past the dashboard, fixated on a blank zone. 

"Malik didn't really want to call you a thug," I blurted faintly out to fill space. The air compacted in the car was stagnant and slow, hovering a great weight around to become unbearable for awhile. 

"Because you're not. He wanted to call you a terror-"

"I know."

His voice cracked in place that hurt the most. Sounds wavered in and out at decibels and the taste of wet blood dried my mouth whole to suckered dry lips.

"Are you?" I asked casually.

There was no room to answer, but I know he wanted to weigh both options equally without bias or the one-ways street after what I've seen.

He killed me with unsaid words.

It was a reckless brawl filled with morbid beatings and a shortage of fighting back. But the absence of sound was an answer according to both of us.

A dying fish was what I was. Whether I floated above the surface or sinking, I continued to drown below sea level floors. Lower than low. It was so dark that I couldn't see or breathe and I knew what it was like to be alone. To hold back from saying something you'd regret. I've gotten used to seeing the blackness and stillness. Though, it was a quite scary thing.

"You're one of them now," I mentioned to no one in particular as my ear continues to pound dramatically like music was blasting directly in the eardrum. I didn't know who "them" distinctively were, but Beau couldn't be considered normal any longer. You can't exactly know someone that comes to your house ever so often with blood always dripping off his face and a gun in a vehicle. He knew. He always did.