45
ALEXA KING
-Present-

Alexa King's house
October 27, 2018
10:18 p.m.

"WHY ARE YOU LYING, daddy?"

I haven't called my father 'daddy' since I was eight years old. A picture-perfect little girl, the one I was before my mother's murder and Levittown's darkness, used that word out of fits and giggles, not out of fear. That word --- daddy --- conjures up summer afternoons spent in our old house's backyard, my father behind some red grill and mom bringing tall glasses of pink lemonade to our loud, younger selves. Me, chasing after Melody under the golden sunlight, her giggles like a melody in the wind.

Christopher was --- is --- right. Memories are stupid.

My father stays quiet, one hand still clutching the edge of the countertop and the other gripping his cellphone. He shuts his eyes tightly, tears managing to break free from his eyelids as they slide down his cheeks. He can't look at me. His hold loosens, the cellphone falling on the marble surface with a clanking sound that rattles in my chest.

My chest, it feels empty. Numb. See-through. Exposed. Anything can pass through it, and I won't feel a thing. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

"Daddy, why are you lying?" I say, my voice a whispered plea that ventures into desperation.

His eyelids seem heavy as he struggles to flutter them open to look at me. A puddle of tears rests underneath each eye, lashes sticking together and glistening under the kitchen's artificial lights. He opens his mouth to say something --- anything --- that could explain this silly lie, but his bottom lip is trembling too much and his teeth are shattering loudly. It's difficult to speak, but somehow, he fights through it.

"Honey, I'm not lying. I wish I were," he says in a battered voice that's been unused for too long. He painfully gulps down his voice, but it comes right back up with the slow bouncing of his Adam's apple. "God, I wish I were."

There's a tingling sensation growing in that empty space in my chest, the numbness that protects my body from pain beating into a new emotion. This tingling sensation reaches the tips of my fingers and my limbs, all the way up to my neck, my cheeks, and my pounding head. The pounding is synchronized to the aggressive beating of my heart, pumps that buzz throughout my body. It awakens it from its numb state, leaving me completely vulnerable.

My head starts to spin, the room moving around with it in a blur of beige and white colors. I try to adjust to my hazy vision, but all it does is upset my stomach. Black dots begin to plague the undertones of beige and white that compose my kitchen, the dizziness that comes along with them turning my body weak. My body leans forward, preparing for a fall that I prevent by putting my hand on a wall.

The familiar anxiety is rendering me stoic, spreading painfully through my chest. Its burning sensation crawls up to my throat, depriving me of my voice, my feelings, my thoughts. But then, something fiery grows in the pit of my stomach. I invite the anger to take a hold of me, just to quench the anxiety for a little while.

"You're a liar!"

He sighs, taking tentative steps toward me. "I know this isn't easy, but---"

"This isn't funny, okay?" I say, shaking my head. "I was just with him."

"Alexa---"

"This is a sick joke, daddy. It's not funny." I huff, something like a strained laugh or a guttural cry coming from my throat. "Why are you doing this to me? You know... You know you can't joke with something like this."

He puts his hands on my shoulders, his skin warm against my own. "Honey, I'm not laughing. I would never do that to you."

"I was just with him," I whisper, shrugging out of his grasp. Something in my mind clicks, makes this confusion make sense. "Oh, I get it. Is he here? Where is he?"

I look around the kitchen, opening cabinets and crouching to look under the table. There's no one here. Maybe he's hiding somewhere in the house, waiting for me to find him with a charming smirk on his face. I can play this game if it means that I can find him... alive.

I move toward the kitchen's entrance, planning to first search the living room and then the upstairs' bedrooms. My father prevents me from leaving, though. He blocks the entrance with his body and puts his arm around my torso when I fight to pass through.

"Alexa," he says softly, as if my name is a sentence on its own. No more words, just the seriousness in his tone.

"Just come out, please. I promise I won't get mad. Come out, and we'll la-la-laugh." I laugh nervously for demonstration, and then scream over my father's shoulder: "Christopher! Christopher! Christopher!"

"Alexa!" my father says, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking my body gently. "He's gone."

There's a moment of silence. I concentrate on his sad, brown eyes. They're full of honesty and pain. With wide eyes, I realize that he's telling the truth.

I back away slowly until my butt touches the kitchen countertop. My heart feels heavy on my chest, like it might just drop to my stomach and burst until it dies. There's a weight on top of me, trying to squash me. Maybe it's the world. It's making me sink with no water. The room continues to spin and spin and spin, until the objects that compose it become unrecognizable.

This is not happening. It can't be happening.

"That was his mom on the phone," he mumbles, bringing the world back into focus. "She found him unconscious a half hour ago and called the paramedics. The police are now involved. They want to rule the death a suicide because there's evidence that sustains it, like the bottle of pills beside his body. There weren't many of them left."

I'm in love with you, Alexa.

Why didn't you say it sooner?

I'm just so damn tired.

Of what?

I love you.

How much?

If anything happens---

Were you trying to tell me what would happen?

I would die if anything happened to you.

Did you die for me or were you killed?

Well, if something does happen, I want you to know that it isn't your fault.

I shouldn't have left you alone. I should've listened, really listened.

I would do anything for you.

What were you trying to say?

So, tell me, why is he on my mind now more than ever before?

Is he on your mind every time Death is?

That's why I'm telling you the truth tonight.

Why did you tell me the truth?

Memories are stupid, wouldn't you agree?

Painful, yes. You'll now be a pain that comes and goes with the years.

I'm more like my father than you think.

You were never like your father. You were good. You are good.

But I'm so tired. So, so tired.

Was this your way of reaching out? I'm so sorry.

Tomorrow morning, if it's okay with you, we'll go down to the station.

Tomorrow, as in the future. You were waiting for a tomorrow. Was this your way of covering the truth?

If I believe in all that bullshit, then maybe there's a chance of a happy ending.

I'm so sorry...

I'm in love with you, Alexa.

I'll never stop loving you.

Why didn't I say all these things when he was alive? Why didn't I notice there was something wrong? Why am I surprised? Isn't this what I'm best at? Whenever I leave someone for just a little while, Death takes them away from me. Am I what's needed for a death to be completed in this town? I am a curse.

I wasn't there for Melody or my mother. Now Christopher. I let him down, just like I always do.

"They're taking his body to the... morgue to determine the cause of death," he mumbles with some difficulty and clears his throat. "I have to be there for Mrs. Shaw, honey. I also have to hand in all the files I have of him to the authorities."

I try to speak, but there's no breath left in my body. My throat hurts too much, while my tongue feels like some heavy weight in my mouth. My father becomes blurry as tears swell in my eyes. I bite down on my bottom lip to prevent myself from crying. I need the physical pain to awaken something, anything, in me. If I don't blink, the tears won't have the chance to come out.

"I'll be back in two hours, honey. You don't need to see him like that. I'll do that for the both of us," he says, taking the car keys from the table. He plants a soft kiss on my forehead and stays there for too long, as if not wanting to leave me behind. "I just don't understand what I did wrong. He was doing great."

Without really thinking it through, something propels me to hug him. I bury my head in his chest, finding comfort in his strong cologne, and push my face against it to stop the tears. His heart is beating quickly. Its rapid rhythm vibrates on my face.

"I love you," I mumble, hugging him tighter.

He sighs through his nose and kisses the top of my head several times. "I love you, too."

After he's gone, I don't cry. All that comes up is a lot of vomit. It's a painful process: my stomach caves in as it prepares to empty itself and my throat burns while everything comes out. I'm hunched in front of the dishwasher, spitting the last of the brown liquid. The cool, running water feels nice in my mouth. I splash some of it on my face, cringing when it comes in contact with a cut on my lip.

My hand trembles as I turn off the faucet. Now that I'm noticing it, my whole body is trembling. It feels weak, like I'm about to collapse at any moment. I need to lie down for a little bit. No, what I need is to see him. It's so unnatural to not be the one who finds his body.

I need to see for myself if he's truly dead. There's no blind faith when it comes to death. At least, not in this town. Never in Levittown.

My legs wobble as I try to get up from the floor, but I fight through the numbness. Everything feels like it's going in slow motion, dragging me further away from Christopher. It feels like that time on the riverbank, when Melody and I were doing pot for the first time. I don't remember much of the night, just this slow feeling to it and lots of giggles.

Christopher is somewhere in that memory, faintly but there. He's blowing smoke in my face during some point of the night, and on another, he's making out with some random girl by the fire. I try to reach for him, my arm extending in front of me but so far away from him. I see him through the gap between my middle and ring finger, kissing her so passionately but always looking at me.

My hand seizes something cold and metallic, instead of his elbow or his hand. It's a doorknob. How did I get to the front door?

I don't dwell on that question. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I get to him. He must be feeling so lonely on that metal bed. He must feel violated with all those people poking around his body, searching for what went wrong. He must want me there. He must be furious with the world for allowing this to happen to him. But, then again, if it was a suicide, he must feel so free from all the shit that the world gave him. Or he regrets it.

I'd like to think that he's finally free, that he found what he always wanted. The problem is, I'm not so convinced that it was a suicide. It couldn't have been, not when we had such an honest and raw conversation a few hours prior.

Once I'm outside the house, my chest inflates and deflates as I'm desperately searching for air. It's like the house was suffocating me to the point of hysteria, but I've been nothing but numb since receiving the news. What is wrong with me? Why can't I cry? Three of the most important people in my life were killed, and I'm just... detached. From the situation, from all of them.

I'll go to him in the same way the rest of us went to the riverbank when we were little kids --- with the wind slapping my face and my calves throbbing. My bike is too small for my body now, so I run as hard and fast as I can toward the town's morgue.

As the cold wind slaps my face until it feels frozen in place and brushes back my wild curls, memories of Christopher come rushing in.

There's him next to Melody, a handsome new boy. He has that perfect smirk on his face, but when his pale blue eyes land on me for the first time, he grins. There's that feeling that only he creates in me, the one I've never felt with anyone else. Me, going out of breath as I look back at him for the first time, my heart leaping to my throat and then crashing somewhere below the stomach. Pumping its blood in forbidden places, swelling my chest with first-time love.

As the memory dissipates and stays behind, pain blossoms in the middle of my stomach.

There he is again, cupping my cheek while passing his thumb on my bottom lip. The room is dark, but I can still feel him grinning down at me. He presses his strong body against my own and a shaky breath comes out of my lips. While his body is poised and confident, mine is a trembling and clumsy mess. Him, tilting my chin up and closing the space between us. His lips are warm as he takes me to heaven, my heart beating all over my body. Our first kiss is deep and passionate, leaving us out of breath and breathing life into us at the same time. He devours me in secret, and I let him.

The memory crumbles down, but I can still taste the vodka and cigarette residue in my mouth. As I continue to run, pain blooms in my chest.

I'll take it nice and slow. His voice, his words. He's here again. His hands roam around my body, nice and slow, taking off my crop-top, then my bra, then my skirt, until finally reaching my panty. He leaves me in my boots. My own hands, roaming around his body urgently, taking off the black sweater, pulling down the jeans, almost ripping off the boxer. Leaving him completely naked. Nice and slow. I like that. My first time with my first and only love.

As the memory floats away, a pounding pain booms in my throat. I try to swallow down the lump, but it's too big. My chest burns to the point where I can't breathe, so I run even faster. Maybe that way, I'll die of suffocation.

You want some company? I can be at your house in ten. Him, waking up at the middle of the night just to talk to me. Him, wanting to see me after I had a panic attack. Him, caring for me. There's us sitting in front of the riverbank back in September, talking about our parents. He listens to me, really listens, and offers honest words of encouragement. He even opens up to me, reveals things from his past that he's never told anyone else.

My vision blurs, the beige-colored sidewalk morphing into the bright orange light that comes from the various lampposts that line it. Some tears float back as the wind continues to slap my skin, my face feeling swollen all over. Everything's a blur, but I don't care. I run even faster, my calves throbbing, my chest aching, my throat burning.

Christopher is waiting for me.

He can't be dead. The places he touched with his lips are still warm. Too warm for someone who is already cold. His voice is still so fresh in my mind. Too fresh for someone who no longer has a voice. It's embedded in my whole psyche. It still feels pleasant inside of me. Too pleasant a feeling for someone who can no longer make love to the woman he loves. I'm in love with you and I love you, freshly out of his lips. Too new for them to die out like that, without given the opportunity to be fully experienced.

He's still so alive to me. It's only been three hours since I last saw him. He can't be dead. No, he isn't. Life cannot be taken away like that, so abruptly and without any warnings. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want it all to stop, please make it stop.

An ambulance rushes by, its sirens wailing a lament that I've heard too many times before. It passes by me so easily, not caring that I'm running as fast as I can to get to him first. Is he inside there?

My steps slow down until I come to a stop. The ambulance truck rushes down the road, disappearing just a few seconds later. My body gasps for air, my burning lungs screaming for me to do something about this pain. This horrible, all-consuming pain that resides in my soul but manifests itself on my physical body.

He's there. Oh my God, he's there. He just passed by me and I didn't, I didn't---

I throw up on someone's front lawn. Whatever was keeping me sane and functioning ends up in that brown puddle surrounded by all that green. I collapse to the floor, my body caving in to the weight of the world. A sharp ache throbs all over once my knees hit the cement ground, but that's not what makes my face twist in pain.

My body begins to shake uncontrollably, an emotion that's been tightly locked freeing itself. I let out a long, loud scream and only stop when I'm out of breath, out of voice, and have a burning throat. Dogs start to bark around the neighborhood, either sensing a cry for help or some intruder. Houses become lit as people wake up, either to hush the dogs or to peek outside the windows.

I scream again, louder than before, and clutch my chest tightly. It's so hard to breathe, so, so hard. Tears begin to come down in torrents, tainting my cheeks with both grief and freedom. This is so much, too much, for my fragile body. But I still want the pain; I still want to feel.

I lean forward and put a hand on the ground to support myself. My forehead is now on the sidewalk, feeling the coolness left behind by tonight's weather. This feels so nice against my burning skin. Scream after scream after scream, I can't stop. I won't stop. I've always been silenced by this fucking town, always been imprisoned inside it, and for what? What has this town ever given me? Fuck this town, fuck its people, fuck everyone.

Tonight, I will make noise and I will be heard. No more of being a nice, obedient fucking girl.

I'm screaming for all the ones who can't anymore, who were deprived of their voices --- my mother, Melody, Christopher, Janet Brown, the women that had the same fate as my mother. I'm crying for all of them.

"Oh my God, Frederick!" a woman screams, but I scream louder. Fuck her. "There's a girl in our front yard, and she just puked all over my garden!"

"I'm calling the police. I'm tired of these drunk teenagers puking everywhere." Yeah, good luck with that. The police here sucks.

Frederick sounds a little tired of Nancy's shit. She keeps babbling about her garden. I'm going to call her Nancy. She sounds like one.

Shoes scrape against the concrete, quick steps taken toward me. "Dear, are you okay?" Nancy-I-only-care-about-the-vomit-in-my-garden asks, touching my shoulder.

I flinch away from her cold touch and stand up. "Don't fucking touch me, you bitch. You're rubbing him away."

I cry even louder now, the thought of her touch on my shoulder instead of Christopher's breaking me down.

"You're obviously drunk," Nancy says with contempt, her eyebrows slightly furrowed. "Look, my husband's calling the---"

"The fucking police! As if they're going to do jack shit," I scream, walking away from her.

She's screaming after me as I jog away. I change my pace and go faster, until I'm fully running again. Tears are still trailing down my cheeks and it still hurts to breathe, but I prefer the physical pain. My mind knows this way by heart, so there's not a lot of thinking as I let my legs do the work. There's only silence... and trees and twigs and dirt.

I don't want to see his body. Neither of us deserves that. I want to keep him alive --- keep the last memory I have of him pure and happy and mine.

The silence is broken by water crashing against rocks. I slow down my pace as I come near my sacred place, our sacred place, and stop when I'm finally in front of the riverbank. If I'm going to break down completely, I need to do it alone, in the intimacy of the woods. The riverbank is my witness, as well as the moon and the stars. Our memories live in this place. It's only fair that I grieve amongst our past selves.

I repeat the madness all over again, let my darkness out --- scream and cry and curse and puke some more. The woods echo back my pain. It sounds haunting in a beautiful, melodic way. The echoes are interrupted by the crunching of leaves, the shuffling of bushes, and the snapping of twigs.

Someone's here.

Was I followed?

The numbness takes a hold of my body once again. I stand up, my shoulders rigid, my body on alert. My heart pounds so hard, it appears it's going to rip itself away from my ribcage. I won't let anyone intimidate me anymore. Whoever's there is going to have a fight.

The silhouette of a man appears behind some bushes. It's awfully familiar somehow. He's not like the shadow I saw when I was here with Christopher in September. This shadow is gentler, not so intimidating. Instead of intimidating me, it calms me. I let my guard down, the numbness going away with it. It's always a shock when it leaves, allowing all these repressed emotions out.

"Christopher?" I whisper, my voice breaking a little.

Maybe he isn't dead. Maybe he's missing or he came here to clear his mind. After all, we are going to the police tomorrow. There's a lot of pressure, a lot to think about. Hope isn't gone, so I let it grow.

He comes forward into the dim light provided by tonight's half-moon. His face is a mask of terror that eases once he notices that it's me. He relaxes, even sighs in relief, but doesn't stop looking over his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?"

•Word count: 3,961•

Countdown: 5 chapters left + an epilogue!!!!!!! ♡

I want to apologize again for being so inactive and for the lack of updates. The story only has a few chapters left. I know I should be more productive, but I'm still in this weird place with my writing. Good news is that I'm slowly but surely getting out of that weird place!

I'm currently taking a Creative Writing course in college, and by writing other things besides Levittown (although short), I'm becoming more inspired to finish the novel! I'm also working as a writer for the digital magazine Her Campus, specifically in the chapter opened in my college (uprrp), and writing articles (nonfiction) is REALLY activating my creative juices.

So, yeah. A lot is happening in my life right now. This chapter was hard to write for two reasons: 1. It was an emotional rollercoaster, and 2. That weird place I'm at mentally. Just know that Levittown WILL BE FINISHED. This is my baby, my first born. Levittown should be finished by the end of March or beginning of April. There's also the new and improved Wattys, which I'm extremely excited about! After finishing Levittown, I will be editing it in preparation for the competition.

Thank you guys SO, SO, SO much for 8K reads and almost 800 votes!!!! ♡ I'm truly in awe.

Questions: why do you think that Alexa is finally breaking down now, at this point in the novel? Did you feel Alexa's pain, confusion, denial? What about her conversation with her father? Her reaction to the woman touching her? Her train of thought, how it jumps from memories of Christopher to the present? Did Christopher commit suicide or was he killed? Who do you think is the person behind the bushes? What will happen next? What are your predictions?

Feel free to correct any grammatical errors, but be kind about it. Tell me what you think of this chapter.

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