chapter 7: not my girl

Taylor's Point of View

I always knew Mondays were the worst. The reminiscence of Trinity and last night still burned deep in my memory, and I couldn't think about anything all day. My tutor, parents, and brothers were all worried. I couldn't tell them just yet. Somehow I plowed through the math papers that I needed to finish and sneaked away from my desk. I brushed my hair with a few quick strokes and aimed for the counter. My brush fell into the sink. I left it there and made my way downstairs. I was just about home free at the back door when I felt a hand clasp over my shoulder.

"Where are you going?" Isaac stood behind me. I didn't have to turn around to figure it out, either. I just knew.

I didn't know what to say. I should have. "I…I…"

Isaac shot me a glare.

"I'm going to Jack's." I answered, referring to my life-long best friend.

Isaac shrugged. "Okay. Why are you so uptight, buddy?" He patted my back a couple times and opened the door for me.

"I'm not." I assured him. I smiled, despite the fact that I was doing something absolutely forbidden, and walked out the door, muttering a 'goodbye' to Isaac.

When I saw the guy walking along the sidewalk towards me, I knew I was his target, but I didn't know why. He probably hates my band, I thought as he approached. Or he could be angry for no reason. I'd heard of murders and things all done for no reason at all. I saw them on the news all the time. Sometimes it was a little baby girl or something, really sad. I hate how evil some people can be. Anyway, he ambled towards me like he knew exactly what he was doing.

"What do you think you're doing with my girl?" he drawled in a half-irritated, half-drunken accent.

I lowered my eyes. How could this be about Trinity? How does he know? Why is she 'his girl'? Thoughts ran through my head as swift and fast as a river. "What do you mean?"

"Trinity," he growled, furious already for a reason I didn't even know.

"What about her?" I tried to be strong, but I was afraid of what might be in his pocket that he kept reaching for.

"She's using you. You know that, right?"

She would never do that. I knew she loved me. But what do I say to this psycho?

"She's not using me. Not my girl."

"Oh yeah? You think you're one big hot shot 'cause you're Taylor Hanson," It was a problem that he knew who I was. That always made things worse. "She's just using you for your money."

I started to get angrier. "She wouldn't do that!" I yelled, a little louder than I had intended. "Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm Michael," the guy groaned. The name sent a shiver up my spine and a red light went off spinning in my head like a police siren.

"Michael…" I repeated the name. It was so unreal. My worst enemy had been standing before me, and I hadn't even known it. And yet, he was the reason I had found Trinity. A blessing as well as a nightmare, right before my eyes.

"Yeah, that's right," Michael grunted. He finally got his hand into his back pocket, but found nothing in it. Instead he brought his hand up and swung straight at my face.

Even though he was drunk, he still hit me straight on, and even though I'd never been punched before, I guessed that it couldn't have hurt very much more than it had. The punch knocked me onto the concrete and I almost heard the sound of my skull hitting the cement. But Michael wasn't done.

His foot came down hard on my abdomen, crushing my bones and internal organs it seemed. I curled up in a ball, clutching at my stomach. My eyes squeezed shut and refused to open as Michael threw another punch at my left eye. Even the black I saw seemed to swirl before me, my brain barely comprehending the sound of Michael's feet walking and his satisfied laugh following him down the street.

At first, I felt like I was dying. My insides hurt so badly that all I could think about was the pain. For minutes the agony went on. When it finally ceased, I passed out. I lay there for many minutes, practically lifeless.

Time passed, but I wasn't awake enough to really notice. Suddenly, there was something cold flooding over me. It felt like someone put an ice cube on my head. I used all the strength I had to open my eyes.

My vision was blurred, but I could still see Trinity bent over me, her hand touching my forehead. As my eyes darted around I realized she was holding a wet cloth on my head to wake me up.

"Are you all right?" Trinity's eyes were a little red and swollen, as if she'd been crying, but her voice was anything but weak.

My lips trembled, trying hard to form the word, 'yes.' My left eye refused to stay open, and it hurt. A drop of water, warm from being mixed with my perspiration, slid into my only open eye. I blinked a couple times and moved my head in a nod, to signal that I was okay.

Trinity pulled me up and grunted a little because I was so heavy. I laid my head on her shoulder and peered sideways at the world as Trinity held onto me.

The next thing I knew, I was propped up by a couple pillows on Trinity's couch, her beautiful face close to mine. My brain barely registered the weight of her legs around me.

"Hold this on your eye," Trinity instructed quietly, handing me a bag of crushed ice.

I took it slowly and gently pushed it on my eye as Trinity asked who hurt me.

"Michael," I told her.

Trinity gasped, putting her hand up to her mouth in fear. "Oh my God," she whispered through her fingers. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," I managed, to make her feel better, even though it wasn't at all okay.

"I have to tell you something about Michael," Trinity put her hand down, instead getting nervous and pushing wads of hair behind her ear that weren't even in the way in the first place.

I put my hand on hers, casually pulling it down and resting it in her lap, then smiled hopefully. "Go on,"

"Well," she gulped. "Today at school, Michael was saying things. Making up things. He was saying how-" she interrupted herself. "You know that night when you found me in the tree house?"

I nodded.

"He said that he actually scored with me."

My eyes widened as my mind swam with millions of hate words and offensive adjectives to describe Michael. "What a dirty-"

"Shh." Trinity put her finger to my lips. "It's fine now, except for the name calling I guess. Everyone is calling me 'whore' and 'slut,' because I supposedly slept with the most obnoxious guy in school."

"Why'd you go out with him, then?" I asked, puzzled.

"I didn't know!" Trinity threw her arms up in disgust. "Nobody told me that he was like that. Donna tried to, but-"

"Who's Donna?" I asked.

"My best friend. She called me one night, but I was asleep. The next morning was Saturday, when I was to go on the date. I didn't notice the message on my answering machine. She called also when I was in the shower, but when I called back, I got a busy signal. I didn't know it was so important."

"But how did Donna know that Michael was messed up?" I felt myself being more drawn into the real-life story.

It was slowly becoming more and more like a novel. There was a protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, and a middle. There wasn't an end quite yet, although everyone wanted the last chapter to come to a close. All except Michael.

"I went to her house last night and spent the night. I asked her that, too."

All I could think about was the endless stream of questions running through my mind on an invisible conveyer belt.

"You went to her house? I thought you were going home."

"I didn't want to explain last night, but my father, right when I was sneaking out, asked where I was going. I said I was going to Donna's, and he asked if I was spending the night. I decided that it would be a good idea to say yes since I didn't know what would happen with you and all."

Only one question was still unanswered. "So how did Donna find out about Michael's personality?"

"She biked over to the school grounds one night, and saw Michael and a few friends. They were drinking and talking and stuff. He was talking about how the only reason he was going to go out with me was because I was a virgin." Trinity looked down, unable to look me in the eyes.

My heart went out to the girl perched on top of me. Even through only one eye, I could see the hurt on her face. She looked the way she had when I'd found her, except she wasn't crying.

"I need to get back at Michael," I decided aloud. "He's hurt you and me way too much."

"I don't know, Tay," Trinity said uncertainly, carefully raising her head. "Maybe we should just leave him alone. Then he'll get the idea that we don't care and he'll stop bothering us."

I sighed, realizing that her plan was far more foolproof than mine was. Just ignore him, was practically what she was saying, and it sounded extremely easy. Much easier than trying to beat him up, anyway. "You're right," I confessed.

Trinity pulled the ice pack from my hand and poked softly at my closed eyelid.

"Ow," I grunted. "That hurts."

"Aw, poor baby!" Trinity cooed with a contagious smile that I found myself catching within a couple seconds. "Want me to kiss your boo-boo?"

I laughed slightly but didn't nod or say anything. I wanted her to decide on her own. Her question seemed more like a statement to me anyway.

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Trinity concluded, leaning in and kissing my eyelid.

I strategically propped myself further up on the couch so that her lips moved down and eventually connected with mine.

"You planned that," Trinity breathed after we pulled away.

I played innocent. "No, I didn't," I lied, but I couldn't wipe the guilty smile from my face.

Trinity rolled her eyes. "I shouldn't reward you for lying, but…" she drifted off, kissed my lips for a long period of time, then ended her sentence. "I couldn't help it."

I smiled delightfully and kissed her again. "Ditto," I replied after she handed me the ice and I replaced it on my black eye.

As if by force, Trinity whipped her upper body around, practically falling off me, so she faced the door. She muttered a curse and turned to me. "You have to hide, right now!"

"Why-"

"No time for questions, just please!"

I didn't have time. I shouldn't have even tried to ask her why, because I would've found out soon enough anyway.

"Trinity!" a man I guessed was Trinity's father, growled. He stomped over to the couch and picked Trinity up by the shoulders. I watched in horror as he flung her body across the room and she fell, helpless and limp, near the stairs.

I jumped up by reflex, not thinking about what my fate would be, dropping the bag of ice on the couch.

Trinity's father looked at me with sparks of fire flickering in his blue eyes. Only a couple words out of his mouth and I knew why Trinity got so upset that he was home early. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Taylor," I looked at him and tried to make the words sound strong, but they came out as more of a squeak than anything.

"Taylor?" he screamed my name as if I had claimed to be somebody else. "Why are you here?"

I gulped. "I'm Trinity's boyfriend," plain and simple. That was how I wanted to keep it.

"Boyfriend!?"

The bellow of Trinity's dad's voice made me cringe so badly that I could barely peep out the word 'yes.'

Trinity was stirring in the corner when her dad yelled, "Go! Get out of here, right now!"

I couldn't argue because I knew that if I did, he would hurt me more than I was hurt already. Trinity looked at me, red in the face, and mouthed, "I love you. Go." Then she fell back onto the carpet, as not to let her dad notice that she was, in fact, conscious.

I stumbled, grabbed the ice off the couch, and made my way out the door, closing it quietly behind me. I felt too great an urge to stay, so I crouched behind a bush and peeked into the window.

As soon as Trinity was able to stand and was about to stumble up the stairs, her dad spun her around to face him. A few curse words later, he glanced in my direction. I ducked as quickly as possible, a few branches slapping my face as I hid. A few moments later I peeked to see if all was clear, then inched my head back up.

Trinity was nowhere to be seen, and I guessed she was in her room. Her father was sprawled, his back to me, on their couch, watching a cheap pay-per-view horror flick. I watched for only a few seconds, just to see a man discover his girlfriend dead in a bathtub full of blood, then crawled away to the backyard. I stood up, and as I brushed myself off, I noticed an in-ground pool filled with sparkling sea blue water. Above me was a balcony, Trinity's arms draped over the edge and her head, shaking, rested on them.

"Trinity," I whispered, interrupting her sobs.

She brought her head up in an instant, then looked down at me and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "Taylor," she said breathlessly.

I felt as if I should've been holding a rose and reciting a poem, had it been at night and had Trinity been delighted instead of totally exhausted and confused.

"I can't see you anymore," Trinity's words came to me as more of a joke, like a fortuneteller was promising me death within days or someone was telling me the real reason the chicken crossed the road.

"Why?" Even though I already knew the reason, I wanted it verified.

"My dad said so," her words felt as cold as my heart.

"How long?" There were a few answers I was afraid she would give to that question.

"A week," she said, as if it was the end of the world. It sure felt like it.

I stood there, speechless for a moment, and then told her I would write letters to her.

Trinity shook her head. "I can't. I can't see you, write to you, or call you." As she counted off her restrictions, it felt like she was reading me my rights after I'd committed a crime. I suppose in her household, I had. Then a thought came to my mind.

"E-mail!" I whispered the answer to all of our problems. "What's your address? I'll e-mail you."

Trinity bit her lip and then told me her screen name. "I'm probably not supposed to have any contact with you, but…"

"I can't live without you for a week," I finished for her.

Trinity agreed with a nod of her head. "I love you. Goodbye, Taylor."

I was close to tears when I softly told her I loved her, and again that I would e-mail her. Then, without a goodbye kiss, I walked quietly into my house, slipping out of her yard and out of her life for the time being.