The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden

packed?”
     
    “I need to borrow your truck.” I adjust the bag higher on my shoulder. “For a few days.”
     
    He blinks again, still out of it as he reaches for his watch on the nightstand. “What time is it?” He rubs his eyes and then gapes up at me. “It’s six o’clock in the fucking morning. Are you crazy?”
     
    “I need to get away from here for a while,” I say. “I need to clear my head.”
     
    Sighing, he scoots up so he’s sitting. “Where are you going?”
     
    “Back home,” I say, knowing it’s stupid to go back, but it’s all I know. There is nowhere else for me and staying here means dealing with shit I just can't deal with and Callie deserves better. “I thought I’d go check up on my mom and make sure everything is okay there.”
     
    He rubs his forehead and glances at the sun rising over the mountains. “You know I’m going to be stranded here if you take my truck? What am I supposed to do? Stay here for the entire weekend?”
     
    “You can borrow someone else’s car.” I turn around, looking for his keys and then scoop them up from off the desk.
     
    “I guess I can get a ride from Seth.” He frowns. “God dammit. This better be important.”
     
    My stomach tenses. “It is. In fact, it’s kind of a matter of life and death.” I walk out the door without saying another word, the bandages beneath my shirt hidden, but I feel the pain. It’s all I feel.
     
    ***
     
    Driving back home is a fucking downer, but if I hang around the campus, I’m going to want to be near Callie and it’s unhealthy for both of us. I do the only thing I know. I go back home, hoping I can clear my head of her.
     
    When I park the truck in front of the two-story house, though, every single memory rushes back to me. The fists, the beatings, the yelling, the blood. It’s all connected to me, like the veins under my skin and the scars on my body, along with this house, and what’s inside it—it’s all I have.
     
    It takes me a second to work up the courage to open the truck door. My boots land in a puddle as I step out. Leaning back inside, I grab my bag from the passenger seat, and slam the door. Draping the handle over my shoulder, I head up the path lined with red and green Venus Fly Traps. The leaves from the trees have fallen, and the neighbor’s son is out raking them up from the grass.
     
    Each year, my mom pays someone to come clean them up, because my dad hates them in the yard. They’re dead and pointless and look like shit, he says.
     
    I wave at him as I trot up the stairs to the front porch. Freezing in front of the screen, I take a deep breath and step inside. It’s exactly the same as when I left. There is no dust on the pictures in the foyer or on the banister leading upstairs. The floor has been polished, the glass on the windows are wiped clean. I walk up to a family portrait hanging on the farthest wall and squint at it.
     
    My mom and dad sit in the center, and my two older brothers and I stand around them. We’re smiling and look like a happy family. But Tyler has a tooth missing from where he banged his face on the table when my dad was chasing him. Dylan has a brace on his wrist from falling out of a tree when he climbed up it to hide from my father. Even though it isn’t visible in the picture, I have a bruise on my shin the size of a baseball from getting kicked by my dad after I accidentally spilt cereal all over the floor.
     
    I wonder why no one questioned our injuries, but maybe that’s why we were always playing sports. As soon as we turned the right age, we were thrown into soccer, t-ball, and when we got a little older, basketball and football. These were good excuses that my mom gladly passed around.
     
    I thought about telling someone a few times when I got old enough that my brain could grasp the idea, but the fear and embarrassment stopped me. Besides, I shut down at an early age. After that pain was just pain. I can do pain. That’s the easy part of life. It’s everything else, happiness, laughter, love, that’s fucking complicated.
     
     
     
     
     
    Callie
     
    “I’m nervous about seeing Kayden,” I admit to Seth as he walks me to my room. Neither of us have class this morning, so we decide to go out to breakfast, just him and me so we can talk.
     
    Fortunately, the scarf isn’t on the doorknob and when I open the door, Violet isn’t in the room. Although, she’s left soda cans everywhere and there’s a nasty looking