The Redemption of Callie & Kayden

bullshit. All this time… under our roof…” He starts muttering incoherently under his breath, the veins in his neck bulging. He paces the floor and I stand there in front of the couch and watch the madness unfold like a building getting knocked down.
    Finally, my mom gets up and crosses the room, heading for the doorway with a determined look on her face. “That’s it…”
    “Where are you going?” I chase after her. “Mom?”
    She dabs her eyes with the bottom of her sweater. “I need to do something… I need to fix this somehow… I just need a minute.”
    Shaking my head, I position myself in front of her with my hands out to the side. “You can’t fix it, Mom. It happened. There’s nothing you can do about, except for be my mom right now.”
    She analyzes my face for a moment and then returns to crying again, throwing her arms around me. It’s been forever since I let her hug me and I stand awkwardly, telling her it will be okay. When her eyes dry, she backs up into the chair, with her face in her hands and her shoulders hunched. The denial and the crying goes on well into the late hours of the night. My dad starts yelling again, going on and on about how Caleb’s not going to get away with this. There’s no conclusion at the end of the crying and ranting. Caleb still raped me and six years have gone by while he walked around getting away with it. There’s nothing that will change that, not even from saying it out loud. But it changes me, alters my life in an irreversible way. It shatters the chains around my wrists and finally I’m free.
    Jackson never does come home and I’m not sure what that means. I eventually get up from the couch to leave the house, despite my mother’s protests. She wants me to stay there and let her cry over me while she figures everything out. She’s so determined that she can erase it somehow, but I’m not naïve enough to believe that’s possible. Besides, I’ve got somewhere else I need to be—want to be. Someplace where I can be happy.
    “Wait, Callie, please don’t go,” she begs, getting up from the couch to follow me to the kitchen. “We can stay here and talk about it some more.”
    I shake my head as I walk for the door. “Mom, as much as I know how you need to try and work through this, I’ve already found a way to cope and I kind of need it right now.” I more than need it actually. I have to be with him.
    She keeps shaking her head and my dad gives me the keys to the truck so I don’t have to walk and then tells me he’s still going to call the police, just so they know. His eyes are red and puffy and his lips are chapped. I tell him okay, because that’s what he needs to hear at the moment. As I step out the door, I wonder what will happen, if Caleb ever shows up again, if he was with Jackson when my mother told him.
    Once the door is shut behind me and I’m by myself, I spread my hands to my side as I stand on the top of the porch, underneath the light. The sky is clear, the stars twinkling against the black backdrop. What will happen with my life? I don’t know. But I’m eager to find out because for once I’m looking into my future, not my past, and I smile at the endless possibilities.

Chapter 18
    #65 Watch fireworks with someone you love
Kayden
    “I still really wish I could have been there with you,” I say. It’s been a couple of days since she told her parents and she seems okay, stronger, more confident. But even though I’m glad she did it, I wish I could have been with her, to support her, comfort her, do whatever she needed.
    We’re sitting outside on the hood of her father’s truck that’s parked near the lake. There’s a New Year’s Eve party going on a ways down and I can see the bonfire through the trees. The stars are out and the sky is a little hazy but the moon shines full. It’s way below zero, and the trucks hood is glazed with snow, but we have a blanket draped over us and the warmth of our bodies to keep us warm. “I wanted to be there for you.”
    “But I had to do it alone,” she says, staring at the sky. “Besides, it’s over now and I’m ready to move on.”
    When I’d woken up in the hotel room by myself, I’d nearly panicked and the feeling multiplied when I read her note. She’d gone to tell her parents what happened
by herself
. The idea of Callie standing there telling them alone crushed me. I wanted to be there with her, help her, comfort her, but in a way, I guess I understood