Karen
We said “Hi” to Dad who was watching a crappy reality show on TV, before heading upstairs with the bottle. Dad didn’t really notice what I got up to anymore, and didn’t comment about me heading upstairs with Dewey on prom night.
We took the champagne up to my room with two glasses, the tall slim ones with long stems that Dewey called flutes. He pretended to blow into one like it was an instrument, and I pretended to laugh.
“To the future!” he said with enthusiasm.
“To the future!” I agreed with my own brand of enthusiasm as we clinked our glasses together.
He talked about the courses at the community college. He’d worked out exactly which courses ‘we’ were going to take, and when. The college was the only place I applied with my home address, and the acceptance letter was stuck above the mirror on my vanity where Dewey had placed it the day we both received our acceptances.
My other acceptance letters, the secret ones, were hidden at the very back of my closet, on the shelf, hidden so far back and so high up you needed a step ladder to reach back there.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah.” My answer was soft, and I was lost in thought as I sipped the wine.
“It’s okay love. It’s going to be great, I just know it.” He had taken my low voice for sadness at the ending of this stage of our lives, when in fact I had actually just been in deep contemplation, thinking about the logistics of moving half way across the country. How many buses would I need to take to get there? How much stuff would I take with me?
He refilled me glass two or three times, popping downstairs when the first bottle was empty and returning with another one.
“Sorry,” he said, “this one’s from California. It’s not a real champagne.”
“That’s okay,” I said, and it was, truthfully they both tasted fine to me. They were a little different, sure, but the expensive one didn’t seem any better to my immature taste buds.
He ran a hand over my cheek as I lay propped up by pillows on top of my bed. “I love you, you know.”
“I know.” I wondered whether he actually did love me. I knew he loved controlling and manipulating me, but did he actually love me. I considered the thought idly, and came to the conclusion that he didn’t. I believe he thought he loved me, but he didn’t, couldn’t actually love me because he didn’t know me. What he knew was the shell of a girl that he had created.
Inside the Barbie-doll exterior the real Karen, the real me, was fighting to get out. He wouldn’t have loved the real Karen if he’d met her. Dewey couldn’t even have put up with, let alone loved, the strong, independent girl that was fighting to get out and would soon be released once she escaped the prison her home had become and managed to start a new life far away in the north.
After the first glass from the second bottle I rapidly began to grow tired. It was not a slow descent into sleepiness, but a rapid change of state from mild buzz to severe grogginess.
“You look tired, love. Why don’t you close your eyes for a bit.”
I nodded, spilling wine as I tried to put the glass on my bedside before Dewey reached over to help me. Isn’t he going to have sex with me, was my last fleeting thought before I faded away into unconsciousness.