Sticks and Stones

When Leika was a girl, her mother used to call Leika her "Baby Barnacle". Everywhere her mother went, there was Leika, attached like a fifth appendage, a bouncing shadow in her mother's wake.

Before Leika was old enough to enter school, she and her mother would go out to the yard, with Leika draped around her mother's back, like a tiny turtle shell, and they would while away warm, summer days chasing Monarchs, as the insects migrated south across Western Massachusetts.

The "Moppy Game" was also a favorite, as she would sometimes recall, a pastime where her mother would walk down the hallway, with Leika cleaved to an ankle, dangling from her mother's feet, swishing prone against the floor, her nose tickling the hardwood. Her bump of a belly would sweep across the walkway collecting Legos and plastic china from her Little Betty's tea party set.

This was her old life, her life before it separated at the seems and came apart like boned fish -- before her dad left, and her mom turned into a unfeeling bitch.

Tonight, the house was especially full of the Hansen family fire works, and the light show would exact irretrievable wounds.

Her mother had stood over Leika while Leika was on Tik Tok, messaging her friends about their weekend trip, and scrolling through reels. Her mother shook Leika's weed grinder at her.

"What is this?" she said.

Leika glimpsed at the grinder, then knitted her brows together. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No." Leika smirked as she answered. Her eyes were pasted to her phone from behind a black Oakley hoodie. Her fingers whirred across on the screen.

"Leika, I'm talking to you. What is this?" She shook the grinder again.

"I don't know, Mom. It's not mine." Her lip curled up on one side, in annoyance.

Leika's mother gnashed her teeth. The tall, slender woman put a hand on her waist, and shifted her weight.

"It's not yours? Then who's is it?"

"I don't know."

"I found it in one of your sweatshirt." Leika's mother put the paraphernalia to her nose. "It reeks of marijuana, Leika, reeks!"

Leika smirked.

"Do you want to go to Hampden County? Is that it? You actually want to get locked up in juvie for the next six months?"

"Mom." Leika's eyes widened in her face as she turned to her mother.

"That's where you're gonna end up," her mother continued. "Judge Wilson gave you your one and only shot." She held up the grinder. "And this is what you do with it."

Leika slammed her phone against the couch.

"Why do you have to be so dramatic?"

"'Cause I don't want to see you fuck up your life!"

"Jesus, Mom." Leika shot up from the couch and headed up the stairs. "Every day it's something," she hissed from the second floor hallway.

"That's right, every day it is something, and I'm sick of it, Leika. Sick of it!"

Leika waved a dismissive hand at her mother, turned into her room and slammed her bedroom door behind her.

She threw herself on her bed, and crawled into the pillows that lay against the corner. It was the furthest away she could get from the tyranny.

The bedroom door swung open.

"Don't slam doors in my house!" Chestnut locks dangled over her mother's face, revealing only trembling lips. She pushed her hair back from her eyes.

"Mom, get out!"

"No, I won't get out. It's my --."

"Get out, Mom! What is wrong with you?!"

"Leikaaaa... I can't do this any more. I just can't... Everyday, everyday its something new with you." Leika huffed and shook her head. Her mother held up the grinder a last time. "This kind of shit is gonna take you down a path you don't wanna go."

"Whatever," Leika mumbled.

"Whatever?? You need to start giving a shit about your life!"

Leika was already back to her Tik Tok, her face twisted into a scowl, her fingers racing away on the screen again.

"Leika!" Her mother huffed. "You know what? You can forget about the Berkshires this weekend. You're gonna spend the weekend here."

"Mom! What are you talking about??"

"If you can't respect me enough to even look at me when I'm talking to you, you won't be going anywhere."

Leika clenched her teeth. The muscles in her jaw twitched and hardened. She exploded.

"You always do this shit! Always! Get the fuck out! Out! Out!!"

Leika's mom blinked repeatedly in the doorway, with her lips pursed, her breath slow. She bit her bottom lip, then turned and shut the door behind her.

Leika listened to footsteps descend down the staircase. She was shaking. She buried her face in her comforter and howled.

Her weekend in the Berkshires was dust. It would've been a weekend away from her mom, a weekend with Meg and her family, a weekend away from the tinder box that her house had become.

She sat up and sent Megan an update on the wretched turn, mumbling obscenities into the room.

She slammed her phone down.

"I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate you!!"

More words bubbled across her lips, searing and hateful, words she'd never have imagined saying when she sat piggy-back on her mom, chasing butterflies. They had gathered a momentum of their own, pushed past her clouded judgement and entered forbidden territory. She meant every word she said. And after they left her lips, there was no taking them back.

"I wish she would die," she said.

The latch on her bedroom door clicked. The wooden door eased open and thudded softly to a stop against her chewed-up Vans on the floor. When a gnarled, green hand slipped through the gap, covered in bumps and pits, her eyes widened, round and quivering, like small moons in her face. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that emerged were hitching puffs of air. The hand extended further, holding, between its thumb and middle finger, a black box tied with red ribbon. It placed the box gingerly amongst the disheveled jetsam on her desk. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the hand slipped back into the darkness, with the door easing shut behind it.

"Wha... What the actual... fuck??"

Leika shot from her bed. She yanked at the bedroom door handle.

"Mom! Mom!"

She banged on the door and heaved at the stubborn knob.

"Mom!"

Nothing.

"Mom!"

She heard no frantic steps racing up the stair case, no screams of fright and concern coming from the living room below.

Only silence.

A jade glow pulsed in the room behind her. Leika snapped around, slamming her back against the door. The illumination from the box expanded and contracted sporadically, synced to the rising and falling of Leika's chest.  

The room’s stillness was cleaved apart by an eerie music-box melody. It came from the strange gift. The tune was a familiar one, something from her childhood: a song Leika’s mom would sing to her, when the unseen mysteries of the night gnawed on her young, vulnerable sensibilities, and kept her from sleep. But its name eluded her.

Leika's heart thumped in her chest, like a thoroughbred in the night. The ditty continued, twisting and contorting in her mind. Her legs moved her towards the box. The thought to turn and hold on to the door handle did come to her, but it was eclipsed by a jagged turn in the tune.

The song called louder with every step. And, soon, the jangled chimes lost their bright timbre and descended, low, into baritone drones, sullen voices groaning the melody. A chill crawled across her skin. With each pace, a sharpness began rising among the voices, until the sounds became screams, twisting and howling in the room.

Distinct amongst the screeching was her mother’s voice.

“No! Leika, please! Please!!”

Leika stood over the box. Tears rimmed her lashes and trembled there, until each one streamed down her face, and across her lips. Every howl tearing through her consciousness dimmed the light inside of her, the part of her that shown whether she was angry or sad, frightened or joyous — the part of Leika she knew as herself. It was being snuffed out by a darkness cold, wild, and unyielding. The feeling left a sweet taste on her tongue.

She reached for the box.