Member-only story
Timothy’s Girl
Did you ever know I wanted you to be mine?
I thought Timothy was just a kid stuck in a bad situation when we first met. Thoughts flashed through my head of a lanky kid whose father verbally sparred with him again and again till the boy had no choice but to run away into the arms of drugs and alcohol. I felt sad for him, it’s true, but I knew that I couldn’t save him. I had enough trouble saving myself.
Maybe that’s why it was so easy to play the role of an angel for him. I didn’t have supernatural powers — no matter how everyone called me a witch behind my back — but I knew some things in the way of clandestine triumphs and kismet’s soft touch. In another age, I probably would have had a rope tied around my neck; thankfully, I lived in an era that had forgotten simple, everyday magic existed.
The first time we kissed, he looked at me through a stupor as if I’d just changed his life in a profound way. But then he glanced away, rubbing his hand across his lips, as if the very idea of me disgusted him. It broke my heart that he could so easily say goodbye when, really, all my words were forever going to be his.
Maybe that’s why I sabotaged myself. I told my mother I had fallen in love with a boy, and she snatched me away from his vicinity as swiftly as Demeter tried to hide Persephone from the clutches of Hades.
