Page 13 of Texas Kissing
We were so fucking stupid.
I showed up at her house, said hi to her parents and ran upstairs to her room. We hugged, double-checked the plan, then slipped out of the window. It took us thirty seconds to reach the car.This is it! It’s happening! I’m free!
I opened the door and the interior light came on. Antonio turned to me from the driver’s seat andsmiled a smile that had absolutely no warmth. A smile that said he was finally going to get his revenge on me for all those years spent nursemaiding me.
“Get in the car,” he told us. “Both of you.”
He drove us back to my house. Annette was shaking and sobbing in the back seat, but there was nothing I could do. When she tried to dial her parents on her cell phone, Antonio snatched it out of her hand. And because we’d oh-so-carefully instructed her parents not to disturb us—we hadboysto giggle about—no one would miss us for hours.
When Antonio pulled up outside our house, three of my uncle’s men were waiting to hustle us out of the car and into the living room. Standing in the middle of the room was my uncle, his face dark with fury. I realized the blinds were all drawn and the TV was turned up loud. That’s when I started to get really, really scared.
There was a kitchen chair next to my uncle and the men pushed Annette down into it. One of the men stood on either side of her with their hands on her shoulders, to keep her in place. I was pushed into an easy chair across the room from her.
“Howdareyou?” Uncle Erico spat. “How fuckingdareyou?”
Annette and I stared at each other, eyes huge. She looked like I felt: pale and shaky, ready to throw up from fear.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said. “I’m really, really sorry.” I kept saying it, repeating it like a litany.
“You want to get involved with our family?” Uncle Erico asked Annette. I’d never heard his voice so cold. “Congratulations, you’re fucking involved.”
“I wouldn’t have talked to anyone!” I yelled. “Iwouldn’t have gone to the FBI!Ever!I just wanted to get out!”
Uncle Erico snapped his head around to look at me. “You will never,everleave your family behind,” he told me. Then he squeezed Annette’s cheeks until her jaw was forced to open.
And he popped the first pill inside.
Antonio had a cardboard pill carton and was systematically popping pills out of the foil and making a pile in his hand. I read the carton and the name printed on the side and felt sick. Annette’s mother’s sleeping pills.
Uncle Erico shoved another pill into Annette’s mouth. Another. Another. Annette was sobbing, mascara running down her face. She was too scared to spit the pills back out and I could see them rolling around her dry mouth.
“Please,” I sobbed. “Please stop.”
“You need to learn, Tessa,” my uncle snapped. “This is what happens when you get involved with outsiders.”
My uncle took a bottle of water and upended it into Annette’s mouth. She thrashed and struggled but, with two men holding her down, she had no hope. I saw her throat bulge and swallow.
And Antonio handed Uncle Erico the next mouthful of pills.
“Stop!”I yelled hysterically, tears coursing down my cheeks. I still thought, at that point, that it was just going to be a warning, that he’d stop before he’d done more than knock her out for a while. “Please! I’ll stay. I promise, I’ll stay. I’ll never leave.”
Uncle Erico looked over his shoulder at me. “You’re goddamn right you won’t,” he whispered. Andstuffed another six pills into my best friend’s mouth.
Annette was kicking and thrashing, now. She knew what was being done to her and she knew she was powerless to stop it happening. It must have been like drowning in slow motion, feeling pill after pill slide down her throat, knowing what they’d do to her. I can’t imagine anything worse, except maybe watching it happen.
Uncle Erico kept going until the pills were all gone. His men kept holding Annette down until they took effect. That was the worst part—sitting there, staring at each other, feeling the seconds tick away, knowing that if she could only stumble to a toilet and make herself sick, she might still be okay. A couple of times, she whipped a hand up to her mouth and tried to shove fingers down her throat, but my uncle’s men always caught her in time, gently but firmly holding her wrists.
I saw her head start to nod and her eyelids slide down. She fought it as long as she could, sobbing for mercy, pleading with them. And, when that didn’t work, pleading withme.
And finally, just before she went to sleep, she half-opened her eyes and looked right at me. A look that I’ll never forget, one of pure hatred and anger and shattered loyalty. Her eyes asked me,why?!
And then I watched her die.
Uncle Erico explained what would happen if I ever tried anything like this again. Anyone who helped me would get the same treatment.
He made me help his men carry Annette out to some woods near her house and lay her body on the ground, along with the empty sleeping pills box from her mother’s medicine cabinet. Antonio must havesneaked in and stolen them earlier that day, when Annette’s parents were at work. My uncle had known about our plan the whole goddamn time.
I had to sneak back into Annette’s house and then come happily down the stairs and tell her parents that Annette had dozed off upstairs and that they probably shouldn’t wake her. Then I went home and cried my heart out.