I decided to take a little different turn for this, trying some realistic fiction. Yes, there are real life events in here, but the majority of it is fiction. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! :)
December 7th, 6:38 AM
The light peered through my curtains, and I was awake. There was no feeling though, no anger from getting up, I wasn’t cold. My heart, that felt like it was no longer there. Another morning full of crusty eyes and striped wrists, still there from last night’s internal battle, still reminding me I have yet to leave this awful feeling behind. The sheets refused to let me go, tangled around my legs and I almost didn’t fight back, I didn’t want to get up today, I didn’t want to face a group of people I just wore a smile for. I knew if I did not get up now, I never would, so I rolled my empty body out of bed. The seven and a half steps from my door to the bathroom were always excruciatingly silent, excluding the sounds of my feet padding across the floor. But it was always the hollow feeling I would get when the light flicked on and my face was red and swollen from tears, wrists with short pink lines.
It was only getting harder, and there were some days I wish I could just find some peace and quite from the monsters in my head, the ones that always seemed to talk louder than the others. I wanted to get help. My mother would always yell when I tattled on them, stating “you just need to calm down, stop fuckin’ crying, I can’t handle you when you cry”. Which then just fueled the voices, and resulted in these kind of mornings.
The snow burned my empty eyes, and I just grabbed the TV remote. Brisk winds and thirty-two degree chills made for a jeans and sweatshirt day, to hopefully fill the aching hole that was my chest, I grabbed my brightest smile and wore it like my favorite outfit.
* * * * *
September 3rd, 9:09 AM
Science had always been a slight fan of mine. It was a challenge I liked to face, and what could have been better than putting math and science together other than in AP Physics. It had seemed so practical, so intelligent. I stuck my chin up a bit before taking the first step into the room. In a grid of four by four with a couple added on to the back, black topped tables and plastic chairs, two to each. I looked to Teresa, but she had already jumped ahead to Rachel and a couple of others I had seen before. I stopped dead in my tracks to see a certain being I had wished I would never encounter the rest of my high school career.
Luke, my first, only and most horrible experience of a boyfriend. Freshman year we had dated for two months, because hey friends should date, right?
Wrong. Oh so very wrong.
So when our eyes met, he turned away as I refused to step down; it had been a year and a half, it was about time to move on. But in no way did I walk up and begin that process.
“Alice,” Rachel, our esteemed and quiet valedictorian-to-be smiled a small smile out of courtesy. We never talked much, that was maybe the most in almost two years. I kindly waved and smiled back.
As the teacher stepped in, he automatically set a seating order, unlike other teachers who let us believe it was free roam. As the seating chart was projected onto the board, I noticed that irony was not lacking today as I got seated next to the only guy I did not know, Dmitri, near the back of the class. When I spun towards the desk, he already sat there with his pencil and pen lined parallel to the right side of the desk.
I tried so hard not to groan. From his exterior, he looked like some low life with no idea what a hair cut was and only had one relationship, and it was with his phone. Finally fighting my judgmental thoughts, place myself precariously in the seat, pulling it as far as possible from his. Rudely, he didn’t even look up.
“Great,” I whispered to my backpack. He still didn’t look up. With a set jaw, I put on a smile that I used for people who may be too idiotic or socially awkward to speak to an aggressive girl.
“Hi, nice name.”
“What?” His face turned from his phone, eyes shining and a dumbfound look on his face.
“Your name, its Russian right?”
“Oh, yeah,” and it was back to his phone.
Was there still a chance to switch out?
* * * * *
October 11th, 10:17 PM
I was on the edge of life. Another performance, a laughing crowd, it was like being high and drunk all at the same time. Maybe even times ten. It was ritual for all cast and crew to go to a local restaurant, a minor burger and shake place, after a Friday performance. I ran my way inside, already crowds of people there causing the hustle and bustle. I looked for the one table that normally didn’t mingle with the cast, the guys who hide in the shadows; the crew.
Over the past few weeks, I had gathered a few friends there, two of them being from my new friend group.
“Vik, scoot down and let the lady sit.” George, the smooth talking sound tech patted a seat next to him. Dmitri only laughed at another crewbie’s joke and slid down a seat.
“Another wonderful performance, Ms. Abbot.“ George slid his arm over the back of my seat, a smile wide across his face. “Always great to get a nice view.”
“George, you are a creep,” Dmitri rolled his eyes.
I merely laughed. This is how things went between the two of them. George, overstepping bounds as he attempted to flirt with me. Dmitri would wait until George wasn’t looking and would inform me of George’s horrible ways. However, it was never George I wanted to flirt with, but the guy who continued the warnings.
By the eleven forty-five, the three of us were laughing with tears in our eyes, and our second wind beginning to set in.
“If you give me your number,” George whipped out his phone, “I’ll text you tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, what an enticing deal, Mr. Laes,” I smiled flirtatiously, then used this opportunity to offer it to the guy I really wanted the attention of. “Hey, do you want my number too?”
It was silent for a few seconds before a smile moved across his face. “No thanks.”
It takes an actress to laugh off a response like that, so I was in luck. Turning back to George, I let the smile tune down and pressed my digits into a foreign phone. Until that moment, I had never known how much I had liked the guy who didn’t want to get to know me. Oh well, a girl could move on, right?
* * * * *
December 7th, 7:03 AM
Moyo, my 2001 white Dodge Durango is a tank of a vehicle, with the gas mileage to prove it. It is the same car I sat in when booster seats were cool and now it is the same car I control from behind the wheel, and by now I was a pro. So when I had gotten in the vehicle, I pulled up the radio, then turned it off. I buckled my belt and pulled out of my drive way. My village always was so pretty when snow covered its surface. Trees were everywhere, in blotches behind houses, beside the highway and even near the fire station, as if our village needed to remind everyone that it was a village and never planned to be anything more. Someday soon, I’d leave this place, someday not soon enough.
A last minute decision, and I was turning right, over the bridge, past the church, turn right and then another right to the ramp of Highway 41. Had to get up to highway speed, fifty-five miles per hour. Just as the blinker went on, wheel turned to the left at forty-five degrees, the car didn’t follow orders, as if I never turned the wheel.
It was as if I was in a dream all over again, and I was going to wake up. I slid to the right, quite close to the edge of a cliff of a fall down a wooded area. The trees I aimed at, they were fused together, I don’t want to hit those. I wanted this to be a dream.
“Sh*t.”
I didn’t see the other tree. I saw a girl get a face full of air bag. Her face red and cold.
The back window of the car breaking. The earth-shattering stop into the snow bank.
The feeling of fear.
The door couldn’t open fast enough. The car is going to blow.
The world is spinning.
She yelled “This girl, she needs help, someone help her”.
The world is closing in. I can’t control myself.
The girl grabs at her nose, breaths a cry when a car goes in fifty feet away.
The cop car at the top of the road doesn’t see her. She already wished she was dead.
She runs for the car, her phone in the glass on the floor.
“Daddy,” I sobbed, shaking, scared, scarred, sitting in the soft snow. “I’m hurt.”
“What, what’s wrong,” he didn’t yell at me crying. “What is it?”
“I’m my car is I’m in the ditch.” I sobbed harder, the feeling of being the center of disappointment, the voices already trying to bust down the door of my sanity. It was slowing coming down. The car sat with a tree detached from the ground wedged in its teeth.
“Where honey?” The urgency, it was real, he believed me.
“It’s a tree, in my car.” I was running out of breath now, the world pitching around me. “By the house, off the high way, I fell down..”
“Tony is going to get to you first…” It all disappeared after that, the monsters tore it all down, and scavenged what was left of my mind, I was going to be sick.
The phone hung up and I cried until a truck pulled up on the frontage road. Tony ripped past the barbed wire fence, and I raced towards him, needing something to hold on to, to know that this was real, to wish it was a dream, to want to be dead. I couldn’t stop crying.
He set me in the snow again, reached into the car and pulled out what remained, and then led me to the car. The cold was irrelevant by now, but my shoes fell in iced over swamp water, ruining my tennis shoes. Pulling me into the truck, I would not stop shaking, and the tree played over and over in my mind.
Dad pulled up in another truck, his face worried, or it was something I had never seen before so it was my best guess. I couldn’t feel my nose, or my face for that matter, my neck hurt, my head felt huge. How did I look?
“Well you didn’t let the tree win,” dad tried to lighten the situation. Both of them removed things from my car, examining the damage of the exterior.
Things went from extreme, to slow and dull. We drove the hundred feet it took to get home; my mom was crying. I was tired. No one would let me sleep. Into another car. Things were weird to me, like I was being drugged. The fast clinic had a cow over the speed, and a tree, and I was still walking. They wouldn’t let me leave without a new collar, and I was rolled to the door.
The hospital wasn’t any better, I was rolled around, sitting then laying down on a cold bed. Sometime ago I let Teresa know the reason I was gone from class, and now my phone buzzed, an odd number rolling across the screen, a person who wanted to know about my welfare. I asked who it was, my heart jumping against the cage in my beaten body. He didn’t want my number then, but now that I almost died, I guess it was important. How ironic.
* * * * *
January 3rd, 11:37 PM
I bit the side of my lip and watched out the foreign car window at the familiar snowy landscape. The silence was killer.
“So,” he started, keeping his eyes ahead. “I heard something today.”
Oh gosh, this was it. “Oh really? What in particular did you hear?”
“Something about a girl, who likes me.” Literally, I wish I could die. Dying would have been much better than this.
“Oh, that’s nice. Do you like this girl back?” Jake, you bastard. I should have killed you off.
“Yeah, well I guess I like her back.” We were in my driveway now, the only thing holding me in the car was the door.
“That’s great.” Damn smile wouldn’t leave my face, this game of not saying how we feel strait out was long over. “Well, so you like me I like you, that’s great. Well, have a good night, drive safe.”
And I ran to the house.
And I can’t believe that just happened. I hate myself.
My bed was too still, walking was too much movement. It was all just too much. I could barely control myself.
My phone rang, his number coming across the screen.
“H-hello.” I couldn’t sound stupid now.
“Hey.” It lingered, letting tension fall where it was needed. “So, I was thinking on my drive home, about what we said in the car, and like yeah I like you. You’re cool and nice and funny and pretty and make me feel good about myself. I know you don’t believe in teen relationships.”
I really hate myself. Why did I have to open my mouth sometime ago?
“But if you want, would you want to date?”
There it was, sitting on my lap and all I did was nod my head. Idiot.
“YES- I mean yes, I would love to, I just said that teen thing because I thought you were into that…” Could someone shut me up now?
“Okay yeah cool.” The tension was still there, prominent as ever. “But just so you know, I don’t want to do this over the phone, I would much rather do this in person.”
In person? What a guy, I tell ya. “Oh yeah that sounds good.”
“So I’ll see you at Teresa’s tomorrow?”
“Ha, yep I’ll definitely be there.”
“Good. Good. Then I’ll see you then. Good night, Alice.”
“Yeah, good night.” I made sure the line went dead and the phone had hung up before I fell into my pillow and screamed my lungs out. The sound of my chest busting open could have almost been heard and it was impossible to contain.
Never have I felt so exposed, and embraced it whole heartedly.
* * * * *
December 7th, 11:27 PM
My bed has never felt so different, and never have I felt so… good. The drugs were setting in, and my body seemed to just loll on the bed sheets, refusing to let go of the really good feeling in my limbs.
However, my thoughts weren’t done running through my mind. Each of them pounded on my conscious, demanding my immediate assistance.
That one guy I had no chance with, he got my number and asked if I was okay. A dopey smile played on my face.
Was it worth taking that risk? He seemed nice, like maybe I was finally going to find a guy who was going break my average perception.
Maybe I think way too much.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, pooling by my ears. I couldn’t help but feel the hope pool into my chest, something I would have never felt if things had gone differently.
“I promise.” My chest filled with an odd, warm feeling I had never known. “I promise that I will never be like that. Life is way too easy to take away, too easy to really lose.”
* * * * *
August 14th, 2015 8:53 PM
I didn’t feel that awesome today, yet another one of those days that it felt like I just couldn’t find an upswing. Even going to see Dmitri wasn’t helping much. His mother answered my doorbell ring this time, a smile on her face. Small pleasantries were exchanged, and Dmitri made his appearance from the basement, only to have us return to its depths.
This room had become a sanctuary, the one place in the entire world that him and I could pretend time stopped. When I sat on the familiar worn cushion, I patted the seat next to me just as he had once done over a year ago.
“Just wait.” He reached into the shelf next to the beaten couch, shuffling through his games and things. “Its here, that gift I order.”
“Oh.” I tried to look excited, but my leg began to bounce. His eyes flicked to me and there was something there I had never seen before. Recovering, I smiled. “Did you make me a seashell necklace in Florida?”
“Ha ha.” The sarcastic tone made me breathe. Then out came a black box, big enough to hold any necklace he could make.
I tried to breathe. Move my lungs. Squeeze my heart. Thump. Thump.
Sitting next to me, he handed me the smooth container, letting me examine it.
Pulling carefully, the top slid up and over the bottom. Another box. “Oh man, you got me a box, lucky me!”
“Yeah,” he laughed nervously. There was a giant pause as I tried to elongate the time between opening the last box. My stomach disagreed. “Now, open in.”
“Okay.” I tried to keep breathing, tried but failed. The next box was on a hinge, another black ominous container. The pop made me jump, but so did the necklace laying inside. Resting on its own black backdrop, a pair of hearts sat cradled, one in silver and before I could guess, Dmitri spoke up.
“Yeah, that’s the diamond dust off the floor of a jeweler’s shop, but…” He shrugged.
“Oh Dmitri.” The stress relieved itself in the sigh of my words, tears coming to my eyes. “Its perfect.”
He smiled, and I fumbled with the perfect heart in my imperfect fingers. In my eyes, I saw a forever I was willing to work for. Something I never knew was possible with him. It was hard to get him to believe in the future, but I think this was his way of saying it, without committing to it.
* * * * *
There’s no way I was going to forget that night, when Dmitri grabbed boxes and shoved them in my car, when George sat at my dining table and picked on my mom, when my dad shared a sip of his drink with us under the yellow lights of the garage. These small hours I spent laughing, talking, joking, teasing, promising, hugging; I didn’t want to leave this. I knew it was time to go, not when George complained about the twenty-minute drive home, or the fact that I was no longer interested in standing in one spot. It was when my throat couldn’t hold my tears anymore, and one single glance at Dmitri was going to send me into a tizzy.
The air bit my warm cheeks, and the hug from George made me nearly lose it. The car pulled out, and Dmitri watched it go. I watched Dmitri.
“I gotta go,” he turned, trying to cut the goodbye short; we both knew I was going to cry.
Nod. That’s all I could do.
He pulled me close, the smell of woods mixed with clean and deodorant pulled out the first drop.
“I’ll be good.” He patted, always so awkward. “We will see each other soon. We can do this.”
I just wanted to believe him and be okay and not cry. Another few tears.
“I love you.” He pulled back, looking me in the eyes. Then they all came out. He pulled me back in, patting, then separated with a final kiss. And like that, he was gone, out of sight.
Back into the house, to my bed, to my thoughts, and the tears kept pouring.
It was that night I remembered the promise I made to myself, made way back when things changed.
And I was glad I didn’t do what I wanted to the night before that day.
