- A/N: I don't own Tate Langdon - that would be cool though. All non-canon characters belong to me. Pure fiction, obviously. -
I think what you need to understand about me is that I've never felt an ounce of love for anyone or anything in my life. I just physically can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it's because I wasn't held enough as a child or that I didn't have a father figure growing up – but honestly, I think that's all bull shit. I think it's just the way we're genetically made; when we're in the womb, some of us are just given the ability to love and some aren't. I wasn't so fortunate.
At school I didn't have very many friends. I was a loner, spending most of my time in the back of the classroom, reading Keats and Poe while the person holding some pathetic piece of paper saying they had the state of California's approval of teaching rambled on about Geography or Biology. I didn't care about things like that; about geography or biology or even other people. I just immersed myself in books, spending most of the day in the library until the librarian kicked me out. I dreaded going home, returning back to that big, ugly old house with its stained glass windows and dusty chandeliers.
All I ever heard was my mother yelling at Larry, telling him that he was a sad excuse for a man and telling him that she didn't want anything to do with him. The first couple of times I heard her say that, I actually thought that he would be out of our lives for good. But after the seventh time I heard her yell at him and he was sitting at our table at breakfast, I knew it was all a big joke. The punch line of the joke was that she didn't really love him; she kept him around because he was someone to fuck and make her feel important. I guess we all need someone like that in our lives.
I remember sitting in the cafeteria at lunch, alone, writing a few lines of poetry down, trying to make it sound real and professional, when she slipped into the seat across from me. I looked up from my notebook, my eyebrows furrowed as I scanned her. She was one of those fake grunge chicks that acted like they listened to Pearl Jam and Alice in Chain when really they were just trying to impress the equally fake grunge guys. She sat across from me, her muddy brown eyes on my notebook.
"What are you writing?" she asked. I stayed silent. I didn't answer her because I didn't even want to waste my breath. She took the hint, sighing loudly. She leaned across the table and looked me dead in the eye. I froze, my blood boiling. "Listen," she began. "I'm doing this because my friend over there told me I had to." She threw her thumb behind her, and my eyes darted to a table filled with a couple of girls that were watching us intently.
"What?" I said, and the girl rolled her eyes. "I was told to come over here and ask you out on a date," she said. "So will you?" I sneered at her, darting my eyes back to my poetry. "No," I stated. She huffed, leaning back in her chair, her arms crossed. "Why not?" she asked. This time, I leaned over the cafeteria table.
"Because you're a bitch," I said. "You're one of those people that can't think for themselves. You dress the way you want guys to see you, you do whatever your friends tell you to do – you have no personality and you're a bitch." Her jaw dropped after I ranted at her, and her furry eyebrows knitted together.
"Fuck you, Tate Langdon!" she exclaimed, and she got up from her seat and stalked back over to her friends. I watched her go over to them, telling them the entire story. The girls faces varied from shocked to amused, and one of them even flicked me off. I happily returned the favor. One of them, however, looked sad, and her eyes found mine and my breath hitched in my throat.
That was the first time I ever felt anything remotely warm in my chest.
When the school bell rang, I left my last class and belted it to my locker, slamming in my combination and stuffing all my books into my backpack. I was desperate to get to the library and drown myself in some sort of literature, something that would take my mind off of the embarrassment I felt at lunch today. Because even though she was a stuck-up bitch and I honestly couldn't give two shits what her and her bitchy friends thought about me, it still hurt. I shut my locker and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw her standing behind me, and I think she almost did too.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Sorry, I – I didn't mean to scare you." She blushed a deep scarlet, and her light green eyes darted to the floor. She was the girl that looked at me with sympathy in cafeteria, but I didn't know her name. She tucked a chunk of dark hair behind her ear and looked up at me. "I'm Emily," she said, sticking her hand out towards me. I looked down at her hand, one of those Irish Claddagh rings on her finger. When I didn't take it, she left her arm go limp and again, she turned pink in the cheeks.
"Well, anyway, I wanted to apologize for what Sarah said to you earlier today at lunch," she said, looking up at me. Her mouth was full and pink, and her eyes held sincerity. I couldn't speak – my lips were glued shut. She shrugged her shoulders. "Well, that's it," she said. "I'll see you around, Tate." She gave me a small smile, and turned on her heel and started walking down the hallway. I watched her go, and I didn't run after her or anything. I just ran out of the school and towards the library.
But I couldn't concentrate on anything; not poetry or literature or even birds. My mind was elsewhere – it was on her, Emily. I couldn't help but think of those eyes, that shade of green that fit so well with her porcelain colored skin. That dark hair that framed her face, and that mouth – I especially couldn't get that mouth out of my head. I left the library early, returning home to hear my mom shouting at Larry again. I ignored it, as usual, and retreated to my room, my safe haven.
I tried to sleep, but that was nearly impossible. Not only were the noises of Beau crying in the attic and mom's loud sex noises from her bedroom keeping me awake, but the acid in my stomach was eating away at my body when I thought about how I just stood there and said nothing. Not a "thank you" or "it's not your fault" – nothing. I just stood there, blank and cold.
The next day in school I tried to look for Emily, but I couldn't find her. Everyone around me was just a sea of faces, just a sea of useless fucking faces, and none of them were hers. I wanted to shout out her name, call out for her, but I couldn't. I was silent, and I wandered the halls, alone, staring at my feet, shoving and being shoved like normal.
Everything went back to normal after that; I was able to concentrate on my books again, work on my poetry uninterrupted at lunch, and study comfortably at the library. My mind was back on track, and the world was still a filthy place filled with even filthier people. I was back to being cold and unable to feel anything, and I liked it.
"Hi." I looked up from 'The Great Gatsby', the book we were reading in English, and saw Emily sitting in the seat across from me at the wooden table in the library. My jaw dropped, and she looked down at the table, her cheeks turning pink, a smile playing on her lips. "Well don't look at me like that!" she laughed. It was like the sound of tinkling bells, and I felt that warm feeling in my chest again. I wanted to throw up. Emily looked up at me.
"Are you doing anything this Friday night?" she asked, her voice soft. "I mean, if you're not busy. Cause I was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out or something. I mean, I don't know…" she trailed off, her fingers tracing patterns on the table. I said nothing, just sat there, watching her trace patterns. She looked up at me through dark lashes, her mouth in a small frown.
"It's okay if you don't want to," she said. "I would understand. I don't think I'm your type anyway." She looked shunned and defeated, and I opened and closed my mouth, like a fish out of water. "N-N-No," I managed to choke out. "I-I-I….yeah, I'm not doing anything on Friday." My book fell from my hands, and I lost the page I was reading. Emily's face lit up, her lips breaking into a big smile.
"Really?" she exclaimed, and the pinched-up librarian shushed her. She giggled softly, turning back to me and biting her lip. "Okay then," she said. "I'll meet you here at seven, all right?" I nodded my head, my heart pounding. She gave me one more smile. "Great, I'll see you then!" She waved at me, jumping from her seat and leaving the library all together. I sat there for ten minutes, looking down at the back cover of 'The Great Gatsby', my eyes stuck on the word "jazz".
She asked me on a Wednesday, and when Friday finally rolled around I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to stay home from school, but I was afraid that if she didn't see me there she thought I wouldn't be able to go out later that night. So I sucked it up and walked those halls with my head hung low and my heart beating fast the entire time. I wanted to see Emily, but at the same time I didn't. I wanted tonight to be a complete surprise. I wanted it to be like I was seeing her for the first time.
When school let out, I headed straight for the library, even though Emily wouldn't be there for another four hours. I needed to read something to keep my head from falling off my shoulders, to keep my stomach from spilling its contents all over the place. I picked up the worn out copy of The Study of Birds in Their Natural Habitat and began thumbing through its familiar pages, trying to steady my heart beat.
"The hummingbird's heart beat can reach up to 1,026 beats per minute," I read to myself, studying the picture of the small, green bird. The green of its feathers reminded me of Emily's eyes, mixed with other colors that I couldn't quite make out. My index finger traced the small animal that I had never seen up close.
"Hi," I looked up and saw her standing across from me, her dark hair pulled back in a braid, a dark green sweater held tight around her body with a floral skirt hanging from her hips. I smiled at her, my finger still resting on the hummingbird. Emily's eyes were almost the exact same color of her sweater. "Hi," I said. She smiled at me and jerked her head towards the exit. "You wanna get out of here?" she asked, and I nodded, standing from my seat and walking towards her. She looked up at me, the smile never leaving her face.
"You look, uh, nice," I said, going scarlet in the face. She flushed a shade of light pink. "Thank you," she said, looking down at her Converse. "You look nice too." But I looked like shit because I had been so disgruntled all day. But we moved out of the library and into the night air, the breath of late fall hitting us in the chest. She spread her arms out into the open night.
"Can we stay outside?" she asked, her eyes closed, her head up towards the sky. "I don't want to miss out on this beautiful night." I nodded, but then I realized she couldn't see me, so I said, "Sure, that sounds good." She opened her eyes, the moon reflecting in them, the little white orb bouncing off the green silhouette of her irises. "To the park we go," she said, and she tugged at my sleeve to follow her, and that I did.
Emily talked a lot, her mouth running as we walked on the sidewalk towards the park. The California night sent a chill down my spine as I realized that my sweater wasn't really going to keep me warm at all. Emily didn't seem to mind though, her lips moving up and down with her stories.
"I'm really sorry about what happened the other day," she said, and I looked at her. "Hmm?" I asked. "Oh, oh yeah. That's okay. It wasn't your fault. She was a bitch, she can't help it." Emily laughed. "Yeah, she is a bitch," she agreed. "I don't know why I hang around with her. She's always putting me down. Emily you're such a prude! Emily you don't do anything fun! Blah blah blah!" I snorted. "Is she really that bad?" I asked, and she rolled her eyes, nodding. "It's worse when you know her," she added.
I couldn't imagine surrounding myself with someone like that. I couldn't imagine surrounding myself with anyone, actually. It was a surprise that I was even talking to Emily at all. But the way she spoke, and her smile – it's like I had known her for a very long time. Her face seemed familiar, like I had seen it before long ago in a dream. I was silent for a while, thinking about her face, her very being, and suddenly she spoke up.
"You're awfully quiet," she said. I snapped out of my trance. "Oh, sorry," I mumbled. She giggled. "We're here," she said, and opened her arms out to Pine Park. I hadn't been here since I was a little kid. Addie took me without telling mom, and she beat the shit out of both of us when we finally came home. I remember having to tell the teacher that I ran into a door because of my black eye. She didn't believe me, but she didn't push further. Here comes the Langdon kid with another bruise – what's the excuse this time?
Emily sat herself down on the swing set and pumped herself up to the sky. "I love this!" she exclaimed, her voice radiating in the inky blackness. "I feel like I'm flying! Like I'm a bird!" And suddenly, I realized where I had seen Emily before.
She was the hummingbird in my books. Her green eyes were the exact color of its feathers, her words rang out at a million miles a minute like their flapping wings, and she made my heart beat 1,026 beats per minute. I ran towards her, stopping her swinging by grabbing the chain links in my hands. Her face fell.
"Tate?" Emily questioned. "What's wrong?" But I didn't respond to her in words, but I pressed my lips against hers in my first kiss. I held onto her lips with mine, my eyes squeezed shut, my forehead wrinkled, and finally pulled away. Emily bit her bottom lip, her eyes wide.
"Oh," she whispered. Her cheeks were pink and I'm sure mine were as well. I swallowed. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I just…." But Emily shut me up by grabbing the collar of my sweater and bringing me down towards her for another kiss. Her lips curved into a smile against mine, and when she pulled away it was still there.
"Don't be sorry, silly," she said. "I was hoping this would happen sometime tonight." I opened my mouth, wanting to say 'Really? You wanted me to kiss you?' but I stayed quiet and kissed her again, because that's really all I could do. Emily wrapped her arms around my neck pulling me close to her, and I placed my hands on the hips that sat on the swing.
That was it. That's all that happened. We kissed, we talked, we laid in the grass and looked up at the moon, we kissed some more, and then I took her home. I kissed Emily at her front door and she giggled. "I'll see you soon, Tate Langdon," she said, and she walked into her house. I walked home with a big smile on my face, a beat in my step, and for the first time in my life, I felt something. I felt that funny feeling in my chest that I remember reading about in Gatsby, the way that Nick felt for Daisy, that awkward hurt and pleasure all mixed together. I felt like flying, but I knew I would never catch up with the hummingbird if I did.
They say that when you're in love, every day is like a blur and that time flies. It's true – we spent every moment we could together, listening to music and laughing. God, we laughed a lot. She told me stories about her childhood, and I tried to tell her some about mine that wasn't too harsh. I would lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, watching the fan move in circular motions, and she would lay on her side, stoking my cheek as I told her about my dad, showed her the scars on my wrists from the razors that burned there. She'd trace them with her fingers.
"You don't have to do that anymore," she said. "I'm here now." She'd kiss them gently, and then we'd kiss more. And the first time we made love, breaking the innocence that we both shared, was clumsy and perfect. Her giggles and moans mixed together as we bumped noses and I slid inside her for the first time, her nails digging into my back as I broke her.
"Don't leave me," I said, holding her naked body against mine. Emily traced circles on my chest. "Not a chance," she said, looking up at me and kissing my nose. She was so sweet, I was afraid that if I touched her too roughly that she would dissolve underneath me. But she was solid, she was still, she was mine. She was the first thing I could call my own.
It was the night before her eighteenth birthday, March 11th, around ten in the evening, and we were at the park, gazing up at the stars, huddled up in a blanket, the early spring air chilling us to the bone. She pointed out constellations, naming them and telling me the stories about the Greek heroes they were named after. I listened to her voice, memorizing her words, etching them in my brain.
"You're quiet," she said, and I turned to her. I smiled. "I'm just listening," I said. "Go on." She rolled her eyes, her lips curling up in a smile, and she moved closer to me. "I don't want to turn eighteen," she said. "I'm not ready to grow up." I held onto her. "It's just a number," I said. "I don't get why you're worrying about it." She wrinkled up her nose, and Emily positioned herself so that she was on top of me.
"But I'll be older than you," she said. "That's so weird. I'm dating a younger guy." I laughed, and she moved up and down with the laughter of my chest. "I'll be eighteen in June!" I said. "I think you can wait three months." I kissed her lips, and she sighed against me. "Okay, I guess I can," she said, and she kissed me back roughly. She slipped her tongue into my mouth, and the way she nipped at my bottom lip, I knew she wanted more. "Emily," I groaned. "It's late." She rolled herself away from me and sighed up at the stars.
"I need to go home anyway," she said, sadly. She looked at me, giving me a weak smile. "I'll see you in the morning, okay?" she said. I nodded, and she leaned over me and kissed me. "Are you going home now?" she asked. I shook my head. "I think I'll stay here for a while," I said. "Look up at those crazy heroes you were talking about." She shook her head and laughed. "Okay then. I love you," she said, giving me one last kiss before leaving the park.
When I think about that being the last moment I ever saw her, I replay it over and over in my head, how I should have walked her home in the dark. I was so stupid, so fucking stupid, for letting her walk home alone in the fucking dark. Why did I let her do that? Why?
The next morning, I made my way towards the kitchen to grab breakfast before heading over to Emily's house so we could walk to school. I had a gift for her, a silver snake ring that I bought the day we went to the zoo. It looked really cool, and I could totally imagine her wearing it on her middle finger, flipping it up at Sarah in the hallway as she passed by us and sneered like she always did when she saw us together. I wrapped it up in a little box with a green ribbon, the green the same color as her eyes, and stuffed it in my pocket.
Addie ran into me just as I was about to enter the kitchen, a frown on her face. "What's wrong?" I asked her, my eyebrows knitted. She looked down at the floor, her body shaking. I put my hands on her shoulder. "Addie?" I said. "What's wrong? What happened?" She looked up at me, her eyes wet with tears. She pulled herself free from my grasp and ran upstairs towards her room, slamming the door shut. I stalked into the kitchen, my fists balled at my sides. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, watching me walk in.
"What did you do?" I grumbled, my eyes burning with rage. She only pushed the newspaper in my direction. "Why don't you read the front page," she said, stubbing out her smoke and walking out of the kitchen. I raised an eyebrow, watching her leave, and looked down at the newspaper laid out in front of me.
"Westfield Student Murdered Near Pine Park" it read. My heart stopped, my stomach dropped, and it said that it continued on page three. With shaking hands, I opened up the newspaper to page three, and continued to read.
"Local Westfield High School Student, Emily Simon, was found dead this morning by a local neighbor who was jogging when she found her body laying in the field outside of Pine Park. "It was terrible," Terry Wilks, 35, said when we asked her about her discovery of the body. "I looked closely at her and saw that her throat was slit. Poor kid – her eyes were still open. They were a stunning shade of green." Police are searching Pine Park, which is currently closed due to the investigation, looking for any signs about what happened last night. Simon was 17, and her 18th birthday would have been today."
My body shook with rage, with sadness, with sickness, and I fell to the floor, my eyes leaking with tears. "NO!" I screamed, pounding my fists on the floor. "NO NO NO! EMILY!" I cried, ripping at my hair, my fists bruised and bloody from hitting the stone floor. Mom came in, picking me up off the floor.
"Now hush up!" she exclaimed, putting her hand over my mouth. "The neighbors are going to think we're beating you or something." She dragged me up the stairs, my throat choked back with tears, my head pounding. She threw me into my room. "You don't have to go to school today," she said, and she shut my door with a loud bang.
I didn't leave my room for days. I didn't go to her closed casket and publicized wake, and I didn't go to her equally publicized funeral. I couldn't bring myself to accepting the fact that she was gone. That only days ago she kissed me, told me she loved me, and now she was gone forever. I would never see her again.
"You need to go to school," my mother said, throwing open the door the Wednesday after her death. "I can't keep making up excuses for you at the school anymore." I dressed, my eyes bloodshot, dark circles underneath from lack of sleep because I couldn't deal with the nightmares. When I got to school, I realized that I missed a lot more than homework; I missed out on a lot of gossip.
It was going around school that I had killed Emily; that I got jealous because she said that she was going to break up with me and that I killed her out of rage. Some guy sneered at me in the hallway and called me a "murdering prick", and I threw him up against the locker, my hand on his throat. I got suspended for three days and had to go to the counselor's office every day after school to talk about what happened to Emily.
"Don't you know anything about what happened that night?" she asked me, her ears perked and ready for me to confess some sort of nugget of knowledge that might help. I just stayed silent. I knew nothing. I was an even bigger disappointment to the police who kept me on close watch. "Call us if you remember anything," they had said, their eyes narrowed. I only nodded my head and walked out of the station without looking back.
I slipped Emily's snake ring onto my thumb, the silver serpent glinting in the light. My anger turned to rage, and my sadness turned to bitterness. My nights consisted of sneaking out of the house, trekking my way into downtown Los Angeles, meeting up with drug dealers at the corner and scoring meth from them.
It kept me up during the night, quelling the nightmares of my last moments spent with Emily before she got up and left me for good. I couldn't bear to see her ghost haunting my dreams anymore without being able to at least change them. They played over like memories I couldn't erase.
School was even worse. I started failing all my classes, and I even had "PSYCHO MURDERER" spray painted on my locker. It took them weeks to get it off, and it was still there even after they tried to scrub it off. It faintly said in pink letters "YCHO MURDER" across the cobalt colored metal.
The only thing that kept my sanity was the meth. The sweet, sweet, drug that lifted me up and away from the entire world. I felt numb, free, gone from the rest of the world. It was the high that made me realize that I could end it all, that there was a way to be with Emily if I wanted to be. When I sobered up, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. There were cuts on my face from the scratches that I had created when I was coming down from the high, and the paranoia that resulted when I finally did sleep and I would wake up with skin and blood underneath my fingernails from tearing at my face.
It wasn't long until my brother Beau died, and the look on Larry's face – blank, expressionless, dead – told me everything I needed to know; my mother asked him to kill Beau. This was the funeral that I had to attend, the funeral where they put him a wooden crate and Larry dug a hole in the backyard and we threw him down in. "We never speak of this to anyone," my mother said, lighting up a cigarette. Her eyes narrowed at me. "Do you understand that?" Addie nodded, wiping away tears. I said nothing, my eyes glued to Larry, who looked down at the now filled hole with fright.
It's not hard to get guns in LA, especially when the guy you buy drugs from has a cousin that was in a gang. "Aye, amigo, we'll hook you up real good, ya sabes?" I only nodded, letting him lead me into the run down apartment that his cousin was staying at. "Yo, I expect payment by the end of this month, que escuche?"he demanded. I nodded my head, shoving the guns into the duffel bag I brought with me.
It's easy to plot revenge when your heart is filled with blackness. It's easy to set a man on fire when you're high off meth and you love the smell of gasoline. It's even easier to blow the brains off of a guy that called you a murdering prick.
When I walked back into the house, I took the razors that I promised Emily I would never use again out of the metal box I stored them in. I took one in my hand, light and shiny, and walked over to the window when I heard the pounding on the door downstairs. There were two SWAT trucks outside, waiting for me. I looked down at the backyard, where Beau was buried, and at the flower garden my mother had planted.
I ran the razor across my wrists, cutting deeply into the veins there, and I felt my body go slack, grow cold, and just before I hit the floor, I saw the blurry outline of a green bird, fluttering in the bushes. It was a hummingbird, drinking the nectar from one of the exotic flowers.
It was Emily, leading me home.
I collapsed, and I remember seeing the light, hearing her call out my name. I ran towards her, but I was sucked back but this darkness, this evil, crushing darkness.
I was sitting on my bed, looking down at my hands, the silver snake ring glinting in the sunlight that streamed in through my window, and the SWAT team busted into my room. I stood up from my bed, in a trance, my hands raised in the air as the little red dots fell on my chest.
"Pew!"
- End -