Okay, I'm glad you didn't let the tacky summary scare you off :).
At the instant he left me I knew. My life was over. Undoubtedly over. His last words contained a certain sense of detached fatality. That's why I couldn't be fixed, as he walked away he left nothing for me to fix. I was empty.
It was mechanical self-preservation, I think. My head swelled so big with things to deal with it simply shut down. It took all the feelings away and tucked them inside a drawer. The emotions, the good, the bad, have all but vanished.
Heart lobotomy, you could call it.
The emptiness was unsettling at first. It was a numbing feeling, a shot of morphine that has been lasting for too long. I had been anticipating the moment where the numbness would wear off, leave me with a long repressed emotional ticking bomb. After the first few weeks, the mindless haze didn't look any close to bulging, and that somehow appeased me.
Of course, this blissful safety net came close to ripping several times; whenever I would see a silver car, whenever I would hear a song on piano, whenever I was in the cafeteria, whenever it was sunny, whenever something reminded me too distinctively of him.
Despite everything, I had managed to keep it all under control. I was careful never have anyone notice these moments of weakness. All my will was focused on this cynical masquerade, all my energy was sucked dry from the demanding pretense to seem normal. Because it would just get unbearable if they started monitoring me for suicidal behavior.
I couldn't stand to see pity in their eyes. Charlie's. Jake's. Mike's. Angela's. Jessica's. It would just finish me off.
"Bella! Bella!"
I raised my eyes sluggishly as I stepped out of my truck.
"Hi Mike," I said, making my tone as friendly as I could manage. He smile warmly.
"Come on, you gotta come watch this! Lauren and Charlotte are putting up the most epic catfight!" he piped, obvious excitement shining in his eyes. "You should see them! Ripping each other's hair out and everything!"
I didn't know how to reach. Why did people always seem so perked up at the idea of two other beings smashing each other's faces in? Could this really bring so much joy to witness the downfall of other individuals? Should it?
He laughed, delighted at the memory. I wondered on. I saw thing differently now. I couldn't help second guessing my opinion on things. I was getting hard figuring out what you should feel, when you couldn't.
As he took in my blank expression, the laugh faded. An undertone frustration layered his features, but the overruling emotion was confusion.
"Am I bothering you?" he accused.
"No, of course not!" I answered to quickly, caught off guard.
"Just tell me if I am, okay? I've just been getting this feeling these last months… You just seem kinda distant with everybody lately," he frowned.
"Sorry, I just sorta zoned out," I murmured, taking a moment to recompose myself all the while fighting the urge to go back to my tuck and drive home. I mentally sighed, putting on my 'interested' tone. "Catfight you we're saying? Lauren and who? Over what?"
He must have mistaken my hastiness for curiosity. My questions seemed to have reassured him. The smile was back as he towed me through the crowd while chattering cheerfully.
We squeezed through the crowd, Mike leading the way by fraying me a path pass the obviously pissed off students. I made a mental memo to watch it around Susceptible Mike. I sighed again, closing my eyes. This was so hard.
Mike and I managed to get to the clearing around Lauren and that other girl who were screaming, all the while trying to claw out the other's eyeballs.
"I thought we were friends!" the other girl cried. She was short, with puffy red hair and freckles. Her cheeks were pink from the yelling.
"We WERE, okay! But I can't stand you anymore! And do you really think it's my fault?! You should have just fucking seen that one coming!" She paused, throwing a look of disgusts over the girl's small figure. "You really thought Brian would ever settle for someone like you?" The redhead let go, Lauren took a step back, flipping her cornsilk hair. Her mouth twisted at a scornful angle as she savored the girl's pain.
After a moment, she seemed to snap out of it. Her expression turned ten shades of terrifying furious.
"You skank! You conceited, shameless, boyfriend thieving SKANK!"
At that, the red-haired girl launched forward and grabbed Lauren by her hair, pinning her to the row of lockers behind her. She was about to deliver the first punch when she was suddenly shoved aside by a pair of buff, muscular arms.
Brian effortlessly pulled the redhead back, breaking Lauren free of the small girl. When she slumped against the locker doors, he rushed to her side to help her up.
"You okay, babe?"
The blonde scoffed, then after a quick glare at her former friend, spun around and stomped away. The boy sighed, looking annoyed, and began to make his way back through the crowd.
"Brian, wait!"
"It's over, Charlotte," he breathed, his pace not slowing.
The soft cry coming from behind him stopped him right in his tracks. When he turned back to her, Charlotte has sank to the ground, her knees pressed together, her calves spread out at each side of her. She clutched the fabric of her shirt, trying to choke back her sobs.
"You can't. You love me. Why can't you see that?" Her tone was bewildered, lost.
"Please, Charlie, don't make this any harder…" The sight before him clearly softened him up a little.
"You said love me," she repeated.
There was a moment of dead silence, just like in a tacky chick-flick movie. Brian opened his mouth, still no word came out of it, adding to the effect.
"… I used to."
My peripheral vision suddenly seemed to darken. I felt something snap inside me. Theses words pulled the trigger, pushing my right of that cautious wire that represented my mental balance. That careful membrane protecting me from myself finally gave away, letting all hell break lose. I desperately pushed against it, trying to close the door back on my blackest fears. But it felt like trying to block a current with my bare hands. The water slipped past my pathetic attempt at containing it. The flow grew in strength, swooping me off my feet, flooding my mind with stabbing memories. I felt myself drown, choking on a wave of anguish.
"It's… better this way…"
The conspicuous numbness was finally gone. The pain came rushing so swiftly it was like the ground was pulled from under my feet, leaving me to fall into a red hot sea of melted lava.
This had to be some awful, twisted, sick joke. All my efforts. All those boundaries. All these imprisoning walls I had built around the memories shattered in millions of cutting shards, digging right into my flesh. My vain attempts all came crashing down on me. The darkness kept growing, closing in around Brian's now receding figure. In that sick head of mine, it slowly morphed, its burliness softening, the bouncy brown curls straightening themselves into bronze, tousled locks. I could only stare, everything around me blacked out with one single spotlight shining onto him. When he turned around, that did it for me. The eyes; sapphire turned into topaz and tore their way down my soul, the pupils still as stone.
My blood stopped cold, frozen stiff by the horror of the moment. I felt myself slipping, my last shreds of sanity blowing up into ashes. My mind drove into a frenzy as only one instinct took over:
I had to get away.
I started running; pushing, shoving, falling, ending up nearly crawling through the crowd. I made my way out of the lockers, and began running again. I couldn't see where I was going. All I could make out were the shape of his eyes, the unblinking stillness of the long eyelashes, the rock hard expression in the golden disks, that last glance he threw at me frozen in all my pain and despair. I closed my eyes, crushing my eyelids together, hoping to grind the images away. But they didn't move the slightest, his eyes were stitched to my retina. I ran faster, frantically shaking my head.
They wouldn't go away! They kept glowering at me. I felt tears well up in my eyes. Why why why why why? I sense the growing panic burning like acid through my veins. I came to a stop, my pulse racing. The eyes kept staring, cold and careless, almost taunting. They had me on my knees. The ground seemed to be quivering underneath me. The hole in my chest tore wider. I didn't have enough strength to hold myself together. I let it rip me apart. The ravaging agony lapped hungrily at my limp body and the advancing shaking coming from the earth barely registered. I was ready to collapse on the ground when a loud honk shot through the mayhem of my head.
'BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!'
I winced as a sharp pang of pain hit me. I felt my body swing back and roll on the concrete. When I finally skidded to a halt, the last thing I could feel was something hot running down the side of my head. The drowsiness was creeping quickly, silencing the loud shouting and swearing around me, toning it down to a gentle buzz. I gratefully surrendered to the drowsiness, urging it to hurry as it erased the scorching pools of butterscotch glaring at me mesmerizingly.
I know, I know, this chapter's putting the worst clichés at shame… but it's in Bella's character. Tell me if I should continue this, what I should correct for the next chapter, what parts pissed you off, don't spare my feelings. ;)