Total remanagement
Keep my thanks to NopNotYourFather and to DragonsxSnowflakes, who read this one first.
Enjoy ;)
"Any minute now, my heart might just stop."
One
The house breathes as I stand over the kitchen table. The TV screams the words of what we missed last night. The microwave spins the food and makes its magic inside the metal box. Here stands a boy holding a knife on the right hand, walking towards the cupboard to put it on the second drawer. As I walk, the knife splits the kitchen into several pieces, making it bleed and rip up in square boxes.
Behind the kitchen table, my mom keeps reciting her guidelines of how her life is going to be today. Taking Emma to play soccer. Call Emma's nanny to take care of her as she goes to work. Attend a hundred patients. Drown her sadness on her work. However, all of it can go to hell if I do not quit zooning around when my mind starts spinning words that I cannot understand.
"…are you listening to me, Jack?" (My mom) Dr. Mary Howard stops slamming chocolate cookies inside Emma's lunch pack and looks at me. I simply nod. "So what are you going to do today?"
I sigh. "I'll pick up Emma at her practice after school". I don't even know if that is really what she said. But she nods anyway, again proving me right.
"Dr. Lawrence called yesterday." She says, and my heart skips a beat. "It's been a while since you don't go talk to him. Maybe a checkup…"
"No." I stop her from saying, splashing blood around the kitchen with the cut sentence. She looks at me with The Stare.
"That man helped you a lot before, Jack." She will try to convince me in every possible way that going to see (a joke) my therapist is a wonderful idea to put my ideas in order so everything will be great because she worries and yada-yada-yada, boring. "Just for a check up…"
"I. Am. Fine." My words could make an earthquake right here. I wish they did, so the house would collapse on my head and I would not have to listen to her shit again.
"Okay," She gets back to what she was doing. "Do you need money for lunch?" She says. I shake my head. "Alright then. Have a good day." I nod, and she kisses my cheek so lightly that I do not even feel it. "Emma, say goodbye to your brother, we're leaving in one minute."
I hear Emma's childish and girly voice yelling from the room - as loud as the TV. Dr. Mary Howard turns on her heels and disappears through the door, Emma following close, stuffing her mouth with a bag of chips. It's not even real food, just junk that adults use to keep their children in line.
"Bye wicked." I tell her, and she waves before leaving.
The kitchen has blood in the air, poison on the walls and ghosts beneath the floor. Still, I wait for another hour to leave the house. There is not much I can do. Even at twelfth grade.
Except to attend to all expectations of people who did the same things that you did, only twice harder for reasons I am not allowed to understand. So whatever I do, it is just not enough. I gave up on school rules years ago, anyway.
It's snowing outside. I get to my car, start the engine, and get out of here. I do not forget to turn on the left street at the main square. I do not take any shortcuts that will make me get there later. My timing is perfect, and I end up stuck in a traffic jam. Today is Thursday, I cannot even complain.
I arrive at school forty minutes after everyone. They say I am late. I am just in time for my standards.
I watch from inside the car as the snow slowly falls over the windows. I cannot get into the halls when everyone is there. I like to wait until the teachers slam everyone into the classrooms and start drugging them with boring lessons we. Will. Never. Use.
7:45. Time to go to school and stop thinking.
Physics is my first class. There is an awesomely boring movie telling us about the speed of light and speed of sound and other garbage that doesn't matter. We are bombed with magical particles that enters the room through the projector. That is not enough to hide the life that exist in the shadows. I don't know if I am the only one who can see them, but I know they are there. They have no face. They are just there, forcing us to don't look at them.
One of them walks up behind me and puts me to sleep.
I wake up to see the enormous green eyes smiling at me. And for a moment I forget everything I was thinking for this day.
"Are you planning to stay there all day?" Hiccup's voice reaches my ears, and suddenly my life has color.
"I was just waiting for you to rescue me." I reply, earning one of his exasperated smiles. I get up before he can be all witty on me again. Too fast, though, and gravity tries to pull me down face-first. I hold on the desk and force myself to stand, stars dancing on my eyes. We both exit the class in silence.
The corridors are full of people trying to squeeze themselves to their lockers/girlfriends/boyfriends/toilets and whatever. Some of them stare at Hiccup when he gets to his locker.
He simply ignores as the whispers spread, one toilet to another. He knows what they are saying. We both do. The voices head into both of our heads, uniting us in this thread of razor wire.
Stupid/freak/stupid/weird/stupid/useless/stupid/idiot/stupid/
ugly/stupid/loser/stupid/nerd/stupid/stupid/stupid/
We pretend we cannot hear it. There is no use. I stuff my locker with the few books I will never use, and Hiccup grabs his dark sketchbook. At the thick line of visible skin between his hand and his sleeves, I see thin white lines of the scars on his wrists.
It took him a few months to tell me about his cuts. I had to beg him to show mw after a fight he had with his parents. He did not talk to me for three days after his fight, and I had to break into his house. His mother would not stop crying, and his dad had that robot expression on his face that he uses when he has no idea of what to do. He must be pretty dumb to use that expression all the time.
I found Hiccup hiding in his room. Curtains closed for what felt like ages of lack of sunlight. He scolded me as I begged him to show me his scars, and after ten rolls of "I won't judge you, it's okay, I am not mad", he angrily took off his shirt to show me his skin. It happened that his whole body was a canvas, and there were so many lines coming out of his torso, ribs, arms, and escaping from the band of his tights that we both ended up crying. It happened right under everyone's nose, and no one never noticed.
He is secretive about it now. He lies and pretends he does not cut. I pretend I believe it. He pretends he does not see I am pretending.
"What are you going to do today?" He says.
"I'm picking up Emma from her soccer practice today, and then we can do something." I offer. He smiles.
The classes go like a dream, and it is like if someone else has slipped inside my mind and took over the basic commands of my body, making me walk, sit, roll up and beg, don't sleep at the first ten minutes, then move on to the next class. I have two classes with Hiccup.
At lunch, I join him on the farthest table so we can eat our food. It tastes like the smell of a hospital bathroom. Hiccup draws on the table as he eats, and I cannot stop myself from looking at him the whole time as he makes a magnificent sketch of a black dragon. I look at his freckled hands, at his blushed cheeks and his concentrated expression. My eyes photograph all of his features, even though I have known him for years. I do this for years. Part of me believes he'll never know.
I drift on my thoughts. I swear one day I will get so lost in my own thoughts that I will open a whole in space-time and drift to this wonderland I call imagination land. People will see a boy with white hair and blue eyes collapsing on the street, or on his desk, or in the worst case driving. It could happen even when I am talking directly to someone. Doctors would appear and declare my body dead, but my mind would be alive. They would slam me inside a machine, would turn into a sick robot and I would instantly write a hundred stories.
The image of Hiccup drawing is doing this to my brain.
~ø~
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Shatters. The book that this is based on is Wintergirls - Trigger Warning, dear, don't do it if you're feeling depressed, suicidal or going through major mental health problems. Search for help. If you'd like to know more about me, check out my photography Instagram: @hgoallan
I'm also on /gohallan