My Steps Quicken
No. Not Yet.
One More Minute.
I'm not ready to wake up yet.
I'm still asleep.
Wait. No. I'm not.
What happened? I blink rapidly. Faces. Faces are peering down at me. No amount of blinking can blur the reality that everything is again. Voices. A few tears. Happy, relieved tears. Did something good happen?
Then I see it. So clear that it could be real. And I'm out again.
On March 2, 2005, I find myself heading home from the hospital after a month-long stay. Three of those four weeks were spent in a coma. Apparently I'm stupid now or, at least, I have suffered some degree of brain damage. I don't exactly how fucked up I am, as I have not yet attempted to do any considerable thinking. Hospitalization is so blissful. You lie in bed all day there with the sole purpose of living. The outside world seems so unnecessarily complicated in contrast.
After waking up, I was constantly companioned. I don't have much family, but my friends made up for that. They talked to me, told me about everything that had happened, told me that they came and visited me everyday and talked to me and played me music. As the week progressed, I began to remember more and more. No one knows what happened, why I fell into such a deep state of unconsciousness. I can't remember myself.
My father and I drive in silence. We've never had much to say to each other. The car pulls up to our driveway and we are home. We both get out of the car, still silent. He opens the door and we step inside. Everything is exactly as it was when I last left home. One minute in shut away in a hospital room, the next everything is back to normal.
"Are you okay?" Dad asks.
"Yeah." What other reply could I possibly offer? "I'm just gonna go to my room and…yeah."
It's odd to be home. Everything is so unchanged. I half-expected everything to be different. Maybe because I feel like I've died a little or something. There are traces of me everywhere. The book I was reading (Wuthering Heights) sits peacefully on the coffee table. The piano is still open. I walk over and close it. My scarf is strewn across the couch, untouched. I walk up the stairs and cautiously open the door to my room. My bed is still unmade; my school books are carelessly sprawled across my desk. Why would anything be different? I was only gone for four weeks, after all.
I flop down on my bed, exhausted by the small amount of walking I just did. I decide to call Jess but I can't quite remember her phone number. I laugh to myself. At this moment, I am pure – free of knowledge and free of the demons of introspection that I once knew so well. I have been incarnated as a new being. Now, it is up to me to live.
"Oh, Kay, it's so good to have you back!" Angela plants a wet one on my cheek and practically rapes me with hugs even though she's been seeing me every day.
Monday marks my reintroduction to normal society. Back to school, basically.
Throughout the morning, which stretches on for an unusually long time, I get an infinite number of "Are you okay?"s.
Actually, yes, I am okay. I have emerged from my "ordeal" with no physical damage and, I suppose, no emotional damage either. Oh, and I have suffered no brain damage.
I attract stares from all directions. I think that people are surprised to see that I'm still me. I look exactly the same. My hair has not changed one bit. I still wear the same mascara and the same lip gloss. I'm the wearing the same jeans that I've worn so many times.
So why do I feel so different?
Let me tell you a story.
I told everyone I got totally drunk on my twelfth birthday.
I lied.
Actually, I went to watch a movie with my dad.
It was my best birthday in twelve years.
(I love you, dad, no matter how cruel you may be).
The very first time I got drunk was after our ending when I went to a party with Angela. We danced and drank and drank some more I threw up in to the toilet for a half hour and passed out.
I woke up god knows how many hours later to find myself in a pitch black room, naked, and bleeding.
I waited for you to come and save me, like you used to always do when I was in the middle of shit.
I waited for what seemed like hours.
You never came.
I wanted to die so much I could barely contain it.
I was fifteen.
"I love you."
That was the first time I said those words.
Never in my life had I heard them said to me. Not by my mom, not by my dad, and not yet by you.
You didn't tell me that you could read minds until after the break-up. I always wonder why that is. Were you trying to protect me, you, or us?
"Kayla, you know you're going to have to look at me sometime, don't you?"
I look at Angela. How can one person change so much in three months? Before the accident she was just as wild as I was, and now she seemed perfectly innocent.
She stares in to my eyes. "Kayla, listen, I don't know why you aren't saying anything to anyone, but maybe we should sit with some other people today… just so you can say hello," she adds when I cast mad expressions in her direction.
I know exactly who she's talking about. I search the cafeteria for the person I love, but who will never love me back.
I don't see Edward until lunch. He's not sitting with his family though, but with another girl.
"Who's that girl sitting with Edward?"
Angela glances up at them and then turns to look at me.
"Oh… uh… that's Bella. She's new here."
I raise one eyebrow. "Why the hesitation?"
"Well… they're kind of… going out. Pretty serious, I'd say. They don't go anywhere or do anything without each other."
I know now why she would hesitate, but, for the first time in a long time, I don't have any feelings for Edward.
"I'm sorry, Kay." She looks at me apologetically.
"It's okay. Do you know what? Whatever he does doesn't really bother me anymore. I've gotten over it."
"You don't have to pretend…"
"I'm not pretending!" I yell. This does it. I leave the cafeteria, aware that everyone's eyes are on me, and I stomp in to the girls' bathroom, where I curl up in to a ball and cry until the school day is over.
Age eleven.
I am in my Jessica's basement. We are playing seven minutes in heaven. It is Mike's turn. He spins the bottle. We watch it go around and around before it lands on Lauren. We all woo them and they pretend to not want to go but we all know that they do so they get up and go in to the closet. Everyone else gathers around it and puts their ears to the door to listen.
"So…" Mike says.
Jessica takes her shirt off. Everyone already knows that Mike is obsessed with her huge tits.
"I can see your bra."
"Can you see the rest of my body?"
"No."
"So it's just like a floating bra?"
Everyone outside laughs like they hadn't heard a joke their entire lives. I laugh along with them, but honestly, that was the moment when I realized that humanity was screwed for good. Our generation would ruin mankind.
At 3:05, I leave the bathroom. When I walk out I bump in to Edward and Bella holding hands. How convinient.
"Hello, Kayla," Edward says very formally.
"Edward." I nod at him. "And you must be Bella."
"Yes," she says. "Nice to meet you, Kayla." She sticks her hand out for me to shake. I hesitate, but I give her mine. We shake. Bella glances up at Edward, and I wonder why she looks like she is afraid of me.
"Listen," Edward begins, "I hate to see you walk all the way home on your first day back at school. Would you look a ride?"
I have no car or driving liscense. My dad said it wasn't safe for me to drive, since he knows how bad my hand-eye coordination is.
Bella shoots Edward death glares.
"Sure," I say. I only agree to it because I want to upset Bella.
Age fourteen.
Look at me. I'm fat.
I'm officially at my highest weight ever. I'm scared to death and I hate myself beyond comprehension. I dont know what to say except I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being such an excess of flesh and lard. I'm sorry for ruining everything.
I've been crying far too much lately and feeling too many out of control emotions. They rushed to my side as I crumpled to the floor sobbing like a child. Are you okay? What's wrong? I cried and cried and cried. He held me and she wiped my tears with her sleeve and they all stayed with me until I could walk again. How is it possible that they still care about me? After all the things I've fucked up. After all the awful mistakes I've made. I truly am the worst person in the world. I should not be within an arm's reach of any type of food or drink. After eating out the kitchen, I looked in the mirror. Even my tears were fat.
I am leaving school with Bella and Edward.
"Oh, shit," mutters Bella as she stops abruptly. "Gotta go write the Socials test I missed. Edward, why don't you go drop Kayla home? I'll stop by tonight? G'bye!" And she runs off.
Strange as it may seem, this is the first time I've been alone with Edward since the break-up. Just the two of us. We walk in silence.
"This is the first time we've been alone together since, like, 2004. It's been a long time," he says.
"Yeah, I guess." I don't make eye contact with him.Silence takes over once again. We are approaching his silver Volvo and he's swinging his keys around on the keychain.
I blurt out before I can stop, "You never visited me when I was in the hospital. Is it because of her? Of Bella? You just moved on and forgot about me? Just a few months ago you told me you loved me…" I trail off, my words barely comprehensisble.
We both stop walking. We don't say anything for a long moment and just look in to each other's eyes. When he doesn't reply, I realize.
"Oh." I look up at him. "You visited me everyday when I was…asleep, didn't you?"
We look at each other for a moment longer and his topaz eyes sparkle. Still no reply from him. He is made of stone. He unlocks his car and we get in. We fasten our seatbelts but he doesn't start the engine.
I tilt my head back and shut my eyes. He stares straight ahead.
"Why can't we talk to each other anymore?" I finally manage to say.
He is staring at his hands, thinking. "Well, we can."
"You know what I mean."
He does.
I decide to apologize. "I'm sor—"
"No," he cuts me off. "Don't be sorry, Kayla. It's not anyone's fault. None of this is your fault. The break-up, the accident, Bella…. We just…changed. Everything changed."
I agree with what he is saying. He continues, "Everyone around us changed, too. Our friends changed, maybe more subtly than you and I did, but you can't deny that they're different." He rubs his face with his hands. "Are you mad at me?" he asks.
I think about it. "I miss you. I'm not mad at you. What? Are you mad at me?"
"Maybe, a little. I'm scared of you, scared for you."
I realize that I am crying silent tears. They feel warm in my eyes and my vision blurs as I blink. But as he says this I can't help but snort.
"You? Afraid of me? I thought I was just some weak mortal."
He stays serious. "Don't say that, Kayla. You're so much more. I still love you, you know. Maybe not in the same way, but I care for you and want you to be safe. I told you before that as vampires we can never make big changes in our emotions, and my love for you is something that I will never forget, as long as I exist. When you were gone…." He stops as if he has said too much.
I process his words.
"Edward, I wasn't in a car accident, was I?"
He shakes his head slowly. When he sees the regret on my face, he wraps his arms around and keeps me safe for the time being.
What have I done?
I enter the house, my make-up smudged all over my face, waiting for dad. He comes home around dinnertime.
"Dad, what happened to me?" I confront him.
He's about to give me the car accident bullshit, but realizes what's going on. He doesn't care enough to deal with me. "What do you think?"
"I think that I tried to kill myself." And I leave the room so that he's not obligated to say anything in reply.
in the morning she looks like death
clouds of regret from her breath
the wind's all at once a push and pull
is the bottle by her bed half empty or full?
steal a few drops and it's no longer half
steal a few tears and you'll hear satan laugh
never allowing mind and body to meet
it's this fragmented existence that makes her complete
out in the cold, where her distance is true
her scars will eventually fade to blue.
every step down the alley of tears
subtracts an hour off her years
number every coffee-stained page
remember what made the sadness rage
with this void she's come to fill
comes a glimmer of hope she's bound to fill
love, loss, and lies: the holy trinity
she chose to accept loss over infinity
it's the lies that have caused the way she will die
and love is at fault for each single lie
The end.