Ashley
She'd never felt pain like that, breathtaking almost physical pain, like a punch in the stomach. Psychic pain. Physical pain would almost be better, it would be something she could wrap her mind around. Not like this aimless breathless ennui water level ache. Damn him. Damn him.
Craig
The girls, both those girls, it had been too much for him. Well, it had all blown up in his face and a merry Christmas to him. Still, he wondered why he cheated on Ashley when he knew it was wrong. Felt it in his bones even as he was doing it. Was it because cheating on her was easier than facing his emotions? Was it because it was easier than saying no to Manny? He liked Manny but with Ashley, it was something more. It was something so much more that he was a little bit terrified. He couldn't tell her. That song he had wrote for her, that song was an excuse not to tell her, not to really tell her, that he loved her.
Ashley
The constant ache of wanting him, needing him, and the overwhelming knowledge of what he had done, it was wearing her down. The inside of her mind was a dark red screaming place. A screaming place. He was gone and love was gone and something screamed it over and over. Little naked terrified girl in her mind, in her screaming place with the red walls and the blood that she could see as it traveled in its little sacs, little veins and capillaries and all those things shuffling off the blood to her heart that didn't want to beat anymore.
Craig
Joey smirked at him, amused at his screwed up love life. Or absence of one now. You can't have the cake and eat it, too, or something like that. Craig sighed, watched a lot of T.V., tried not to feel so miserable but it was hard. Screwed up again. Nothing new. Par for the course. Sometimes he liked to blame Manny. She came onto him. She danced up against him so sexy at that rave and she hung around him at school and she, with her sexy little clothes and sweet baby voice, she made him do it. But that was a cheap way out. Manny wasn't some temptress and he was some helpless boy. He chose to cheat. He did it freely. It wasn't fair to blame Manny.
Ashley
Beyond tears now. All cried out now. She felt like a shell, just an outside, her insides all burned away.
Craig
Maybe Ashley would take him back, if he apologized. If he could get in her good graces again. He thought about her dumping him, those blue eyes swimming with tears, her nose all crinkled up like it got when she was angry. "How could you?" she said to him, and he'd just stood there. What could he have said? What were the magic words to make it all better? The truth was there were none.
Ashley
Craig's dad had beat him, she knew that. Used to feel so sorry for him, and she'd picked up on it when they did that little play last year, "Taming the Shrew". Craig wasn't exactly acting when he shoved her to the floor of the stage, the anger in his voice and in his eyes real. She'd seen his dad at the school and realized that Craig had dressed up as him, the glasses and the suit and all of it. And she knew the dead mother and the abusive father had something to do with why he couldn't say he loved her even if he did. But still she'd pushed him to say it, she'd pushed him away.
Craig
School was becoming an ordeal. Ashley was absent a lot but when she was there her eyes shot little daggers at him and she walked in a wide circle around him if they had to pass in the halls and her friends all gave him dirty looks and whispered behind their hands. Everyday was like this Ashley land mine and if he didn't watch where he stepped he'd get blown up.
Ashley
Laying on her bed the waves of that darkness pulling her under, pulling her into her own mind with a force that was hard to fight. Everything ached, her nerves were singing with it. It was beating her. She called out to Craig in her mind but he didn't hear her, he was deaf. It was pain but she didn't know how to describe it. Pulsing. Numbness. Coldness. Jabbing stabbing pounding. All those things and a thousand more. Little rodents with teeth. Dentist drills. Migraines. She started asking for help but she didn't know from who. It was a dead voice in an empty room. Maybe she was asking God. Maybe she was asking Craig. Both were as inaccessible.
Craig
It would be okay. It had to be. She couldn't stay mad at him forever, could she? She'd thaw. She'd let it go and see that it was a mistake and let him in again. Into her life. Into her heart. And maybe when she did he'd have the courage to tell her how he felt.
Ashley
They wanted her to eat but she didn't want to eat. She didn't want to move. She wanted Craig. She loved him despite what he had done. She loved him. And he had ripped apart her trust, he had destroyed what was good in her, he had left her alone. She opened her eyes, saw the sun fading outside, just an orange line on the horizon now. That's all it was. No one was home now. She could sense the emptiness of the house. Down the hall to the bathroom where Toby's dad kept his razors. She took one back to her room and locked the door. It gleamed in the last of the orange sunset light, and she rolled up her sleeve.
Ashley
The vertical slashes with the razor didn't hurt at all, and the blood welled up so red, so dark red like magic on her white arm. Like magic.
Ashley
It didn't hurt as the blood splashed to the floor and the light faded from the sky and from her eyes, and the blood leaving her body in such gushes made her feel light headed, almost high, and her thoughts turned funny, lighter. Like they were unburdened by the lack of blood, the pain no longer coloring her thoughts and they were free to be what they wanted to be. Free. Craig was fading, the pain he had caused was fading, and it was harder and harder to keep her eyes open. She could no longer make sense of the blood splattered room or the dark sky or even herself.
Ashley
Lying on the floor, her hair soaked in her own blood, blue eyes open again and staring at nothing, into nothing. The ticking clock in her room on the shelf was the last sound she heard, and she thought it was the sound of her own heart.
Now there was only Craig.