Warning: Mature content--not lemons, but angst to the extreme. Read with caution. Is not meant to promote or justify tragedies of a similar kind. May be disturbing.
[*~*~*]
Broken Wings
[*~*~*]
It's just a bike, Bella thinks to herself as she wheels the blue beach cruiser down the rainy street. The white rubber tires squeak as they move along the wet pavement, and Bella counts each of her steps, hardening her resolve as her shoes splash against the asphalt. This shouldn't be so damn hard.
The small, tree-dominated street is barely lit by the cloudy gray skies overhead—streetlamps have already come on, though it is only four thirty in the afternoon.
Alice Cullen is sitting on her front porch on the glider, wrapped in a blanket and sheltered by the overhang, watching as her best friend approaches. "Bella! You're going to get sick!" she yells.
Bella takes a deep breath and forces a smile, shrugging as she turns up the driveway. She knows she isn't in any danger of catching anything. Not tonight. "I'm wearing a jacket, Alice. I'll be fine. Quit worrying."
"Sure you will," Alice says, narrowing suspicious eyes. "Then why are you giving your beloved bike to me? You ride this stupid thing everywhere."
This is true. In such a rainy place as the Olympic Peninsula in northwest Washington, the bike really is a stupid idea. But Bella has always loved it—the wind combing through her long hair, the comfort of the slight burn in her legs as she pulls herself over a hill, the exhilaration she experiences when the sun sneaks through the clouds to highlight the blue paint... She's free on the bike—free to go where she wants, free to live her life.
But she doesn't have any use for it anymore—the bike or her life. It's impractical, always has been. Plus, her dad is looking into getting her a car. She tells Alice so, and the other girl, small and skinny, smiles. "Finally!"
Bella looks at her bike again—it was a present from her father when she first moved in with him. It only seems right to give it away to Alice. It's a new beginning bike. The new beginning bike might do Alice some good, especially after it's done.
"You have to promise to take care of it," Bella says, a warning in her voice, pale fingers clenched tightly over the handlebars. Her fingernails are short and rough, her cuticles torn, proof of the nerves, stress, and indecision she has battled over the past month.
Alice rolls her eyes and nods. "I promise, blah blah blah."
"Good. I'm going to head home then, okay?"
Alice pouts, and crosses her arms over her blanket. For some reason, she is uncomfortable with the thought of Bella leaving tonight. Something is urging her not to let the other girl go, something cold and nervous and knotted inside her chest. "You don't want to hang out for a little while? We can watch a movie or something..."
Bella bites the inside of her bottom lip, the skin tender and torn apart, and shakes her head slowly, reaching up unconsciously to pull on a strand of her hair. "No, I've got a ton of homework. I should get home and start working on it. That rhetorical analysis essay alone will take me a few hours. And as much as I love you, I'm not willing to give up my nightly two hours of sleep."
Alice groans. "I told you taking all those AP classes would be suicide, didn't I?" Alice is rolling her eyes, and she misses Bella's flinch. "But did you listen—nooo. And now, whenever I want to hang out you're always busy with all your stupid homework, or your community service, or running some club… You don't even have time for me anymore. Who cares about looking good for colleges when you could be having fun with the great Alice Cullen?" Alice teases, pretending to pout pathetically.
Bella swallows the lump in her throat, hoping she's not giving anything away. She's lucky Alice missed her flinch. "I always have time for you, Ali. I love you, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, alright. Go be responsible then, sheesh." Her best friend sighs, but a smirk hovers at the corners of her dainty mouth, as always. She stands up and tosses the blanket haphazardly onto the glider before stepping toward Bella, arms outstretched.
Bella sighs as well, and squeezes her friend tightly to her, eyes pressed shut, trying not to let this moment of brief contentment weaken her determination. Every ounce of her strength holds the other girl to her, reluctant to leave her behind. This is one journey Bella must make alone, however, and she knows Alice cannot join her. "I love you, Alice, I really do."
Alice laughs lightly, still feeling strangely about letting Bella leave. "You too, Bells. Text me later, 'kay?"
"Yeah," Bella answers, and finally turns away, pulling her unwilling arms back to her and shivering. She can feel Alice's gaze on the back of her rain jacket, but she keeps walking, hands pushed into her pockets, head bowed to watch the pavement under her feet. Defeat drips off of her like the rain drops sliding down her hood.
She hopes she can keep this memory after it's done.
[*~*~*]
Edward is frantic. He stands close to Bella, just behind her, hands stretched out to touch Alice's shoulder for just a moment. The girl doesn't respond, but that's normal; not many can really tell he is as constant as Bella's dark shadow—though the tone of her voice does take on a pleading note as Alice begs Bella to stay.
He can feel it when Bella decides she is not staying, not tonight, even when Alice asks her to. Panicked, he kicks up a stronger wind, hoping the cold and rain will discourage her from heading home. He knows she won't let something as mundane as the weather stop her—Bella is stubborn—but he has to try anyway.
He can't ever make any decisions for her; hell, he can't even properly guide her, either. As her guardian, it's hard to protect his girl when he is unable to help her make the right choice. He is strung and tied to her, stitched to the soul within her body—Edward knows her more intimately than anyone could ever hope to imagine without inhabiting her shell. Her soul is as clear to him as a piece of thin glass, and just as fragile.
Tonight, she intends to shatter that glass, to break the taut strings that tie her down and leave her screaming for release as they bite into broken flesh and soul, suffocating and cutting, bound too tightly around her chest.
Bella has been severely depressed since her parents' divorce, three years ago. It had been a rough separation for all involved, and the lone daughter of Charlie Swan and Renee Dwyer felt the effects of this most. She moved in with her dad after the divorce—her mom was busy planning a wedding to Phil, the man she had cheated with, and Bella could neither abandon her father nor forgive her mother so quickly. She felt guilty, found ways to blame herself for her mother's affair, and pulled away from them both.
It was then when Edward first felt the darkness creeping into Bella's thoughts and emotions, wrapping strangling probing fingers around her, searching for her weaknesses and flowing through like a river. It eroded her resistance to sadness and fear, filling her with a righteous anger on her father's behalf and a startling hate for her mother.
He worried, and tried to comfort her—he sent friends toward her, attempted to help her lost father remember how to be a good parent, intercepted her dreams and visited her in them sometimes, and absorbed over half the load of stress she would have otherwise been carrying. Still, Bella was wearing down.
She'd first thought of it a year ago when her English class watched a documentary on the subject after reading through a number of Shakespeare's plays. She had wondered aloud why his female characters so often took their own lives—Portia, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Cleopatra…
At the time, she saw suicide as a sign of weakness and Shakespeare's misogyny at work. Her teacher and a classmate disagreed, arguing that at that time in history women had little to no power. Suicide was a way in which they could exert what little control they had in their lives or get revenge upon those who deserved it, those who had hurt them and their loved ones…
Bella immediately thought of her mother, of the pain inflicted on her family when the woman left. She had never really forgiven the mother who wanted to control so much of her daughter's life. Renee Dwyer nagged her to join clubs, paraded her around in front of possible clients, and poured stress over Bella's life like some kind of sticky syrup, never letting her stretch away. This, combined with Bella's innate hatred of her mother for cheating, had caused part of Bella's need for vengeance. Suicide was a way to make Renee suffer, and to escape the stress and fear Bella constantly lived under.
Edward resented those who had put the idea of suicide being an attribute of the strong in Bella's head, almost as much as he hated that she felt hopeless enough to end it. Before them, she hadn't seriously considered it. She'd thought it was a cowardly way out of one's problems.
Until then.
Over the past year, she has plotted and planned and thought long and hard. Finally, she is acting on her thoughts. Her father is happy now and Alice is already buzzing about graduating in four months. Bella is needed no longer—or so she thinks.
Giving away her bike to Alice is her first step.
I think it will help her. She'll understand tomorrow. And I need to call Mom, too, Bella thinks as she walks, dread and fear sizzling through her veins.
Edward knows well the two don't talk often, and Bella feels the need to say goodbye once more, even if just to hint that perhaps part of this was Renee's fault in the first place. As for her father and the rest of her friends—she'd written a well-thought out note while Edward hovered anxiously behind her, causing her pen to snap so she had to start over and then crashing her computer in the middle of the typed version.
Edward regrets that he is not able to be seen or heard by Bella. His job would be so much easier if he could talk to her or show her what he could see—the future is bleak for those whose lives she has touched with hers. Ending her own will damage theirs, as he well knows—unfortunately the seventeen year old girl walking down the street in front of him does not know this, and he cannot help her realize it. After all, she has never dealt with the consequences of death and does not know the pain of losing someone; she simply sees her relief after it's over.
He speeds up to walk next to her as she almost runs down the street, shoving hands into the pockets of his own jeans. Over the many years he has been a part of her soul, he has taken on the habits of his girl… the casual way of dressing, her speech—even intermingled with cuss words as it sometimes is—and the flustered state entered when he is frustrated, much like Bella's personality. The bond between angel and soul is unbreakable and all-encompassing; even after death, he is still assigned to watch over the bodiless conscience. He was created simply to be hers, a part of her soul unexplored and unknown to her.
"I wish you won't," he whispers to her, reaching out and pushing her hair behind her ear. She shivers when she feels the wind of his passing, icy cold against her cheek, and he sighs forlornly. This girl—his girl—is his entire world. Nothing matters or ever has except for this young and wounded soul.
The streetlights highlight her delicate features, defining them in the contrast between soft yellow light and the deep shadows. He thinks her face reflects her soul as they near her street, and the strands of her hair catch the light of the next bright circle.
Bella swallows roughly against the panic clawing up the back of her throat, making it hard to breathe as her chest constricts, the bands of anxiety too tight to allow for normal breathing. Her hands shake as she reaches out to lean against the nearby streetlight, and she slides to the ground as her legs turn to jello, gasping for air, eyelids pressed together as her heart thunders loudly in her ears, drowning out all other sound. Edward hovers over her, hating that her Prozac is hidden in the vanity cabinet over the sink in her bathroom and wishing she had never needed it in the first place.
The medicine has been a problem. Bella's physician had prescribed it seven weeks ago to combat the panic attacks that had become increasingly common and to tone down the depression she had expressed concerns about. The warning on the bottle clearly states increased thoughts of suicide are common within the first few months, along with many other side effects that almost outweigh the benefits in Edward's point of view, but nobody else seems to question the medicine. Her father isn't concerned—he believes it's helpful for her. But Edward wonders whether the medicine actually works after all, or if it's just making this whole situation much worse. Sometimes he thinks she wouldn't act on her thoughts if it weren't for the Prozac.
Bella frantically searches for a distraction from the ache in her chest, the tightness causing her head to spin uncomfortably, the burning of her throat as she drags a minimal amount of air through it. Her toes have gone numb from lack of oxygen, her shirt sticks to her suddenly sweaty torso. Leaving Alice wasn't supposed to be this hard. Her plan is upset by the panic attack. She wonders if leaving her father will be worse, and then remembers she won't be around to feel it later; her heads spins dizzily as her anxiety over all the goodbyes seem to merge into one overwhelming surge of panic, a strong gray tide pulling her under. Her eyelashes flutter weakly against her cheeks.
Edward can do nothing but wait for it to end. After eighteen minutes, she can finally breathe properly again and has stopped choking, but is too weak to resume walking. Seven minutes later, she pulls herself off the ground and takes small tentative steps toward home, finally relaxing slightly as air flows more naturally through her bloodstream. Fighting her way through the panic attacks without the medicine is getting increasingly harder. Bella needs to get home and take her Prozac as soon as possible. Her hands continue to tremble as she walks.
Edward follows beside her hopelessly. He can still remember her at age four, laughing with her dad when he swung her around, making faces at her mother during games. He longs to see that bright smile again; he misses her innocence and her faith in the world. How could he have let her become this way? What kind of guardian angel is he?
He is meant to protect her—and he can, usually. He stopped her from stepping out in front of a car when she was five; he got her mother's attention when seven year old Bella began choking on a piece of gum; he distracted her from watching a cat get run over around the corner by forcing one of her friends to call out to her from behind. He can protect her from everything that may be a hazard to her—except for the one thing that is most dangerous. Herself.
He can't see a way to save her this time.
She is going to commit suicide, and nothing is going to stop her, least of all him.
[*~*~*]
Bella shivers again as she unlocks the front door of her house for what she knows will be the last time. She lets her bag slide down her arm to land on the wood floor and heads down the short hallway, glancing into the small living room with its dark shadows of furniture. Bella turns and heads for the stairs, climbing the dark stairwell slowly, feeling her way with her feet. One of the stairs creaks belatedly below her, and the heater kicks in on her back, warming her cold skin, small and familiar things she might experience only a few more times tonight.
A shudder convulses her muscles again, and she rushes into the bathroom fighting off the residual nausea, opening the vanity cabinet and pulling out the small bottle of Prozac from the second shelf between Naproxen and an expired prescription of her father's. Her hands are still shaking as she tries to open the lid, and she isn't surprised when the bottle falls from her fingers, lid popping off to spill green and white capsules over the black carpet in front of the sink.
Bella looks down at the pills on the floor and sighs. They're dramatically different from the dark rug, small but stark against it. She kneels and picks them up—nine of them rest in her hand, useless now unless she wants to swallow them knowing they've been on the bathroom rug. She leans over and tosses them into the toilet, flushing them with another sigh. As she stands, she shakes a single capsule into her trembling hand and pops it into her mouth.
Bella puts the lid back on the bottle, places it carefully back on its shelf, and avoids looking at herself in the mirror. She closes the door behind her, thinking about the possibilities. Overdosing, slitting her wrists, stealing her dad's gun… there are so many ways to end her life now that she's looking for them. She wants the most dramatic scene, though, the one that will make her mother regret her actions the most. Which probably means blood. So overdosing is out. It's between slitting her wrists and shooting herself, then. She has a few hours to choose between them.
Downstairs, she enters the kitchen, stops, and looks around her. Her father is not yet home from work, and she has time to make him a good dinner tonight.
She gets ingredients out for spaghetti, meatballs, and real garlic bread, numb and scared. Fear is rooted deep into her heart, but she refuses to let it rule over her. Still, a slight tremor betrays her nerves. The medicine helps slightly as it takes effect over the next hour. This time, she is the conqueror. She is in total control. Nothing can take this away from her, not now. Nobody suspects. They don't understand.
A single light is on in the kitchen, brightening a small circle with the charred orange illumination, deepening the shadows on her face—the half-moon bruises under her eyes from lack of sleep, her slender neck, full lips stretched unusually across her face in a flat line.
Once she has finished dinner, she leaves everything on the stove, pausing to turn off the dials on autopilot. Her dad will be home quite soon. She heads upstairs again.
Before she finally escapes the fear and numbness that has plagued her weary heart for years, she has a few things left to do. Calling her mother to say goodbye one last time, acting normally through dinner with her father while still trying to get across the message that she loves him, and texting her friends one last message.
Setting up will take time too—the letter addressed to her family and friends is written up, sprayed with perfume, and folded in the bottom of her desk drawer. The vase on her desk, right next to the window, already has the water and the sweet pea in it to hold the letter in place and say a final goodbye. She is going to clean her room and organize things, maybe write an unofficial will tonight—or will anyone want the reminders of the dead person? Maybe she won't.
Bella tugs on a lock of her hair as she opens her door, looking around the room she will only be living in for a few more hours.
The violet walls of the room are a testament to the age of the teenaged girl living in it. Black stars spatter the white ceiling, which matches the carpet and the black and white polka-dotted duvet on the bed. A red stain from a bottle of Gatorade mars the corner of the bedspread, half thrown onto the floor over a pile of books dropped from weary hands in the middle of the night. A single shoe pokes out from under the bed, betraying the location of a collection spanning thirty-three pairs—many are Converse of different colors, a few pairs of boots, and finally an entire organized row of heels which rarely see daylight, bought mainly by her mother before she left.
Despite the hidden hatred she feels for her mother, Bella can't throw the heels out. They remind her of a time when Renee was an active, loving part of the family, a time before Renee broke out and shattered those she left behind. She'd tried to burn one pair, long ago, and hadn't been able to do it. Instead, she'd cried, organized the shoes to be hidden behind all of the others, and attempted to forget about them.
Clothes dot the floor, and forgotten school papers completely obscure the dark wood of the desk and the laptop under the wide window—rain drops from the dark sky outside, though the setting sun is barely visible far in the horizon from the top of the hill the house sits on. A lamp in a corner by the bed is already on to illuminate the room, a circle of light focused on the disarrayed pillows and the stack of novels so far unread, ordered by desire to read. Crime and Punishment rests at the bottom, under such titles as 13 Reasons Why, The Fountainhead, and Paper Towns.
Snapshots cover the walls, secured by tacks of varying bright colors—lime green, turquoise, bright purple, red, orange, yellow. Each tack is specifically chosen for each picture based on the dominant color in the photo. Only one portrait has a frame—a large white square around the small picture covered entirely by scrawls in all different colors, messages from the five laughing people in the middle of the frame, a memory captured in color. An acceptance letter from New York University is wedged in a corner of the frame, conspicuous and placed perfectly for maximum viewing. She wants people to be proud of her accomplishments, wants them to remind everyone that it was her choice and not their fault.
Bella focuses on the messes she has left, and is cleaning them slowly when she finally hears the garage open downstairs, announcing her father's return home. She remembers that her room is rarely quiet—her iPod is always playing, and it will be suspicious for him to recognize the absence of sound.
She presses play on her iPod, and isn't surprised when it suddenly switches playlists—it has been doing so for the last few months at random. The Apple Company hadn't found anything wrong or defective with the iPod, so she's accepted the fact that it is out of her control now and has a life of its own. Lyrics such as 'Looking up through the water, I kept sinking down, down, down,' are arbitrarily replaced by 'But the hard times will come, and we'll keep moving on. We're moving on. Keep moving on. Life. Hope. Truth. Trust. Faith. Pride. Love. Lust. On without the things we've lost, but things we've gained we'll take with us.'
Satisfied that her father will believe the picture of normalcy she is constructing, she returns to organizing her things. By the time Charlie Swan knocks on the open doorframe, the room is spotless and looks as if it is unoccupied by a living person, let alone a messy teenager.
He looks startled at the sight of the clean room. Though his daughter does not often have a swamp of disorganization in her room, it is rare that every paper is in place, every drawer closed and sweater hung. He disregards his shock and decides to be grateful and remain silent about it.
"Hey, kid, how was school?" he asks, leaning against the frame as he works to loosen his heavy black belt. She looks away from him, unable to bear the sight of the gun strapped in a holster on his hip; it reminds her of the actions she will soon be taking.
"Great, Dad. How was work? Did you send anyone to jail?" she teases weakly, glancing back at him. His hair is still quite bushy and colored for a man of forty-four years old—if she were to ever reach that age, she would have hoped her hair would retain the same dark color as his has.
Forcing the conversation is harder than she presumed. She reminds herself she is entering her last few hours of bonding time.
"Nah, I just ticketed a few speeders—your friend Rosalie Hale sure likes to ignore speed limits. Try not to get any rides from her. And we arrested a drunk guy trying to start a fight down at the bar. Same as usual. Did Mrs. Walla give you any trouble with your English essay?" he inquires, smiling at her as he listens.
People always tell her she looks a lot like her father—she inherited his strangely deep brown eyes, the easy smile that draws people in, and even her long thin fingers from the slight but tall man in the doorway. The only thing obviously passed on from her mother is the arch of her eyebrows and the awkward skin tone that makes foundation shopping so difficult.
"She liked it, actually," Bella says, swallowing. "She read pieces of it out loud in class."
In reality, the assignment made her nervous—it was almost as if Mrs. Walla suspected. And yet, the older woman couldn't know anything. Bella has made sure she is acting like herself lately, even when she felt as if 'herself' had died long ago—she's forced the false smiles, staged the fake laughs, and pretended to be happy. Still, the essay on leaving things behind and fading away is a little too coincidental for Bella. She loves The Little Prince with a passion, but the discussions of the past week are already haunting her, and the assignment accompanying the end of the book was no different. That essay had been easy for her, the easiest all year as she contemplated leaving soon. And after its completion, Bella is ready.
"Well, there you go," her dad cheerfully grins, straightening up. "Come on down and join me for dinner. Tell me the rest there."
He turns to leave, and Bella stares at his back, fingers tangled in her hair. She wills him to turn around and admit he knows, he suspects; she wants him to get down on his knees and cry and beg her not to debate between slitting her wrists in the bathtub or stealing his gun from the drawer in his desk under pounds of paperwork. She never wanted it to come to this, ever—but now it has, and she has to react.
She needs someone to stop her.
But she can't stand the thought of being caught, of continuing through this hell on earth.
Somebody has to see it coming.
When he pauses and turns to look back at her, she is afraid she willed too hard, terrified he really does know. But he just frowns at her for a moment and shakes his shoulders as if freeing himself from someone's hand. "Close your window before you come downstairs, it's freezing in here."
[*~*~*]
Edward follows Bella down the stairs hopelessly, still trying to project his image to her father. It's easier for him to reach the physical realm if his target is asleep or in a relaxed state, but Charlie Swan is now much too tense. The unease Edward prodded him with moments ago is growing, but the man cannot find a reason. He decides he is just anxious to see the Mariners' game score as his daughter enters the kitchen with a wide smile on her face.
Only two of the sentient beings in the room know the smile is as false and unnatural as silicone breasts.
"How's Alice? Still sick?" Charlie asks.
Bella nods and grabs the plates out of the cabinet. "Yeah," she answers, handing him the green circle of glass carefully, looking at his large hands, following the life line with her eyes. Edward knows she is comparing it to her own, wondering if suicide changes the length of the line. "I dropped by to see her before I came home. She's still just as chipper as ever."
"That's because her parents gave her too much caffeine when she was little—your mother and I only let you have a Coke a month, remember?" He laughs as he scoops some of the spaghetti noodles out of the pan.
Bella feels a jolt at the memory of her happy childhood, a childhood protected from fear and anger and sorrow. She forces herself to join in, chuckling to avoid suspicion, and Edward is agonized. He had hoped she would be unable to behave normally, would drop enough hints for Charlie to realize what was going on, but she is doing well. Her dad suspects nothing.
His girl is unusually talkative tonight, a combination of nerves and reluctance to leave her father so alone in the world. She is, she knows, all he has left at the moment. She knows he will have to move on at some point, and she knows it will be a while before he can return to normal.
She hopes her father will not take the blame for this; she doesn't want to leave him with a heavy load of guilt dropped upon his shoulders. Somehow, she has to let him know this is not his fault, that it lies between Bella's need to escape and her need to punish her mother. Bella has never wanted to hurt her father. But Edward knows this is more painful than she thinks it will be, and Charlie will never recover as she expects him to. This will be the second time he loses a woman he loves, and he will not be able to love again after the act.
As she chatters on about school and laughs at all of her dad's jokes, Bella allows herself to relax minutely and just enjoy the moment. She pushes her food around her plate instead of eating, but her dad is used to this behavior from her and presumes nothing is wrong. Edward can feel her pushing the darker emotions back, and he foolishly hopes they never return. But when she stands and starts clearing away dinner, the anxiety returns.
Charlie yawns widely and stretches in his chair before glancing at the clock over the oven. "Honey, I'm going to catch the score on the game, alright?"
"Yeah, sure, Dad, I'll put away your dishes because I love you so much," Bella mumbles and forces herself to roll her eyes, focusing on pressing the lid down onto the Tupperware container housing the remainder of the meal.
Charlie laughs. "Love you too, kid." He stands, leans over to kiss the top of her head, and leaves the room, thoughts focused on the batting stats of his favorite team.
Bella pauses to watch his back retreating down the hallway, and bites her lip. He seems happy, at least, which is reassuring to her as she submerges the lid of the saucepan into soapy water.
I'll miss him. The thought flits through both Bella's and Edward's minds; she shakes her head savagely, fighting away her weaknesses, and he wishes more thoughts like it would follow, would break her resolve. If only she could hear Edward as clearly as he hears her, if she could feel the emotions crushing him.
The phone rings shrilly in the kitchen, and Bella jumps, heart pulsing erratically, disrupted from her thoughts. Edward had watched for three minutes as she stared at the soapy bubbles disappearing in the sink, comparing her life to them. He's glad for the distraction; though he knows it's coming, he doesn't want her dwelling on her demise for too long. Naive though it may be, he hopes the less she thinks about it the less likely it is to occur. She might waver. It could happen.
"Hello?" Bella almost gasps into the phone, her pulse still strong in her temples.
"Hey, baby! How are you? I haven't heard from you in so long! Oh, Phil says to tell you 'hi' for him." The voice on the phone is muffled for a second, as if a hand has been placed over the mouthpiece, though Bella can still hear her mother talking to her new husband—"Bells says 'hi' back, honey."
Bella isn't sure how to respond to the phone call. She hadn't imagined her mother would call. She'd thought she'd have to gather the courage… but this way is easier. If she had caught her mother unawares, perhaps Phil wouldn't be near, and perhaps Bella might forget how angry she is at Renee. But the reminder, the false cheerfulness in the woman's voice, forces Bella to breathe in deeply.
"Hi, Mom."
She won't be giving anything more. If Renee was going to call, then she was going to do most of the talking as well—not that it was a problem for her to monopolize a conversation.
"It's great to hear your voice, my Bells!" Renee enthuses, voice dripping gooey sweetness, more of the stifling fake sugars combining to make the sticky syrup holding Bella from breaking away completely.
Bella cringes at her mother's old nickname for her—my Bells.
When she was little, Renee had pulled her into her lap one day and explained why she called her that. Renee was possessive of Bella, loved her more than anything at that point in time, was proud to call the dark haired child hers. As for shortening her name to Bells, she explained Bella was her very own freedom bell.
When she was little, this was a remarkably sweet and precious moment between mother and daughter, a fond memory. But now Bella hates the name. She's not the freedom her mother craves anymore; she's wedded Phil for that freedom. And she sure as hell doesn't belong to this woman any longer, not after what she's done.
Edward understands Bella's anger, of course he does, but he wishes Renee could feel it too, wishes she would just stop talking and listen to her daughter for once. It might save her life.
"How's school, honey? Any cute guys interested in you? Prom is coming up, I heard it from Mrs. Stanley at the grocery store the other day. It's exciting, right? Do you have a dress yet? Oh, you'll finally have a reason to wear all those high heels I bought you!" Renee gushes, leaving no space for Bella to respond. Edward feels her annoyance and bubbling anger as the woman rushes on, oblivious to the storm brewing on the horizon of her life.
"School's fine, except I'm having trouble with calculus. My friends are fine. I'm taking Prozac now. I'm not going to prom. I don't like high heels," Bella finally responds when Renee stops to suck in a lungful of the necessary oxygen. Edward thinks if she didn't need to breathe, Renee would never be silent, and blesses the necessity for air when it gives his girl time to speak her mind.
Renee's shocked gasp gives both Edward and Bella hope—that maybe she's finally heard for once, maybe she actually cares—but it is soon dashed, a fragile glass thrown against the hard floors to shatter into small pieces, reflecting the same picture, the same feelings, over and over again. "Isabella Marie Swan! You have to go to prom! It's practically required of you!"
"Mom!" Bella snaps into the phone, finally fed up. "I just told you I'm taking drugs for depression and you pick out the least consequential thing to focus on! Do you even care that I'm clinically depressed? That I have panic disorder? Is a stupid dress and a corsage really more important to you than my well-being?"
"No, of course not! Isabella, how could you think such a thing! I'm sorry you're depressed, but I though talking to you about happy things would make you better…" Renee trails off, and Bella laughs harshly, painfully. Tears threaten to fall down her now-flushed cheeks.
"Yeah, sure, because fucking prom is going to make things all bright and sparkly and colorful again. I'm sure everything will be all better! Do you think I should get a red dress, Mommy, do you? I think a red dress would be so pretty!"
Bella's bitingly sarcastic tone forces even Edward to flinch, especially because he knows of which red dress she is thinking, the threads of which are twisted rivulets of blood.
"Bella! Don't speak to me like that! I'm your mother, and you'll treat me with respect," Renee snaps.
"What, like you treated us with respect? Like you respected your marriage vows to Dad when you were off playing with your boy-toy? You are the last person who can lecture me about respect, especially when I don't have any left for you." Heat prickles under Bella's skin, and if he didn't know better, Edward would expect her to burst into flame.
"What's wrong with you?" Renee snarls through the phone; Edward's hands shake and his wings shuffle as his urge to protect Bella flares sharply.
"With me?" Bella gasps. Tears burn as they slowly progress down her too-warm cheeks, and her throat is tight again. Edward reaches out and frames her face in his hands, offering all he can, pathetically little though it may be. The cool touch helps to calm her, though she only feels as if a breeze has swept across her face. She pauses, draws in a deep breath, and takes a mental step back from the conversation.
"Mom, everything is wrong with me, and you've either been blind to it or you've decided to ignore it and make it disappear by hiding. Well, I hope you're happy now, because my issues won't be bothering you much longer."
Bella pulls the phone away from her ear and presses her thumb over the talk button to end the call. I'm done with this shit. For good.
Edward sighs hopelessly. If only the conversation had turned out differently, if only they hadn't started to fight…
Bella's motions are angry and restless as she finishes cleaning the kitchen; she sprays down the counters, sweeps for good measure, all the while red with fury. Charlie calls down the hall, asking her to quiet down, and Bella is tempted to thrown the broom on the floor.
She squeezes the handle in her hands, pressing her eyes closed and thinking about the metaphorical meaning of closing out the hatred and the anger, of moving it to a place she can access later tonight when she'll need it. "Sorry, Dad," she yells down the hall.
"You okay?" Edward knows Charlie has stopped paying attention to the TV and is leaning forward in his chair, looking at the doorway and thinking about coming out to talk face to face.
"Yeah, just… Mom called and… she was just being annoying," Bella responds, pushing her hair out of her face.
"Sorry, kid." Edward feels it when Charlie sighs and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands, ignoring the game. He regrets that Bella has had to live through such a bad divorce, part of which was his fault. The reminder of his defeat, of his failure, causes him to stay in the living room instead of checking on his daughter again.
She turns to the sink and splashes cold water on her face, pressing the towel against her skin almost roughly. Edward brushes his hand down her spine again, and she shivers.
"Please," he whispers desperately, uselessly. "Please don't."
Bella bites the inside of her bottom lip so deeply she tastes metallic blood. She's worried about her father again, and Edward hopes that she'll reconsider, that it might be enough of a cause to put it off. She turns from the sink, flicks the light off in the kitchen, and walks down the dark hallway blindly.
[*~*~*]
Upstairs, Bella sits at her computer desk and opens her laptop slowly, reluctantly. Hoping to distract herself and take up time, she begins her essay analyzing the use of rhetorical devices in the boring article she pulls from her binder.
By the time her dad has climbed the stairs, heading for a shower and then his bed, she has finished the essay and moved on to her other AP classes.
"Good night, Bella," Charlie says, walking into her room. He bends over, kisses her on her temple, and squeezes her shoulder. "Try to get some sleep, kiddo. I love you."
"I love you too, Dad, more than anything," Bella responds, voice tight and rough. Emotion jolts through her as she glances back over her shoulder to see him smiling and waving from the doorway.
Then he is gone, and she whispers one last thing. "Good bye."
[*~*~*]
Bella is sure her father is asleep now, and still she cannot pull herself out of bed. Fear pulses harshly through her veins, though they are far too constricted to allow her blood the same freedom.
Edward is trying to wake her father from his slumber—Charlie is dreaming restlessly, dark and disturbing images tumbling quickly through his mind. He's still not receptive enough for Edward to fully infiltrate the dream, to hear Edward's frantic warnings.
Bella finally slides to the floor over the side of her bed, leaning on her knees and gripping her duvet in clenched fists, face buried against the mattress. "I have to. I just… I have to," she mutters to herself. She reaches out for her cell phone, sitting just in reach on her nightstand.
Alice; I love you. I'm sorry. Not your fault. I love you. ~ B
Bella wishes she could say more, wishes it wasn't so impersonal. But for now, the text to her best friend will have to suffice. The letter tomorrow will explain, but this goodbye, her final goodbye, is brief and electronic. If she wasn't already going to be dead, Alice would have killed her tomorrow.
On shaking legs, she stands and crosses the room to her desk. She turns on her lamp and the yellow light makes her squint against it, eyes used to the darkness. She opens her desk drawer through almost-closed eyes, pulls out the envelope as her fingertips brush against its edges, and picks up the vase with the sweet pea in the other hand. In the center of her room, on the conspicuously bare floor, she kneels down and sets them in place.
Charlie is forced into the state between sleeping and awake. He grumbles, rolls over, and pulls his pillow over his head, trying to expel the terrifying dream from his conscience. Edward, agonized, returns to Bella's side, hoping to find something, anything, to hold her up long enough for Charlie to finally get out of bed and check on her.
The letter is placed first, the blue envelope stark against her white carpet; she sets the vase carefully on the corner to weigh it down, and arranges the sweet pea to perfection, brushing her fingertips over the soft yielding petals. She inhales deeply and withdraws her hand. It's shaking again.
Bella pushes herself up from her floor and shakes her hair out of her face, tangling a fistful in her fingers. She takes a deep breath and finally makes her choice—the bathroom is closer, the box cutter is ready in the drawer under her hairbrush, and the blood should be dramatic enough to give her mother nightmares for the rest of her life.
Edward knocks the vase over, and she turns back quickly to stop the water inside from spoiling her letter.
Bella manages to save the envelope, and delicately takes the stalk of sweet pea, shakes it off, and sets it back on the letter in another spot, grateful she doesn't have to rewrite it, to relive the scared and lonely words. Bella picks up the vase and sets it on the corner of her bookshelf, careful not to make any noise.
She's only a step from her bedroom door, right hand stretched to turn the knob, when three of her pictures fall off of her bulletin board.
Edward has forced the pins out of the cork, freeing the images of her past.
She pauses, glances at them—Alice's face laughs up at her from one, pressed up next to the image of her own wide smile. The one lying on top of its corner was taken two years ago—she and her father eating lunch at a beach down in Oregon.
In the last photo, Bella is alone, looking off into the distance and unaware of the camera's existence. She looks hopeful and thoughtful, unburdened and light as she leans on a wooden railing. Sunlight shines behind her, glinting in dark hair being tossed in wind and shining in her unfocused eyes. She'd stolen this picture from Alice's camera three and a half years ago because she liked the shadows caused by a tree to the left of her—she liked to imagine the shadows looked like wings spread on either side of her. Of every picture ever taken of her, this is by far her favorite.
It is Edward's favorite as well, the one solid piece of evidence in her life that he exists, is always present for her. Even alone, she is never abandoned.
Bella stares at the photos for a moment, reliving those memories of happier times. She swallows harshly, bends down, and brushes her fingers over the faces of the two people she cares for most in this damned world. She imagines Alice's face tomorrow morning, shudders and quickly clears the image away by focusing on her fingers, spread over the carpet next to the glossy shots. Her father's face superimposes itself, and she struggles to shake it away as well.
She can't afford to continue on, to falter now and go back to bed, only to wake up with another forced smile in the morning.
Bella snatches the pictures up, pins them carefully back in place, and bolts out of her room toward the bathroom door.
Edward flies after her, passes her as she stumbles through the dark hallway, hands trailing along the wall in search of the door as her bare feet shuffle against the carpet.
When the doorknob doesn't turn under her hand, Bella begins to panic. She needs to get in there, she needs the box cutter, the relief she knows will follow behind each stroke of the blade over the pale, too-thin skin of her wrists.
Edward forces the lock to stay in place as she frenetically jiggles the doorknob. When she falls against the door, slides to the floor, tears of frustration and fear in her eyes, he kneels next to her and wraps her in his arms and wings, hoping to chain her to the floor long enough for her father to get up.
Charlie is still half-awake, eyes shut as echoes of the horrible sounds of his dream play through his head again.
"No, no, no," Bella whispers against her knees, shuddering. "No. I have to… I have to…"
She remembers her other option now—the bathroom door is clearly stuck on something, or her father had locked it behind him as he left, by accident. But two of her options are now out—the Prozac is hidden in the vanity cabinet, the box cutter trapped in a drawer.
Edward shakes his head forcefully as she stands, stepping through his embrace and turning toward the black stairwell. He mournfully follows her, all the while attempting to urge her father into a more aware state.
Bella tip-toes into her father's study, closes the door part way, and turns on the overhead light. She crosses the room and crouches next to his desk. In the third drawer, under a pile of paperwork and files, her fingertips brush over the freezing metal where her father usually hides it after work.
She jerks her hand back as if burned, cradling it against her chest, and breathes in deeply, trying to avoid a second panic attack in twelve hours. After a moment, she forces herself to reach back into the drawer and close her fingers around what feels like the butt of the gun. She lifts the small pistol out, surprised by the weight of the metal and the danger that seems to radiate from it in cold, menacing waves.
She'd learned how to handle a weapon when she was younger—her dad had taught both Bella and her cousin Emmett how to handle, shoot, and clean a gun. Still, it had been a while since she'd gone out to the range with either of them, and she'd forgotten the feel of it in her hand.
Bella knows the clip is empty, and knows she'll need to load the gun before she can do anything with it. The box of bullets is obscured by papers as well, and she reaches back into the drawer to pull it out.
Edward sees an opportunity as she sets the box on top of the desk, and soon it's tipping over, spilling small golden rounds, which scatter loudly onto the wooden floor like a rain of metal.
Bella leaps up and rights the box, listening to the clattering of the bullets as they still against the floor—she holds her breath and waits to hear her father getting out of bed above her.
Charlie sits upright in bed at the sound, wondering if he'd imagined it as part of his dream. Still, he is uneasy now, and something feels off.
Bella hurriedly jams six rounds into the magazine before shoving it into the gun, cocking back the hammer to load one into the chamber, and flipping off the safety. She jumps up from her spot on the floor, throws the door to the hallway open, and runs toward the kitchen and the backyard past it.
Edward tries to hold the back door closed long enough for Charlie to realize Bella is not where she should be.
Charlie throws his legs out of bed and staggers across his room into the hall—Bella's door is open, which immediately wakes him up. She sleeps with it closed, always has. He pokes his head into her room, just in case, and sees the letter and flowers when he flips on her light.
Bella almost screams in frustration when the sliding glass door refuses to open. She turns to grab something, anything, to throw at the glass, to break it, and finally hears the sound she has been dreading—her father's heavy footsteps upstairs.
With a sinking heart, Charlie steps forward and picks up the envelope, addressed to him. His blood runs cold in his veins.
Edward is momentarily distracted, hoping Charlie will decide to look for Bella rather than read the letter right away, and Bella tries the door one last time—it flies open, smacking against the other side of the frame, and all three of them react to the sound differently—Charlie freezes upstairs, listening hard; Edward whips around to stare in horror as Bella flings herself out into the night.
Cold air breezes through the kitchen as Edward rushes after Bella—her heart is pounding in her chest, in her wrists, her stomach, her throat, her temples. She gasps for air, throws her head back, stares up at the stars. She decides they will be the last thing she ever looks at.
Edward is screaming now, frantically trying to break the barrier between them, and Bella hears the sudden wind howling in her ears like the blood rushing through them.
"Bella!" Charlie's voice cuts through the night air from upstairs. His feet are heard bounding down the stairs, and Edward foolishly hopes he is on time.
Bella squeezes her eyes tightly shut at the same time her fingers pressure the trigger. Please.
The sound of the gunshot rings through the night, echoes from trees as the sound of a body dropping is muffled by the grass receiving it.
Edward lets out an anguished cry as he is wrenched to his knees beside the lifeless girl lying in the grass, grass soaking up her dark blood too fast, too fast for Charlie to slide through the kitchen toward the sound he is suddenly most afraid of.
Edward reaches out a trembling hand to brush the pale wrist of Bella's body, and his wings droop and change. He can feel them losing their strength, their vitality as quickly as his girl has lost hers—feathers that had once been white and full crumble and become brittle, gray and motionless but for those falling to the ground, turning red as they absorb the mess beneath his knees.
He reaches forward with both arms and pulls Bella toward him, cradling her in his arms one last time. He'd have to find her now. She would be lost, alone, terrified and in pain until he could take her hand and guide her in a way he was never allowed with her physical shell.
Charlie stumbles in the kitchen doorway, fingers searching for the light until it illuminates his backyard. He falls to the ground seconds later, shattered.
Edward whispers her name; it falls from his lips like his last prayer, and then carefully he arranges her. When he looks up, the fear has left his heart—there is only one thing left for him. He has to find her. Edward feels the pull of her aimless spirit and stands, leaving her body and crying father behind him as he spreads his broken wings and begins his search.
[*~*~*]
AN:
This is a reaction to the loss of two friends within the last five months. Yesterday was the three month mark for one of them, the girl I was closer to. She was my chemistry partner, my calculus partner, my AP classmate—and she was suicidal. I never saw it. Not many did. And I arrived to school one day to face the news; my world crumbled with the loss of a second classmate.
Since then, suicide has been in my thoughts daily—not my own, but theirs, hers. I needed to write it out, I knew, but I couldn't find the words for the longest time. I started, failed, quit. And then I finally gathered enough composure, enough of my old spirit, and wrote. This is the reaction to the loss of my friends—and I hope it discourages people from following the same path. This is not meant to promote suicide, but to have the opposite effect.
If you are suicidal, I urge you to talk to somebody, anybody, call an anonymous hotline—something. Don't put the people who love you through what I've gone through, what my school has endured, what my community has mourned. Even if you think you aren't loved, there is somebody out there who will react in the same way I have.
The characters in this represent more than we know them to be—those who are unaware of the danger, those who know but are powerless to help, and those who are misunderstood and feel as if the world has nothing left to offer.
You're wrong. It does have something left--love.
hyacinth
Dedicated to the memories of Dillon Chiulli and Marissa McLeod (September 30, 2009 and December 1, 2009)
Nominated for Best Tragedy at the Silent Tear Awards. Link on profile.