A/N: This is the last chapter. It's a pretty happy ending, I think. As happy as it can be, that is. I don't want to say anything else. Except thank you for all the reviews :] You guys rock. Also, I'm here to shamelessly plug an original TV script I've been writing for fun, and I've been wondering what people would think. So if you're interested, message me. That's all, and it's been a great ride.
Emily woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. It hurt so much that she cried out in pain the second it began. Pandora rushed in, ready to help, but the second she got in, Emily hurried out and found the bathroom. She threw up whatever had been in her stomach, probably three days worth of it. And though she had never done well in school, Pandora knew exactly what Emily was experiencing; she had seen it enough in the movies and on TV to recognize the symptoms. And she knew she way over her head.
"Tomo! Thomas!" she yelled helplessly. Luckily, Thomas still hadn't left for work. He slid into the bathroom, pants barely buttoned and shirt in his hand.
"What is it..." His voice trailed off when he saw Panda sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her hand on Emily's back. And by the stench and the noises coming from the small girl, he certainly knew what it was. "Oh my goodness. Panda... this is dangerous." He tried to get Emily to speak in between her bouts of vomiting. "Emily, how did you sleep last night?" No response. "Was it hard? Did you wake up a lot? Were there bad dreams?" She managed to nod. "Did you sweat?" Another nod. "Shit." He turned to Pandora. "She's going through withdrawal symptoms- a man in my village died from the same thing. She needs... something to drink."
"What!" Pandora was outraged. "Thomas, I don't think more alcohol is the solution!"
"Unless we get her directly to a doctor or give her more alcohol, she could die."
"She could die if you keep putting that rubbish into her system!"
"Pandora, I love you; listen to me. I do not want to hurt Emily," he began. "But she will not die from this right now. If we let the day play out and planned, I think that it would be best. She is in no psychological state to visit a physician right now."
"What do you mean 'play out'- oh..." Pandora remembered instantly what they'd planned for the day. "Emily?"
She only got a groan in response.
"Emily- do you feel up to seeing a psychologist or a doctor today?" Pandora tried so hard to keep herself in plain English for Emily's benefit.
"Today... I'm just tired," Emily answered. She had stopped throwing up for the moment and looked up the two of them.
Thomas grabbed a towel, knelt down, and handed it to her. She began to wipe up the disgusting leftovers from her cheeks as he gently laid his hand on her shoulder. "What do you say we go to the lake today, Emily? And tomorrow, when you've had a day off, we can take you to the doctor. For now, we can give you a beer- and that is all. To stop you from throwing up again or something worse. You should have a clear mind when you sort yourself out. For now, this is the clearest it can be. How does that sound to you?"
Emily just burst into tears and laid her head on Thomas' chest. "You two are the best fucking friends in the whole damn world."
"JJ, this isn't funny anymore. Where the fuck are we going?" Naomi sat blindfolded in JJ's dinky car, traveling some unknown road in god-knows-where. At first she'd tried to figure out where he was going by the turns, but being JJ he'd known she'd try and had purposefully gone all over the place to confuse her.
"Don't you trust me?" he asked, pretending to sound hurt.
"Don't mess with the feelings of a suicidal person," Naomi warned. She knew JJ never liked to hurt people's feelings, so she thought a little guilt might help him tell her. Or at least stop his bloody singing to Disney classics. It made her want to throw up.
It made him shut up, which she considered good enough. JJ looked over at her, hoping that he, Pandora, and Thomas were doing the right thing. It was so hard to know after all this time what the right thing was anymore. He sighed, keeping focused on the road. He didn't want to upset Naomi, so he stopped singing and talking and pretty much everything expect breathing and driving.
"We're here," he whispered softly. Thankfully, he saw Thomas' car already there. To avoid causing suspicions for Naomi, he parked out of sight of their car, but this put him in sight of Emily. She was too busy sitting on a rock, staring at the lake to notice him pulling up. Quickly, JJ popped open his door, ran to the passenger side, unwrapped Naomi's blindfold, and pushed her at Emily before she could protest.
Naomi stumbled curiously into the general direction of the girl, not realizing who it was until she was too close. "Oh, fuck."
Emily whipped around, nearly knocking herself off the rock. And then she saw who it was. Unlike last night, she didn't run or scream or kick or kiss or do anything but sit and stare.
The blonde approached her ex-girlfriend, and the first thing she noticed were the numerous brightly-colored bandages covering Emily's fingers. "What happened to your hands?"
"What happened to your face?" Emily shot back, nodding to the red marks Naomi had inflicted last night from scratching.
They both stared at each other for a moment and then both burst into laughter. It took a good two minutes for them to settle down, wiping tears from their eyes. "But seriously," Emily wanted to know, "what happened?"
"I got really depressed last night and stared to scratch myself. I was planning on offing myself, too. And I would've if JJ hadn't stopped me," she muttered. "What about you?"
"I was tugging on this beer bottle with Pandora, and it shattered after I let go. I tried to clean up the pieces, but all I got were cuts," Emily explained. "Speaking of Pandora, I think it's her and Thomas and JJ who made us come here."
Naomi laughed again; it felt strange and familiar at the same time. "Well, good ol' Jay blindfolded me and drove in circles to confuse me, so I pretty much knew something was going to happen."
"Really?" Emily smiled at Naomi, and the other girl smiled back. It was simple and so normal and so out-of-place for this situation. "What happened to you, Naomi?"
"Emily, I really don't think-"
"No. I deserve to know, and you'd better fucking tell me." Despite the alcohol still in her system, Emily managed to stop her speech from slurring and her body from swaying. She felt more sober than she had in years. Four years, to be exact.
Naomi turned over the fabric of her skirt in her hands, eyes not leaving it as she spoke. "I couldn't... do that to you. I- it was a combination of genetic predisposition, stress, low self-esteem. Or that's what the doctors said, anyway."
"Low self-esteem?" It was hard for Emily to believe.
"My friend from Spain used to tell me, 'Las personas que tienen la mas confianza son las mas tristes.'" Naomi just left it there, like that explained everything.
"You do know that I don't speak Spanish."
"It means, 'The people that have the most confidence are the saddest,'" Naomi told her. "I had a lot of confidence- but it wasn't quite enough, clearly. I think- I think it was confidence in everyone around me; I knew that everyone could do whatever they wanted, but I felt like I didn't have those same abilities. And combined with biological factors, I drove myself into depression. Major depressive disorder, it's called."
Emily waited patiently for Naomi to actually get to why she left, but it looked like the blonde would need a bit of a nudge. "So then why, Naomi? I could've helped you with it, I could've-"
"I didn't want you to think it was your fault." Silent tears dripped steadily from her eyes, but she made no move to acknowledge them.
With nothing better to tell her, with no good response, Emily simply muttered, "You're crying."
"I've cried so much over these past four years that I don't really notice anymore. It becomes... normal." Naomi went to brush the tears away, but Emily tentatively put her hand on Naomi's arm. Without daring to look into the other girl's eyes, she began to wipe every little hint of water from Naomi's face, slowly, carefully. "It's sort of fucked up, what our version of normal has become," Naomi whispered, pretending not to notice anything Emily was doing.
"It would be hard not to have it be like that." Emily finished getting rid of Naomi's tears, and they had subsided a bit so all she had left in her were little hiccups and heaving dry sobs. "When everything turns to shit, normal turns right with it."
Naomi took in a deep breath and she looked nervous as hell. "Can we- can we turn it back, Emily? Please?"
The true meaning of that statement was not lost on the smaller girl, but she had already prepared an answer. "It took one day for all we had to be destroyed, four years for us to take the first step in the right direction, but who knows how long it will take to get it back? These are things you can't know, Naomi, but... I'm willing to find out."
"Really?!" The word was out of Naomi's mouth too quickly, too eagerly for her to hide her excitement. And Emily knew instantly that every word, every action, every tear she'd experienced since Naomi's return had been 100% sincere.
"Yeah; I think... I'd like that." It was too soon to kiss, too soon to hug, too soon to do anything, really; anything but Emily reaching over and squeezing Naomi's hand that still rested on her lap. They spoke no more words, shared no more eye contact, but did not break the bond their clasped hands formed. They watched the sun rise in the sky until it perfectly aligned itself in the middle of the sky. It shone brightly on both their faces, illuminating the tiny hints of smiles and glints in eyes. It also brought up another point: Naomi's stomach began to rumble.
Emily smiled more, laughed. "Maybe we should go get some lunch. Together."
"Yeah?" Naomi smiled, too; everything Emily did was contagious, radiating off of her and directly into Naomi.
"Mhmm. I... can tell you about where I'm going with my shit, and you an tell me where you're going with yours," Emily offered. "And maybe we can start over."
"Maybe," Naomi began, "maybe we should try to build up from what we have. I mean, yeah, all we've got is a foundation, so it would be like starting over. But we had a building, and then we knocked it down, so now there's all this debris around us, and we can't just forget that. It's not like we have anywhere to go but up, but at the same time I don't want to forget all we've lost."
Emily nodded, realizing that Naomi was having just as hard of a time accepting any sort of forgiveness as she was giving it. "OK. Let's start there." Naomi's stomach rumbled again. "Let's start there, over some lunch." Emily stood, not letting Naomi go. For once, Naomi allowed herself to be led, she allowed herself to follow, because really the ball was in Emily's court and she had no right to bring it back to hers. And as they walked back to the cars, hands held lightly together amidst the laughs and smiles of their three conniving friends, Naomi thought maybe she could see just a little bit of light at the end of this tunnel, this tunnel that she dug herself.
Because there's a certain beauty in the breakdown. When we reach that lowest low, we know that the high will be all the more gratifying than it would be if we only fell halfway. Of course, when we're broken, we don't often know this. We're spiraling down and hitting the bottom and shooting off to hell. But heaven is right above hell, and to get there, all we have to do is climb.