Chapter 10

I think there are two types of people in this world. Annoying ones, who think that people can be divided in two to types, and other people who just go with the flow. I'm saying this because I think it's annoying when everyone's just dividing everything and putting names on things that already have names, creating sub-names, and then putting names on the sub-names and therefore giving birth to sub-sub-names mutations. With all that crap, we end up having 24.5 different names for the same thing. Because seriously, what's with people needing to name things right? It's obnoxious. Whether is precipitation or rain, it's like, the same thing. Right?

Because I mean, either way, one day you just wake up, and you got something inside you a little changed. Like, the feeling you get when you move one of the things in your room. It feels clean, fresh. You kind of feel like it should have always been there you know? You don't exactly know why you didn't change it before. You feel kind of changed, but I mean, it's nothing you can explain very well, or pin point exactly where it is. Where it started.

It might have been the way she made you feel right. Like you've never really been before, you know? Or the way that she's just the coolest, Hannibal Lecter-loving, strongest, could-fight-prehistoric-whales-if-she-tried, most beautiful, and simply the nicest person you've ever met, and she doesn't even try. I don't know. Isn't that enough? To just know that someone gives you shivers, and makes you physically hurt when they leave? Isn't enough to hold one girl, some day, and to just know? To just know that this is what you should have done since you were born? Why do we have to go and make it real, grade it; crush, like, love, in love?

I'm just scared, you see.

So that's why I'm at my mother's Mother Meeting Council thing.

Yeah. Don't ask. This is not a joke. It was either this, or going over to Spencer's while she's still in her pjs, with messy hair. Therefore looking perfect, and therefore causing me to have an emotional breakdown.

I haven't told Spencer about everything that's been going in my head this past while. It's really the first time, usually I tell her everything. Actually, I'm not even exaggerating by saying everything. Like, even those very unimportant thoughts that come and go usually, the ones that are very stupid and you wonder why they were there in the first place. Like my theories on how to save the polar bears from drowning, since they have no ice left up there, because everything we do seems to fart carbon dioxide that leads to global warming or whatever. Which are all very stupid, and after a few seconds more of thought are annihilated by common sense.

''… and so she yelled at me for 45 minutes, simply because I bought purple Fanta.'' My mom is like.

All the attention is on me, and the concerned look that everyone has makes it hard for me not to burst out laughing at this whole group. Their whole version of reality and sense. It's so easy to use the words they understand, and turn them around against them.

''My mother and I have a communication problem,'' I'm about to explode with laughter, so I fake a cough to try to make it go away. They're still looking at me like it's a matter of painful endless death and pure undiluted life.

I'm like, ''I don't know how many times I've told her that Purple Fanta and Coca-Cola are excreted waste. Most probably from prehistoric fish, and therefore, it hurts me deeply when she buys those undrinkable substances instead of Pepsi, the drink that restores my faith in humanity. It almost seems like she wants my death.''

My mother is looking at me like she doesn't know whether to call me full of shit, to apologise, or to be jealous that those ladies like me more then her.

Martha Stuffed-Trout is like; ''Ashley, hon, I'm sure she doesn't mean to hurt you. I'm sure this is all one big misunderstanding.''

I breathe in deeply to try to control the laugh that's about to explode out of me, I close my eyes and nod over dramatically.

I excuse myself, blame the 'overwhelming' emotions this session has brought me, and go home.

It's your fault Spencer. You dick.

God I'm so lame. I knock at Spencer's door, Paula answers.

''Ashley, hello! I'm actually very happy to see you. Spencer, to put it nicely, woke up a little grumpy today.'' She tells me.

So I'm like, ''Wait a minute.'' I run to my house, go get a little something I got in case something like this happened.

I'm back with Paula, with a mask in my hand. She looks at me, chuckles a little and gives me one of those honest smiles. Opens her mouth, closes it. Chuckles again and points upstairs.

I go up, knock once on her door, so I don't walk in on her naked, and ruin my life.

She's lying down on her already made bed, and she has frown that I swear, is bigger then her face. I'm not even sure that expression will ever be able to get washed out of her face. For real.

''Okay grumpy pants. I got a present for you.'' I throw the mask right next to her.

She looks at me her eyes big, her mouth open. She picks up that classic Hannibal mask, that thing that kind of looks like a dog muzzle.

She mouths, ''no way.''

And I shrug, ''yeah way.''

She puts it on her lap and she's like, ''Please put it on, and say the lines when Clarice talks to Hannibal?''

Blasphemy! ''Hey! I'm the one who did you a favour! I gave you the present! What do I get in this?''

She rolls her eyes, smiles, ''Oh come on, as if me asking you isn't enough.''

I roll my eyes. Ew, she's so cute. ''You're such a dick. Stop hurting my pride man.''

She looks at me and grins.

So I roll my eyes and I'm like, ''you're so ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like with your good back and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A…''

I know that whole part by heart. When I'm done she's looking at me in a way I don't fully understand. She's kind of looking at me the same way I look at her, everyday.

All of this is getting a little too heavy, a little too complicated.

''You're lucky I love you.'' I tease her.

She looks at me, and she is painfully honest as she says;

''Yeah. I know.''

I grab the mask and put it right next to her bead, so it can keep away the nightmares that she keeps having. I go lay next to her and she cuddles closer to me. Her shirt rises. I look at the exposed skin, pale and smooth; I examine the pinkish scar that stretches out across her hip bone. That seems to cut right through her, and in that same way, at that moment seems to cut through me too.

It selfish, but I can't look at it anymore. I can't look at her; it hurts too much. I don't want this you know? I'm not dumb, I can see it in her eyes; she isn't right out from a fairy tale life she was supposed to have. I mean, it doesn't take a master in psychology that half the things she does aren't done the right way, the way they're supposed to. As if half the time, it is more like survival than living. It's not like I can explain either. But just seeing that the inside had leaked and stained the outside in some very superficial way, just seem to be too much for that simple moment.

I felt I was going to break away. I didn't want her to see that. I mumbled some half decent excuse, kissed her cheek and left.

It's pretty late at night; I'm sitting at the kitchen table. I'm holding a glass of cold milk, sipping it as if it can soothe it all. As if it can heal all those wounds I seem to have that aren't supposed to be my own.

''Ash?'' That's my mom.

''Yeah I'm here.''

She looks at me, takes me in.

''What happened?''

I decide to be honest; ''I don't know.''

''Are you okay?''

''I don't know.''

She sits down with me; she takes turns staring at the table and me. She's looking for something to say.

''Why does it have to be so hard all the time, mom?'' I tell her. She doesn't say anything.

''No seriously. What in the fuck is everyone's problem, what's with the messed up way of things? Cause when it's bad, obviously it's going to get better, but why can't you know that then? It's like you shouldn't have hope, like you're not aloud to know that you're going to be happy again. Why doesn't anyone teach you something that you're actually going to need before it happens? Because honestly, all were basically doing is trying to catch up with times that will be over as soon as we learn about them. What about the in between? What if you're needed at that moment, what do you do then?''

I look at my glass, trying to focus on at least one part of my racing thoughts.

''And people suck. Honestly, basically, that's the truth. We try to cover it up, and we do it so well, but because someone, one day, decided to hurt perfection's daughter, you're all as guilty to me. I hate this, I hate them.''

The moonlight is melted on the hardwood floor. She doesn't know what to say. I guess it wasn't fair to explode on her like that. It takes a while before she answers, her hands playing nervously with her wedding ring.

''I, well, I don't know what to tell you Ashley. My guess is that people seem to forget that everything is connected. All of us, through exchanged words, and thing's we can't help. We hurt for the same reasons.''

Everything is silent for a long time. Then I get up; tell my mother I'll be back tomorrow morning. I leave.

I open her door slowly. She's clearly asleep, and she's holding on to the mask I got her, like it's actually something way more comforting then it seems.

She's sleeping on my side of the bed.

I kick off my jeans, grab one of wife beaters she keeps in the first drawer, and slip in on. I take gently the mask out of her hands, and put it where I had earlier.

I put my arms around her tightly. And then it's back to square one, back to normal. She doesn't even wake up, just scoots herself a little closer to me.