You guys can kill me later. Just do me a favor and read the chapter first...then possibly review.
Real quick: Who saw "Friday" by Rebecca Black? This world is getting shallower and shallower everyday.
Disclaimer: Yo no tengo Degrassi.
I always wonder why it is that slow changes seem to move so fast. Because maybe, like a roller-coaster plummeting to the ground from a hundred feet up, the speed never stays the same. Maybe things start to fall gradually, so carefully and secretively that no one even knows it's happening, and by the time we do notice, it's at full speed, rushing away and whipping our hair behind our head, grabbing a hold of our breaths and refusing to let go. I wonder whether or not the change that took place within Darcy was the same way; a long, deadly road down down down.
Darcy always seemed to be happier than me. She was the one who would go out at night to scare herself sick with Texas Chain Massacre, or eat so much candy that she would collapse on the couch, head on her best friend's shoulder, or dance around the kitchen to Build Me Up Buttercup while making cookies until my mom told her she would disturb the neighbors. That's the way I want to remember her. That's the way I should remember her. But I can't find the will to. Every time I picture her face or whisper her name, all I'm capable of thinking about is the closed door to her bedroom, and the silence behind it, just quiet enough to block out the rest of the world.
Getting home is tricky. Everyone knows that entering your house after school is done in a traditional fashion, containing the same question: "How was your day?" answered with the same, "Fine," and continued with the opening and closing of kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator door, two teenage girls desperate for food.
"When I get a car," Darcy would say, throwing away a bag of chips with only crumbs left inside, "I'm going to Path Mark and buying all the food in the world."
"Good luck paying for it," I said, "Even the wonderful job at Harley's doesn't gives you enough for that."
Darcy groaned, thrusting back a piece of loose hair with frustrated fingers. "Don't remind me. I have to work tonight. And it's just going to be me and Laurie. I hate her."
Harley's was an old run-down ice-cream shop about fifteen minutes away from home. They're practically famous for their ice-cream cakes, which my family has been getting for each other's birthdays ever since I can remember. Darcy was pretty much signed up for the job since she was ten. The owner, Joe, an overly religious man with two kids in college, is best friends with my grandparents ever since my PopPop began going to the Mugrat next door for breakfast every morning ten years ago. It was a job that never seemed to pay enough for my sister: it was either empty like a hollow balloon with nothing to do or so crowded Darcy would come home sweating like she just ran a marathon. Darcy had wanted to quit since day one, which I didn't understand because getting free ice-cream and soda everyday doesn't seem like such a drag. But she hated that job, claiming it's too this or too that, not balanced enough for the perfect amount of work and freedom she desired, taking away her Saturday nights and Sunday mornings and Friday evenings. Honestly, I don't think there's a job on this planet that would have pleased Darcy, but she kept insisting that Harley's was the problem, not her.
Yeah, right.
What do places like Harley's, who depend on adults that flunked out of college or kids still in high school, do when one of their workers suddenly can't work anymore? Do they hire someone else, fill in that empty slot and go on as if nothing has ever changed, as if dying teenage girls happens all the time? Is there some weird ceremony in which they make a "funeralistic" ice-cream cake filled with black balloons and candles left unlit? It's these small things, the ones people choose to forget about because they act as the solute in our lives, getting dissolved into the larger solvents, that leave me struggling to understand what we're supposed to do to clean up this mess that could keep screwing itself up time and time again.
My mom is home. I can tell because I hear the rapid clicking of a keyboard in the dining room, slippers that are worn-out to the point of being more rips than actual clothing rubbing against the wooden floor. I set my backpack down next to the front door and walk towards the kitchen table. A pile of soggy newspapers stack up against each other on the placemat, a bowl of unfinished cereal left to spoil beside them. I pick up the bowl and scrape out the left over Cheerios in the garbage can, well aware that my mom should have noticed me by now.
By the time the milky bowl is in the dishwasher, I sigh in defeat and face up to look at her. My mom's hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail as usual: a few stringy locks hanging down to cover her ears. She's typing away furiously, as if the message she's saying may lose its meaning by the time she's finished.
"Hi," I say quietly.
She gasps and whacks herself in the chest. Her eyes are fixed on me now, studying, as though I'm a complete stranger. "Clare," she wraps one hand around the other, "When did you get home?"
"I just walk into the door," I lie. No purpose in making her feel worse than she already is.
"How was school?"
I shrug tiredly and lean against the counter, using my hands to play with the knob of a drawer behind my back. "It was fine."
"That's good," She looks back from the computer to me. "Do you have any homework?"
I glance at my backpack. "Just some papers I need to get signed."
"Okay, put them on the table next to Dar-"
She stops abruptly, sucking in a severing breath of air. I stop breathing, too. We both know what she was about to say. How close she was to ripping off the scab and making us both bleed.
I step back and my mom covers her mouth with her hands. She closes her eyes like keeping them open is too much pain to bear. At the moment everything is.
"Just put them on the kitchen table," she chokes out, and I do what she says, as unemotionally and arduously as a robot.
The tile floor beneath my feet feels like thin ice. With each step I take a crack is opened up. And with each other step to avoid falling comes another one. Eventually, I know, there'll be no more stabilized grounds to press my weight against. But I try my hardest to push the thought away, to pretend like everything isn't one mistake away from hitting rock bottom. Pretending is tiring, but at least it doesn't involve shredding through past wounds.
When I get upstairs and close my bedroom door, I finally feel like I can take in a deep breath. Everything is neat: clothes folded safely in my drawers, make-up and hair brushes evenly lined up along my dresser, books stacked against the shelves, straight up, of course, and all old pictures planted face down, hidden away by the dark wood of my armoire. For once there's nothing that needs fixing or tidying up.
It wasn't always like this. A year ago my shirts would have been bundled up in a broken laundry basket that my mom needed back, my powdered make up would stain the carpet flooring, my bed would be unmade, my books would be dented and ripped, my whole room would be nothing but a cluster of waste.
I can't remember when everything fell into this state of perfection. I can't even remember how. Maybe I was too busy cleaning up the mess my sister left behind to make my own.
My phone begins vibrating from my nightstand. I crawl across the bedspread to retrieve it.
Dot at 3:30? TOTALLY bored.
It was from Alli. Written in the same nonchalant, casual way we had always communicated with each other.
I slide my phone down and chuck it at the floor. The backside of the case, the one that never fits right, splatters off and bounces on the carpet until it lands a few feet away.
Even though I hate when that happens, I'm too tired to get up and fix it. Today has felt as successful as swimming through Jell-O. Going through another year, another day, of this strenuous routine of keeping a straight face and turning away from all those withering eyes…I don't even think it's humanly possible. But I guess I have to, because it's all I have left, and facing myself with the stone hard truth would be even more painful.
Downstairs, I hear my mom pacing back and forth in the kitchen, sobbing.
Ignore it. Close the door, lock it, wear a pair of headphones, cross the boarder, grow some wings, fly away, and never come back. That's the ultimate resolution. Never come back.
But that's what Darcy did. That's exactly what she did.
I've never been suicidal, and I don't think I ever will be. But after everything that happened with Darcy, all the tears and sorrow and emptiness, I can't help but wonder what would happen if I followed in her footsteps. I wonder if my parents would cry any harder. I wonder if my school would have a separate ceremony for me. I wonder if my name would be spoken at Path-Mark or if there would be a plaque with my name on it. I wonder if I could ever be my own individual person, and not just the shadow chasing after her sister. I wonder if I'm more than that.
If I killed myself, I wonder, would people call me the Girl Who Killed Herself? Or would Darcy and I become known as the real Virgin Suicides?
Shake the thoughts away. Stuff them in a box and forget about them. Right now isn't about me. I don't know if anything will ever be about me again. The whole world seems to have stopped to gawk at the death of Darcy Edwards. The Earth has stopped spinning and the grass has stopped growing and the rain has stopped falling. Everything's in pause, waiting, waiting….waiting, and with each passing moment the waiting becomes more dreadful, more silent. Eventually, each desert island and ocean-trench will be pervaded with this cold sheet of silence, forever frozen.
Within five minutes of sitting on my bed, I'm snuggling up into the covers and hiding my face in between my pillows. My head hurts from all this thinking and I have nothing better to do. Vibrations keep forcing me awake every time Alli tries to persuade me with another text, but eventually the distracting noise turns into a lullaby. I close my eyes and picture anything but the things I see everyday, because what's the point on wasting my time with aspects I'm facing twenty four seven anyway? The blanket is cold against my skin, not helping at all, but I consider it more as an outlet to the world than something meant to keep me warm.
Something is poking my shoulder. I shrug it off and turn over so my stomach is pressed up against the mattress.
"Clare, it's time for dinner," my dad says, and shoves me just hard enough that I flip over onto my side.
I rub my eyes and yawn, "Okay, I'll be down in a minute."
Something flashes through my father's eyes, but like a shooting star in the night sky, it's too quick to decipher. "Are you alright? You look a little flushed?" His shaggy blonde hair sweeps across his face when he bends down to touch my cheek. He smells like rich leather and air-freshener, the regular office odors. I inhale just a little bit and flutter my eyes closed for a minute before opening them back up again. His hand is still touching my skin, tentatively, as if he's afraid I might break.
"How was school?"
The way my dad asks me sends off a signal that he actually wants an answer, a real answer. He has never been the kind of person to accept "fine just fine" without taking time to shovel down deeper until he hits the very core of our honesty.
But the truth is, I don't want to be dug in. I'm fine being flat, plain, and untouched.
"It was okay," I give him a smile in hopes that it will convince him I'm not lying.
"You sure it was just okay?"
I nod. "Yep. Just okay."
"Well….okay," he pats my leg through the thick comforter and turns around to leave. "Your mom ordered Chinese. I hope you're up for some lo mein."
I don't bother answering him. Even if I confess that I'm deadly allergic to Chinese noodles, it won't make a difference. My parents have fallen into this stage where words skim through their brains like a leaf floating on water. It barely makes a ripple affect. Barely changes a thing.
It smells like Chinese food when I finally head downstairs. My mom is setting the table with such determination you'd think her life depended on it. The food is sitting in brown paper bags on the middle of the table right next to the forms from school. My mom picks them up and places them on the counter, he hands sweating, her lips trembling. There's something about the way she stands, so fragilely and brokenly, like a block of Legos getting higher and higher until they're about to tip over.
I can tell my dad notices her nervous behavior. He walks over to her side and wraps one arm around her waist, as if she'll collapse onto the floor without his support.
For a second I see my mom finally let go of whatever tough act she's trying to pull on us. Her whole body leans against his arm, mouth relaxes and hands go motionless against her sides. I just stand still and watch them, afraid that by making my presence known I might destroy this one moment of serenity.
Of course, it only lasts a second.
"Okay, take whatever you want."
My dad begins plucking out the food and placing each container on our plates. Already, the glasses are filled with our favorite drinks: iced tea for my dad, wine for my mom, and apple juice for me.
Take a deep breath. I can do this.
It takes walking over to where I normally sit to realize the chair that's supposed to be next to mine is gone.
I falter backwards. Suddenly my appetite is gone, replaced with an overwhelming sense of nausea, the kind of nausea I know won't ever go away because whatever's causing it is buried too deep inside my stomach to escape.
People always say small things hurt the most. I guess they're right. Because realizing that there will never be four members of the Edwards family sitting at the kitchen table ever again is enough to clutch my lungs and twist them.
I swallow the nausea and crawl into my seat. The cushion feels as though it's full of helium and is bound to pop at any given moment. I open up the lo mein container and focus on nothing but getting the noodles onto my plate. Nobody speaks. Apparently getting food out of a container takes all the concentration in the world.
I glance over at my mom, who is shoving an egg roll with her fork and biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. My dad's about to put a spoonful of rice in his mouth, but stops, puts the utensil down, and sighs.
"Helen," his hand lands on my mother's arm, and her shoulders tense at the contact, "Are you alright? You look so tired."
My mom pulls away and eats a piece of shrimp, although she looks tempted to spit it back out. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not."
Her fork drops to the floor, squealing like a baby against the tile before falling quiet. "Yes, I am. Work has just been hard. Larry screwed up again, and as usual, he calls me, the Superwoman, to go and fix his mistake."
"If it's his mistake, you can just tell him to go and fix it."
My mom squeezes the rims of her eyes together, angry at my dad's attempt to make things better.
"I really can't. It's partly my fault, Randall."
"How is it your fault?"
"Because, I looked over his work. It was my job to check and make sure there were no mistakes. And you know what? I didn't see it. I didn't see any. But now we're stuck and have to start all over because I couldn't see what was right there in front of me."
I'm not quite sure if my mom meant for the metaphor to slip through her words, but they did. Loud and clear.
"No one saw it," my dad's head dips down low until it's pushing against his chin. There's this distressed expression on his face, like someone is slowly cutting a knife up his arm. "It wasn't just you."
"Still, it was my job."
"Helen-"
"I really don't want to talk about work right now."
His head pops back up. "I assumed we weren't talking about work."
There it is again. That same old clueless mask my mom wears whenever someone's close to scratching across her true skin. The mask that says she's too damn stupid to understand what anyone is trying to tell her, too tired to reach out when someone is about to grab her, too fed up with work and ordering Chinese food to care about anything else.
Part of me just wants to rip that mask right off her face, hard enough that it hurts and leaves scars to last a lifetime. But the other part, the bigger part, doesn't want to see what's underneath.
"What else would we be talking about?" She cocks her head to the side.
"What do you think we'd be talking about? Helen, you need to tell me what's going on. It's not healthy to just jump off the face of the planet like this and push away everyone who tries to save you."
There's nothing else I want more right now than to have a button that's able to transport me to some paradise far, far away. It doesn't even have to be paradise. Any place where I can't hear this fucking silence scraping across the wood of the table is fine.
I shove a spoonful of lo mein through my lips and chew as loudly as possible, doing everything I can to keep myself distracted.
"Talk to me, Helen. Just talk."
Just chew. Just chew. Just chew.
I pick up my glass and take a sip.
Just gulp. Just gulp. Just gulp.
Nothing seems to work, though. No matter how hard I try to place a brick wall between us, something keeps crumbling it down. That's the thing with family. You can never truly run away with from them. There's always this string of genetics that reels you back in, halts your escape, and glues your feet to floor.
"If we keep talking, your food will get cold."
My dad looks down at his untouched plate and pokes the rice.
"It's too late," he mutters, "I'll have to warm it up." He stands up and walks over towards the microwave, settling the food safely inside.
Even through the humming of my father's cold food warming itself back up, I'm able to hear my mom's whisper.
"It's always too late."
I would love to give you all an excuse, but I urghhhh...don't have one. Well actually I kind of do. But that's a long story and would be a chapter in itself.
P.S. (READ THIS!)- Looking for another good fanfic? Check out "Rhythm of Love" by . It may not be Eclare, but believe me, an Eclare fanatic, it is absolutely amazing. She updates fast, her stories (every single one) is awesome, and she is one of the best writers and people ever. So go ahead and read it! You will not be disappointed.
