-| Glitch continues |-
When Carlisle and Esme Cullen moved to Forks my freshman year, the local rumor mill reacted about as you might expect—like a rare steak had been thrown into a shark pit. The official headline was that the rich, handsome doctor decided to forgo a life of success and luxury because his wife preferred to live in a small town.
The Forks rumor mill didn't buy it.
In typical fashion, the town's career gossip mongers churned out a record number of hypotheses that would better explain this anomaly. Theories ranged from scandal in the big city (involving Carlisle's devilishly good looks and one too many indiscretions in the on call room with his nurses) to Esme being slightly touched in the head (which would explain her customarily dreamy expression and outlandish decorating).
Forks talked about the Cullen's fancy clothes, their fancy cars, the fancy house that they had custom-built on the outskirts of town. Contractors from Seattle, of course; local builders were not up to snuff.
But the piece of gossip I remember most was that the Cullens couldn't or didn't have children (no one was sure which). I remember thinking about this fact every time I interacted with Carlisle, with his gentle face and even gentler hands.
He would have made an excellent father.
Esme, an excellent mother.
Maybe, just maybe, they are.
I stand at a fork in the road.
To my left is the path to normalcy, recovery, and a potentially long, productive life.
I already have one foot firmly planted down this path. I've left Forks, uprooted myself from the fiendish forest with its strangling web of branches and roots and lies, and have begun a new life on the opposite coast, where they have cute bungalows with green shutters and surprisingly chill supermodels like Rosalie and...tulips. The Dartmouth campus bursts with them.
This eureka moment I'm having is probably nothing more than residual delusion, a final hurrah from my brain trying to hold onto the comforts of my past. A rush of endorphins and adrenaline caused by an overzealous Art Appreciation assignment. I've read the research. I know that giving up an imaginary friend is not an instantaneous thing, not a twitch your nose twice and poof, he's gone type of deal.
Ingrained patterns of thought require time to heal, time for the neural pathways to realign and readjust to a new reality. A healthier reality. A real reality.
Focus on facts. Focus on what's real.
Back in Forks, the Cullens have a D. Nali painting with three face-like blobs on it. I remember noting this detail because, as Alice once told me, odd numbers of items create asymmetry, which is more visually dynamic than layouts that are perfectly symmetrical.
Beyond the fact that the painting exists lies mere conjecture.
The third blob could be any number of things. One of the Cullens' last living parents, perhaps. Or a great-aunt who was wealthy enough to commission a budding artist from India.
Or maybe a dog.
Yes, likely a dog. One of the expensive breeds that rich people favor, like a female teacup Yorkie or a Portuguese waterdog or an English bulldog. Something foreign. The Cullens seem like dog people, don't they? I can just see Dr. Cullen taking his impeccably groomed Irish setter for a romp in the forest. I can just see the slobbery, hairy animal tracking twigs and dirt all through Esme's impeccable house…
No.
I can't see this.
The Cullens don't seem like dog people at all. Something about their eyes. Cat people, maybe. Their eyes are eerily feline…
Focus.
To my left, normal.
But to my right is the sign for Crazyville.
To my right lies uncertainty, social leprosy, and a potentially bleak future, me sitting in a rocking chair in a house overgrown with brambles, without even a child to help ease my passage into the beyond.
Can I really trust my own brain?
I lie so well I regularly fool others. Could I fool myself?
Could I have sat for fifty-three minutes in front of an abstract painting and grown so bored that my brain decided to make things interesting? Could my brain have fabricated an elaborate story about a fictitious artist who somehow magically layers a second image behind his primary one, using just the right tricks of perception, depth, and light? Could I have then come back to my house and "read" all about it on Google?
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
The human brain is capable of almost anything. From my studies, I've learned that much. And if your brain has decided not to play nice, well. It's not pretty. You're kinda at its mercy.
Left: Rational, safe, mundane.
Right: Supernatural, risky, insane.
In this moment, it's like I never left Forks. My new life in Hanover fades; all the progress and promises I've made, all the lies I've told, all the progress…none of it matters. I've spent the last year trying to put my life back together. In a single day, I can feel it all falling apart around my ears.
I want Mr. Bear.
Left: Dr. K, Renee, and Charlie.
Right: Gran, Edward, and…Alice.
Focus on Alice.
What would Alice do? If Alice were here, right now, what advice would she give me? She, who has always danced to the beat of a drummer only she can hear. I know exactly what Alice would do. Alice defies normal. Alice is the most spontaneous, bubbly, and giving person that I know. The person I want to be like when I grow up. Even though I'm two months older than she.
Yet Alice is also the same person who was carted off to Italy and force-fed pills. The one who has to sneak out to go visit her best friend in tree houses. Who chiefs of police suspect is illegally spreading medicinal love.
Do I really want to end up like Alice?
In that moment, that exact moment, my phone buzzes.
I look down to where it's sitting, right next to my mouse. Right next to my hand. A few more seconds, and it will buzz right off the table, down into the trash. Let it go. Let it fall into the abyss, where it belongs.
Three…two…one…
I reach out and snatch it back from the ledge like a cat paws a mouse.
Look down at the screen, and I see two little words.
One, two.
It's time.
I suppose I don't even have to tell you.
The text is from Alice.
Impossible. Improbable. Serendipitous.
I have not spoken or texted with Alice in more than 365 days. Yet I hear from her today. This exact moment. Those exact words.
Here I sit, thinking about a portrait of blobs and smears and I know—I know I know I know—that my mind has not concocted some fiendish plan to overthrow my sanity. That D. Nali is real. That the third blob in the Cullen family portrait is not an elderly parent. Not a great aunt. Not an animal of any kind.
I know it.
I believe it.
In my mind, I can only see the Cullens' painting as I remember it. I can't unfocus my eyes just right and see what lies beneath.
But my heart knows.
My heart knows that Esme hadn't been playing the piano that day. Esme's fingers weren't the ones that were coaxing that music—my music—from the keys of that baby grand.
The song had not been Chopin's Nocturne in E minor.
Close, similarly morose, but not the same.
If Esme had truly been playing, she would have known which song.
As always, Alice is right.
It is time.
Time for me to stop ignoring the signs that I'm not crazy. Time for me to believe, once and for all, that I have not merely made up Edward to help me cope with the traumas of my childhood. Time for me to take matters into my own hands.
Literally.
Push calmly away from my computer. Walk carefully out of my room, past the dark, gaping doorways of my roommates, who are at class, at work. I'm alone. No parents, no friends, no Jake.
I grab a glass of water from the kitchen. As I drink with my left hand, I ease open a drawer near the sink with the other. There, lying in a nest of cutlery, is my last-ditch attempt to show Edward that I mean business.
My other attempts have failed. But this time, I will not fail. I will not fail because I'm committed. I'm not giving myself an out. I'm not bringing Jake along in case Edward decides to let me drown or catapult myself into a rock. I'm taking a true leap of faith.
No safety net.
Discovery or death.
The house is steeped in silence, a heavy, omnipresent silence. No mice scurry in the hidden spaces between the walls. No birds chirp in the tree outside my window. The neighbor's dog is unusually calm, the other neighbor's cats playing nice for once.
In the silence of my room, behind a closed and firmly locked door, I move to stand in front of the sheet that covers my mirror like a shroud. Yank, and it crumples to the floor in a whip-snap of faerie dust.
I look at my reflection, and what do I see? A plain Jane of a girl—average height, average weight, the most common hair color, the most common eye color, and regular size 7 feet.
Yet this normal girl, she's about to do something extraordinary.
Near my thigh, something dangerous winks.
Fascinated, I rotate my left wrist, watching the play of light on metal. It's mesmerizing. Focus on how pretty it is; don't focus on what it's about to do.
With a crook of the elbow, I press the tip of a butcher's knife to the delicate skin on the inside of my left wrist.
The metal is cool.
"So," I say.
"This is it," I say.
"I'm going to start cutting now," I say.
I say these things to my reflection.
My room is still, silent, not even the slightest breeze through the curtains.
I wait for a second until it's clear that my reflection doesn't care. Then I grip that lovely, deadly knife until my knuckles go white. With a hiss, I dig the tip of the blade into my wrist just hard enough to draw the first pinprick of rose red blood.
I look carefully away, focusing instead on the feeling of fire on my flesh. I take a deep, shaky breath, steeling myself in preparation for a quick, forceful thrust. One slice—that's all it will take. One slice and this will all be over, one way or another.
Discovery or death.
Just as my fingers grip the knife hilt more firmly in preparation for that one, final slice, I hear a voice.
And this voice, it says, "Stop."