Chapter 20
It was a misty day. Not cold enough to put on a sweater but too frigid to walk out in your Summer clothes. The early morning dew and fog combined with the cloudy sky mired the world in a desaturated tint and Emily Fields refused to leave her bed for the third day in a row. Alison tried begging, threatening and even attempted to get rough with her, pinching her nose until she nearly suffocated and poking her sides and 'gently' tapping her face but Emily did not respond, she just lay there, staring out the window, watching the condensation build up and trickle down the glass. Alison gave up eventually and stormed off into the nursery to get the kids ready for daycare.
Emily shuddered when she heard the door slam behind Ali and the kids. She knew Alison would just keep pushing her but she just couldn't bring herself to care at that moment. She lay on her back and stuck her arm up in the air, watching her bracelet hang loosely down her wrist, marking a tiny path of its own. Everything was moving and rushing and Emily was just... bored. She was bored of everything. She just couldn't bring herself to care about anything anymore. She hadn't moved, eaten or showered and with nobody taking care of her the stench was starting to build up.
Alison refused to take care of yet another 'kid' on a 'tantrum' as she called it so she delegated to her friends but they had all been too busy or too ignorant to care. Apart from the odd phone call from Hanna or the texts from Aria she hadn't heard a peep. And Spencer? Spencer hadn't made contact in days.
Emily watched the shadow the bracelet cast on her skin. She thought about all the scars she studied on Paige. The ones that marred her face and her thighs... the ones she and Alison helped her put there. She wondered if it had been a knife she had cut herself with or razor blades. Or maybe it wasn't even a cut at all... maybe it was burns. All those hours of studying and she still wouldn't pass a course on Paige's anatomy. She was hopeless.
She remembered feeling those bumps sharply contradict the silky smoothness of her legs as she caressed her. She remembered the first time they were intimate and how embarrassed Paige had felt. She still feels guilty for helping make Paige feel ashamed of her own body. She feels it's only fair if she had some matching scars of some sort in order to compensate but what good would it do? So what if everybody knew how horrible she was or how horrible she felt, it still wouldn't bring her back. Punishing herself just for the sake of punishing herself so she can feel better would only benefit herself and she was in no mood to do herself any favors.
Still, she wondered what it would look like if she took a razor blade or knife to her wrists, really slowly, in the bathtub. She imagined watching the blood run down her arms the way condensation runs down her window pane. Splitting little lines that start off good and well meaning but end up doing irreparable damage to everything they touch, just like her, her friends and Alison.
She needed to get out of this funk.