WITH MY FATHER’S BROKEN FRAME in my backpack, I hide in the girl’s locker room while I pull myself together.
I cried. Finally, for the first time since leaving the hospital, I really cried.
And now that I have, I feel lighter. It’s not as if a boulder was lifted off me—more like a tiny atom, but it’s enough for me to notice. It’s also enough to deplete me. This day, everything about it, has stripped me layer by layer to the point I now feel as if I’m nothing but brittle bones.
When I walk out to the football field, I take a seat on the bleachers to wait for Kroy, pull out my cell, and dial my mother. This time, instead of it going straight to voice mail, it rings. She doesn’t answer though, so I hang up, relieved she’s alive enough to charge her battery but furious that she had to add more stress to this already nightmarish day.
I sit back and watch the guys hike the ball and barrel into each other like animals. The sun blazes brightly above, and sweat begins to bead and trickle down my spine while the team runs play after play.
I used to sit out here before Kroy and I started dating, and I would daydream about what it would be like to be his girlfriend. It’s a little strange to now sit here as the ex-girlfriend, and I shift and fidget, trying to avoid being dragged deeper into sadness. So much has changed so quickly, it’s hard for me to figure out where I fit in anymore—if I fit in at all.
“Hey, babe,” Kroy says as he jogs over to me. “You good?”
I nod, not bothering to mention the monumentally embarrassing breakdown I had earlier.
“I’m gonna hit the showers. Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
I walk around the school to the parking lot and wait for him next to his car. When he finally emerges, I couldn’t be more ready to go home and wish this day away into extinction.
“I knew you’d survive,” Kroy says out of nowhere as he drives to my house.
“What?”
“Today,” he states. “Was it as bad as what you were anticipating?”
“Ehh.” I brush off his question with a shrug. Even if I told him, I doubt he’d truly understand. “How was practice?” I ask to avoid talking about myself.
It works, and I spend the remainder of the drive listening to him talk about football, but he goes silent when he pulls up to my house. My mother’s car is parked haphazardly, two wheels on the driveway and two wheels in the grass with the driver’s side door still open.
Both of us step out of the car, not knowing what to say as we walk up the driveway. When I see the car is empty, I close the door.
“You want me to come in with you?”
“No,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Mom,” I call out when I step inside the silent house, but I get no response. I walk to the kitchen and then the living room before heading upstairs. Quickly, I toss my bag onto my bed and then go to her room. I don’t bother knocking, I just barge in to find her lying in bed and still dressed in the same clothes she left the house in last night. “Mom!” I call loudly, rousing her awake.
“What is it?” she mumbles with her face buried in her pillow.
Reaching down, I shake her, forcing her to acknowledge I’m here. “Wake up!”
She rolls over and props herself up on her elbows, looking like an absolute mess. “What’s the emergency?”
“Where have you been?”
“When?”
“Last night. This morning. God, Mom, I woke and freaked when you weren’t here.”
She sits up and scoots herself back against the headboard. “I told you I was going out.” Her voice is dismissive and laced with booze.
“To dinner. You said you were grabbing dinner, not that you’d be out all night. And I can’t believe you drove home drunk. How could you do that?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me with such disrespect. I’m your mother.”
“Are you?” I’m fuming. The agitation roiling through me is unreal, and I can’t think of a single other time I had ever been so angry with her.
She glares at me. “Excuse me, young lady? I suggest you change your tone.”
“You have no right to demand respect from me when I’ve done nothing but cater to your every need for months.”
“You don’t have a clue, do you? You’re just a child; you couldn’t possibly understand.”
Her accusations fan the flame.
“I lost everything!” she screams.
And for the second time today, I lose all control. “And what about me, Mother? Huh?”
“He was my husband. I had twenty-three years with him, you couldn’t possibly understand how it feels to lose a husband. I can barely breathe without him, and here you are,” she accuses, throwing her arm in my direction, “off at school, playing with your friends all day while I’m drowning in pain.”
“You don’t think that I feel pain? That I don’t hurt? That I don’t wish that it had been me that died that day?”
“Get out of my room.”
I stare into her eyes and wonder if the alcohol would force her to speak the truth. Do I even want the truth? Or do I already know it deep down?
“Is that what you wish?” I ask, willing myself not to cower away from her response. “Do you wish that it had been me that died that day and not Dad?”
She delivers no reaction. She’s nothing more than carved marble, sitting here looking like a total train wreck.
“Forget it,” I fume under my breath before storming out and slamming the door behind me.
How dare she dismiss everything I’ve been through. Mourning my father, taking care of all the responsibilities of this house, being forced to watch over her and worry about her every damn day while she drinks herself into a hole. I might as well have lost her too. There’s no more safety for me. I have no parent to grasp on to for help or guidance. No parent to comfort me or protect me. The world has thrown me the worst curveball ever, annihilating the life I once knew and forcing me to go at it alone.
I’m so pissed off at everything and everyone that I want to punch my fists through the walls. With so much trapped inside me, my flesh tingles for release. My teeth grit as I pace my room. I claw my fingers through my hair and walk into my bathroom. Turning on the water, I cup my hands together and splash my face in an attempt to extinguish the burn that’s itching beneath my skin. Dousing my face again, my elbow hits my makeup bag, sending it falling to the floor.
“Dammit.”
Everything spills out around my feet, and when I kneel down to clean up the mess, my hands stop when they land on my nail clippers. I fall onto my bottom and lean my back against the wall as I hold cool metal in my hand. With a body housed inside skin too tight, I swivel out the metal file, holding it firmly between my finger and thumb. All four of my limbs sizzle with pent-up tension, and when I aim the tip of the file against the inside of my forearm, I bite my jaw shut, pinch my eyes closed, and press down. I hold my breath as I try to puncture the skin, but the file is too blunt to penetrate, which only amplifies my irritation.
The pressure building inside reaches the point of testing the boundaries of my body. My skin flares, begging for relief, so I take the clippers to the same spot on my arm, press my lips together, and squeeze the lever, snipping through delicate flesh.
A sort of euphoria whispers through my veins the moment I see a bubble of dark maroon spill out of the tiny cut. Metal clanks against the tile floor, and I drop my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I relax as I feel my skin loosen around muscle and bone. My arm falls beside me, and I relish the sensation of a single stream of blood trickling down to pool in the palm of my hand. From one single snip to my skin, all my senses forget about everything—everything except this morbid unleashing.
I remain here, fading quietly in synchronicity with the evening sun.
Peacefulness.
I replace my dad’s broken frame with one that used to hold a photo of my mom and set it on my dresser. Then, I grab my laptop, flop down on my bed, and search for something on Netflix to binge watch. I’m still scrolling through the different shows when my phone chimes with an incoming text.
Kroy: Where are you?
Me: Wasn’t feeling well this morning. Staying home for the day.
Truth is, I can’t stomach the thought of having a repeat of yesterday. Once was enough, so I decided to ditch. It’s not like my mom would care if she knew. She hasn’t come out of her room since our fight. Never in my life have I spoken to her the way I did yesterday, and even though I’m still furious with her, I love her—she’s still my mother. So, when I woke up, I knocked on her door and offered to get her a bite to eat. She declined and then told me to leave her alone, so I did.
Halfway through a terrible movie I’m too lazy to turn off, my phone rings. I freeze when I see David Andrews lit across the screen. I sit up on my bed and stare down at his name, but I don’t answer.
When the ringing stops, I wait in suspense to see if he leaves a voice mail, but he doesn’t. Instead, my phone chimes with a text.
David: Tell me everything’s fine and that I shouldn’t be worried about you.
I read his text again, feeling that same metallic strike I felt in his office yesterday before responding.
Me: Everything’s fine. I’ll be at school tomorrow.
He doesn’t text me back, and I don’t realize until I wake up the next day that I lied to him.
Another day of skipping classes drones on. Instead of getting lost in mindless movies, I decide to spend the day reading after an hour in the pool, doing some water rehab on my shoulder. It’s still sore, but it feels good to do a little light swimming.
Both Kroy and Linze have already texted me by the time I pull myself from the water. I keep up the lie that I still don’t feel well, but I know they don’t believe me. It’s a lame excuse anyway.
Next time, I’ll have to try harder.
By day three of being a no-show at school, I simply choose not to respond when they text. That doesn’t stop Kroy from showing up at my front door after his football practice.
“What are you doing here?”
He eyes me up and down. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“Cut me a little slack here.”
“I have been, Cam. But when you start lying to me . . .” He steps into the foyer and waits until I close the door before he continues, “This isn’t you.”
“Kroy, please don’t do this.”
“Do you know how hard this is, to see you like this?”
“Like what?” My tone hinges on defensiveness.
“You’re so far from who you used to be.”
“How am I supposed to respond to that? Am I supposed to apologize for being sad?”
“It’s not that you’re sad,” he says, standing in front of me with his hands on my shoulders. “You’re just . . . different. And before you say I don’t understand, know that I want to. But it’s almost as if you don’t want me to understand. Like you’re hiding from me because, for some reason, you don’t want us to be able to connect.”
His words annoy me, and the scab on my arm begins to itch beneath the Band-Aid. I hate that he’s making this about him, blaming my behavior as the cause of his discomfort around me. The accusation that I’m doing this all wrong stings. It’s not as if death handed me a how-to manual for grieving and I forgot to read it. For once, I just want someone to accept me as is and not try to sway the choices I make or change the way I’m handling myself. Why can’t everyone just let me be, assure me that I’m okay, support me, and stop judging every move I make?
“I’m sorry if I can’t cater to everyone’s emotions when I’m simply trying to take care of my own.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he says.
“This is why we broke up, Kroy. This right here. I told you I couldn’t be what you need. Yet, here you are, complaining that I’m not giving you what you need.”
He drops his hands from me and combs them through his hair as he takes a step back.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I add. “But—”
“I don’t know how not to be with you,” he confesses on a cracked voice.
“And I don’t know how to be with you . . . at least not right now. I can’t take care of you when I’m struggling to take care of myself. There’s no way I can meet your expectations of me, and to be honest, I don’t want to even try. I know that might sound selfish—”
“No,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “I’m the selfish one. You made it clear to me at the bonfire, and here I am, acting as if you’re still my girl.”
It feels like we’re breaking up all over again.
I hold on to my words, knowing whatever I say will only twist the knife in deeper, and I don’t want to hurt him more than I already have. So, I watch in silence as he walks out of my house and to his car that’s parked along the curb.
He glances over to me, and in a softness he might not be able to hear, I tell him, “I love you,” before he gets into his car and drives away.