JOSH

Life at the Peaks fell into a mundane routine, and I slipped into it as a foot into a well-worn shoe. Only one thing stuck out, and that was my constant hope of a call from Sarah. But as the days went by, and I didn’t receive one, I found myself wandering around in a kind of restless dream, one day evaporating into the next, my hope of a second visit slowly dissolving like the days.

On top of this, I found that I couldn’t sleep, and all night I would go over things in my head; things I hadn’t considered for a long time and that I’d made a habit of consciously hiding away in the deep forests of my mind. Something of Sarah’s visit had triggered a kind of self-analysis to begin inside of me, like the blooming of a flower, and I’d spend my time lying awake going over all the sordid details of my existence.

I went over all the women I’d spent time with in my life, and there were plenty. Amy Houston and a whole troupe of fuck buddies came quickly to mind. Then there were the faceless many, the casual lays that melted into one seamless picture-show of debauchery. I would lie there wondering what had been the point in any of these transient, carnal pleasures. All of it had been nothing but pure sensuality with no real feeling, a meeting of genitals rather than souls. I realized then—as perhaps I’d always realized—that I’d never given myself over to any of these women except one.

Only one girl had ever been able to write her name upon my heart. Only one girl could I say with any certainty had been my girlfriend. And only one that had ever induced love in me.

Heather Todd.

I met Heather at St. Christopher’s, a mixed-sex boarding school for the privileged, when we were fourteen. She was another side of me. But not like Amy. There was something more with Heather—not just a recognition of similarities between us, but an actual mirror reflection of the other. We were both intelligent, but also stupidly dangerous. We were both beautiful, and yet could be terribly ugly. We enjoyed pushing the boundaries of life from an early age, and if I was fire, then Heather was gasoline.

The first time I saw her, she was hanging out the back of her dorm. It was night and she was smoking a joint, her brown hair swaying in the breeze and adding to the ghostly aura given off by her pale white skin that appeared to glow in the moonlight. The second I spotted her, I knew I had to have her. She looked so unreal as she blew the thick, cottony smoke into the air, her big brown eyes staring out after it as it flowed upwards. Only a few of the guys in our year dared to smoke weed, of which I was among, but no girls. Not one. Here, however, was this chick toking on a fat joint.

Amazed at what I saw, I approached her and asked the girl for a pull on the blunt. She just smiled and handed it over.

“You’re Josh Kelly,” she’d said to me as I took a drag.

“Yes, I am,” I’d answered casually. “Or at least that’s what they tell me.”

This corny joke of mine made her giggle, and for the first time ever I saw the dimples light up on each of her cheeks and the instant pang of something touched my heart. Yes, even at fourteen, I felt a spark illuminate in me just from being by her side.

After that we began dating. Not that we ever mentioned it. Neither of us asked the other out in any formal manner and everything happened in an unspoken way. A word was never uttered, but we both understood without exception that we were meant to be side by side, like day and night. When I looked at her face, I felt that I was looking into the eyes of another side of me, the missing half of my soul. We each instinctively opened up to the other, as though we were a single mind and when we talked it was the same as thinking to ourselves. She told me things about herself that she’d never told anyone. Things she’d only dared to think and never to utter. Like how her father had abused her ever since she was twelve and how she hated going home. She told me that the pig would feel so guilty about his secret crimes that he’d attempt to buy her forgiveness. That was why she always had so much cash; the dirty old man was paying for her drug habit in order to appease the guilt he felt from having soiled his role as a father, as well as a human. I, in turn, shared my soul with her and told her all about my mother’s murder.

For four years we shared everything of ourselves and lived as one.

That is, until her tragic death. In a single flash, I lost her forever. And ever since, I’ve been haunted by her, driven to despair by the phantom of her image showing itself in my dreams and attacking my unguarded thoughts.

The first time I rolled through the doors of Withered Peaks was shortly after her death when I was eighteen. I was suffering a complete breakdown; my glass heart smashed into a billion splinters and my mind not far behind. Every one of my life decisions since her death has had her image stamped into it somewhere. All my limited triumphs and all my endless defeats, have her signature carved deep in the heart of them. She chases me through life, both within consciousness and unconsciousness, the secret of her appalling death buried deep within my withered heart. I actually thought that perhaps Sarah was the first person in my life that I could bring myself to talk to about this appalling event. But when the days accumulated into weeks without so much as a call from her, this dream began to fade.