Trapped in Forever

51 ~ But Definitely Not Happy

After my parents had sat me down that morning, with the smell of burnt bacon and cracked eggs drifting in from the kitchen where black pans laid, abandoned, on the cooling burners and plates filled with breakfast foods—a slice of toast, a low-fat yogurt, too many pale green grapes to count—and sugarcoated those words that shifted my reality, made so many things so much more complicated than they had been when I went to bed that night, when I still thought that what was broken could be fixed, that I could just take somewhere no one knew us, knew her especially, and just ate ice cream with M&Ms like we used to, and forgot about Evan Dillinger, about that party, about what they all saw that Friday night, and I wandered back up to my bedroom, and saw my phone on my nightstand, where her message blinked on the screen. Just a few moments ago, I was about to listen to it, hear her either blow off what happened on Friday, that Evan Dillinger was just a rebound and that he wasn’t that good anyway, or that her mom found out that she was at that party and they pulled her out of that bedroom, almost completely naked, with that deer caught in the bright gaze of headlights look on her pale face, but then Dad knocked on my bed and pulled me away. When I was about to listen to that message a few minutes earlier, she was alive—or, so I thought anyway, but she was actually in the basement of a hospital, cold and even paler—and now she wasn’t. Now that message was more than a missed call. It was a missed chance.

I never told anyone about that voicemail, about how I blew her off when she needed me most, when she needed someone to convince her that things weren’t that bad—so what if everyone knew about her pica or that she slept with Evan Dillinger and they mocked her for it—and that eventually, they’d forget, that someone would start even worse rumors about someone else and they’d forget about her. I never told anyone that I chose sleeping over her, over saving her, over rescuing her. I also never told anyone that I always ignored that voicemail when I answered my phone or charged it, dismissing that last murmur of her voice, small and scared, talking into the receiver of a cellphone, and I never told anyone that I never listened to it because I didn’t want her to be gone; I didn’t want that voicemail to be just another part of her discovered, another part explored, another part just as empty. As long as no one listened to that voicemail, she was still out there somewhere, unheard, fresh, and somewhere closer to me than six feet under a mound of dirt and wilting flowers. But I also didn’t want to hear that small and scared voice telling me she didn’t know what to do, that she was so tired, that she was sorry, that she needed me to just answer, that she’d call me back later or something when she really wouldn’t. I didn’t want to hear her voice and know that while she was saying she couldn’t do it anymore, that I was ignoring her.

But now, as I stumbled through that sweaty, multi-perfume aromatic labyrinth of people with high heels elevating their height and pit stains darkening the small pieces of fabric around their arms, with cups of sloshing amber liquid in their hands and a smirk speaking their flirting conversations, I couldn’t let that voice just slip away into that darkness, to go unheard, to be forever roaming and waiting for someone, me, to just listen and finally stop ignoring her. I felt alone in that swarming throng of people surrounding me, brushing against my elbows or my sides, sending me glances as I passed them with a pinched expression, my eyes blinking, my chin probably turning purple from trying to keep it from quivering. I wondered if this was how she felt when she dialed my number that night, if she felt as exhausted as I did or if she somehow felt worse, if she was tired of being alone, like I was. I was so exhausted of being alone, of being without her, of trying to find a place to belong without her, of liking someone who wasn’t even mine to like. I wanted her right there, holding her sweaty palm in my own and leading me through that maze of high school seniors and onto that patio, telling people to get out of her way, and I wanted her to toss my cellphone into the grass and murmur who cares? I’m right here now. I wanted to know where I belonged, and I wanted to like someone who wasn’t as complicated, who I could push friendship boundaries with, without the linger sense of guilt plaguing my nerves, who never met her, and certainly didn’t fall in love with her.