For my little brother, I hold it in. He cries and I hold him until his energy is spent and he can’t cry while he sleeps.
But me? My tears sting my eyes and my chest builds with the pressure holding it. I don’t trust myself to just let it out because it will be this big, loud thing that will involve me waking Mum and punching her in the face, even though she still hasn’t been out doing drugs yet. I have to give her credit for trying.
But. But friggin’ hell. Can’t she put her stupid antics aside and see she scared her son so much he pissed himself in the pool when he knows it’s wrong?
As I think, Not everyone is like you. Not everyone needs to be as crazy as you, I pause.
Think.
Isn’t that me in a nutshell?
The way Scout reacted, you’d think I fucked up. Sure it was wild, but I was at a party, and there was shit going on all around me. It wasn’t just me. But after seeing her, I wondered for the first time if I’d regret what I’d done. Seeing Nate’s body all drained of hope that I can’t … just no.
Scout had looked at me like she was saying Normal people don’t do that.
With Tris back asleep, I walk back down the hall to my room.
She’s right.
I fucked up. Normal people don’t see one of their most important relationships falling apart and accelerate it by knowing you’re doing something stupid but doing it anyway. I am my mother’s daughter. Seth, Tristan and I are the most important people to Mum and I swear she unintentionally targets us.
I don’t want to be like that, but I’m realising that’s what I am, too.
For a moment I consider tapping out a text to Nate, but what would I say? Sorry would just be a cop out. Begging would only make him push me further away.
I do all I can and flop into my outline from before, staring at the blackness of my ceiling once more.
And I think about all the ways I think I like him. Yeah, like that.
• • •
In the morning, I wake up and check my phone first thing, as usual. My heart pounds, waking me in a second when I see I have a text.
From Nate.
I take a breath, push my morning hair from my face, then lunge for an elastic band and shove it in a high-top bun to get it out of the way. Then, only after my body is about to combust with the adrenaline coursing through me do I allow myself to read his text:
Nate: Was going to tell you that I have a week-long shoot with one of my classes. I leave tomorrow.
14
By Wednesday night I have a neat pile of notebooks and papers on the right side of my desk, a huge stack of messy papers on the left, and my laptop somewhere in the middle under the pens and food wrappers and tissues and more paper. It’s surprising how much uni work I can get done when I force myself.
Until Wednesday night.
Monday I started the trend, Tuesday I thought I could continue it for the whole week but by tonight I burst. I throw back my chair, which topples to the floor, and stomp to my bed where I fist my hands and slam them into the mattress. One, three, five times and then I assess the outcome and decide things don’t look destroyed enough.
Standing in an open space, my arms are pinned straight by my side, my fingers wriggling and squeezing my thighs so I jerk in pain. I could smash my phone and my computer and it wouldn’t be enough. Then I see my violin case, the top closed but the latches unlocked, and I no longer want to smash everything.
I want to overpower it.
I storm up to my bookshelf and pull out a folder. Inside I leaf through the sheet music until I come across “Love the Way You Lie”, originally sung by Eminem and Rihanna. I remember when that was released. I’d stick in my earphones, go for a run and push myself harder than other times, running until my breaths turned into puffs, puffing until my chest felt like it was being squeezed off by a band, struggling to breathe until my throat felt funny and I had to stop off the sidewalk, lean over and wait for the nauseous feeling to subside.
When I play on my violin, I hack at it. I love this thing, but it’s my therapy when I can’t explain myself and boy, do I have a lot to say. Lost in the moment, I wonder why every note sounds hushed, strangled, until I see my bow has crossed the bridge and I’m playing over the hump in the little section where the sounds can’t echo through the violin. How the hell this happened, I don’t know. I’m a professional player, a qualified teacher.
I live and breathe this thing.
I put the violin and bow back in its case, close the top, and slide the case back in its resting place.
Then I sink on my bed, face in the concave of my palms, and feel heat rushing to my cheeks, my ears tingling and a tremble hurting me from deep inside. I almost cry, but it’s not sadness in me. It’s nothingness.