Obsessed(59)

“You’ll make it,” he said, confidently. “You will, El. With or without them.”

*

After my breakdown, I stayed in the house for the rest of the summer. I didn’t break windows or smash anything else to pieces. On the contrary, I barely moved at all. I felt beaten. The tears slowed, but sometimes I’d be struck with random sob fits that lasted a few minutes and stopped in the blink of an eye. Then I was normal again. Well, normal enough not to break shit.

But I knew I’d changed. Inside of me, this anger sat, eating away at all my other emotions. I felt aggressive, like the sweet girl that loved to dance just a few weeks ago was gone. I was grieving her loss on top of everything because no amount of good music made me want to move. I was a shell.

Adrian fixed Aston’s bedroom and put up a new window. He then went to Mom and tried to speak to her, but he always left the bedroom more frustrated than he was when he went in. I didn’t think he could help her either. He probably understood me now because he never brought her up again to me. He came and went, dropped off groceries, helped me around the house. He was a godsend.

I spent my time thinking of Aston. I don’t know why, but I continued to hope. I tried to look at the bright side. He couldn’t mean what he said. He would come to his senses, pick up the phone and call me. But then days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and I realized his silence spoke a thousand words. He had left me to manage our broken mother, and she didn’t want a bar to do with me.

Hope was intangible and meaningless.

Our home was an emptiness that couldn’t be filled.

We were all drifting further and further away, and I had no choice but to accept it.

*

My first semester of high school was a fucking bitch on a stick riding a two legged horse in the pits of hell – on a good day. I was talked about. My infamy had reached all corners of the student body. My episode at the house, the confrontation with Aston – all of it had spread like a virus, mutating into ridiculous versions that made the real story unrecognizable to theirs. My life was out there and in the hands of gossipers and preachy old ladies who scowled at me with judging eyes. Misinformed fucks who believed Aston was my blood brother and I was an incestuous harlot who needed God. No big deal.

It was hard. I won’t even sugar coat it. Imagine constantly putting up a front so they didn’t know they were getting to you. Because if they knew they were getting to you, they swarmed around you longer, poking and prodding for more of a reaction, until you erupted and they had a new wave of gossip to spread around.

Mom remained introverted. When she eventually went to work, she spent most of her time there. Sometimes I wouldn’t see her for days at a time, and if we crossed paths in the house, it was mute and cold. It didn’t stop me from trying, though. I tried to ask her how she was, tried to be in the same room as her just so we could warm up to each other’s presence, but I got nothing back. She shut me out without reason, and I struggled to understand what happened to the warm mother I once knew.

To top it all off, Aston didn’t return home for the holidays. He sent a Christmas card, and a small present for Mom, but that was it.

I had gone from having a full life to a completely empty one. Worst of all, I was alone.

And loneliness was a madness you couldn’t escape from.





20.



Elise

You know how spinsters become cat ladies when they lose all hope in life after being burned time and time again by horrible, stupid men that squeezed their hearts ‘til it popped in their fists? Don’t linger on the gruesome images. Point was, I had become one.

But first I became friends with a homeless druggie. I know, I know. I had lost my mind.

On the weekends just before I went to work at the paintball field, I started taking walks in the mornings along the lake. The water reminded me of a good place in my life. It brought me closer to Dad and the memories of teaching Aston to swim in the water.

Before I found Tuck hidden in a bush, I talked to this homeless dude named Ray. He’d sit on the boardwalk and throw bread at the birds, and I stopped once and said, “You know there’s a sign that says you can’t do that, right?”

“Where?” he asked, all stoned-out from the blunt in his hand.

“Right next to you.” I pointed to the sign two feet from him that had acted as a wind shield for him and read:

DO NOT FEED BIRDS OR PIGEONS. Because pigeons didn’t fall under the bird category, I guess? The sign must have been made on a Friday.

Feeding of pigeons or birds creates artificially high populations that cannot be supported by the natural habitat. DO NOT FEED BIRDS OR PIGEONS!

Ray looked at the sign and then back at me. He didn’t read it. “You going to do something about it?”