Gone, Gone, Gone(39)

I love you, you f*cking idiot, and I love you crazy and I love you sane, so will you please answer my emails? That’s all I’m asking from you, I’m not asking for your love or your brain or your f*cking future although, let’s be honest, I’d take them all, I’d take them all and I’d keep them safe, just like I’ll keep you safe even though I don’t think I’m supposed to have to do that, I don’t think that’s how relationships work, one person taking care of the other one all the time, but damn it I’ll do it, Cody, but you have to answer my emails. You f*cking have to. Fuck you, Cody, answer me. ANSWER ME. I JUST FUCKED EVERYTHING UP FOR YOU AND YOU WILL NEVER EVEN CARE.

Love,





C


I don’t sleep.

I don’t sleep.

Breathless, awful, impossible, I don’t sleep.

I don’t sleep.





LIO

I KNEW IT WASN’T GOING TO WORK OUT. AND I KNEW why, too. Because I’m Cody-lite. When there’s still the possibility, no matter how small, of Cody-real, what am I good for?

This mattress is hard and rubbery. I can’t get it out of my head how much this room smells like him. And cat pee, a little, but it really smells like him.

I need to move on. The problem is, I don’t know anyone else. Even before I moved, Maryland meant Craig.

This is so pathetic. Maryland so far has been a boy who doesn’t love me, homework, and six dead bodies.

God, I sang him a lullaby.

I can’t believe that. I don’t sing for anyone but my dad anymore, and only then when he’s drunk after some work party and his Ls sound like Ths and songs come pouring out of me before I can stop them, like some kind of battle cry.

Adelle would have a field day with me right now. Maybe I should start seeing her three times a week now that I’m in love.

I think once you start going to therapy three times a week, you’ve made some sort of terrible transition. I think that’s the difference between “a little f*cked up,” in a concerned, endearing tone and “f*cked up” with raised eyebrows and a slow head nod.

Craig would probably like that. It probably brings me closer to turning into Cody.

That isn’t fair of me to think, but I don’t care right now.

Maybe all that bullshit about how you never forget your first love is true. Maybe Craig will go through his whole life taking little wounded puppies and trying to mold them into a Cody that he can save. Maybe that’s what happens when you get your heart broken.

But I’m not just some wounded puppy. I’m not. And I’m not going to let some boy make me all about things that happened to me because that’s how he knows how to see me. Shitty things happened to me, and they happened, and I’m dealing. I’m fine with being wounded, but not to prove a point. I’m not an archetype. I’m fifteen f*cking years old.

I sit up and look out the window. It’s stopped raining now, and the moonlight’s glaring through the tree branches. The dark is so heavy that I don’t think it can be disturbed. Maybe that’s why there haven’t been any overnight shootings. The night would muffle gunfire like a pillow.

I want to wrap myself in the dark and disappear.

I want to wrap myself in Craig and disappear.

Will I give in to this? Is my heart broken now? Will I spend my whole life trying to turn boys into him? Dressing them in polos and pricking their fingers to make them cry?

I have a desperate urge to get what I deserve, for once.

I go into the bathroom and drink water out of the sink. It’s hard to swallow. My lips still feel tingly, and so does my body everywhere he touched me. Maybe I’m dying.

Tonight, I’ve been so worried about getting sick again. My whole head is throbbing cancer cancer cancer, and I’m paranoid it means something. I got blood work done last month, and I was fine. But I’m scared. I’m scared again. I close my eyes and do deep breaths.

I bet Craig never thinks, “I’m dying.”


And to be honest, I probably spend more time thinking, “I’m living.”

I sit down on the toilet. I can see myself in the mirror. This is so weird. Who wants to look at themselves in the mirror when they’re on the toilet? I guess it’s okay when you’re only sitting here, like I am now. But I still like to know where mirrors are before they sneak up on me.

I look at myself for a while.

I try it a few different ways; I turn my face at different angles, and push my hair back off my forehead, trying to see how I’d look if I were a tiny bit different in a few different ways.

I am so pathological.

I feel like I need some sort of hotline right now. Not a suicide hotline, more like the opposite. Is there a hotline for people who feel a little too motivated to be alive?

I don’t want to die, but I wish waking up every morning didn’t feel like such a f*ck-you every single time. Sometimes I don’t want to get out of bed with my hands in fists and a fight song in my throat because rah rah I beat cancer. Sometimes I’m only getting up to go to school, and that has to be okay. I need to calm the f*ck down about still being here, but I don’t know how.

I’m worried I’m going to go through my whole life feeling like someone’s pulling me, like from a string behind my belly button. I’ll keep going if you let go. Really. You don’t have to make me. I have every intention of sticking around. I didn’t mean to be ephemeral. I wasn’t trying to scare you.