Hemorrhage.

I have never been to Warped Tour in my entire life. It wasn’t something that I knew about when I was a kid, and by the time that the words had become a part of my vocabulary, I was too wrapped up in other things to really want to go. Even if the desire had been there, my mother would have never allowed it. She wasn’t that type of laid-back, let-your-kids-do-what-they-want person. She always had to be in control of me, and I think that’s why my anorexia really bugged her.

When it came to my weight, I was in control of it. She could scream and cry and battle until her fingernails bled, but I wasn’t going to give up this battle. Deep down, she knew this, I think. Probably, she was just trying to be in denial about it. She needed to be in control of everything, right?

When I asked my mother if I could go to Warped Tour in Southern California, the look on her face was priceless. She seemed shocked, and then that shock immediately turned to disapproval.

“What are you talking about, Emelie?” She asked, her tone sharp. “To go to some concert in another state? Are you being serious?”

I hated when she acted like that with me. She got so condescending, and talked to me as if I were five again. I narrowed my eyes at her.

“It’s one state over, Mom. And John’s going to be with me the whole time. He wants me to visit during the tour, so we can see each other.”

I didn’t know how my mom felt about John. I guess this was as good of a time as any to find out her true thoughts. She could either love him, because maybe she could see that I think he was trying to help me. Or she could blame him for the entire thing (which, if we were being honest, it was his fault, but not in the way that she would assume) and attempt to forbid me from seeing him ever again.

It was a two way street. I really hoped she was going to make this easy on me.

But knowing my mother, and knowing the way that she worked, this would probably be a nearly impossible task.

“John?” She looked a little weary. “Why would John be going to the Southern California date anyway?”

“He’s on the tour, Mom.”

“Oh. Well, then won’t he be busy?”

“I don’t know. He invited me to come out, so I’d imagine that he’d make time.” I said. She was really putting a damper on my mood, and making me second guess things. Would John have enough time for me? Or would I just be an inconvenience for him? Was he just being polite when he asked me to come out?

What if the reason they were having Molly do merchandise was because he needed to get away from me?

"How are you going to get there?" She asked.

I thought about it for a second. "I don't know. I'll drive. It's only a day's worth of driving, and it will be good to clear my head."

"When is it again?"

"August."

My mother looked apprehensive. "Let me think about it," she said, and I agreed, even though I was twenty years old and I was old enough to do what I wanted when I wanted to without her permission. I didn't tell her that, though, because she might have had a heart attack.

I turned away, going up to change before I went out. John was supposed to meet me at the mall in half an hour so I could get a new cell phone, considering the last one was gone for good. I told him that I really didn't need one (my life might be easier without mean and menacing text messages to wake up to every morning) but he insisted, saying that he needed a way to get a hold of me at the odd hours of the night when he felt like having someone to talk to.

I slipped on a pair of jeans, too big, and a striped sweater. I found my most comfortable pair of slippers, and put my hair in a bun. I didn't need to impress John or the people in the mall.

Without a phone, I slipped my wallet in my pocket and grabbed the car keys. I felt very bare, but I ignored though thoughts as I skipped down the stairs and slipped out the front door.

The mall wasn't that far away from my mother's house, which was a convenient thing, I guess.

John had told me to meet him in front of the AT&T store, so I parked near the food court and walked out front. He was standing there, a beanie on his head, sunglasses covering his eyes, facing the store. I walked up next to him, letting out a small sound of greeting.

"Hey," I said.

He turned, sending me a smile. "Hey."

The next few seconds could go many, many ways. That kiss was still lingering in my brain (it had been doing a lot of lingering) and I kept on trying to figure out what exactly it meant. You don’t kiss someone without it meaning something, right? Everything like that needed to have a meaning. I just really wanted to know what exactly John’s meaning was, because I was a little more than confused.

Before I had too much time to contemplate it, John leant down, pressing his lips to mine once again. His hand found mine. The kiss didn’t last long enough for me to respond, but at least it registered in my brain. He pulled away, smiling that cute little smile at me.

“What kind of phone do you want?” He asked and I shrugged.

“Something that works, preferably,” I said. “But not too complicated, because I don’t use it for many things.”

“So, an iPhone would be out of the question?”

“That’s what I had before, and I barely used it, except for text messages. And I hate touch screens.”

“How can you hate touch screens?” John seemed incredulous.

“They’re confusing, they get fingerprints, and they get sticky. They’re inconvenient, and really hard to navigate if I ever grow out my nails. Like, girls with acrylics that have iPhones? I don’t know how they do it.”

“It takes skill.” He nodded.

“I don’t have skill. I want something simple.”

“You have skill,” he protested. “Maybe not with typing with fake nails, but you have skill.”

I shrugged. John rolled his eyes, but gripped my hand tighter as we walked inside of the store. I hate stores where the second you walk in, a sales associate immediately pounces on you. I know that it’s their job, but it’s still annoying and somewhat uncomfortable.

The man was probably in his early thirties, and he was a little overweight. He did not look like he was enjoying his job, at all. I decided to shrug it off. Thousands of people were stuck with jobs that they hated.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked, not even bothering to slap on a fake smile.

“She needs a phone,” John said. I stared at him, for his oblivious statement.

It was like…duh.

Apparently, the guy thought the same thing as I did, because his face looked bored. “Well, we have an assortment of phones. There are smartphones, located in the back corner of the store, and phones with keyboards located in the right of the store. Everything else is kind of scattered around. Feel free to browse.”

John nodded. I shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. The sales guy moved to another customer.

“So…let’s start looking. Do you have a color preference? Shape?”

I shrugged. “I don’t really care. I’ll just pick something out that I like.”

John laughed. “You’re so simple. Unlike half of the other girls that I know.”

I didn’t know how to take that. Part of me thought that maybe it could be a compliment. A John-like compliment, if nothing else. Did he mean that in a good way or a bad way, though? Was it a good thing that I wasn’t like the other girls that he knew? Or did he want me to be like them? Because I swear to fucking god, I have spent years changing my body to be like them. I don’t know how to change my personality.

We spent about ten minutes browsing, and when I found myself repeatedly going back to the same red and black phone. It was square, with a keypad that revealed itself when I pushed the screen up. I liked it. It seemed simple enough, and it was kind of pretty too.

I was back to staring at it once more, when John slid up next to me.

“Found it, huh?” he asked.

“Yup.” I said. He nodded, and then he turned, flagging down the sales guy. The guy brought the phone out from the back, ringing up the box and adding it to my current plan. He then asked if I had insurance (I denied, John begged to differ), which I eventually got, and then it was time for me to hand over my debit card. It was kind of dampening on my bank account, considering the fact that I haven’t gotten a job yet, but I didn’t really spend much anyway, so I guess I would deal.

The second I was down with the money aspect, I pulled the phone out of the box and got it activated. It turned on with a little jingle, and the screen brightened up.

John and I turned, walking out of the store. The sales guy didn’t even bid us goodbye, but I wasn’t really expecting that much from him.

We walked towards somewhere (I wasn’t really sure) while I added the contacts that I knew by heart - my mom, John, a few people that I sometimes talked to from back in LA. I looked up, looking over at John.

“Hey, can I see your phone?” I asked.

John nodded. “For contacts? Yeah.”

He handed me over his eye phone, and I was careful not to drop it. It was going to be kind of impossible to transfer contacts while I was walking, so I suggested that we go sit down at one of the multicolored wooden tables in the dining court.

We sat. The smell of the greasy food kind of made me uncomfortable, but I was determined to not seem overly obvious about the way I was feeling. I kind of wanted to be strong. To be like the other girls that John knew.

John went to go order some lemonade from Hot Dog on a Stick and I set his phone on the table, going through and adding the people that I knew - Garrett, Jared, Kennedy, Molly, Pat.

I was adding in Pat’s number, the digits going one by one. Something was familiar about it. I guess that was kind of stupid, considering that Pat used to be in my iPhone, but something was kind of familiar in a bad way. Like, my stomach kind of turned seeing those numbers, like they were associated with something that made me feel sick.

I was staring at it for a second, when the numbers kind of clicked in my brain.

And my stomach felt a little sicker. I was just kind of wrapping my head around it when John returned, an extra large cherry lemonade in his hand.

“Is this Pat’s number?” I asked him, holding the phone up to his face.

John furrowed his eyebrows but nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“That’s not the number that I had in my phone. His used to be a 757 number.”

“That’s his house number,” John shook his head. “The 252 is his cell.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“Okay.”

Yeah, no reason at all.

Except I used to get some pretty mean fucking text messages from that number.