Care For Me Not, I'll Hurt You Too Much

Right now you couldn’t care less whether or not everyone stared or hated you. You just wanted to get as far away from Gerard as possible. Him just being around pained you to know that he had not only seen you at your weakest, but had also found out more than you ever intended anyone else to know about you. Michaels was no help on that part either, blabbing away your life to him just because of a small pain in your shoulder.

Alright, so it wasn’t such a small pain. The fact being that your father had just added new cuts and bruises to your arm only a day ago. Even her light touch to this sensitive area caused the sharp shooting feelings to run through and numb your better judgment. But the look that they had to give you, that pained you more than the actual physicality of the situation. They had to pretend to care about you, that realization of false compassion mixed with lack of enthusiasm hurt even worse. Who’s left to care anyway?

You didn’t look back when Gerard said a rushed goodbye before walking to turn in his paperwork to the front office. Instead, with the spitefulness still flowing through you, you turn your back on him without a word or acknowledgement on your part, and stalk as quickly as you can without drawing too much attention to yourself down the hallway. Some people’s heads turned and you could have sworn you saw people whispering as you passed, but the only thing that you cared about was getting as far away from the Hell-hole they call school as quickly as possible. The color now decorating your face and cheeks, followed by the immediate rush of heat, would have normally made your head hurt from all the blood flow in and out of your head, but you’ve had all day to get used to those feelings.

You’re left sitting alone on the tattered swings located in Military Park, dragging your worn sneakers slowly across the damp earth beneath your feet. The swings were slightly damp when you showed up, this being the result of the earlier weather mood swing, but you sat down quickly, just trying to not draw too much attention to yourself by stopping and cleaning the seat before sitting down. You’re wearing your older pair of pants anyway, what does it matter?

The spinning in your head returns after you cause the nerves in your shoulder to kick up again, after placidly trying to adjust your position on the swing set. The minor aches to your temple cause the heat to rise again in your face. You can still feel all the eyes of the world on you and you can hear their whispered complaints behind your back, even though everywhere you look everyone is engrossed in their own lives entirely. The park is nearly empty, but the anxious feelings persist until you feel nauseous.

The chains to the swings weren’t as cold as you would have thought as you pressed your cheek lazily against the metal. You inhale the heavy air of the city you grew up your entire life in and close your eyes as the cool caresses your face. The heat formerly occupying it dies down quickly and the color drains, but leaves your cheeks still slightly flushed. The nausea comes and goes, but the feelings are so familiar that you barely notice them being there.

Can’t say “Same shit different day” anymore. This is a whole new set of shit. You think to yourself as you lightly push your heels into the soft dirt to glide your heels more easily along the barren patch.

You hung your arms uselessly to the side, leaning away from the heavily bruised arm to ease the still remnant throbbing. With your eyes closed, you rehearsed all the things that had happened to you in just this one day. You didn’t want to, but the memories seemed to be haunting you like the plague. You squint your eyes tighter to try and erase all the memories that would bring back the red to your normally pale complexion.

Thinking back over it all, you begin to analyze what the fuck happened back there today that made you blush so damn much.
First: The new kid ends up in your class. Random placement on the school’s part. Their fault.
Second: He ends up sitting by you and seeing your drawing of his eye! Stupidity on your part entirely.
Third: He sits by you. Ignorance on his part, he didn’t know any better.
Fourth: He follows you to class. Michaels’ fault entirely.
Fifth: You’re in the same classes. School’s fault again. It’s their fucked up curriculum and his chosen electives that determined that sentence.
Sixth: He wakes you up, but accidentally gives you the most attention you’ve ever had in your entire school career. Not his fault, good intentions. Your fault, you’re too jumpy.
Seventh: He sits with you at lunch. Pity for you? He was just being nice.
Eighth: Ditches Sarah and her instant popularity key. Again, ignorance on his part.
Ninth: He sits with you in class. He’s embarrassed that he’s new, plus he’s shy.
Tenth: He sits with you in Art. Familiarity. He did that this morning, thought it was appropriate.
Eleventh: You cried, Michaels exclaimed over your drawing and unknowingly clapped your heavily scarred and bruised shoulder, while you over reacted and showed them another weakness of yours. They must now think you’re insane. Fate is conspiring against you and this new boy must be one of their minions sent to rid you of the last shred of decency, sanity, and personal integrity that you had left.

You sigh in defeat against Fate as you contemplate the list and the reasons you’ve concluded were behind them absentmindedly. You don’t even notice the way the sun seemingly went down quicker behind the thick clouds. The rain drops fell so lightly around you; they went unnoticed until thunder cackled menacingly in the distance. You glance around and awe at the darkness now creeping around you and encasing you in a comforting cold.

You step quickly out of the park once again, the fear of being struck by lightning reacquainting itself with you once again. This reminds you of the first night you were back from the hospital after you supposed “accident”. That night was filled with Deja-vu and unwanted memories and pains. The images of the mangled car and corpses pulled out flash quickly into your mind with the ever-present nausea tagging along with it. You shake your head in an attempt to get rid of these memories while unknowingly biting your pierced lip.

Think of something else stupid! You tell yourself while also fighting back the offending tears that began winding their way into your eyes.

Else? What else is there? You argue back.

You contemplate your life unwillingly once again, but this time you start from after your week-long hospital stay. You recognized those feeling you thought were new at the time. Seeing Sarah for nearly the first time and feeling that familiar attraction you thought you had buried deep within you. It wasn’t until later that you remembered why you had buried those feeling and tried to lace them with malice instead. Her open criticism of you made itself known to you once again when you overheard her talking about you always wearing long sleeves and dark colors.

“I mean, Kendell doesn’t even have a life.” She snorts loudly to her always-present throng of admirers.
If you had been more daring—or had better self-esteem—then you might have shown some type of acknowledgement to her statement. You might have defended yourself in some way. That was only if you really did have a life to defend. Only if.

All too true Sarah, all too true. You say to yourself as you turn the corner onto your familiar, empty-housed block.

Except now, as you kept on walking down the lonely street, it didn’t seem as familiar as you remember it being. Something was different down this street and it took you a while to finally notice what it was. The rest of the surrounding houses still didn’t have a light, or a car, or a lonely occupant walking the alleys created between the houses. Something was definitely different here, it just hadn’t caught your eye yet.

You had kept your head down most of the walk down your street, until a glimmer in your peripheral vision caused you to look up curiously. He would never leave a light on like that, whether he was there or not. You think, referring to your father.

That’s exactly what it was. It was a glimmer in the window of a light being turned on and off, as if being tested by someone inside. Your father would never leave a light on in the house, he was hardly ever in the house. When he was, he preferred the dark like you did. You have turned your bedroom light on and you do use it, but you blocked out the window with spray paint that you found lying in one of the many graffiti covered alleyways in your sophomore year. Before that your window had been covered with a large piece of paper taped to the window sill. This arrangement made it hard for you to open your window, but after finding the can of spray paint, you blocked out every single hole in your window, except for a six inch wide gap at the very top of your window. This gap allowed you to see whether it was day or not, and on special nights, it even permitted you to see the moon and all her beautiful lunar rays shining through and pooling themselves onto your comforter, feeling as if she were some guardian in the night. The nights when the moon was gone were the nights when you felt the most unprotected and vulnerable. Those were the nights that were plagued by nightmares.

Now that your window was blocked, it was much easier for your house to go on seemingly as ‘unoccupied’. The reason behind blocking out your window was mainly a whim at the moment. 1) You didn’t want anyone watching you as you changed through your un-curtained window and 2) You wanted to have some way to block out the millions of eyes that you felt were watching you ever since the first night your father ever laid a hand on you. Those eyes were forever watching, judging, and admiring your scars and bruises. It soon grew too much, so you blocked it out as best you could. The paper was too bulky, and now with the spray paint, you can re-apply it to the places that are thin, and you are able to secretly open your window for fresh night air without giving away the house’s occupancy in the process.

So seeing this light being turned on and off repeatedly caught your attention, considering you were the only one that ever used the house lights, and that your window would have blocked out any light coming out of your room.

She used to do that…just out of habit. You think unexpectedly. Memories of your cousin come flashing through your mind, making you wince. You blink your eyes and turn away for a second, to make the hallucination dissipate.

When you look back though, you believe you’ve actually gone crazy. The light is still on in the second story window of the house, but now there’s another one on in the living room. You approach hesitantly. Trying in vain to make the lights go off and the house turn dark once again. Your foot steps are dragged as you come closer and closer to the house you thought would never once again be filled with living people other than you crawling through the window that never closed in the kitchen.

A silhouette passes in front of the living room window briefly. You stop dead in your tracks, hoping that you won’t be seen. Who’s in the house?