Fireworks
The Clock's Done Ticking Second Chances (2)
The final bell rings and implodes my reliving of the past.
Girls file out of the locker room, chatting away about what their plans are for this weekend. Even the swimmers are already gone, and I’m still standing by my locker, half-dressed and wiping my eyes on my gym shirt. My legs are shaking and my heart feels like it’s being clenched by a steel hand that’s been sitting on an ice cap for the last decade.
“Let’s get moving, Giovanni.” Coach walks past me as she checks the forest of green metal boxes.
I quickly pull on my black skinny jeans and MSI tee, aware that Rachel is waiting for me. I don’t want to remember what had happened two years ago. I don’t want to remember. Dontrememberdontrememberdontremember.
Rachel already questioning me before my brain can function correctly and open the holes in the side of my head for her words to enter.
“You seem to be late for everything. Where were you this time?” We’re walking towards the parking lot where her mother’s car is probably running and waiting for two fourteen-year-old girls with dead older sisters.
“Coach kept us in because some guy wouldn’t do his pushups correctly” seems to be an acceptable answer. I am still trying to mentally close and lock the weak flyaway wooden door that is putting up a good fight for being so weak and flyaway.
Rachel greets her mother and I get into the backseat with her. She doesn’t like sitting up front when I’m riding home with her – which is every day.
“How was your day?” asks Mrs. Rensley. I’ve never known her to say anything other than that. She’s always quiet and slinking around the house if she’s not holed up in her room.
The door rattles. We don’t answer her question because I am nearly trembling from the exertion of trying not to remember and Rachel can tell I’m trying not to think about the thing she doesn’t want to think about either but it’s infectious and I know her door is opening as well, or whatever container she keeps her memories in.
I get out of the car so suddenly when we park in Rachel’s driveway that I’m assaulted by a head rush so severe it’s blackblueorangered blotting out my eyesightvision. I clench my teeth and grab the side of the car for support, a pain tearing at the space between my eyes. It’s like someone just punched me with a blunt needle on the base of the bridge of my nose.
“Sara, you okay?” Rachel. Mrs. Rensley has probably already gone inside.
Slowly the pain subsides and I stumble forward. “Yeah.” A white garage door and beige-painted walls swim into view.
This sort of thing happening to me isn’t uncommon. Rachel and I go into the house without further worrying.
A random draft of cornbread is lifted to my nose, and the amount of energy it takes to stop my hands from taking a piece off the dining table is enormous. I grit my teeth. I am strong. I will not eat. I am skinny.
“Want some?” Rachel pinches off a crumb and places it on her tongue.
Against the wishes of my brain and saliva on my tongue, who can already taste the soft bread maybe spread with some butter and chew and swallow and repeat, I shake my head.
“What did you have for lunch? Maybe you can spare just a piece.” Rachel casually lifts her hand to her hip, but I know she is pressing for the pain under her skin and denim.
“Water. For breakfast I had bread.” In desperation my brain automatically calculates the total. Only 55 so far. I can eat a slice of cornbread and tack on a 100. And then I can skimp on dinner with only a Fuji apple, 50.
“Here, take one,” Rachel says, handing over a thinly cut slice. My fingers savor the feeling of hundreds of crumbs packed together and breaking apart to sprinkle on the floor. It’s bright yellow, the edges a bit darker.
I bite. The square rests on my tongue, soaking up my taste buds and I can taste the butter in the mix, the sugar and the flour and every other ingredient adding their numbers. Chew. It swirls deliciously between my teeth, so thankful it’s not even getting stuck. Swallow. There it goes down my throat, so effortlessly.
Rachel’s already on her second piece and I’m not even halfway through this one. I take another bite and chew fifteen times before swallowing.
Her eyes flicker shut. I look up from my concentration and catalogue the look on her face. I know Rachel has occasional lapses where she dips back into the past, anything that reminds her of Jillian. She is not as strong as I am.
Her feet are moving and taking her to the downstairs bathroom. I follow and shut the door behind her once we’re inside. Rachel claims what she does isn’t lethal. It doesn’t even qualify as self-mutilating in the book of therapists.
She removes a small golden thumbtack from the medicine cabinet. Her eyes are wide open now, watching herself in the mirror. I’m sure she’s forgotten I am standing behind her. The point of the thumbtack is microscopic, sharp, slicing the air into ribbons as she sits down on the toilet. Up goes the hem of her shirt, down goes the waistband of her jeans. She presses the impossibly thin tip of the tack to the skin on her left hip and inscribes a line, winter-silent. I cannot feel what she feels, but I can picture the black memories, bad blood, angerhurthatesadness pouring out of the four centimeter exit. Beads of blood bubble from the pink wound but Rachel wipes them away with her finger.
Down goes the hem of her shirt, up goes the waistband of her jeans.
All done.
A blissful smile has clawed its way onto Rachel’s features and it’s like someone has pushed the reset button on her emotions. She puts away the thumbtack and washes her finger.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rachel laughs. Her arms move more freely, as if all the tension is leaking steadily out of the secret in her skin.
I hand her a red-rimmed grin and she inquires to me, “How’re you doing?”
“I just got to 90.0,” I declare proudly, lifting my shirt and swiveling my body for a side view. My stomach is a slight depression in my upper body, my lower ribs hiding beneath a few more layers of fat. I’ve gone from a 97.0 to a 90.4 in one week and half an inch separates my thighs.
“Good job, you’re doing great,” encourages Rachel. She unlocks the bathroom door and we spill out into the living room. I am walking on a cloud as she rambles on about how the teachers at school are oh so oblivious.
Michelle’s body is cremated because she had never wanted to lie in a box, trapped, in the ground. This way, she will be sailing the seas and flying with the wind. Maybe she will even come to visit me at night and tell me stories about what high school is like so I won’t be scared.
Before she is burned, I get to see her. We go to the mortuary and all I can smell is sterilized air wafting through the vents. It doesn’t smell like dead people like I thought it would.
Michelle is still beautiful, even though her head is cracked and she is black and blue. The blood is gone but her skin is still split and she is lying in an unnatural position. Mom bursts into tears and Dad has to look away, but I am transfixed, my eyes scanning her thin arms and legs. I feel as if I have failed her, always being the younger sister tagalong and cramming too much into my growing body. Michelle was never fat, Michelle always looked great. My legs feel like lead, burdened by the fat on my arms and plate of bacon and eggs in my stomach. Her honey-brown hair is matted and parted where her skull broke the glass and itself, and suddenly my stomach revolts, I have to focus on the grey floor. If your stomach were empty and flat like Michelle’s, we wouldn’t be having this problem, my subconscious sneers at me. I am ashamed.
The daytimes are hollow. There is no one bounding about the house joyously announcing plans. The nighttimes are haunted. I lay in my room, watching the seawater slowly fill up my bedroom like a giant tank, until Michelle’s head splashes out of the water like a mermaid. Her hair is back in its voluptuous waves, so unlike mine, and her skin is stitched together with invisible thread that makes her glow. She’s wearing her prom dress and it’s clinging to her body like it was never shredded apart mercilessly.
“Hey, Sara-Bear.” She smiles at me and despite the water flooding my carpet, I sit up in bed and tears leak down my cheeks without my permission. “No, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.”
“Michelle, I miss you,” I whimper, wanting to go and hug her but afraid of the water. I can see the fish exploring my bookcase, their mouths going opencloseopenclose, and the seashells littering the floor.
“I miss you too. I miss everyone.” Her entire body has emerged from the water and she sits on her knees, staring forlornly at me. Her makeup is smeared and the heels on her heels are cracked.
“Did it hurt?” The question slips past my lips before I can stop it. I take in Michelle’s perfection, even as a ghost in death. Or is she real? Either way, I vow to make her proud.
“I didn’t feel a thing, Sara-Bear.” She gives me a sad smile and wades over to my acoustic Fender cutaway. It fits in her lap like it was made for her, half submerged and yet I doubt it feels a thing. I’m not sure how Michelle can manipulate living objects. Her fingers pick away at the strings, playing no definite melody. “Go back to sleep now.”
“But I don’t want to leave you.” I don’t want to leave Michelle to the darkness, to the otherworld where she lives now. I want to stay here with her. My tear ducts fill and boil over and longing pangs my heart. “I don’t want you to be gone.” My voice cracks in multiple places.
Michelle doesn’t answer, but continues to play. I am drifting off to sleep against my will before I realize she is playing ‘Half Alive’ by Secondhand Serenade.
I shake my head and circle my thighs with my index fingers and thumbs. They don’t quite touch yet. For my fingertips to meet, that is my goal. Michelle doesn’t visit me often anymore, but she drops by from time to time when I am frustrated and listens to me play.
55 + 0 + 100 + 50 = 205.
Girls file out of the locker room, chatting away about what their plans are for this weekend. Even the swimmers are already gone, and I’m still standing by my locker, half-dressed and wiping my eyes on my gym shirt. My legs are shaking and my heart feels like it’s being clenched by a steel hand that’s been sitting on an ice cap for the last decade.
“Let’s get moving, Giovanni.” Coach walks past me as she checks the forest of green metal boxes.
I quickly pull on my black skinny jeans and MSI tee, aware that Rachel is waiting for me. I don’t want to remember what had happened two years ago. I don’t want to remember. Dontrememberdontrememberdontremember.
Rachel already questioning me before my brain can function correctly and open the holes in the side of my head for her words to enter.
“You seem to be late for everything. Where were you this time?” We’re walking towards the parking lot where her mother’s car is probably running and waiting for two fourteen-year-old girls with dead older sisters.
“Coach kept us in because some guy wouldn’t do his pushups correctly” seems to be an acceptable answer. I am still trying to mentally close and lock the weak flyaway wooden door that is putting up a good fight for being so weak and flyaway.
Rachel greets her mother and I get into the backseat with her. She doesn’t like sitting up front when I’m riding home with her – which is every day.
“How was your day?” asks Mrs. Rensley. I’ve never known her to say anything other than that. She’s always quiet and slinking around the house if she’s not holed up in her room.
The door rattles. We don’t answer her question because I am nearly trembling from the exertion of trying not to remember and Rachel can tell I’m trying not to think about the thing she doesn’t want to think about either but it’s infectious and I know her door is opening as well, or whatever container she keeps her memories in.
I get out of the car so suddenly when we park in Rachel’s driveway that I’m assaulted by a head rush so severe it’s blackblueorangered blotting out my eyesightvision. I clench my teeth and grab the side of the car for support, a pain tearing at the space between my eyes. It’s like someone just punched me with a blunt needle on the base of the bridge of my nose.
“Sara, you okay?” Rachel. Mrs. Rensley has probably already gone inside.
Slowly the pain subsides and I stumble forward. “Yeah.” A white garage door and beige-painted walls swim into view.
This sort of thing happening to me isn’t uncommon. Rachel and I go into the house without further worrying.
A random draft of cornbread is lifted to my nose, and the amount of energy it takes to stop my hands from taking a piece off the dining table is enormous. I grit my teeth. I am strong. I will not eat. I am skinny.
“Want some?” Rachel pinches off a crumb and places it on her tongue.
Against the wishes of my brain and saliva on my tongue, who can already taste the soft bread maybe spread with some butter and chew and swallow and repeat, I shake my head.
“What did you have for lunch? Maybe you can spare just a piece.” Rachel casually lifts her hand to her hip, but I know she is pressing for the pain under her skin and denim.
“Water. For breakfast I had bread.” In desperation my brain automatically calculates the total. Only 55 so far. I can eat a slice of cornbread and tack on a 100. And then I can skimp on dinner with only a Fuji apple, 50.
“Here, take one,” Rachel says, handing over a thinly cut slice. My fingers savor the feeling of hundreds of crumbs packed together and breaking apart to sprinkle on the floor. It’s bright yellow, the edges a bit darker.
I bite. The square rests on my tongue, soaking up my taste buds and I can taste the butter in the mix, the sugar and the flour and every other ingredient adding their numbers. Chew. It swirls deliciously between my teeth, so thankful it’s not even getting stuck. Swallow. There it goes down my throat, so effortlessly.
Rachel’s already on her second piece and I’m not even halfway through this one. I take another bite and chew fifteen times before swallowing.
Her eyes flicker shut. I look up from my concentration and catalogue the look on her face. I know Rachel has occasional lapses where she dips back into the past, anything that reminds her of Jillian. She is not as strong as I am.
Her feet are moving and taking her to the downstairs bathroom. I follow and shut the door behind her once we’re inside. Rachel claims what she does isn’t lethal. It doesn’t even qualify as self-mutilating in the book of therapists.
She removes a small golden thumbtack from the medicine cabinet. Her eyes are wide open now, watching herself in the mirror. I’m sure she’s forgotten I am standing behind her. The point of the thumbtack is microscopic, sharp, slicing the air into ribbons as she sits down on the toilet. Up goes the hem of her shirt, down goes the waistband of her jeans. She presses the impossibly thin tip of the tack to the skin on her left hip and inscribes a line, winter-silent. I cannot feel what she feels, but I can picture the black memories, bad blood, angerhurthatesadness pouring out of the four centimeter exit. Beads of blood bubble from the pink wound but Rachel wipes them away with her finger.
Down goes the hem of her shirt, up goes the waistband of her jeans.
All done.
A blissful smile has clawed its way onto Rachel’s features and it’s like someone has pushed the reset button on her emotions. She puts away the thumbtack and washes her finger.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rachel laughs. Her arms move more freely, as if all the tension is leaking steadily out of the secret in her skin.
I hand her a red-rimmed grin and she inquires to me, “How’re you doing?”
“I just got to 90.0,” I declare proudly, lifting my shirt and swiveling my body for a side view. My stomach is a slight depression in my upper body, my lower ribs hiding beneath a few more layers of fat. I’ve gone from a 97.0 to a 90.4 in one week and half an inch separates my thighs.
“Good job, you’re doing great,” encourages Rachel. She unlocks the bathroom door and we spill out into the living room. I am walking on a cloud as she rambles on about how the teachers at school are oh so oblivious.
Michelle’s body is cremated because she had never wanted to lie in a box, trapped, in the ground. This way, she will be sailing the seas and flying with the wind. Maybe she will even come to visit me at night and tell me stories about what high school is like so I won’t be scared.
Before she is burned, I get to see her. We go to the mortuary and all I can smell is sterilized air wafting through the vents. It doesn’t smell like dead people like I thought it would.
Michelle is still beautiful, even though her head is cracked and she is black and blue. The blood is gone but her skin is still split and she is lying in an unnatural position. Mom bursts into tears and Dad has to look away, but I am transfixed, my eyes scanning her thin arms and legs. I feel as if I have failed her, always being the younger sister tagalong and cramming too much into my growing body. Michelle was never fat, Michelle always looked great. My legs feel like lead, burdened by the fat on my arms and plate of bacon and eggs in my stomach. Her honey-brown hair is matted and parted where her skull broke the glass and itself, and suddenly my stomach revolts, I have to focus on the grey floor. If your stomach were empty and flat like Michelle’s, we wouldn’t be having this problem, my subconscious sneers at me. I am ashamed.
The daytimes are hollow. There is no one bounding about the house joyously announcing plans. The nighttimes are haunted. I lay in my room, watching the seawater slowly fill up my bedroom like a giant tank, until Michelle’s head splashes out of the water like a mermaid. Her hair is back in its voluptuous waves, so unlike mine, and her skin is stitched together with invisible thread that makes her glow. She’s wearing her prom dress and it’s clinging to her body like it was never shredded apart mercilessly.
“Hey, Sara-Bear.” She smiles at me and despite the water flooding my carpet, I sit up in bed and tears leak down my cheeks without my permission. “No, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.”
“Michelle, I miss you,” I whimper, wanting to go and hug her but afraid of the water. I can see the fish exploring my bookcase, their mouths going opencloseopenclose, and the seashells littering the floor.
“I miss you too. I miss everyone.” Her entire body has emerged from the water and she sits on her knees, staring forlornly at me. Her makeup is smeared and the heels on her heels are cracked.
“Did it hurt?” The question slips past my lips before I can stop it. I take in Michelle’s perfection, even as a ghost in death. Or is she real? Either way, I vow to make her proud.
“I didn’t feel a thing, Sara-Bear.” She gives me a sad smile and wades over to my acoustic Fender cutaway. It fits in her lap like it was made for her, half submerged and yet I doubt it feels a thing. I’m not sure how Michelle can manipulate living objects. Her fingers pick away at the strings, playing no definite melody. “Go back to sleep now.”
“But I don’t want to leave you.” I don’t want to leave Michelle to the darkness, to the otherworld where she lives now. I want to stay here with her. My tear ducts fill and boil over and longing pangs my heart. “I don’t want you to be gone.” My voice cracks in multiple places.
Michelle doesn’t answer, but continues to play. I am drifting off to sleep against my will before I realize she is playing ‘Half Alive’ by Secondhand Serenade.
I shake my head and circle my thighs with my index fingers and thumbs. They don’t quite touch yet. For my fingertips to meet, that is my goal. Michelle doesn’t visit me often anymore, but she drops by from time to time when I am frustrated and listens to me play.
55 + 0 + 100 + 50 = 205.
♠ ♠ ♠
Critique + Comments. ♥