A Skeleton's Prisoner

My door slams shut with a bang--like the one in my heart when I heard my mom start arguing with my dad over the phone again--and before my body's even fully collapsed into bed, my fingers are speed-dialing Nate.

"What's the sitch?" he answers.

"Stop that, it's nerdy and you're not Kim Possible."

He laughs. "What's up?"

"It's back."

A nimble-fingered skeleton lurking in the corner of my room, my depression's back. It holds in its hands an opaque-beyond-opaque midnight blanket, cool fabric at the ready to fling itself over my body and fuse to my skin. I hate that goddamn fucking skeleton.

This time, Nate sighs. "What are they fighting about now?"

I get to my feet, open my door a crack, poke my ear outside.

"Apparently, my dad's two months behind on paying the phone bill. Fucking waste of sperm."

"Want me to come over?"

"I have to study for the math test tomorrow..."

"I'll help you."

This is why Nate is my best friend. Before him, I would have just pushed my homework to the floor, crawled into bed with my laptop warming my thighs, and spent half the night wasting time online.

When he gets here I let him in through the side entrance, unwilling to walk through the verbal battlefield that stands between me and and the front door. My stomach's a bundle of nerves like it always is around him, even though I tell myself numerous times to calm the fuck down before he figures out that I like him as way more than a friend.

I take two deep breaths and lead the way upstairs to my room. I try not to look at his ass as we climb the stairs.

I don't succeed.

He collapses into the exact same bed-spot I was in and starts rifling through my binder.

"So, what is it that you needed help with?"

"Um, everything?"

Laughing good-naturedly, he pats the empty bed-space next to him, and I eagerly claim it.

"Can you put your iTunes on shuffle?" he asks. "Math is unbearable unless I have music."

"Sure."

After listening to a couple of songs, he puts his pencil down and looks at me incredulously.

"Rachel. Your taste in music..."

"Don't even go there."

"We've gone from death metal to country to techno in less than ten minutes. It's bizarre."

"Shut up and teach me trigonometry," I tell him, laughing.

Depression tiptoes around the room, running its fingers over the spines of my many books, wiping dust off of the top of my TV. It slings the blanket over its shoulder and leans against my wall, staring, waiting for the opportunity to pounce.

Fuck off! I shout mentally. Then, I move closer to Nate, who smells like Axe. I never thought I liked Axe until I smelled it on him.

"So for number twelve, you just do...inverse tangent, then whatever the number is?" I ask for clarification.

"Yeah. And then take the number you get and subtract it from pi or 2pi or whatever the constraints are."

"...Why the hell is that so much easier when you explain it?"

"Because I'm awesome, that's why."

I shove his shoulder. My fingers tingle like the bones inside have been replaced with fireworks.

"So...how are things?" he asks carefully.

I sigh. Last week, I’d finally caved and admitted to secretly planning my own death. I’m a total wuss about everything, though, so I didn’t really see the point in telling anyone before. It isn’t like I’m going to actually kill myself. Too many people care about me.

"You can stop walking on eggshells around me, Nate. Just because I'm suicidal doesn't mean that I'm going to do something about it if someone pisses me off."

"Sorry. I just...I'm worried about you."

"You shouldn't be."

He rolls his eyes. "Right. Because most people don’t worry when their best friend tells them that they want to kill themselves."

"I said, just because I'm suicidal--"

"I know, I know. It doesn't mean you're going to do anything about it. But you still feel that way, Rachel. That's what worries me."

He pulls me to him in a hug so tender that I start crying. Like, really crying. Snot-dribbling-out-of-nose, curl-up-in-ball crying. I’m mortified.

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" he asks, terrified that he's done something wrong.

"No, no. Not at all. I forgot what it was like to be touched, that's all."

Emotions swirl behind the stormy depths of his eyes. He tightens his arms around me; my head rests on his chest. It's all so perfect and so natural that I have to keep reminding myself that it hasn't happened before. He’s not mine, he never has been, never will be.

No yummy midnight hair and thunderstorm eyes for you, Rachel.

"What's it like?" he asks.

"What?"

"...Depression."

His question catches me off guard. I take a while to think about it and he thinks I'm upset.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I'm only curious. I can't imagine being so miserable that I'd consider killing myself..."

"It's like someone's come along and turned out all the lights on your life," I tell him. I sit up and grab a tissue. "Like...like there's someone constantly walking behind you, holding a thick blanket over your head. You can feel it, you know it's there once you know what it is, but that doesn't do anything to help make it go away. You can see what you should be like, but all you have is the grim reality of the blanket and how it made you its bitch."

Face now free of snot, I chance a look at Nate, who's watching me intently.

"You can try to shake it all you want, but...really, you know it's there for the long haul. That any effort to get rid of it is laughably futile. You'll be miserable forever; you'll always be the one on the outskirts of other people's happiness. You accept it.”

I start picking at a stray thread that’s begun to detach itself from my comforter, and continue.

“But...every once in a while you get so angry...you get so angry that nothing matters anymore, and all you want is a chance to say a giant, bloody 'Fuck you' to anyone who ever contributed to your fucked-up mental bullshit, and...you don't care what you have to do to accomplish it. “

I twist the thread around my finger until my skin goes purple and I imagine the same thing happening to my neck.

“Everyone's the enemy, as far as you're concerned--even your best friends. Unknowingly, they're enemies, because they're happy and you're not. They have what you don't and never will. And...nothing will ever make it all okay."

He stares at me for a long moment, hugs me tighter, so tight I feel like my ribs are being squeezed together, and says he's sorry.

I save my finger from its death. "Don't be. There's nothing you can do about it. And there's really no point in me telling you this, because the only person that can help me is me, and I'm far too fucked-up to even consider it."

“You’re not fucked-up, Rachel. You have a psychological disorder, that’s not—”

“I’m not fucked up? I’m not fucked up? When was the last time you purposely listened to music that made you miserable or held a stuffed animal and pretended it was a romantic interest from a book come to life to tell you everything's going to be okay? When you did everything possible to stop thinking about how badly you wished there was a gun in the house so you could just blow your fucking brains out? ” I shout.

He’s silent.

“Yeah, never, that’s when. Because these types of things don’t happen to people who aren’t fucked-up. People who are normal. Me, on the other hand--I can daydream all I want and tell myself that it’ll all be okay and that being miserable in high school is to be expected and that I'll find love eventually and that I won’t always be so bitterly jealous and secretly malicious, but deep down I know that everything wrong with me, I did to myself, and that blaming someone else only makes me hate myself more for not owning up to my self-initiated fucked-up-ness and trying to do something about it,” I spit.

I take deep breaths and try not to cry again. Nate stares at me.

“Rachel—”

“Don’t you dare try to tell me I’m okay, because I’m not. I hardly do anything right. I like to pretend that someone is coming to save me from all of this and at the same time I have to laugh because really, no one's fucking coming. And I'm sure as hell not going to find them."

"Rachel--"

"I can barely maintain the friendships I do have. I mean, people reach out to me and I can't reach back. I have to literally force myself to contact people, and if someone doesn't talk to me first, I won't say anything at all. I'm alone; all I have is my books and my loneliness, and if the past few years have been any indication of the future, I'll probably always be that way.”

“I’m just trying to help—”

I know I’m being a bitch, but I can’t keep myself from talking. It’s a giant volcanic eruption of misery vomit, triggered by some unknown force.

“Anything that's not silence makes me want to kill myself. It's like..." I sigh, searching for the right words. "Like the whip-crack of lightning in a too-silent sky. Everything is too loud, too obnoxious. All I want is silence, but when I get it, I feel like it's suffocating me. And then there's my family."

I laugh, bitterly.

"They fucking disgust me. Every time my grandma complains about another one of her ailments, I want to vomit. I have to grind my teeth and hold my breath until I'm calm again. Being around them is like being shot by a million arrows--absolutely unbearable and yet impossible to escape. I'm supposed to love them, but every time my dad starts in with one of his half-drunken ramblings, I want to shoot him in the face. He can drown in a pool of his own vomit for all I care."

I meet Nate's gaze again. I feel exhausted, like I’ve just climbed nonstop to the top of Mt. Everest, screamed until there was no air left in my lungs, and climbed back down.

"So don’t tell me that I’m not fucked-up, okay?”

Nate blinks. “Okay.”

The skeleton against my wall slowly claps its hands, pleased. My blood boils.

It was you. You’re doing this. You’re making me tell him all of my shit, because you know that no one in their right mind would want to be around someone as fucked-up as I am.

The skeleton shrugs, as if to say So what?

I force myself to look away and make sure Nate hasn’t fled the premises yet. He’s still there, looking at me in a way that’s half-full of pity, half-full of “Sweet holy shit, this bitch is crazy.”

"So how do you cope?" he asks.

"You don't. You just...breathe, and pretend it doesn't exist, and get on with life."

It’s not until he hands me another tissue that I realize I’m crying again. I reach for it. My skin touches his, and it feels so good that I decide what the hell, why not kiss him, why not just see what happens? I grab his face and move towards him, and just as our lips are two seconds away from touching, bony hands grab my shoulders and yank me backwards.

Nate falls away from me.

“No!”

I scream so loudly I feel as if my throat is seconds away from dissolving into shredded flesh.

No. Don't let it end. Please. Focus.

My pleas are ignored.

The skeleton shakes its head, pulls me again, and then we’re swirling through black space that arranges itself into wisps of smoke and disappears.

I'm standing suddenly in a checker-floored ballroom, the skeleton nearby in a crisp black tux. It’s holding the ever-present blanket. Before I can react, I feel fabric falling over my head. It settles into a dress that fits me so snugly I almost can't breathe. And the thoughts rush in, like overeager family members anxious to see a new baby.

You should have known the Nate thing wasn't real, you dumb, ugly bitch.

Why the hell would Nate like you? He's just some cute kid that sits across from you in math class. He doesn't even know you exist, and yet here you are fantasizing about being friends with him. That's real fucking pathetic.

You have no chance in hell with him, you realize that, don't you? Just give it up.

No one's ever going to love you like you want to be loved so you might as well just gouge your wrist-skin down to the bone and let your blood go on a permanent vacation.

“N-No! You’re lying. It was real. It was real!”

The skeleton laughs, grabs my arm, and pulls me close. Music stutters to life from somewhere unseen. We begin to tango. Depression’s grasp is cold, like holding on to a handful of ice cubes. I’m shivering by the time the music ends, and when I’m released, I back away quickly. Again, the skeleton laughs. In an instant it’s at my side, bony mouth against my ear.

“Mine.”

Faint knocking comes from somewhere above. Black space returns, sweeps me up, and deposits me back into reality. I open my eyes. Tears have soaked the pillow beneath my cheek, and I'm exhausted even though the clock on my bedside table says I slept for ten hours. I sit up, berating myself for letting my mind wander for the past few minutes instead of grabbing for some more sleep.

The door of my small room opens. A businesslike but pleasant nurse bustles in, bearing a small white cup and a bottle of water.

“Time for meds.”

And I realize that despite all the progress I think I've made, there is only the illusion of escape.

There is no real way out.