Nobody's Listening

N I N E

The drive to the hospital would be long, because it was on the other side of town, closer to Southside High than to Northside High, which was our school. James sprawled out in the passenger's seat with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling. He had his left sleeve pulled up for once and was stroking the scars with his pointer and middle finger.

"So what about your mom?" I asked, having to break the depressing silence.

James slowly looked up from his calm and stared at me for a few moments. Then he laid his head back and sighed. "She divorced my dad and remarried. She lives near Northside, but she smothers me." He laughed, but it didn't sound the same as usual; it was still cold and sharp, like a knife. "You'd think that since my father hates me, I'd enjoy the love, huh?" I glanced over at him to see him shrug. "I hate being smothered to the point where I have no freedom. And it's not a good type of smothering. It's like she's afraid that I'll turn into my dad, so she tries to keep me from all people." He sighed again. "Plus, she always hated depressed people."

I was at a loss for words. "I didn't think you were still depressed."

He laughed again and resumed stroking his arm. "You never really get over it. Just when you think things are getting better, when things are truly turning around, when you start feeling this flicker of something that may be happiness, it's gone. And everything goes back to square one. Or around that area. And all that hope of it getting better gets lost for a couple of days or weeks or months. And that flicker of happiness you might have felt for a minute, an hour, a day, a week, it seems like a dream."

At a red light, I look over at him; I'm sure he's gone delusional from the blood loss. James is stroking one scar in particular, one that looks the oldest and perhaps the deepest. "This one I carved using my dad's hunting knife. It was when I was fourteen. Things had just been boiling down to a point that I couldn't handle, and I needed help. I think that was the year that mother dearest had her second child with step-father. I was being replaced by everyone, including my friends. I cracked. I went to rehab for a week after that."

The light turned green. I started to drive as he started telling me the story of every scar he ever had. A scorch mark from when he was high and sixteen years old, and he couldn't feel the high, so he took the lighter and burned his skin away. A horizontal scar right across his wrist after a week that everyone had called him a faggot; he had gone to rehab for a second time for a week again. The newest one, only a few months old, was jagged and still a rich red. He didn't have a great story for that one, he said with a chuckle.

"Just depressed," he explained lamely. "I've hidden this one pretty well. They're not trophies like they were in tenth grade. They're not even reminders of the past, or little things that got me high, and I didn't do them so I could feel again. I just did them because I felt like it. Is that a bad reason?"

I gulped, feeling like he was a ticking time bomb next to me. "I used to want to be a psychologist when I was a freshman, but I realized I didn't really have enough patience with people like that. And I never wanted to be a doctor, because I have a weakness for blood. But I've always wanted to be a poet, or a writer. A photographer, a teacher, a singer; anything that inspires people. Because honestly, I've never wanted to fix people; I've just wanted to inspire people to fix themselves, you know?

"And I have my ideas and my beliefs. So no, I don't think that's a bad reason. I just hate the fact that you are so amazing and you can't see it, and you're even trying to hide it from me. You shouldn't cut yourself just because you're bored."

He scoffed. "Well, that's great and all, but it wasn't from boredom. I guess I just wanted to burn."

I pulled into the hospital parking lot (finally) and James grabbed my hand before I could jump out. "Haven't you ever wanted to burn?" He inched closer to me and ran the tips of his fingers over my face. "Have your lungs burn from running or smoking? Have your skin itch and crawl? Have your passion not be just words and thoughts in your head, but outside, pulsing around your body?" His fingers met my lips and a charge went through my body that made me jerk backwards.

"Pretty sure that's called hormones," I choke out and escaped from the van. "C'mon, it can't be good to leave you bleeding out still."

James opened the van door and started to step out, but swayed. I rushed around the van and steadied him. "Dezza… why are there three of you?" He tried getting out and blanched, his eyes crossing as he slumped forward, passed out, blood running from his leg and staining my van's carpeted floors.