Alone at Six

We walked into the patterned sterile white and egg shell room which Cole was placed in. There was no question on whether or not it was hers once the melody greeted my ears in a slightly familiar way. Only this time, instead of sad or depressed, it just sounded tortured and broken.

“Once said, always said. I will hold the past over your head. I'll speak my mind whenever I feel slighted. I am hellbent on extracting all of my revenge. Take heart, sweetheart, or I will take it from you.”

We walked into her line of vision and she immediately stopped, hostility drowning out any melody as she addressed Dash. "Don't you ever go home? I'm fine. Don't you have school or something?"

"Don't you have school?" Dash countered as he sat in the chair next to her bed. "Didn't you skip it?"

"I'm getting high A's in all my classes. You're barely passing."

Glancing back at me, he gave a smart smile. "She’s a pretentious bitch, isn't she?"

"Yep, I am." Cole sneered. "And you're a self-righteous jackass."

"I can feel how deep your relationship runs." I cut in before they could continue to go at each other. "Sibling love."

Dash shot me a look then stood. "Yeah, whatever. I'm going to find something to eat."

"Hopefully some cyanide." Cole mumbled, giving a peeved smirk when he looked back.

"Bite me bitch" Dash sneered before shutting the door. The sound of the click rang through the room and kicked off the awkward silence, not anything like the silence that I remembered and missed sharing with Cole.

Finally, I broke through the flimsy nothing with words I didn't think through. "You guys are so...... genial towards each other. It's kind of surprising to know that he likes yo-" In horror, I cut myself off. Did Cole know? Was I just proving to be even more of a douchebag than I've already gotten everyone to believe? Great fucking job, Beirsack.

Cole didn't look up at me when she spoke, but the light blush on her face almost said she'd caught it. "Well, the best of you, you know how they say someone special like that should bring it out?"

"Yeah." She knew. She's known it seems. And if she's figured him out, has she figured me out too? I tried not to let that thought scare me. "So what?"

"I feel that Dash doesn't do that. He brings out the worst in me most of the time. But, about being bad with him.... I like it. I like having someone to spend time with at my worst and not having to worry, someone to, every once in awhile have a bad streak with for fun. It wasn't a question of whether I was a good person or I lacked the courage to be bad. With him, I 'm just bad." She was quiet for a moment, but them added, "And we fight a lot lately."

The words reassured me, but only a little "Do you like the bad coming out?"

"Well, no. I like the way it feels, but I don't like the way it feels to other people. Like how it felt to you. So I don't like it."

"Well, if Dash brings out the bad in you then how do you just resort back to the good when he's gone?" I asked, remembering how as soon as Dash left the room, all hostility followed. Cole went back to being the unsure and quiet girl I've known. "How do you just snap out of it like that?"

"Well, um, you see.." She reached for her inadvisable chains, settling for gripping the sheets she was laying on. "You do, I've noticed. I'm..... not as selfish with you around. I don't keep as much to myself. But I know you'll leave soon, so I didn't want to cling onto that version of me. I still don't want to. I don't want to think of who I could be with you when I know I can never be it. I never planned on having you be part of my life because I know you never will be. It's selfish, I know, but what else can I do? Hold onto a false hope? I don't have the vitality to deal with anything more than I already am. I mean, look at me now."

Then I was lucky she couldn't meet my eyes, couldn't see the terror that I felt building behind them. If it wasn't for me, she wouldn't be sitting in this bed. Things would have been better. I was the reason she looked so awful right now, I was the reason she was so pale, frail, lifeless, dead. I was the reason she sounded so heartbreaking. My just talking to her succeed in killing the goal I was working my way to.

"I'm sorry" Cole's voice gently crept through my consciousness. "I really didn't mean for this to happen. I tried to avoid it, to stop it, make sure this didn't happen."

After meeting my eye long enough for a curious look to pass, she hung her head and said "It..... it became clear to me, the severity, when you climbed through the window. When you stayed and put up with Dashiell. I guess I should have realized sooner, but I assumed you were just being nice, just thought it was cool to hang out with me. I'm sorry, but I can't let anything like that happen to me with you. I didn't mean for this to happen. I know I'm probably being above myself, acting like you won't be over it in a few days, but I can't help but say it, I feel bad. I'm being selfish, I'm sorry. I just..... I just need to watch after myself right now."

The silence was heavy. Crushing and squeezing every last slither of breath from my under-worked lungs. Luckily, Dash saved me from my breaking thoughts and slowly manifesting words as he strode through the door and threw a plastic bag at my face.

"Food, eat it." Dash instructed as he handed Cole a bottle. "Here."

"Dash, why are you still here?" Cole questioned, rather annoyed. "Go home."

"Why?" He shrugged "You know I have no life ever since you left."

"That was six years ago, and you have school."

"School? I don't remember signing up for that."

"What are you talking about? You called me and complained about how it took them so long to get the classes you picked straight."

"Whatever. It's not like I have any uses for them."

"How about for getting a job? You know, to do something with your life." Cole gestured to me, the only thing to break me out of my numb automatic of looking back and forth through their conversation. "Even Andy finished high school."

"Yep." I nodded dumbly, trying to gain a small part of my composure back.

"Yeah, whatever." Dash went back to gnawing at gummy worms.

"God," Cole sighed as she twisted open the lid of the glass bottle. "He acts as if he has no future, as if he'll die young."

After successfully swallowing one of the chewy candies, Dash contributed, "Well, you sometimes act as if you want to."

She didn't deny it. "That's different. You don't want to, or at least you never told me you do. You act like you have. You just do everything like you're not going to do anything with your life, like it's your last day on earth."

"That's because there's no way of telling if you want this to be yours. I don't live down the street anymore, I don't know when that day will be. I have to be prepared to drop everything. The best way to make sure there are no loose ends is to do nothing to begin with, I'm being responsible by being irresponsible. Besides, I'd rather spend more time with you then waste my time preparing for some future I don't even care about."

"Just because I die doesn't mean that you will. We're not conjoined."

"I told you, I had no life ever since you left," He said a bit too solemnly. "If you permanently leave, then I'll have even less of one and it won't be worth it. So if you die, I die. If you feel like you can't take it anymore and even I or Andrew fucking Beirsack can't help that and you feel you want to end it all, I'll do it too. I'll die with you whenever you want."

"I didn't ask for that." Cole snapped, not seeming to care about any confession he may have made. "If I die, it'd be senseless and selfish for you to die too. Don't be stupid."

"Don't act like I'm the only one being selfish here." His lashed back. This seemed to erase everything but the angered look on Cole's face. We all knew she had nothing to negate that with, she couldn't deny it. We all knew exactly how many wrongs she was in, even if she put herself there and no one else saw it as so.

"That's what I thought," Dashiel said as the tension and seemingly normal rancor pushed me out of the room.