They'll Never Take My Heart

After Silver Electric’s accident, neither of us were allowed outside without a killjoy backup. Well, to be honest, Silver wasn’t going anywhere much at all. She wasn’t doing well… The bullet totally exposed her spine. I almost passed out when I helped bandage it up. Silver was just drifting in and out of consciousness for the last week, someone always going on the hour every hour to check on her. And during that time when I wasn’t really good for anything (“Silver just needs some more sleep, why don’t you make some more explosives, or practice aiming with the raygun?”) I learned how to make paper stars. And every single one I made, I wished on. And almost every single wish was the same. I wanted Silver to get better, so everyone could be happy again. I just wanted everyone to be happy again. Silver wasn’t always, in her dream place. Sometimes she looked like she was in worse pain than ever, and that’s when I was supposed to call in Dr. D to make her better. So for that week, after running out of nitroglycerin, all I did was make paper stars. They were everywhere… In the booth seats, on the counter, in my boots, in Jet Star’s hair, on Dr. D’s radio, all over my bed, and several on the ceiling. No one bothered me about it until I overheard Kobra and Poison talking one night when once again, I couldn’t sleep.

“She’s going overboard with this wishing thing, Gee.” Gerard was Poison’s old name. Gee was a nickname.

“C’mon, Mikey. It makes her happy.” Poison replied.

“They’re all over the place.” Kobra argued

“She’s just a kid, even younger than Silver. Kids do things like this.” Poison was obviously getting tired at this point.

“You know what she wishes for. What if it doesn’t happen? Then what will you say? ‘Sorry, but the world’s a ****ed up place?’ I don’t want to be the one to tell her that there’s no point in wishing on stars. You say she’s just a kid, but so is Silver and you don’t see her doing stupid things like this. Adrenaline’s different and you know it. She has the body of a teenager but the mind of a four year old.” That hurt…

“She may be a kid, but she’s not an idiot, so stop acting like she is. Silver’s going to be fine, and then we can clean out the stars. Tomorrow I’ll tell her to put all of them in a box, or something. You’ve seen her face when we tell her that she can’t help, she’s just lonely right now. Making stars keeps her mind off of it. And we’re all a bit different, in case you haven’t noticed. Now go to sleep already.” Poison groaned. I know what I was doing was childish, but a part of me wanted to believe that wishing enough would make reality.

“A-adrenaline?” Silver croaked. Sometimes she would talk when she woke up, others she would just stare for a bit and then go back to sleep.

“Yeah, Silver?” I whispered, moving so that I was next to her bed

“What color is my spine?” She asked with a slight smile. “Fun told me before that you could see it. Once you get past the gross-ness, I think that’s pretty ****ing cool.”

“It’s kind of a white-gray-blue, if Adrenaline remembers right.” I replied, shuddering at the memory of seeing it.

“Epic.” Was all she said, and then she was out again. Well, at least she hadn’t changed much through all of this. My first instinct was then to reach for my paper and fold some more, but remembering what Kobra said, I stopped. Instead, I pulled my knees up to my chest and started humming. It was a song that Jet played a while ago. Poison had words for it, too.

“Well I was there on the day they sold the cars to the queen, and when the lights all went out, we watched our lives on the screen. I hate the ending myself, but it started with an alright scene…” I sang as quietly as I could. “It was the roar of the crowd that gave me heartache to sing, it was a lie when they smiled, and said you won’t feel a thing-” I’d forgotten the lyrics from that point on, but I remembered the tune, so I continued to hum.

‘Mind of a four year old…’I thought bitterly. Is that really how they saw me? ‘And what did Kobra mean,

‘what if it doesn’t happen’?’

“You’re gonna be ok, Silver.” I said. “You’re gonna be ok and then everyone’s gonna be happy again.”

Before the shooting, she’d explained to me her view of the killjoy family. “And you’re gonna be part of the family, too. You’ll see.” Before this, we were just along for the ride. But they cared about her like family more than family cared for family sometimes. That night, I didn’t sleep. Or the next, or the next, or the next after that. My stars were packed away in a box, like Poison said, and Silver was waking up for longer and longer each time. She was getting better and better every day. But I couldn’t sleep. My mask hid the dark circles, and during the day I’d gotten better at forcing myself to stay awake. But I think the others noticed a change. I wasn’t talking as much, and Silver, when almost completely healed, finally yelled at Poison for not checking on me. But I didn’t need it. I was going to change the way they saw me. So the nights of dreaming were replaced by furious scribbling in my notebooks. If I didn’t talk, my thoughts wouldn’t be exposed and then no one could compare my thought process to a four year old’s. So everything I thought about went into the notebooks instead. Like a diary, but accompanied by pictures. Skeletons holding guns, suns that projected darkness instead of light, people howling at the moon, things that I’d seen before me, without seeing them. Hallucinations, I think... Silver knew I wasn’t sleeping much, but I’d learned to fake it half decently. And even though I had to hide them, I still made my stars, and continued to wish.