Bones
Eighteen
When Laura first appears in Jamie’s life, he feels his whole world stop and restart in a matter of moments. Everything up to that point was pointless. None of it mattered, not a single thing. She appears, all girl-ish with long blonde hair down to the small of her back, blue eyes, pink lips. Small breasts and a tiny waist, but the presence of curves still clinging to her frame. Up until this point in time, Jamie had never felt anything remotely close to attraction (well, except one but that doesn’t count.)
Laura starts a war with Jamie’s hormones, and he was losing the battle with little complaints.
It isn’t until Jamie’s 17 and in his last year of school that he meets Laura, even though they’ve gone to the same for the last 3 years. He never really noticed her, and he’s confused as to why.
But that’s not what matters here.
Jamie approaches her, fumbling over a stutter that’s just magically appeared. He says he’d like to be friends. He says his name is Jamie, and she smiles and he smiles and she smiles and he smiles. And she says that her name is Laura, and that’s the beginning of the end.
Jamie fell in love in a matter of fifty seven days, and he barely notices. When Laura first kisses him, he freezes and for a moment she thinks she shouldn’t have done that. This is the first time Jamie’s kissed anyone other than his mother and his great aunt Thelma who always left near purple stains on his fat little cheeks. But when he kisses her back, that’s when everything changes. That little spark of heat would affect the rest of Jamie’s life in ways that make him want to take it back.
As they spend more time together, Jamie starts to notice things about Laura. Like the way her hips sway, the beautiful way her wrist curves into her hand. The way she runs her fingers through her hair when she lets out a genuine laugh. He notices the gap between her thighs and the lovely way her buttocks curves to meet them in such beautiful symmetry. There’s a birthmark right there, in that perfect little curve, a perfect little circle on her perfect lily skin. He likes the moments he gets to do this - just look, just study. It’s in moments like this that he feels truly safe. And it’s in moments like this where they talk and talk and talk and things start to fall in to place.
And one day, Laura says that she needs to tell Jamie something. Instantly his stomach drops. She’s tired of me she’s tired of me she’s tired of me. What did I do what did I do and how can I fix how how how. His brain scrambles to set itself straight and he does his best to let it, but curiosity and fear get messy when they meet.
And what Laura says, Jamie certainly does not expect. She tells him about her Game, and she asks if he wants to play along with her. She says shell teach him the rules, and even how to cheat. And before she really explains anything, he agrees. Albeit stupidly, he agrees. Simply because he loves her and the way she talks about this game makes it seem innocent and lovely and fun. Lovelylovelylovely.
Had Jamie’s hormones not been raging, his amygdala telling him he was in love, then this would be the point where he realized exactly how bat shit insane Laura was. Exactly how not Perfect Laura was. She was really Evil Laura, Queen of Nothing and Destroyer of Lives.
But to be fair, this Thing - this obsession of Jamie’s – it didn’t start with Laura. No, she was just the catalyst that split his life into two paths – he of course took the wrong one. This Thing (because truly, it didn’t have a name and Jamie never tried to give it one), it started when he was thirteen and diagnosed with the big bad D word. He didn’t start doing this to himself on purpose, honest. It was the pills, they killed everything. His emotions, his life, took his already lacking appetite and exiled it into nonexistence. The expression ‘eat to live not live to eat,’ that’s what Jamie was, a simple personification of a phrase composed of a measly eight letters. He began to notice things, little things. The visibility of tendons when he extended his thumb, how when he reached out his veins tried to claw their way through his forearm. How when he lay down, his ribs would protrude, his hip bones. The shadow under his collar bone. It was all so lovely. And things were okay. They weren’t great, but they were okay which was good enough for him.
Then Laura came along, and she turned Jamie’s fascination into an obsession. She turned it into a Game, but changed the rules so many times she made it impossible for anyone to win. And then she did the worst thing she could possibly do, so much fucking worse than introducing the Game or the Tricks or anything else.
She quit.
And she left Jamie to play by himself, to make up his own rules. (He’s losing, dear God is he losing.)
The thing Laura never told him though, the thing it took Laura’s death for him to figure out: no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you play the Game, you won’t win.
You can’t, and this is etched behind Jamie’s eyes, to torture him every waking moment.
To Jamie failure may not be an option, but neither is success and that’s just how things have decided to fall.
Laura starts a war with Jamie’s hormones, and he was losing the battle with little complaints.
It isn’t until Jamie’s 17 and in his last year of school that he meets Laura, even though they’ve gone to the same for the last 3 years. He never really noticed her, and he’s confused as to why.
But that’s not what matters here.
Jamie approaches her, fumbling over a stutter that’s just magically appeared. He says he’d like to be friends. He says his name is Jamie, and she smiles and he smiles and she smiles and he smiles. And she says that her name is Laura, and that’s the beginning of the end.
Jamie fell in love in a matter of fifty seven days, and he barely notices. When Laura first kisses him, he freezes and for a moment she thinks she shouldn’t have done that. This is the first time Jamie’s kissed anyone other than his mother and his great aunt Thelma who always left near purple stains on his fat little cheeks. But when he kisses her back, that’s when everything changes. That little spark of heat would affect the rest of Jamie’s life in ways that make him want to take it back.
As they spend more time together, Jamie starts to notice things about Laura. Like the way her hips sway, the beautiful way her wrist curves into her hand. The way she runs her fingers through her hair when she lets out a genuine laugh. He notices the gap between her thighs and the lovely way her buttocks curves to meet them in such beautiful symmetry. There’s a birthmark right there, in that perfect little curve, a perfect little circle on her perfect lily skin. He likes the moments he gets to do this - just look, just study. It’s in moments like this that he feels truly safe. And it’s in moments like this where they talk and talk and talk and things start to fall in to place.
And one day, Laura says that she needs to tell Jamie something. Instantly his stomach drops. She’s tired of me she’s tired of me she’s tired of me. What did I do what did I do and how can I fix how how how. His brain scrambles to set itself straight and he does his best to let it, but curiosity and fear get messy when they meet.
And what Laura says, Jamie certainly does not expect. She tells him about her Game, and she asks if he wants to play along with her. She says shell teach him the rules, and even how to cheat. And before she really explains anything, he agrees. Albeit stupidly, he agrees. Simply because he loves her and the way she talks about this game makes it seem innocent and lovely and fun. Lovelylovelylovely.
Had Jamie’s hormones not been raging, his amygdala telling him he was in love, then this would be the point where he realized exactly how bat shit insane Laura was. Exactly how not Perfect Laura was. She was really Evil Laura, Queen of Nothing and Destroyer of Lives.
But to be fair, this Thing - this obsession of Jamie’s – it didn’t start with Laura. No, she was just the catalyst that split his life into two paths – he of course took the wrong one. This Thing (because truly, it didn’t have a name and Jamie never tried to give it one), it started when he was thirteen and diagnosed with the big bad D word. He didn’t start doing this to himself on purpose, honest. It was the pills, they killed everything. His emotions, his life, took his already lacking appetite and exiled it into nonexistence. The expression ‘eat to live not live to eat,’ that’s what Jamie was, a simple personification of a phrase composed of a measly eight letters. He began to notice things, little things. The visibility of tendons when he extended his thumb, how when he reached out his veins tried to claw their way through his forearm. How when he lay down, his ribs would protrude, his hip bones. The shadow under his collar bone. It was all so lovely. And things were okay. They weren’t great, but they were okay which was good enough for him.
Then Laura came along, and she turned Jamie’s fascination into an obsession. She turned it into a Game, but changed the rules so many times she made it impossible for anyone to win. And then she did the worst thing she could possibly do, so much fucking worse than introducing the Game or the Tricks or anything else.
She quit.
And she left Jamie to play by himself, to make up his own rules. (He’s losing, dear God is he losing.)
The thing Laura never told him though, the thing it took Laura’s death for him to figure out: no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter how well you play the Game, you won’t win.
You can’t, and this is etched behind Jamie’s eyes, to torture him every waking moment.
To Jamie failure may not be an option, but neither is success and that’s just how things have decided to fall.