Washroom Color

a story left untold .

Whenever I see my face in a mirror, I feel sick to my stomach.

I'm not sure why that is, and I never take enough time when I look to let myself figure it out. I knew for sure, that there were bags beneath my eyes, and bruises line my thin arms, just from sleeping too soundly in bed. I knew that when I turned in the mirror, so my back is facing the glass, I would see the bruises that went all the way up my back.

For the most part, the fatigue was gone, and for the most part my glands had refrained from swelling, but I was terrified that I'd wake up one morning and everything would be scary again, and everything would stop being “normal”.

And it was then, when I was feeling as healthy as I could be, when I met Garrett. He was a friend of my brother I never had gotten around to meeting when I still lived at home. Back home over my winter break from school and staying with my parents, my twin brother Seth, and baby sister Anna. Anna, I knew, was just completely obsessed with this band called the Maine. They were friends of my brother (or so he'd said) but it was just typical of Anna to not start actually listening to their music until she saw an ad for them in some magazine. I'd heard of them before, I'd listened to her babble on about the members about about how amazing their songs were, and how funny they were “in real life.” On my first night back I caught her with her laptop at the kitchen table, pretty much forcing our mom to look at the screen and watch endless videos of their band and whatever.

I was never really into it, but then again for my whole life I'd never found anything that I was “into,” in the same way that Anna was when she got excited over something: not so much as to call myself obsessed and consumed, that is. Garrett was kind of a different story though. Even when it was just in the beginning, and even when I was convincing myself that it would never happen, because it should never happen, there was something that kept me infatuated enough that I could never bring myself to completely separate myself from him, no matter how hard I tried.

We were all sitting at the dinner table, December 5th, the day I'd gotten in. Dad at the head of the table, then me, then Anna, and mom, and Seth sat across from me just like he used to when we'd eat dinner together as a family back when we were in high school. Before I spent weeks at a time in the hospital. It was Anna's fifteenth birthday, and the dinner had just been eaten, and Seth was pushing aside his plate of cake to reach over the table to hand an envelope to Anna.

“You better appreciate this,” He said, rubbing his hands together and adjusting his tee-shirt at the neckline. Anna grabbed for the envelope and ripped it at the top, without a clear line of where the flap was.

Tickets fell from her hand, and Anna squealed in delight. “Wow, no. WAY!” she'd gone all fan girl now, and excited, I leaned over to see what she was so excited about. Oh. Tickets. To see who other than the Maine, because Seth was just the guy who'd be able to spring tickets. Cause clearly we were all cheap bastards.

I raised my eyebrows, and Seth looked at me with a shrug, and then looked at Anna. “They're only going to be here for another few weeks, then they're going back on tour.” He said. “This is their las show before they break.”

“Oh my god, thank you so much, Seth.” She squealed once more, “Who's the other one for? Can I bring a friend?”

“Oh, that one's for Hannah.”

I coughed a little, and dad laughed. “Isn't she a little old, for that kind of thing?”

Seth looked at him as though he was crazy. “Dad, you have no idea.”