Where You Left Me

Dearest Carter,

Today I was at our usual coffee shop at our usual table and I was trying so hard to be invisible and hide behind In The Time of the Butterflies when someone started to talk to me. And when I peeked out behind the edge of the book my heart stopped for a moment because I could’ve sworn it was you. The sun was in my eyes, but there was golden hair and the hint of a smile, broad shoulders, and lanky arms. I wanted it so badly to be you that I almost didn’t put up my hand to block the sun and see their face.

And then I did, and it wasn’t you like the rational part of me knew, but it still hurt like you had died all over again. And sometimes when I get like that it’s like I can’t breathe or think and everything in the world is just you dying. And it’s the most horrible feeling because you are too beautiful to be dead, but you are. And by now you’re probably decomposed, and the bugs are eating you and I will never, not even for one second, get you back.

And it wasn’t you, because his eyes were brown and not blue, and his nose was crooked like it had been broken and he looked at me and smiled and asked me out. And I was in that dark place and all I could hear was a roaring in my ears and I thought I was going to be sick because I couldn’t tell him that I have a boyfriend because I don’t really have one anymore, and instead I rushed away like he was a ghost and came home covered in tears and my mother took one look at me and sent me to my room.

And that’s why I’m here, because I need you. And damnit, I hate you for dying. I hate you I hate you I hate you. I want you so bad, I need you so bad. How am I supposed to exist in this world without you? How is it that you get to move on and I’m stuck here forever trying to figure out how to be without you. How do you die? Why does this God let it happen? How do you stop living all together, how do you just stop breathing, stop thinking. And I bet it hurts so badly, I bet dying is absolutely horrible. I bet you can feel the life draining from you and there’s nothing that you can do to stop it.

The day after I fell in love with you those years ago, you came to my locker before school and stood there and just looked at me without saying a word and it made me so uncomfortable that I wanted to snap at you.

And then finally, “So how are you?” you asked.

“Sufficiently creeped out,” I said while shoving my books inside my locker and causing a mini-avalanche on the top shelf which I had to stop with my knee and I had to figure out how to get them to all go back again the way I found them.

“So can I walk you to class?” You asked, leaning forward on your toes like you were about to share a secret, or fall over from excitement and you were so amusingly cute that I wanted to kiss your neck and whisper your name and never have to think about anyone else ever again. And I guess that is what happened after a while, when we both became so involved in each other it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist at all.

“Not today,” I said, and closed my locker shut and dove into crowd before I though you could follow and you tried to for a few feet before you gave up and found your way down the hallway to your own classroom, and I found my way to my own, without any help from you.

Alexi was digging out her nail polish when I got to class, and today it was a violent shade of green, like ivy on an old building or grass when it’s just starting to grow, and the constant painting of her nails never ceased to throw me off. Like it was part of her that she was always trying to improve on, make it better, fix it somehow even though as far as I could see she was pretty much flawless. And why do humans try to fix themselves all the time? Why are we never good enough for ourselves? Why is there always more more that we need that we think we need and tell ourselves we need, but we don’t? Why did Alexi paint her nails every day in an attempt to look better than the day before? Why did I try on twenty shirts before I went to school that day so that I would look good enough for you? Why did you keep your hair cut short because you knew that’s how I liked it even though I knew you liked it longer? How do humans expect to strive while we do this? How can we expect to move forward when we can’t even let ourselves makes ourselves happy. Maybe all we need to do is focus on ourselves, and would that really be so hard? But maybe it would, because I’m here now and I’ve brushed my hair a hundred times and I’m hoping that tomorrow when I wake up it will be lighter and longer and it won’t get tangled or flip out at the ends.

Alexi turned sharply towards me and her short hair almost smacked me in the face because she was lounging so far over in her chair. “Do are you preggers yet or what?” She deadpanned in my face, and you always hated Alexi for the way she said everything but I secretly loved it more than anything about her.
“Eloquent,” I said back in a harsh whisper because now the teacher was giving me a sharp look, and it’s so hard to place his face to this story and so easy to place your face everywhere in my life.

“But I’m serious, are you going to do him?” She asked me and her eyes got so wide I thought they might take over her face and she would become one giant eye.

“No,” I said, but it was too loud and too sharp and the teacher scolded me and ignored the acidic smell of Alexi’s nail polish as she applied coat after coat of the offending green to her nails, and when they caught the light just right they were the same color as her eyes were, and it was strange to know that she probably didn’t know this, and there are some things about your appearance that you might never know. Like the fact you had a tiny crescent scar on the underside of your neck and you probably never knew, but you knew about the matching scares I left on your butt that one time when you were trying to apologize to me.

“Damn this is making me sexually frustrated and I get laid every night,” she hissed at me and I rolled my eyes because I knew this wasn’t true since she had told me the week before she was pissed at Trevor and not sleeping with him this week.

“Next time I’ll make sure to make all my personal decisions based on your input,” I said, but the last part was drowning out by a sharp remark from my teacher as he threatened to throw me from the room.

So I shut up and watch Alexi paint her nails that green color, took all the notes I needed to take, and pretended I was a million miles away in some wild backdrop that would be more decent for a book and not dreary and gray like the entire school was.

At lunch though, the colors burst, when you put all the students in one room and they mix together and move together in a constant stream of motion, the bright pink shirts, the shiny black hair, bold skirts, loud dresses, sometimes it was too much to be in that room and look at all the colors without getting a headache. But there were my friends tucked into a window, Alexi’s hair casting a red beacon, and Georgia wearing her favorite pale sweater with her blonde hair tucked all away and I moved towards them through the colors and felt drab and dull.

“There she is!” Georgia smiled up at me, her teeth were a brilliant white, but almost too white, like she had just gotten them treated and it hurt to look directly at her smile. And she had her arms across her skinny waist and was complaining about being bloated and trying to get away without eating lunch until Megan across the table threatened to force feed her a fist if she didn’t shut up and eat some damn food.

Have you ever stepped back from your friends and wonder why the hell you talk to them? Megan, whose hair was too short for her face, Georgia and her eating problems, Alexi being generally herself, and it was all too much sometimes for me. And I wanted to slip away into the library and accept books as my friends and not have to deal with all the people and emotions. It would be so much easier if I pushed away locked myself up and shut down, if I didn’t have to deal with others, because they are so hard to predict and you cannot control them or make them think a certain way, all you can do is sit there and wonder what they think and how they feel and listen to them complain. You understood that, I think. You were quiet when I needed you to be and loud when it was okay, you didn’t explode with emotions, but you let them spill like a stream and not a waterfall.

“I’m sorry Alexi but that nail color is hurting my damn eyes,” Megan said, and she looked serious by the way she was squinting her eyes, but then Megan never really liked Alexi much, which was okay with us because I don’t think any of us liked each other at all in the end. Which made for a strange and brutal sort of friendship, one that was easy broken and mended again, always staying on the surface, never venturing to make a deeper connection, but we were all okay with that, like I said. None of us wanted something deeper, we were all too busy chasing our own demons to deal with our friends’.

“I’m sorry but I can shove the polish up your ass if you’d like,” Alexi shot back and Georgia started laughing hysterically.

“It is pretty offending Alex,” I said, and pretended to shield my eyes from the glare which made Alexi huff and shove her arms underneath each other to hide them.

“God forbid I have any form of self-expression in this place,” she said, and it was darker than she usually said things and when it gets like that no one is really sure how to proceed so we sort of let the conversation drop like a dead body into a river.

“Hey babe, welcome to life, where the only law is that it sucks,” Georgia said, and sometimes when you stop and think about it my group of friends were especially dark, and being together didn’t help us one bit because when you put a bunch of dark people together they tend to get worse and worse and worse. It’s like putting an alcoholic in a bar, but we couldn’t stop or get enough of the energy we fed off of, and maybe if we had stopped and looked at it we could’ve parted ways, but it never happened, and you know how we ended up.

“Fuck Eliza,” Megan said quickly, leaned over the table and smacked my arm with her bare nails.

“What the hell Megan?” I said, rubbing my arm where she hit it.

“Don’t look now but Hottie McNice-Ass is coming this way right this very moment, and I’m having a hard time not stripping down to my underwear,” she said.

“That was very vulgar of you,” I said, and fought the urge to turn around so it looked like I didn’t care.

“Look at me, my name is Eliza and I have a big vocabulary I like to show off with to make other people feel inferior,” Georgia said, which made me get both mad and embarrassed.

“Eliza?” There was your voice behind me, small and tentative and kind and it sounded exactly like you were.

“Carter,” I said whirling around and pretended to be surprised, my heart beating, my hair getting stuck to my chap-stick where it had fallen out of my braid.

“I’m going to the library to eat some lunch,” you said, and your eyes never strayed to beautiful Alexi, delicate Georgia or edgy Megan.

“Thanks for making me aware,” I said, half to give him a hard time and half because I was still pissed at Georgia for what she said.

“You coming?” you asked, unfazed by me or my tone of my friends making entirely inappropriate moaning noises behind us.

“Yeah,” I said, gathering my things and following you through the halls and back into the library at the other end of the school, where the Librarians were sitting around and gossiping, some of them were smoking and made no move to hide it when we passed by and into the labyrinth of shelves.

“Your friends are interesting,” you noted as you sat down, shoving aside one of the many towers until I could see your entire face.

“I haven’t met yours yet,” I said back, quirking and eyebrow and digging my sandwich from the depths of my bag and making too much noise with the plastic bag it was secured in.

“I don’t have many friends,” you shrugged took a gulp from your water bottle and shoved your hand into your lunch bag before drawing out a thermos.

“Why is that?” I asked too soon and too quickly, because my own damn curiosity had gotten the better of me, because I didn’t like it when people commented on the people I did or did not choose as friends.

“Why is what?” you asked, drawing out the silence, dancing around the question like you always did to piss me off.

“Why don’t you have friends?” I asked.

“I have friends, just not many.”

“Well then why don’t you have many friends?” I asked again.

“Oh, well isn’t that a complicated question,” you said and smiled at me, and your mouth was full of food and it was disgusting and cute all at the same time.

“I don’t see what’s very complicated about it,” I said, “If you can question my choice in friends I’m sure I can question your lack thereof.”

“God it’s like you’re a therapist or something,” you said, and ran a hand through your hair like you were tired beyond your years. “And I guess it’s not the question that’s complicated, but rather the answer.”

“I’ve got time,” I said and I tried to smile at you but it was hard because you made my entire body feel numb.

“Maybe I can tell you some other time,” you said, leaning forward like you always did.

“You can’t get out of this one, I’ll get the answer eventually,” I said, taking another bite of my food and listening to the Librarians’ faint voices behind the desks and the air smelt like smoke.

“We’ve got all the time in the world for questions,” you said, and I know now that was a lie because we have no more time for questions or answers. And we never thought our time was going to run out, but it did three months ago, and now I’ve got all this leftover time I had put aside for you and I don’t know what to do with it.

“Actually right now we only have until the end of lunch,” I said, and even then I was planning on an end for our time, and just when I thought it would go on forever it was gone, maybe if I never stopped planning for the end it never would’ve come.

You laughed and the Librarians’ conversation faltered, “Damn you need to relax Eliza,” you said, leaned back in your chair and rested your elbows behind the crook of your neck that I would later burry my face into.

“Easy for you to say, all you ever do is relax,” I said, feeling defensive, like I somehow was at fault for not being exactly like you.

“What does that mean?” you asked, sitting up straighter.

“It’s easy for you to be relaxed because you don’t have any problems, it’s not so easy when your life isn’t that easy and all I ever do is worry because no one else seems to be conserved about what’s going to happen to us in ten or even two years,” I said, leaning forward, my tone was too harsh, my eyes were to slanted, I wish I could take it all back but I put it out in the universe and now there was nothing I could do about it.

“Who says that it’s easy for me? What makes you think that just because I’m relaxed my life is like a walk in the fucking meadow?” You said, and you leaned forward, but your body was at a sharper angle that looked scary and not sexy and I would know later that your life wasn’t like that, but there were still so many things I hadn’t learned yet.

And there are still so many things that I just don’t know and that I just won’t know. Our time ran up, but now I’m not sure what to do with the rest of it.

Yours,
Eliza.