Thanatophobia

Painted Gold

I didn't realize that I was crying until I heard the screen door slam shut and Nick step onto the porch. He was standing there with a concerned look on his face, fear pooling in his jade colored eyes and his thin lips turned down into a disconcerted frown. He was right there, for the first time in about two years, yet I felt completely and undoubtedly alone. I took a shaky breath, unable to stop the hot tears from falling down my face and pushed past him before he could say anything. He just stood frozen on the porch until I started up the stairs, when I heard him trudge across the yard to start bringing boxes in. Nick wasn't good with confrontation, which was fine with me.

I hurried up the steps and turned down the long hallway, my feet padding across the thick carpet. At the very end of the hall, a door was propped open with blandly pale yellow walls and dark hardwood floor. I didn't know or care if it was mine but went in and shut the door behind me, falling onto the giant bed and sobbing more uncontrollably than I had in my entire life. More than the day I decided to kill myself. More than the day my parents hardly reacted to the suicide attempt. And by the time I was told about moving to Princeton, tears were pointless. But now it was like a dam inside me had broken and the tears wouldn't stop coming even if I wanted them to.

Suddenly with Tom gone, the house seemed less wondrous and instead overwhelming. The huge walls were closing in and I wanted to scream so badly. There was a soft knock on the door and I ignored it.

"Shelby?" Nick called from the other side. "Are you okay?"

"Obviously not," I replied, sick of all these stupid questions. What are you doing? as I stood on the edge of the cliff. What were you thinking? just after what was supposed to be a suicide. Are you okay? as I locked myself in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar town with an unfamiliar brother who I hadn't seen face to face since I was almost a freshman. All extremely redundant questions that everybody apparently needed to be answered.

"Do you need anything?" he asked.

"Just go away."

And he did.

Somewhere along the line, the tears of self-pity stopped coming and I fell asleep. When I woke up, the sun was low on the horizon and the entire room was filled with orange light, which made even the disgusting yellow walls look pretty. I looked out the enormous bay window and saw the tips of the trees around the house were illuminated with gold light. I'd never seen anything like it, mostly since there weren't many trees around my house on the shore. If I craned my neck, I could see the reflected silhouettes of the trees in the pond- a perfect mirrored image.

The smell of garlic wafted up to my room and I realized how hungry I was. I must have been sleeping for at least four hours, and I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. I checked my reflection in the full-length mirror that was propped on the wall opposite the door and laughed. My waist-length hair was completely mussed up on one side and my face was puffy from crying. My eyes were bloodshot and swollen, so I left the room in search of a bathroom.

"Nick?" I shouted down the stairs. "Where's the bathroom?"

I could hear him downstairs clanging pans together and opening and closing drawers. Then after a minute he was standing at the base of the steps with a look on his face that said what he wouldn't dare say aloud: "you look like shit."

I just laughed and he looked a bit surprised, like he expected me to start bawling again at any moment. Slowly a smirk emerged on his face and he said, "Your bathroom's on the other end of the hall. I figured you'd want the blue room that it's attached to, but you can have whichever you want."

"Thanks," I answered quietly. "And sorry for being a bitch. I'm just kind of-"

He cut me off before I could finish. "It's cool. I get it, Sheri and Lloyd are assholes ninety percent of the time."

"Pretty sure we're the only people in this country who think that," I said with a grin. "I'm going to go wash my face, then. Are you making dinner?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm making garlic chicken pizza if you want any."

"Perfect," I said. "I'll be right down."

So I found the blue room with the matching blue bathroom and washed off my face. Everything was so meticulously matched; blue towels, blue rugs, blue walls, blue everything. The bedroom was also blatantly blue, with matching curtains, pillows, bed sheets, and walls. All of my boxes were stacked against the wall, and I made a mental note to thank Nick for bringing them all up. I think I hated this room more than the yellow room, plus this room didn't have the cool bay window in it.

Once I was halfway presentable, I came downstairs to the enormous kitchen with black marble counters and stainless steel appliances, all sorts of cooking utensils, and engraved cabinets. "Jeez," I commented, sitting down on one of the bar stools at the island in the middle of the kitchen. It was filled with the same fiery light as my bedroom was, filtering through a gigantic sliding door leading out to the deck out back. "Our parents sure love you."

Nick snorted. "Love? More like bribery. This house his way too big for even two people. Maybe eight is suitable."

He sat down next to me, setting a plate of steaming pizza in front of me. "It's a nice house, is all I'm saying."

He shrugged and bit into a slice of pizza. I could tell by how he contorted his face that it was way too hot to eat yet. "It was nice for like an hour," he said bitterly after gulping down half a glass of ice water. "Then it got lonely. I mean come on, I can cook. That says a lot about how much time I have on my hands."

"Yeah, two years ago you could barely work a toaster," I joked. Still, it was kind of sad imagining my brother alone in this house day after day. "What about Millie?" I asked.

Nick kept his eyes on his pizza. "She dumped me," he said plainly.

"What?" I asked, stunned. "She was so sweet, though!"

"Yeah," was all he said.

"That really sucks," I said sourly, dropping the subject. He obviously didn't want to talk about it. There was no way he did anything to her, I knew that much. Nick may have been really attractive (everyone knew it) but he wasn't a jerk. He never was.

After that the conversation was awkward, and I knew he wanted to know about what happened with me as much as I wanted to know what happened with him, but neither of us knew how to go about talking about it. So we stuck to small talk, which I hated.

"When do you start school?" Nick asked before I headed up to bed.

"Day after tomorrow," I replied dryly. As great as it was to be able to start over again, I wasn't looking forward to it.

"Cool," he said.

"Yup," I replied.

He started putting plates in the dishwasher and I sighed. "Well, good night."

"Night," Nick called over his shoulder.

I started up the stairs, then suddenly leaned over the banister and said, "I'm painting this atrocious yellow room eventually."

"Cool with me," was all he said and closed the dishwasher.

I reached my bedroom and plopped down on my bed without even changing my clothes. I just wanted this day to be over.
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Dudes I'm getting my tonsils shaved over spring break! Once I got past the terrifying aspect of it, I realized it's pretty rad. Woo!