Toy in a Toolbox

Brian and the dog sure were assholes. Thanks to them the calendar in Cindy’s room got to be flipped to the next month and the alarm clock reset from its original school schedule. She hated them because of it.

On the last day of May, Cindy’s brother found her unconscious behind her bedroom door with a tie-turned-noose around her neck. The dog had his muzzle resting on Cindy’s stomach with his sad eyes focused on her head. Half an hour before Brian had gotten home, the dog had burst into the room and pushed the door, with Cindy leashed onto it, into the corner of the wall. The impact was enough to knock her out and rip the tie from the doorknob. She ended up living because of it.

. . . But maybe Brian wasn’t that much of an asshole. The dog, most definitely, but not Brian. He had called the police, yeah, and attracted a lot of unwanted attention, but he had done it right. As right as it could get anyway. He didn’t even tell his parents or the paramedics that she had attempted suicide. When Cindy was allowed to come back home, he told her in a low voice that he had removed the tie from her neck and made it seem like a bunch of books from her shelf had knocked her out. “I know you, Cindy. You don’t like to be looked at in a negative light. You refuse to accept help and you’re always trying to wing it on your own. I don’t know what happened to you recently, and I know we’re not that close, but . . . I’m here for you, okay? You may be keeping mom and dad off your back but you can’t do the same with me.” He sighed, and she blankly stared at the back of his head. “I’m sorry, Cindy. For everything.”

Cindy didn’t know what to make of the whole situation so she chose to ignore it. The calendar behind her bed was left on the month of May as some kind of nonsensical protest against the continuance of life and time. The dog got into the habit of sleeping outside her room but she couldn’t do anything about it except shut her door. She didn’t leave the house and she didn’t talk to her friends. Her parents were absent, as usual, but they did show their concern by getting someone to come in and fix the loose shelf. Her brother, Brian, tried his best to get closer to Cindy no matter what it took, but most of his efforts were futile. The only thing that ended up bringing them together was pot.

Since the attempt, she found herself sitting down with him more and more to get high beneath his window. She used to take her share of what he kept in his closet and smoke it back in her room but that wasn’t an option anymore. Brian grabbed her hand and made her stay when she tried to leave now. She just stuck around because she couldn’t say no. He took it as a sign that they were getting closer. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Cindy wanted her reality altered, and he was the only one that could do just that.

After a week of going stir crazy, Frank came over with a bouquet of flowers and get well cards from all their friends. Cindy had a pipe between her lips when he walked in. He didn’t scold her or ask why she was getting high alone in her brother’s room. He just said, “Heard you got your ass kicked by some books,” and joined her on the floor. She lifted her shoulder in reply. Her brother had gone to work and this was one of the few times she had the house to herself. Although a little peeved that Frank had ruined that private time, she was overall glad that he was there. She needed her boyfriend.

“It happens,” she replied.

“Not really.” He smiled and she blew her smoke at him. It was light in color from keeping it down so long. Frank inhaled then waved it away. “Anyway,” he continued, “Nikki is making you a giant care package that she’s shipping from Texas. I brought you flowers and lots of love from your friends. I’ll send you a rock or shell or something from California when I leave. Are you okay? You have a bump right here.” He touched a spot on the corner of her forehead where a bump was starting to fade away. “You poor baby.”

“I’m okay.”

“We haven’t seen you in awhile.”

“Doc said I needed the week’s worth of bed rest.”

“You should’ve said something, I would’ve visited you earlier. I-- We missed you being around. All of us.”

He was talking about all their friends, and that made her stomach shift uncomfortably. Cindy put the pipe back to her mouth as she stared at all the cards and flowers and candy and crap piled on Brian’s bed. A pang of sympathy struck her suddenly and made her hiccup and sniffle. Frank stared, confused. She set the pipe back on the floor but he picked it back up. “You okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “We really need to talk.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

Frank paled noticeably and shifted a bit. He put the pipe in his mouth and said around it, “Okay . . . You can start. I hope you don’t mind if I use this.”

She waved him on then stared at her fisted hands in her lap. Cindy didn’t know where to begin. She never told anyone about her feelings, about how unhappy she was with life, because she didn’t want people to see her any differently. Once, when she was young and at a birthday party, Cindy and her friends were sitting in a circle talking. Someone had asked “out of anyone in this circle, whose life would you have?” and Cindy’s friend had immediately pointed at her. Cindy has the perfect life, the girl had said. But she wouldn’t say why or what about it seemed so perfect, and Cindy chose not to ask.

Her life was far from perfect. At that point in time when the question had first been asked, she was already being neglected by her parents and ignored by a teenage Brian. There was nothing great or wonderful about growing up alone. To this day Cindy wondered if maybe that’s where all her troubles began, from someone pointing out that her life was perfect, and Cindy realizing that, no, her life wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

“I didn’t get my head crushed by books,” Cindy began.

Frank frowned and let out a stream of smoke through his nostrils. “What happened?”

She fixed her eyes on a point in the ceiling and pressed her lips together. For a minute neither of them talked until Frank said, “If someone hit you, I’m really going to kick their ass.” He was getting up to fix another bowl as he said this. She could tell he wanted to get really high and she decided that it’d be easier to tell him everything if he was in a toked-up state anyway. He could probably handle the truth more.

So after he had sat back down and they’d each taken a large hit, she sat back and told him everything. Everything: from the suicide to her depression to her bad habits to how bad her back hurt from him fucking her in that den at the beach. She ended her whole rant with a lame comparison of her life to a rollercoaster, something one of her friends had put on a suicidal awareness poster for health class. Cindy wanted to be remembered as a perfect teenager that had gotten off the ride of life at the wrong time -- that part was from the poster -- and she wanted people to feel sorry for her. She wanted their sympathy.

Frank stared at her with wide eyes, not saying much as she spilled everything from her past. Even after she’d finished, he looked just down at his hands holding the pipe, still not speaking. He was playing the silent game. When he finally did open his mouth, it was only to ask if he could get another bowl.

“I don’t care,” she told him. She was a little hurt because it felt like he didn’t care either. Not about anything. It was as if he had missed the whole point of what she had told him.

That night they both got really high, nearly rocked her bed from its post, then held each other and cried. Frank couldn’t stop petting her hair and whispering about how sorry he was. For what, she didn’t know. It was her turn to play the silent game. Now that he had come to the realization of everything she had told him, she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She was uncomfortable with the things she had said.

Earlier she had claimed she felt unloved, which was the main reason behind her depression. She felt as if no one cared about her and that nothing she did could make anyone love her more. Saying it out loud, remembering it again as Frank held her in his arms and promised to make everything better, made her feel stupid. Of course she was loved. She had an amazing boyfriend and friends who cared, but for some reason that just wasn’t enough.

They needed to love her too, the people who left the house at five and had so easily fallen for the reason of a bookcase falling on top of their daughter’s head and knocking her out. Cindy wanted her parents, as well as the rest of her family, to love her as much as they loved money, but anytime they showed the slightest bit of affection, she was the one pushing them away. She wanted their love, but at the same time she didn’t. It was a never-ending cycle, a never-ending ride.

Cindy definitely wanted off of this rollercoaster. She got motion sickness too easily, and the whole thing just wasn’t worth it. Not at all.