Red Lights

I woke up with an awful taste in my mouth and a splitting headache. I rolled onto my stomach, pressing my face into my pillow. The button of my denim shorts pressed into my belly and I frowned, wiggling around under my blankets as I removed them, tossing them onto the ground off the side of my bed. Finally comfortable again, I pulled the blanket over my head and shut my eyes tighter.

That’s when it found me.

The smell was overwhelming as I cut the supply of fresh air out as I hid under my blanket. I realized then it was on my shirt, maybe even on my skin. The smell of beer, just slightly so, and even more potent – earthy soap and Clean Scent laundry detergent – the smell of a boy who I had known less than a month; he wasn’t even here, but I still smelt of him. I smelt like a boy I barely knew, a boy who I had went out for drinks with last night, a boy who I had kissed in the backseat of a taxi in the early morning.

I removed the blanket from my head. I breathed in the smell of my room, but he was still lingering on my shirt and skin.

I needed a shower and an ibuprofen.

I showered, washing away his boyish smell, replacing it with the lavender of my shampoo and rinsing my mouth with a shot of mouthwash. When I all but fell out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, hair dripping down my back, every trace of the night before was gone, except for my throbbing head and oh, every single thing that had happened.

I found medicine in the cabinet above the sink and swallowed it dry. I rubbed my hand across the mirror, removing the fog the steam had created, and stared into the eyes of a girl I hadn’t seen for a long, long time. I couldn’t place her. I retreated to my room, wishing my reflection wouldn’t follow me.

But of course, she did.

She was there, with all of last night written across her face and then some.

I changed into a pair of soft shorts and a t-shirt two sizes too big for me. Dan was laid out on the couch in the living room, flipping through channels. I opened the fridge door, bending and searching for a bottle of water or a soda. I grabbed a Coke and shut the door, turning back and leaning against it. My brother had muted the TV set, beginning to sit up in his seat.

“John told me what happened the other night,” he said. Fuck, he was even loud from a room away. I took another, slower sip from the can of soda.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Dan. It was nothing.”

“Why not, though? I tell you about stuff, sometimes. I can tell you more, if you want. Whatever gets you sharing for once, Liv.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Dan! Fuck. I’m hungover, for Christ’s sake. I do not want to talk about any of this right now. Later, fine, but not now.”

I wanted so badly to be able to walk across the floor, slam my door behind me and fall into bed. But that meant crossing my brother’s path to get to my room and I was sure slamming my door wouldn’t do any good for my head. I settled for walking calmly past him, silently fuming, which didn’t really work.

“Would you have talked to her about it?”

I stopped mid-step, eyes falling shut as my jaw tightened.

He knew the answer to that question. He didn’t deserve an answer. That didn’t stop me from spitting one at him.

“You know what the answer to that is,” I said lowly, turning to look at him. “You’re pushing my buttons. I don’t know what’s gotten into you. I’m not talking about this right now. Or ever, actually.”

Then, he just kinda snapped at me. He didn’t have to raise his voice. Every word stung my skin from feet away, each syllable a dart being thrown at my body.

“Olivia, seriously? Seriously? Listen to me. She’s gone. She is gone and it fucking sucks and she isn’t coming back. I know she was your best friend and no one can replace her but damn it, why can’t you open up to anyone else who fucking cares about you? I care about you, Olivia! I’m your brother, through all of this shit I’ve always been your brother and it kills me that you won’t talk to me! I’m tired of you being miserable all the time.

“All these years, it’s like strangling a dead cat, trying to get you to talk to me or John. Or anyone, anyone at all! That isn’t how it should be, you realize that? How the hell are you supposed to move on and meet new people and get on with your life like she would have wanted you to if you can’t even talk to the people who already love you? If you can’t be honest with us, who can you be honest with? All I want is for you to talk to me, about anything at all that actually shows you give a shit about life or yourself.”

I just looked at him, my brother, who was like me in so many fucking ways. This right here, all of these words he was spitting at me, were exactly what I would be throwing at him, if it was all reversed. Where was this coming from? How long had he been waiting to say this, wishing that he could share his thoughts? I wanted to ask, but I wouldn’t. I just wanted it to stop.

Melanie was my best friend. She was my sister. He had no right to tell me how to deal with this or be angry just because I wasn’t dealing things the way he wanted me to.

I didn’t realize I was yelling those things at him, the words I had thought were being spoken in my mind for only me to hear, until he stood, replying.

“I do have the right to tell you, Olivia! I’ve watched you for years now, walking around, doing nothing to get over this, and I can’t take it anymore. I cannot fucking take it. She was your best friend, she was your sister, yeah. But you’re mine. You’re my sister and that gravestone does not have your name on it, but you sure fucking act like it does.”

I turned on my heel and hurried to my room, palms pressing flat against it as I pushed the slightly ajar door open. It hit the wall, coming back for a vengeance and knocking into me as I stepped through. I just grabbed it, slamming it behind me and taking to my bed, where I pulled the blankets over my head and tried to scream my head off without ever opening my mouth.

It didn’t smell like Dylan anymore.

---

I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I did.

When I woke up, the house was empty. Daniel’s truck wasn’t in the driveway. I thought about going for a drive, for some hot, balmy air, but I couldn’t find my keys and well… traffic and all.

Without a reason to do anything else, I shuffled back to my bedroom again. I leaned back on my mattress, resting my head on one arm and shielding my eyes from my overhead light with the other.

Dan was right. I knew he was, but it hurt. It always hurt.

He had never been so honest with me before, so upfront and well... brutal. It was necessary, though; so very necessary for me. If I ever needed anything in my life, it was honesty: raw, complete, dangerously painful honesty.

I knew it was me. It is always, always, always my fault. I push people away. It is my job. I mean, I work for my family and I make sure my grandma is eating and sleeping enough and I bother my brothers. And on top of all that super difficult, time- and energy-demanding work, I ruin every relationship I could possibly have with anyone who isn’t required to love me by terms of a contract. And according to what my brother was saying, I was on the verge of ruining every single one of those relationships too. It’s impossible for people to hold onto you when you aren’t giving them a rope to grab onto.

I haven’t had a best friend since Melanie. I haven’t had a good friend since Mel, honestly. The only person to blame for my lack of friendships, and relationships in general, is myself.

Too antagonizing when I want to be. Too much sarcasm, too many passive emotions. There wasn’t enough release in my life, in my choices. Only restricting. Too much fear of losing someone. Again. Because I didn’t just lose Mel once.

I lost her when her parents called to see if she had made it to our house and she hadn’t. I lost her when the immediate sinking feeling filled my gut as my mother told her no, Mel wasn’t here, but that we would go out and look for her as soon as they got off the phone, okay, bye. I lost her when I ran out the front door and down the sidewalk, no shoes, my hair wet from a shower, and followed our route until I saw the mayhem just next to old Mr. Graham’s mailbox. I lost her when the sirens and lights came, when I saw her lying there from yards away, when I started screaming and crying and running for her all at once. I lost her when Dan grabbed me from behind, trying to pull me away from it all. He recognized her bright yellow bike, laying there behind EMS responders and police men – I vaguely wondered if Mr. Jenkins was on call and I hoped not. (I found out later he was. He was one of the first to see his daughter’s lifeless, mangled body.) I pulled against Dan, I remember, drowning out everything with my sobs. He finally had to pick me up and carry me home screaming, as we came home to an empty house, my mother disappeared to the scene we had just left.

I lost her when we got the phone call from John, his voice broken and hollow. She had died on impact with the sidewalk. No hope. Nothing. I lost her in my dreams that night, the ones I had while I was still awake, unable to sleep. Three days later at the funeral, I lost her again as I walked past her closed casket. I lost her as I threw a buttercup, her favorite flower, into her grave. I lost her at the school recognition service the first week of high school. I lost her on our birthdays, our friendship anniversary, on my first day of work at the office, at homecoming and prom. I lose her every day, all the time, in my day dreams, in my nightmares. I had lost her and nothing was bringing her back to me. To any of us.

Damned I could forget about losing her when it never really stopped.

I sat up and leaned over the side of my bed, reaching for a dark green plastic crate hiding underneath. I pulled at it until the book inside was just in view and I was able to grab it.

It was bigger than a textbook, surface area wise. The outside was a dark purple, black and white silhouette of flowers traced into it. There was a small cut out in the middle in the shape of a square and a white paper lay underneath, the word’s “For Olivia” written out in black, curvy letters.

I opened to the first page. Facing me, a letter, also in her handwriting.

The book was a scrapbook that she gave me for the last birthday we shared together. Scrapbooking was a hobby she had taken up with her mom and as much as she tried, I couldn’t get into it. That didn’t stop her from making me my own book, which she worked on for I had no clue how long. It was very nice, filled with pictures of each of us, separate, together, in a lot of the adventures and events of our friendship. There were also pictures of our families, of the business, of our brothers with their dates for their first homecoming dance, my grandparents holding hands at the conference table at the office. She even left the last few pages blank, completely free of anything. I always assumed it was so we could add to it later, maybe with our own pictures with our dates at our first high school dance. Not that we ever got a chance to add more memories. I didn’t like to think of that. Still, it was nice, all together, filled with dates and handwritten memories and quotes. I loved it when I got it, but I wasn’t truly thankful for it until she passed.

I used to pull the book out late at night and pour over it, every detail, when I really missed her. I haven’t looked at in probably over a year now. My fingers hesitated over the corner after that first page, but I finally turned it. Pictures from my brother’s birthday party, where we met. There was a quote written underneath in her squiggly, curvy writing. Under that, her own little side notes. The book was filled with her comments, all the thoughts she had on everything she’d laid out for me.

“You can't choose who you love.., but you can choose whether or not you open your heart to love.”

And then, in her own words:
I didn’t know we were going to become friends that day, but I’m so glad we
did! I love you, Olivia! My life wouldn’t be the same without you! You’re
honestly the sister I never expected and I’m super thankful. I really am.

I chuckled, because of the quote. Melanie was obsessed – and I do mean obsessed – with One Tree Hill. There were OTH quotes littering this scrapbook, along with the notes we used to pass in middle school. I never liked the show much, but I generally steer clear from reruns ever more so now than before. The chuckle turned into a sob and before I realized it, I was dripping salty tears onto the pages of the book. I was thankful for the plastic protective sleeve covering each page, to say the least.

My vision blurred under all the water. I pressed my palms to my eyes, rubbing and pushing, wishing my eyes would just fall out of their sockets. My elbows dug into my knees as I hunched forward, just wishing for once, for the millionth time, that I had more than my memories and this scrapbook to remember her by.

My phone was on vibrate on my bedside table. I learned this a second later, when the screen lit up and the vibrations on the table top made my heart jump out of my chest. I reached for it without thinking. Dan’s name and face lit up the screen.

“Liv, I’m sorry I blew up on you earlier,” he was saying, words flowing through the receiver so quickly I could barely register them. “I shouldn’t have just sprung it all on you after not talking about it for so long and –”
My voice was shaky, too loud, cracking. Like the tears in my eyes, the words just poured out without my permission, although they were not unwelcome. “I-I went out with him again. The boy from the award show. He came over the day I missed work and he brought me tea and we watched this stupid TV show he acts in. It really isn’t stupid at all and… and we went out last night. And I drank too much and kissed him on the way home in a taxi and he dropped me off and promised to call and I just woke up feeling different and out of control or something and I just… I don’t know, Dan. I don’t fucking know why I’m doing this or why I’ve been being such a bitch for years. I’m sorry. I know you’re my brother and I do love you I just… I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

I stopped, my breathing stuttering, my head feeling heavy in my hand. I listened to Dan’s breathing, not talking, for almost a whole minute.

“I love you, Olivia. I hate seeing you this way. It hurts all of us, all the ones who love you, you know, seeing you so unhappy and… I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Thank you for sharing with me. I… I have to go, but I should be home in a few hours. If you wanna talk, or if you don’t, that’s okay too.”

I nodded, holding my face in my hand. The tears were gone, but the evidence of them was still resting in miniscule puddles on my skin, on my damp sheets and the plastic covers of those pages and in the tightness of the back of my throat, in the heat radiating from my face and from my shaking, quivering bones.

I remembered he couldn’t see me when he said my name again and I breathed out a yes, an ‘I love you’, an ‘I’ll see you later.’

I untangled my legs from each other, from the book and my sheets, and headed to the bathroom. I splashed my face with cold water, pressing full palms to my puffy, red eyes and letting it chill my skin. Hands cupped, I took a handful of water from the faucet and sipped from it, swallowing over the feeling my tears had left me with.

I caught my own gaze in the mirror. Remembering this morning, wanting to look away, to ignore the red rims and tired skin, I forced myself to stare at the reflection again. I still couldn’t place her.

The girl in the mirror, she wasn’t the drunk teenager who came in too late at night and hid from her older brothers and parents. She wasn’t even the sad girl with hollow eyes to match her hollow stomach after she lost her best friend, who lost half of her heart in an accident.

She was something completely different. A different breed, of sorts. She was born long before those other two girls. She wasn’t a girl to be ashamed of, really, just one who had been missing for so long that she scared herself away.

Tired, she was. A little lost, but searching. And happy. She was happy. Or at least, she had the potential to be. The reflection facing me in the mirror that morning was the one I had looked into for years before Melanie died, only she had aged some now. The girl in the mirror was just that – a girl. Who had feelings, who had experienced something, who gave a fuck. She was living. She was alive.

It had been a long time since I felt that way.

I hated when Dan was right.

More than once I had wished to switch places with Melanie that day, wishing that I had died instead. But I had been living the past seven and a half years like I had died with her.

It wasn’t fair to anyone.

Not to me, not to my family and definitely not to her.

But that was just how I had coped with it.

Not that I had ever tried anything else. Dan was right. John was right. Everyone was so fucking right except for me. Bottling things up wasn’t helping me in the least, it just made things so much worse. It caused me to finally explode, first in an emotional, breathless panic to Dylan, and then an angry, screaming, crying fit to my brother.

Bottling Melanie up wouldn’t keep her alive. It surely wouldn’t bring my spirits back, either.

I couldn’t wait a few hours. I knew that. I turned the faucet off, turned the light switch in the bathroom down, found my phone and made the call.

---

I stepped out onto the front step just as he pulled into the driveway. I was at his window, reaching forward to pull the door open before he could even take his seatbelt off.

“I’m sorry, I know it wasn’t going to be that long, but I-I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t realize how much I needed something, like… I didn’t realize I needed anyone. I-I need you. To just… to just listen or something and just… just be honest with me or something. I just need someone.”

He slid out of the seat, but didn’t push me out of the way to shut the door. I realized I was shaking again, my body trembling despite my bare feet on warm pavement and the heated, balmy air surrounding me.

“I’m going to need you to take in a deep breath and maybe sit down and maybe like fill me in on everything you’re actually talking about right now.”

I nodded, still trembling, watching as he looked around us before he placed both hands just above each of my elbows, my arms pressing to my sides, and backed me up until I was now sitting in the seat he just occupied, my legs dangling in the open doorway of his car, a sleek black sedan with leather seats. Then he bent down, leaning against the frame of the door some and again I found myself face to face with bright, honey eyes framed with long, dark lashes.

“Olivia,” Dylan said, eyebrows up and three wrinkles stretching across his forehead. “Please, like, please try to explain.”

“Dan blew up on me and he said all of this stuff, like… mean stuff, but totally honest and serious and just absolutely brutal. He said that she was dead, Melanie, and that I had to move on and I had to start doing something different and… and…” I sucked in a breath, my throat tightening on itself again. It hurt, it really did, to know what my brother thought of me. To know what everyone thought of me. I wasn’t fooling anyone about how Melanie’s death had affected me, even if I wasn’t talking about it.

If this wasn’t living, this breaking, swelling and collapsing feeling inside of me, I didn’t know what was.

I reached out, my hand hitting Dylan’s arm. My fingers slid down, trying, searching for the hands and the touch that had made it so easy, so simple to say everything at The Waffle nights ago. I clasped both hands around his left, holding it in my lap, staring up at the upholstered inside of his car.

“He said I’ve been acting like I died with her, like I was the body they buried that day and he didn’t realize that he should be grieving for his sister then, too. I can’t talk to anyone about it and that makes me this dead bitch or something… living but not living. Not making friends, not getting anywhere, just going about it all the way it has been… I’ve never talked to anyone about it. Ever. I couldn’t. No one seems to get that.

“And then you just kind of made me spill it all up, like I was all but exploding with it and her and I don’t understand how I could tell you, when I just met you and I positively hated you for getting it out of me without even wanting it or trying at all and just – how could I tell you everything when I couldn’t even tell my brother? I couldn’t tell anyone.”

The leather seats of his car were still warm against the back of my legs. The hand enclosed under mine was too, balled into a fist, knuckles pressing into my palm as I held it so tightly.

“It’s okay, Liv,” he said, opening the fist that was closed between my palms. He rested it flat against mine, palm against palm, his light fingers tickling my wrist. His lips barely moved as he said it, eyes downcast toward our touching hands. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t get it, you know? I guess I don’t get anything, really. I-I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry I kissed you and I’m sorry I called you today and I’m sorry because this is probably so weird and I can’t even justify if it is or not because it’s all so out of sorts for me anyway because I haven’t dated anyone in years. Probably just because I haven’t been drinking in years, obviously, and god, I’m sorry for that! I’m a lightweight and I shouldn’t have let you buy me more than a single drink and I shouldn’t have kissed you and I probably should have actually answered your question about John but it wasn’t any of your god damn business at the time and then I kissed you and god, it kind of became part of your business and just –”

“Jesus christ, take a breath. I said it’s okay, Liv. Just breathe, please.”

I nodded, trying, breathing, but it was like I was sick all over again, unable to catch a good, solid breath. All I had was the momentum to keep going, shaky, breathless, as best I could, until maybe it was all gone.

“He told me once. I was ninenteen and he said that he had this little crush on me when Mel was still alive, but I’m two years younger and he thought maybe, when I was older… and I should have been so happy, because I had this thing for him then, too. It kind of faded for both of us when she went and our lives were still so intertwined, it kind of came back… but we couldn’t do it. It was too weird, like yeah he’s probably the only guy in the world who could truly understand why I’m so fucked up, but it was just so… like, serious? The possibility of it becoming detrimental later, in every aspect of our lives. Plus, we love each other, but not that way… he’s my brother now. I’m the only sister he has.”

Melanie probably would have liked it, had John and I gotten together. She was like that. She wanted whatever it took for true, undying love – like I said, she was obsessed with OTH and all things like. She dreamed about meeting someone one day, getting married, planning my wedding for me as my maid of honor – while all that time, I just wondered how much money it would take to get my grandfather to drop the security gig for two seconds to dance with me on my wedding day.

Which, of course I knew now, wouldn’t happen. None of those things would happen.
Melanie was gone. My grandfather passed a year ago, from a heart attack in his sleep. My grandmother woke up ready to start a new, fresh morning, make coffee for him before they drove to the office together… only to find him not breathing, unmoving in the bed she still slept in to this day. And like that, the most influential person in my life was gone, John and Dan moved into our grandparents’ house to help me watch our grandma, and my dad took over as the head of Hunter’s Security.

Life went on as best as it could.

Because dying was something that happened every day, to every one of us, until finally we disappeared forever.

“Why are you here?”

He looked up, another wrinkle adding to his forehead. “What?”

“Why are you here? Why did you come? I mean, we do barely know each other –”

“You were freaking out on the phone, Olivia. You sounded about ten seconds away from a panic attack. There was no way I wasn’t coming over.”

“But why?”

“What do you mean, but why?”

“We’re not friends, Dylan! We met two weeks ago!”

“Yeah, we met two weeks ago, okay? That doesn’t mean we aren’t friends.” He pulled his hand from mine, but I caught the end of his fingers between mine, holding on despite the look on his face. He nodded to our hands. “We are friends, Olivia. Look at you. Look what you’re doing.”

I dropped his hand as a point.

He chuckled.

I didn’t like that chuckle, at a new low compared to the light ones I’d heard over the past few days.

“We had fun together, did we not? Is it actually impossible for you to believe that you can make friends? Because you can. I like you. That’s why I wanted to spend time with you, not so I could watch you sleep off some cold on your couch. I’m not sorry about how we met, or dragging you around the city, because let’s be real. You needed it. You looked so miserable, Olivia. And I’m not sorry about last night, or being honest with you, or kissing you. I’m not even sorry about right now, even though you’re making me wish I was because you’re proving the point that you don’t want to be my friend.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t… I couldn’t respond, although the restriction of my throat felt gone, although sore. Too many words bubbling up at once can do that. Why couldn’t I just learn to stop?

I was pretty sure that if I wasn’t sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, he would have driven away by now. So without a word, I slipped out of the car, moved around him, my arm brushing completely against his in the small area I had to move out of his way. I stood on the sidewalk leading up to my house, facing the driveway and his car, but didn’t look at him in the face. He was still leaning against the door frame, head turned down to where I had been sitting.

Shoving his hand in his pocket, he pulled out his keys, slipped into the car’s seat and pulled the door shut. I didn’t move from that spot as he drove away. Ten minutes later after I had finally returned to the house, falling into the loveseat I had been sitting in days before, Dan’s key wiggled in the door. He asked what I was doing and when I didn’t answer he just sighed, dropped his keys on the coffee table, and walked past me to his room.