Runaway Smile

His hair was black, and beautiful. It shone like a raven's feathers even in the bleakness of that godforsaken building.

It compelled me to talk to him. To sneak to his room that night and talk in hushed voices lying in his bed, stroking that beautiful shining hair. We had known of each other but never spoken before. He was just Jack Barakat, the boy who was known for his severe mood swings and violent head twitches when he felt angry. I was just Zack Merrick, the boy stuck in here for trying to slit his wrists in the bath.

I was getting better though. I could feel it. I wanted to be better, it just wasn't much fun sticking by that routine. I didn't like it. I wanted to be at home with my parents, my sister. With all my friends living just streets away from me.

Jack was my shining star to get me through from there onward. It took one night for us to want to stick together, one week for me to get up the courage and kiss him, and three months for us to be in love.

Maybe it was silly to call it love from the get-go, but it was for me. It just... was. I couldn't explain it. Jack, shining from the inside out, needed so desperately to be loved. I had to love him, I didn't understand how nobody had snatched him up to keep for themselves before me. Jack said it was love for him because I still called him my star when he was screaming and crying, clutching my arms so hard they bled from his nails digging in. I wasn't scared of his disorder like everybody else.

Our relationship was one of impulse. It kind of went hand-in-hand with Jack's disorder. Plotting our escape after some four and a half months of dating didn't come as a shock. It was exciting. We had money from our parents, money that we weren't really supposed to have, but it was enough. Enough to get free. The trick was strolling out of the ward like there was nothing wrong with us. Like we were visitors.

And then we were gone. A bus ride, a train ride. A rented car. I suppose it became sort of stolen. We gave them our parents' details and it's not like they knew where we were.

Looking back, I don't know why exactly we did it. I was sick of the bleak walls. Therapy helped me get better but I hated having to live there, in that place. It was almost as depressing as actually having depression. And Jack... Jack just needed blue skies and somewhere that smelled of fresh air rather than medication.

People say love makes you stupid. I was stupid.

What do you do when you don't have any medication to calm someone who's out of control? What do you do when they don't listen to reason?

I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so, truly sorry. I could say it a thousand times and it would still be a pathetic and insignificant word for how I feel.

I didn't know how many sleeping pills would be enough to keep him comatose until we arrived. At first I feared maybe I'd crushed up one too many in his water but it seemed to do the trick, and I barely had the money to buy enough gas for the car, but we made it.

Well, I made it. It wasn't exactly a joint decision. And he was out cold the entire time.

My parents were there. I didn't think they would be. I cried when I found out my mother had spent every night for the past two weeks sleeping in her car in the hospital parking lot, waiting and praying that I'd return safe and sound, that I hadn't rented a car just to drive it into the ocean and meet a relieving death.

I didn't want that any more. I wasn't suicidal. Just very, very stupid. I couldn't handle it. Without Jack's medication, he was insane. Terrifying, even. I'd never been scared of him until the night he lashed out uncontrollably in the car. I nearly drove into an oncoming truck. He screamed and kicked and cried and he wouldn't let me calm him. It wasn't like before. I stopped the car and he screamed into the dirt until he threw up and fell asleep immediately afterwards. I bundled him up tearfully in the back seat with a blanket, too shaky to drive again for hours and hours. He woke up bright as a daisy like nothing had happened.

He was still my star, but he was getting a little dim around the edges. He needed polishing up. That was how I worded it, when he stirred from a drug-induced slumber to find us somewhere familiar, two doctors carrying him inside. He sobbed and swore at me. I slept in my mother's bed that night.

They let me go home, a miracle in itself. The rental car was taken away and I never heard another thing about it. I was allowed to be at home as long as I attended three therapy sessions a week, for the foreseeable future. That seemed like a fair deal, to me. And I was allowed to visit Jack, too. They were being terribly lenient with me.

Despite being allowed to visit Jack, the younger boy didn't want to see me. I cried the first five times he turned me away, but I grew to expect it. It took thirteen attempts before he finally let me into his room to talk to him.

I feared he might get angry, but he cried instead. Not his usual screeching and sobbing until he vomited and passed out. It was like weeping. Quiet and broken, into his pillow.

"You're afraid of me," he choked eventually, and I held him for a very long time. "I'm sorry."

I couldn't lie, he did scare me now, after seeing how bad he could get without any medication to help ease it. But I wasn't so much scared of him, of him hitting me or yelling in my face.

"I'm afraid for you," I whispered when he wasn't crying quite so much, stroking that beautiful hair. It had lost some of its lustre, limply hanging over his eyes. Showering wasn't one of Jack's top priorities any more. "I had to, Jack. If you hurt yourself somehow, I couldn't-- I would never get over it. And you're already hurting. They're going to make you all better, and then you can come home. And you can be with me always."

He just nodded and cried against my chest until he fell asleep.

I left him a note.

My shining star, with the beautiful hair black as a raven's wing, you haven't fallen. You're a little less bright than you once were and if you faded completely, my whole world would be dark. I need you to be my light, to be your own light. You'll be shiny and new again so just promise me you'll smile until then.

Zack xxx

He had a grin from ear-to-ear on my next visit.

I truly believe it, too. Soon he's going to be brighter than the sun and I won't be able to touch him without feeling warm, light rays burning holes through my fingers.