Birdie
Day Seventeen.
It’s always the same.
It’s always at 10.45 am on a Monday morning that it hits me, the gravity of reality hits me. It is always when the cool air is blowing in through the open window next to me, and I face the monster that it really hits. I mean hits me hard enough to knock me off my feet and leave me breathless.
I have never known a more violent time that 10.45 in the morning on a Monday. If there were ever a time to leave me bruised and broken this would be it, because each week it slaps me in the face knocking my teeth and heart loose. And I know if things were reversed, if I were the one who was gone, she wouldn’t be here at 10.45 am. She would be out dancing in the rain and trying to make sense of the nonsensical, because she was magic.
She was beautiful and wonderful and absolutely my best friend. I have never loved someone like I loved her. Sometimes I wonder if it is even possible to love someone so much that their absence physically hurts. But it is, because every Monday at 10.45 am I am almost certain someone has punched me in the face and kicked me in the gut.
They haven’t, but it feels like they have. It is just that at this exact minute I remember. I remember that not twenty-five days ago she was here, waiting for me in class with that smile of hers that was brighter than all the fluorescent lights above us. I turn around and face the classroom once I have received the detention slip and stare at the empty seats where we used to sit.
In the middle of the backrow stares back at me, our seats far enough back so that the monster wouldn’t catch us texting and passing notes. So that we could copy each other’s work and chew enough sugary sweet gum to give us cavities. Someone else is sitting there now and that makes my heart sting because once upon a time she would have kicked then out and made me sit down in my spot, in our spot.
I am not like that, especially now that she is gone, so I take a seat next to the window where I watch as fall leaves fall and wait for the bell to ring so I can go home and cry. It is 10.46 am and I miss her just as strongly as a minute ago. The monster who is more commonly referred to as Ms Jefferson, stands up, her hips like her desk groan in protest.
She has a hip replacement a few months ago and she is still recovering, when she didn’t show up on that first day of class I was so glad. I had thought that maybe she had finally retired, and I would be free from the misery that is Mrs Jefferson and second session maths.
She came back a few days after the funeral almost as if it were all some sort of sick joke. The monster returned the day the hero left for good. It is almost funny, I don’t laugh though, I don’t laugh anymore. I haven’t laughed since I stopped talking nearly eighteen days ago.
Eighteen days ago we buried her and I was supposed to give a speech for my twin sister up on the podium next to the old priest but my tongue had tied, it had tangled and my mouth had dried. I hadn’t been able to speak. I hadn’t spoken that day and I haven’t spoken since. I think the Monster is making it her personal mission to target me and my silence, like she thinks I am doing this to get back at her.
She doesn’t get it, no one does.
The one time I was supposed to speak up and tell the truth, say something poignant and important I had frozen under the weight of a million promises and swallowed the words that may have saved her life. If I couldn’t speak then when it was all so important what is the point of speaking now when nothing makes sense. No amount of words can change that, so I don’t pretend that it will. I do not pretend that my words will fix anything, my words are too little too late, and because of that I will forever lock them inside of me, until they surely drive me mad.
It is 11 am and I think I can breathe again. We are doing independent study, catching up on the homework that was set this weekend that no one actually did. I am trying to concentrate but the words on my page blend together and spell out her name.
Alison.
Without thinking I take the black pen in my hand and being drawing a picture, one that connects every line and curl of her name, it almost makes it pretty again.
Almost.
No amount of pretty colours can cure the ugliness that hides in her name now. I focus on drawing and don’t pay any attention to the people beside me. I barely hear the classroom door open and shut, or someone sit down at the table next to me.
I barely hear because I am busy drawing her, I am drawing her as she was meant to be, magic, and I think if I focus hard enough it will make everything better and if it doesn’t I think I might cry. I am so focused on making her beautiful again, fixing the pain and making it all better, that I don’t hear the boy next to me trying to get my attention. It is only when he taps me on the shoulder and says, “Hey bird girl” That I register that he is here and I am drawing a bird.
I am drawing a bird because if she was a bird all this could have been saved. Instead of hurting herself she could have flown away. Instead of dying she could have relocated and come back when the seasons changed and the trees didn’t remind her of her sadness.
I lift my eyes from the bird on my page, it is covering the letters that I thought had spelt out her name, Alison. I swear it was there but it isn’t, it is instead some equation and I think I am going mad.
“What are we doing?” The boy asks, my eyes are on him, searching his face for some sort of malice. I am searching his face to see if he realises who I am but I don’t think he does. I cannot remember his name.
Without a word I turn away from him and return to my bird, I focus on the wings because they are the most important part. If I can get them right than everything else will fall into place, everything else will be perfect.
“Oi Birdie,” The boy says leaning over and staring at my picture, I want to hide it from him but that takes strength I do not have anymore. “Are you mute or something?”
“Eli!” A voice behind us scolds, we both turn to face a pretty blonde girl whose hair is sitting high on her head in a bun, a hairstyle my sister would have loved, she smiles when she notices me staring and I know she knows.
“What?”
Eli his name is Eli and I remember him now I think. He is one of those boys Alison used to love to talk about, the ones that loved to kiss late at night while I waited for her, warning her one day she wouldn’t be able to just run away. I remember him, he wasn’t one of the boys who tried to kiss her darkness away. He was one of the boys that scared her but I am not sure why. Maybe it is the scar that runs through his eyebrow or the cuts on his knuckles, maybe it is because he is always wearing a lip ring and a smirk.
I don’t know.
I turn back around and focus on my bird again because it needs to be perfect. I hear the blonde girl explain to Eli that I am in fact mute, selectively though.
“Don’t you remember?” She whispers in a voice that makes me wonder it she has ever had anything even slightly bad happen to her, “She’s Alison’s sister” Eli makes a noise that is somewhere between a sigh and a realisation.
And now he knows, now he knows that I am Abigail, Alison’s twin sister. The one that found her at 10.45 on a Monday morning, and he knows he made a mistake. He knows that twenty-five days ago I found Alison on our bedroom floor with tears in her eyes and a bottle of pills by her side, death in her pores.
Because twenty-five days ago I found my twin sister with a stomach full of pills and lungs free from air. It has been twenty-five days since she left and seventeen since I have spoken and I wonder if I will ever be able to stop counting.
It is 11.15 am and I cannot breathe again.
It’s always at 10.45 am on a Monday morning that it hits me, the gravity of reality hits me. It is always when the cool air is blowing in through the open window next to me, and I face the monster that it really hits. I mean hits me hard enough to knock me off my feet and leave me breathless.
I have never known a more violent time that 10.45 in the morning on a Monday. If there were ever a time to leave me bruised and broken this would be it, because each week it slaps me in the face knocking my teeth and heart loose. And I know if things were reversed, if I were the one who was gone, she wouldn’t be here at 10.45 am. She would be out dancing in the rain and trying to make sense of the nonsensical, because she was magic.
She was beautiful and wonderful and absolutely my best friend. I have never loved someone like I loved her. Sometimes I wonder if it is even possible to love someone so much that their absence physically hurts. But it is, because every Monday at 10.45 am I am almost certain someone has punched me in the face and kicked me in the gut.
They haven’t, but it feels like they have. It is just that at this exact minute I remember. I remember that not twenty-five days ago she was here, waiting for me in class with that smile of hers that was brighter than all the fluorescent lights above us. I turn around and face the classroom once I have received the detention slip and stare at the empty seats where we used to sit.
In the middle of the backrow stares back at me, our seats far enough back so that the monster wouldn’t catch us texting and passing notes. So that we could copy each other’s work and chew enough sugary sweet gum to give us cavities. Someone else is sitting there now and that makes my heart sting because once upon a time she would have kicked then out and made me sit down in my spot, in our spot.
I am not like that, especially now that she is gone, so I take a seat next to the window where I watch as fall leaves fall and wait for the bell to ring so I can go home and cry. It is 10.46 am and I miss her just as strongly as a minute ago. The monster who is more commonly referred to as Ms Jefferson, stands up, her hips like her desk groan in protest.
She has a hip replacement a few months ago and she is still recovering, when she didn’t show up on that first day of class I was so glad. I had thought that maybe she had finally retired, and I would be free from the misery that is Mrs Jefferson and second session maths.
She came back a few days after the funeral almost as if it were all some sort of sick joke. The monster returned the day the hero left for good. It is almost funny, I don’t laugh though, I don’t laugh anymore. I haven’t laughed since I stopped talking nearly eighteen days ago.
Eighteen days ago we buried her and I was supposed to give a speech for my twin sister up on the podium next to the old priest but my tongue had tied, it had tangled and my mouth had dried. I hadn’t been able to speak. I hadn’t spoken that day and I haven’t spoken since. I think the Monster is making it her personal mission to target me and my silence, like she thinks I am doing this to get back at her.
She doesn’t get it, no one does.
The one time I was supposed to speak up and tell the truth, say something poignant and important I had frozen under the weight of a million promises and swallowed the words that may have saved her life. If I couldn’t speak then when it was all so important what is the point of speaking now when nothing makes sense. No amount of words can change that, so I don’t pretend that it will. I do not pretend that my words will fix anything, my words are too little too late, and because of that I will forever lock them inside of me, until they surely drive me mad.
It is 11 am and I think I can breathe again. We are doing independent study, catching up on the homework that was set this weekend that no one actually did. I am trying to concentrate but the words on my page blend together and spell out her name.
Alison.
Without thinking I take the black pen in my hand and being drawing a picture, one that connects every line and curl of her name, it almost makes it pretty again.
Almost.
No amount of pretty colours can cure the ugliness that hides in her name now. I focus on drawing and don’t pay any attention to the people beside me. I barely hear the classroom door open and shut, or someone sit down at the table next to me.
I barely hear because I am busy drawing her, I am drawing her as she was meant to be, magic, and I think if I focus hard enough it will make everything better and if it doesn’t I think I might cry. I am so focused on making her beautiful again, fixing the pain and making it all better, that I don’t hear the boy next to me trying to get my attention. It is only when he taps me on the shoulder and says, “Hey bird girl” That I register that he is here and I am drawing a bird.
I am drawing a bird because if she was a bird all this could have been saved. Instead of hurting herself she could have flown away. Instead of dying she could have relocated and come back when the seasons changed and the trees didn’t remind her of her sadness.
I lift my eyes from the bird on my page, it is covering the letters that I thought had spelt out her name, Alison. I swear it was there but it isn’t, it is instead some equation and I think I am going mad.
“What are we doing?” The boy asks, my eyes are on him, searching his face for some sort of malice. I am searching his face to see if he realises who I am but I don’t think he does. I cannot remember his name.
Without a word I turn away from him and return to my bird, I focus on the wings because they are the most important part. If I can get them right than everything else will fall into place, everything else will be perfect.
“Oi Birdie,” The boy says leaning over and staring at my picture, I want to hide it from him but that takes strength I do not have anymore. “Are you mute or something?”
“Eli!” A voice behind us scolds, we both turn to face a pretty blonde girl whose hair is sitting high on her head in a bun, a hairstyle my sister would have loved, she smiles when she notices me staring and I know she knows.
“What?”
Eli his name is Eli and I remember him now I think. He is one of those boys Alison used to love to talk about, the ones that loved to kiss late at night while I waited for her, warning her one day she wouldn’t be able to just run away. I remember him, he wasn’t one of the boys who tried to kiss her darkness away. He was one of the boys that scared her but I am not sure why. Maybe it is the scar that runs through his eyebrow or the cuts on his knuckles, maybe it is because he is always wearing a lip ring and a smirk.
I don’t know.
I turn back around and focus on my bird again because it needs to be perfect. I hear the blonde girl explain to Eli that I am in fact mute, selectively though.
“Don’t you remember?” She whispers in a voice that makes me wonder it she has ever had anything even slightly bad happen to her, “She’s Alison’s sister” Eli makes a noise that is somewhere between a sigh and a realisation.
And now he knows, now he knows that I am Abigail, Alison’s twin sister. The one that found her at 10.45 on a Monday morning, and he knows he made a mistake. He knows that twenty-five days ago I found Alison on our bedroom floor with tears in her eyes and a bottle of pills by her side, death in her pores.
Because twenty-five days ago I found my twin sister with a stomach full of pills and lungs free from air. It has been twenty-five days since she left and seventeen since I have spoken and I wonder if I will ever be able to stop counting.
It is 11.15 am and I cannot breathe again.