Disenchanted

I drove as slow as I could. Through town to town, it took me three days to get to California. Rodeo to be exact. He'd never come back here, and that was oddly comforting. Because I knew for sure I'd never have to see him again and he could never make ruins or my thoughts again. 

My house looked the same as it had two years ago, I hadn't been back since then. For sanity purposes. The white paint was peeling in some places and the lawn was unkempt and weeds had taken over most of it and the flowerbeds.  The windows were dark, staring back at me blankly. Black as night. No warm light pouring through them lighting the lawn. I felt as deserted here as the last time I'd set foot on this property. The only thing my parents had left to me. 
They both died in a apartment fire in 1992, the year I, and him got together.

I got out and gathered my three bags. And walked towards the porch slowly, warily. The few sounds shattering the silence of night was dogs barking, and the constant clatter of my heels against the cracked concrete walkway. I set one bag down on the porch and gathered the other two under my left arm as I dug around in my jacket pocket for the scantly used keys to my house. I froze when my fingers grazed over the all too familiar feeling of the flat, smooth plastic piece attached to my keychain. I didn't take it out to look at it to be sure what it was, because I knew already. I shoved it deeper into the depths of my pocket and fished out my keys, quickly unlocking the door. Stepping inside and flipping on the light, I blinked several times until my eyes adjusted. 
And as everything else was, it was all the same. The black love seat shoved up against the west wall. The brown coffee table littered with magazines and cups. The flatscreen tv, and around it on the floor was littered with sickeningly sweet love comedies I'd watched during the breakup. And my eyes froze when I spotted it, on the corner of my coffee table. It's familiar reddish orange cover. It was something he had left behind, his favorite book. The Catcher in the Rye.

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly for a moment. I could have done without the reminder of my 'Former life'

I nodded once and packed everything to the back bedroom down the hall. And it too was the same. Everything covered in a fine layer of dust. But this room was far too bitter, the corners of my mirror were covered in sappy pictures of us. And I dropped all my bags on the floor in a loud thump. And went to the mirror, seeing my jagged reflection, I began yanking down every picture. Stacking them into a pile, tossing them into a shoebox and taking them outside even though it was eleven thirty at night, I got a shovel and dug a deep hole in my backyard and tossed it in. Covering it up, staring down at the uneven ground before walking back inside. The image of his green eyes even more prominent in my head then I'd like it to be. 

I got into bed fully dressed, under the blankets covered in two years worth of dust. Like this, it felt like I was lying in a dusty coffin. My life had already gone and been lived and my time was over. It was like dying over and over again.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But that was beyond possible to do when you are in the room where it all began, and it all ended. And most of all, where you fell apart at the seams.

I hate the ending myself, but it all started with a alright scene.

******

I was a new student. Moved down from Baltimore with my parents. I wasn't too pleased about that. I had been the popular girl. The one who had whoever she wanted as friends. A big fancy house and rich parents. So you can see my disappointment went we moved and I was no longer that fixture. And we downgraded to a smaller house. And dad got a job that gave less money and mom worked at a launder-mat as she had said was a 'hobby' but I was smart enough to see it as so much more. 

I stopped wearing my fancy dresses everyday as a effort to fit in. No more heels, no more curly hair. I straightened it everyday before school and wore a pair of blue converse, bell bottomed jeans, and a t-shirt. I applied less girly colored makeup and applied more greens and blues. Then somehow he noticed me.

He sat at the corner table everyday with his best friends. And it was one day he glanced over at me after I'd gone to that school for six months. Everyday his stares drew out a little longer until he finally got the nerve to come talk to me. I still remember his first words. So clearly he had said “Look... I dunno who the hell you are, but you are in my seat.” I was in the same math class as he was.

I cocked my eyebrow and stuck my tongue out at him. I told him “Get lost dreads.” as he had black dreadlocks at the time. He glared at me and sat at the back of the room.

As the weeks passed, we talked more and more, helping each other with homework, mostly me helping him, but in the end it didn't matter how much I'd helped him. Because he dropped out anyways. But we became joined at the hip, and now I don't even know what happened.

I thought about that as I once again seeped away into a restless unconsciousness.