Clarice.

She insists on being called Clarice, like some kind of stick-thin French model with jaw-length jet-black hair and elegant long fingers that are perfect for playing the piano, living in her just-outside-of-Paris apartment with her gorgeous boyfriend, leading a life so glamorous and big, it’s dizzling to even think about it.
Clarice is far from that. Clarice doesn’t have long thin fingers and a size zero, but she wants to. She dreams to.
That’s why she juts out her collarbones and angles her head in a unrealistic fashion on every picture on her Myspace. That’s why she sucks her stomach in all the time and makes a pouty mouth when there are cameras around.

That’s why Clarice to me; looks ten times more prettier when she isn’t aware of anyone watching her.

Clarice is not my family, not my girlfriend, not my friend. She wasn’t she first girl I kissed and I bet I’m not the first guy she fucked with. Clarice lives in the house next door to mine and Clarice is always here. We get high together and we talk a lot of shit together. We never talk about anything serious, because Clarice depresses the hell out of me.
So instead we smoke pot and pretend that one of us isn’t slowly shrinking away to nothing.

Clarice thinks she’s invisible. She’s so selfish, I bet it would kill her if she knew what her family tells me.
Clarice thinks she’s invisible and her brother tells me she sits in the family bathroom at four in the morning, crying for hours on end, and her mother tells me she worries that Clarice might hurt herself.

I don’t know why they tell me.
Clarice is not even my friend.
Clarice is just always there.

That’s why it’s confusing when the night before my band and I are supposed to leave for L.A.; Clarice doesn’t show up when she was invited to.
And everyone else is glad, but me.

It’s so confusing because something makes me call her up and something makes me feel worried when she doesn’t answer the phone and the something hasn’t got anything to do with friendship or ‘blood is thicker than anything’, because Clarice is not related to me and Clarice is not my friend.

It’s confusing because I stub my cigarette out on the gravel at my feet and down my beer as quick as I can and get in my car and drive home and park the car in my own driveway.
Because Clarice lives in the house next door to mine.

The lower floor of Clarice’s house is dark and the curtains are still wide open, even though it’s been past eleven. I look up and there is a light shining behind the curtains in Clarice’s room.
So when I enter their house I know exactly where to go.
And when I enter her room, I find Clarice in a heap on the floor and her room smells like puke and cigarettes and Clarice is crying.
I don’t know what to do at first, because Clarice isn’t even my friend, or my family, or my girlfriend.
So I stand and watch her cry.
I stand there until Clarice lifts her head and looks at me. She isn’t wearing any make-up and it’s the first time I’ve seen her like this since she was about eleven years old.

As I let my gaze wander over her body, crumpled in a hopeless mess with cheap-looking pink nail-polish on her nails and her blonde curls sticking to her forehead and her big green eyes screaming for help, I can’t help but think how completely innocent and helpless she looks.
Except for; Clarice isn’t innocent.

She doesn’t say anything and neither do I, at first.
It’s what you would call an awkward moment and I, being my normal prick self, am thinking of getting the hell out of there, because nobody wants to deal with shitty situations and nobody wants to deal with people that are depressed. Nobody wants to know somebody that is feeling low enough to fall down to the floor and cry.
Not when it’s not your profession and you get paid for it.
Not when there’s no guilt eating at you because you can’t leave your friend, family, or lover like that. But Clarice is not my lover or my friend or my family, so I feel like leaving, but I don’t.

“Jesus.. Clarice,..” my voice seems distant and weird, like it’s not really me talking.
She keeps staring up at me and every word that was right there on my tongue, ready to come out and make myself feel better because at least I’ve made a pathetic attempt to help; simply dissolves into thin air because I realise something.

This is happening right now.

So instead of telling her it’s going to be alright and making an excuse about how I need to get back to the party- partially my party; I slump down to the floor next to her.

She is still watching me, but she’s stopped crying.

I want to ask her something casual to break the tension, like where her parents are or what she is doing tomorrow, but I know it’s already too late for that. I realise I made the choice to stop pretending when I sat down next to her. I’m hoping she’ll do or say something that makes it okay for me to start pretending again. Like she normally does.

So I look straight back at her and in her eyes are hollow, and in her eyes I see death.
An involuntary shiver creeps its way up and down my spine as I’m waiting for her to speak.
Part of me starts to think she’s already dead, the way she’s sitting there with big empty eyes and her mouth shaped into a perfect straight line.

“You shouldn’ta come here.” she finally tells me.
Her voice sounds like its normal self, as if she hasn’t just been crying on the floor for God knows how long. It makes me feel better. About myself.
“I know you don’t want to be here. You should go back to your party, you know I won’t mind.”
I know she really doesn’t. I know she really thinks it’s best for me to go back to my party, leaving her alone on the floor of her smelly bedroom, crying and crumbling and falling all the way down.
“Come on, I’ll be fine. Go to your party, you’re leaving tomorrow. Go to your party.” She fakes a smile and waves one of her hands at me, as if to shoo me away. She sounds so convincing, if you’re waiting for her to say those exact words.

Clarice with her ugly Ugg-boots and big earrings, always wearing long sleeves under her shirts, getting people to start rumours about her cutting herself. I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but I don’t know Clarice.
Because we never talk, because she depresses the hell out of me and knows it.

I don’t know her, but I understand her well, even when I don’t want to.
But like every other selfish asshole walking this planet, I decide to avoid another tough situation and ask her if she’s sure.

I picture Clarice crying some more and dragging a razor across her legs as I leave her bedroom and walk all the way down the stairs and through the dark house.
When I’m outside, I walk back to our side of the driveway and lean up against my car where I light another cigarette.
I lean up all the way against the hood of my car, so I can see Clarice’s room, where the lights are still on and the curtains are still closed.

Good, at least her lights are still on.
It’s almost good enough of an excuse for me to flick my cigarette butt onto their side of the driveway and get in my car and start the engine and switch it into the back rear and back up to the street and drive off to go back to the party where my family and my friends are waiting to say goodbye to me.
Because I am leaving for L.A. tomorrow. With my band.

I drive and I try not to picture Clarice in her room by herself in a house where the main floor is dark with the curtains wide open. Clarice hurting herself like her mother told me she suspects Clarice does, crying like her brother told me she has been doing in their family bathroom at four in the morning, for hours on end.

There is nothing in this world that could have made me turn around at that split second, not a song on the radio that could remind me of her, not something someone has ever said to me that made me realise I should go back, not anybody coming up to my car window and telling me I should go back to her, there is absolutely nothing in the world that could make me think of her more than I do already.
Because I think of Clarice every day and every night, too. And when I’m not thinking of Clarice; I’m thinking of ways to avoid thinking of her.

So when I make a U-turn when I’m almost at the destination of my party; I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.