OH MY GOODNESS. It’s my NaNo story. It has nothing to do with women, ghosts, or fantasy…but I still want to write all of those… This was started the second day of NaNo because I started my story over due to the fact that I hate writing fantasy and I fail at it…so this was made out of no planning and you can kind of tell…a lot.

It’s not my best and I know it, but I hope some of you like it anyway.

Warning: Lots of angst, drama, and NaNo-mademedoit rambling.

Oh, and because I didn’t plan it the first paragraph doesn’t really…work…

There was a point in time (or maybe it still is that point of time…) when I would’ve done anything that Brady told me to do. I would’ve robbed a bank just so he’d look at me. I would’ve climbed Mt. Everest just so he’d talk to me. I would’ve swum across all the oceans and then back again to be at his side and so once I was there, maybe he’d like me. I would’ve killed a thousand innocent people just so he’d love me…but instead of doing that, I attempted to kill myself instead.

I suppose I had the habit of taking him too seriously. Maybe I did it again that time, too. When I told him I loved him he told me to jump off a bridge. Instead I decided submerging myself in my bathtub would have to do, and so that’s what I did. I filled it to the brim, played some classical music, and sank into the water, hands over my eyes as Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor echoed and throbbed above the surface.

My sister was the one who found me. She panicked…thought I was already dead, but then she and my dad pulled me out of the water. Dad performed mouth to mouth, got me stable enough till the ambulance came and picked me up. Then the paramedics did their magic on me and saved my life.

There was none of me that felt relief when I woke up in the hospital. I felt that I had failed Brady. I felt that he would just find me to be a huge disappointment, someone that disgusted him…someone that wasn’t good enough for him and never would be good enough for him. I felt shameful. I felt afraid. I felt like I had to try to die for him again.

Unfortunately, I was too weak to get out of the hospital bed and the tubes going in and out of me helped to keep me in place. Unfortunately a nurse came in to find me with one of those tubes wrapped around my neck. Unfortunately they all knew that my near drowning in the bathtub had been intentional and what I’d just done had confirmed it.

And I felt even worse after that. Even more worthless. Even more hopeless. Even more lost.

My dad came in and sat by my bed, asking me why I’d try to do such a thing. My sister, beautiful, smart, eleven year old Julie, threw herself across my stomach, clung to me, cried and sobbed, asking me how could I possibly leave her? Even my mother showed up, her new husband at her side as she sat stiffly beside me, saying that if it was her fault she’d like me to tell her, though I doubted her motives. Was she there to erase any traces of guilt she might have or to help me? Then the nurses and the doctors came with notebooks and clipboards and scribbling pens.

“What’s the matter, Keegan?” they’d ask with their pens poised, waiting for me to say something interesting, say something they wanted to hear. I couldn’t think of anything. If I mentioned Brady, he’d be dragged into it. He might get into trouble. He might hate me for it and then we’d never talk, never be close to each other, he’d never like me, never ever love me…so I kept my mouth shut.

I lied. I said I’d been feeling depressed. Dad blamed himself. Julie blamed herself. My mom blamed my dad and I watched it all, feeling guilty but not guilty enough to mention Brady.

After the hospital I was wheeled up to the psychiatric ward. Life there was a mundane, drab, bland grey. I blamed it on the fact that Brady doesn’t there. Brady was screaming red, neon green, sunburst yellow. He was life and freedom and everything interesting. He was exactly the opposite of what the psych. ward ended up being.

The other patients and I were woken up at the same time every day. Every other day, TJ shit his pants during breakfast because he was afraid of shitting in public bathrooms. I’m not sure why he thought doing it in the cafeteria was any better, but he did it nonetheless. Linda cried every time we had group therapy no matter what the day’s chosen topic was, and she talked about her mother who she said was always bringing up Linda’s weight and saying she was too heavy, and about her boyfriend who called her a slut when she talked to any other boys. In the craft room, I refused to participate as Bailey only made paper airplanes and threw them at me or Linda every time our supervisor wasn’t looking, which would send Linda into tears…again. Every night we all gathered into the rec. room to watch a cheesy sitcom while TJ cried if someone sat too close to him, and if he cried, Linda complained because he was being too loud and that would rile up Bailey who would start screaming and I would retreat to the corner to think about Brady and his shaggy blonde hair and oceanic eyes and it got me through till an army of nurses came in to calm us down and send us all to bed with a bedtime snack of sleeping pills and our appropriate medication.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Julie and dad visited me. Visiting hours lasted an hour, from seven to eight PM, and they always made sure to stay for the full hour. On Sundays when visiting hours went from two to five PM, mom and her husband came to see me and mom sat stiffly, glancing around the room from the corners of her eyes as she tried to make conversation but I could never bring myself to talk to her. Those two never stayed for very long. The pastor of my dad’s church visited me once, and so did Adam, an old friend of mine from school, though we weren’t really friends anymore. After Brady I hadn’t needed him. And some days I’d go and sit in the visiting lounge and wait for Brady to show up and break me out of there or to hug me to him so I could smell his Zest soap smell and never let him go, but he never showed up.

During the week, I met with a therapist named Dr. Raymond. He was a balding man who had a nervous habit of constantly smiling which annoyed the hell out of me. Stepping into his office was like stepping onto a battlefield, but instead of being attacked by bullets, I was bombarded by questions. Questions of how was I feeling and how was I feeling the day before and was I getting along with everyone here and what about my family – was I getting along with them? And every day I was feeling fine, thank you, and I was feeling fine the day before too, thanks again. I was getting along just fine with everyone there and that included the nurses and the patients, so don’t you worry, and things were just peachy with my family other than that whole not talking to my mom and her husband and the nagging of guilt toward my dad and my sister but let’s just pretend I didn’t mention that, doc.

I expected this way of life to keep on stretching on till it finally hit the point of highest tension and snapped…or I snapped, but one day Dr. Raymond greeted me with a new question.

“Keegan, how would you feel about being able to go home?”

I didn’t know how I felt about that so I just stared at his bald spot as his smile flickered on and off like a light bulb in need of a change. I didn’t like it there, in that foggy world where days meshed with the days before just to blur into the days that followed. I didn’t like it with its lack of color, its smell of heated cafeteria food mixed in with the scent of TJ’s shit. I didn’t like it without Brady. But if I left, where would that leave me? Would I be constantly watched by my dad and Julie? Would mom feel obliged to stop by and visit me just to sit and stare and not say a word? Would Brady continue to not show up? When I went back to school would be looked at as the freak? Would I try to drown myself again, strangle myself again, maybe this time really jump off that bridge? I didn’t know.

But after spending another day, getting up to find TJ in the cafeteria, his eyebrows furrowed as he hunched over the table, I realized that being out in the real world promised much better things than what I saw in the ward day after day, so I told Dr. Raymond that at our next therapy session together.

And now here I sit in the visitors’ lounge. It’s ten minutes after noon, or ten minutes after the time my dad was supposed to come and pick me up. I can’t really be angry since I wasted so much of his time when he was visiting me here, but the longer I wait the more anxious I feel. Maybe they changed their mind and decided that it was best to keep me here. Maybe my dad decided he doesn’t want me at home because I’ll just cause more problems. Maybe something happened to him or Julie on their way here. I chew on my lip and lean forward over the bag I have that holds the meager supply of clothing I had while here and a few notepads that were given to me during my stay and that I decided to take with me.

Just as I’m about to get up and trudge back to the nurses’ station to tell them that I’ll be in my room if anyone comes to get me, knowing that I’ll stress the if, I hear my name.

Dad’s standing in front of me, Julie tucked under one of his arms as she stares at me through her murky greenish brown eyes that are identical to mine.

“I was just talking to your doctor,” dad says. “And…now… Are you ready to go home?”

I shrug one shoulder and stand up. Am I really ready? Was I ever not ready? I shrug again, let him put his free arm around my shoulder and guide me out to the car. I slide into the backseat and Julie sits up front with dad, her shoulders hunched up and her whole little body tense as she stares out the window while we pull out of the parking lot. She doesn’t want to sit by me. She doesn’t want to be near me anymore. She was the one that found me, right? Isn’t that what dad told me in hushed tones in the hospital? I don’t blame her for not wanting to sit by me.

No one talks the whole ride home. My dad focuses on driving, not even swearing under his breath when someone cuts him off. The radio’s off. Julie’s silent. The only thing that’s making noise is my breath, my wheezing breath squeezing free from my tired lungs. They’ve been through a lot. They’ve made friends with large amounts of water. I cough and the silence in the car shatters, causing Julie to jump and my dad to tap the brakes. I cough once more and tuck myself into the back corner of the car. Maybe I wasn’t ready to come home after all.

-

The bathroom looks exactly the same as the day that I came in here to die, even though that was nearly half a year ago. The same hygiene products line the counter; the same oversized towels hang from the towel rack. It still smells like the orange potpourri Julie made at school and put in a little basket on the back of the toilet. The tub’s still in the same place, five hundred feet tall and looming. The only thing missing is my CD player, and I guess it makes sense. I’m not sure what else would’ve changed. Maybe I thought the bathtub would’ve been blocked off by yellow police tape telling me not to cross over. Maybe I thought the tub wouldn’t be there anymore. But it is and I quickly take a piss, keeping my back toward the thing that almost took my life down the drain and hurry to my bedroom before I can think of that day or of how easy it would be for me to climb back in there and start my adventure all over again.

“Keegan!” my dad calls before I can shut my bedroom door. “Keegan, what would you like for dinner tonight?” He doesn’t meet my eyes. He wrings his hands in front of his stomach. He’s nervous around me.

“You don’t need to worry about that, dad,” I tell him, that guilt pulling at me once more. “I’ll just have cereal.”

“But…I wanted to make you something special to welcome you home.” He bites his lips…first the top one and then the bottom one and then repeat.

“Macaroni and cheese is fine… Hey… Dad… While I was gone…” Gone as in sleep away summer camp or a trip to the beach, right? Saying that I was gone so casually couldn’t be referring to me being locked up with a bunch of crazies, could it? “While I was there…were there any messages for me? Did anyone stop in looking for me?”

He furrows his brow, making me think of TJ and I swallow hard to keep down any vomit that might want to start rising up. “Adam came to bring me your homework.”

“And no one else…?” No one beautifully angelic and oceanic? No one named Brady who had colors zinging off him, lighting up the shadowed corners of the house?

“Nope. Were you expecting someone, kiddo?” He meets my eyes this time, searches them for the secrets I keep hidden in the slimy grooves of my brain.

“No. No, I wasn’t expecting anyone…” I step into my room, shut the door, lock it, press my forehead against it. No one means that Brady didn’t even come to my family to see if I was doing all right. Didn’t he realize that I’d disappeared? Didn’t he care?

My heartbeat quickens and I’m afraid that it’ll through and I’ll die here between a locked door without being able to find out how Brady’s feeling toward me. The music of Mozart’s Requiem seeps into my brain and I take deep breaths while whispering the Latin beneath my breath.

“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis…” Grant them eternal rest, Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them. “Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.” You are praised, God, in Zion and homage will be paid in Jerusalem.

My breathing slows. My vision clears. The heat that clouded my head just moments before dissipates and I collapse onto my bed. My room’s been cleaned while I was gone. Dad probably came in and checked for drugs…for signs of mental instability, and decided to clean up in the process. As long as he didn’t find the pictures of Brady that I had tucked beneath the bottom drawer of my dresser, I don’t care what he did, what he might’ve found that he might’ve thought was worthwhile.

I want them to be there, safe and sound so Brady can be kept safe and sound, but fatigue creeps into me and I can’t bring myself to get up and check, so instead I dream and in my dreams I’m returned to a dream I’ve had since I was landed in the hospital. I’m surrounded by blackness, darkness, nothingness, and then colors zoom and flash in and Brady’s there, rainbows flashing off the ocean’s surface. At least in my dreams he hasn’t abandoned me.

End chapter one.

Note: I got all the Latin and translations from Wikipedia and this other site that actually has Mozart’s music for it available to listen to. If anyone wants it, I’ll supply the link in my profile. :shrug: I wanted something Mozart-y to be in the story…because I wanted classical music playing when Keegan was in the tub…and Mozart was the first person that came to mind. Plus I like him anyway.

I’ll try to update every Sunday. If I don’t…someone can PM me to complain and I won’t even be bitchy about it. Cross my heart.

Release will be updated eventually...along with Magnetized.