Chapter Three

This became routine over the next few weeks. I noticed that Lauren had, for some reason, begun to avoid me, though she never stopped staring at me, pain in her expression, when we were in class. I missed her, needless to say. Never before had I had the chance to acknowledge her absence--she had always been right by my side, right there facing the world through the same eyes, and the solitude that I had granted myself stung.

But today, two weeks later from my first cigarette, Lauren confronted me. She frowned at the stench of cigarette smoke on me but said nothing, though her blue eyes kept darting around my expression as if to try and find some excuse.

After a few minutes of saying nothing, with her standing in front of me with long arms straight down at her sides and posture, remarkably, stiff, she managed a tight-lipped smile.

“Um, remember the concert that I asked you to come to?”

I nodded, and she grinned a little wider.

“Do you still want to come? It starts at nine, remember. I know it’s a Monday, but, well, I really needed…” her innocent voice drifted off, and I smiled.

“Sure. I’ll come and pick you up at eight.” That was how things usually worked--what with her being a child of four with grandparents in the home, there wasn’t as much money to go around, and she didn’t yet have a car of her own. And yet, somehow she was always the one who made the plans, always the one who kept our bond as thick as it was.

She laughed, a sound of pure relief on her part. “Good--I really need to talk to you about something. See you tonight.”

Home made my stomach twist in uncomfortable ways. When Mom was alive, she had always left music playing, was always singing along and talking in that loud voice of hers. Without her to share her say, every conversation seemed bland, and every evening seemed empty and awkward. Not the silence that I longed for, the silence that accepted everything--the painful, judgmental one that had never been quite so frequent.

Each evening Dad and I found ourselves drawn to the living room, where we sat in the harsh calm for a few moments until one of us turned the TV on, which neither of us were able to watch. Then we would go our separate ways to our rooms, one next to the other, where I could hear him sobbing and flipping through photo-books until two in the morning.

So I would turn on my music, attempt to read, though the words all went right through me, until I turned off the light and tried to sleep.

Sleep had grown rather presumptuous within the last few weeks, and avoided me at all costs. I would lie in bed, my eyes drifting closed, just waiting for my consciousness to take its vacation, but it never did. I would give up after about five hours, when I would go and watch some TV or go outside and walk or draw little stick-cartoons that I had grown rather fond of.

Life was surprisingly tedious when your ambitions had all faded.

Now I sat in the living room, eyes tracing the television pictures that ended as soon as they began, dreading the sleepless night that I knew awaited me. Who knew--maybe I would get lucky, and have one of my five-hour sleeps, but I doubted it.

I glanced at the clock--seven-thirty, it said. I flashed my dad a smile and told him I was going downtown for a while. He gave me one of those black looks and nodded, before turning back to stare lifelessly at the TV.

I rushed to my car and turned the music up as loud as I could, as if to blind out my conscience. I knew where I was going--the bar, where the rebels held their gatherings every Monday night, where no one would judge me. I needed something to get my mind off of everything that was going on, some preoccupation to stunt my merciless cognizance.

When I finally found the bar--I had never actually been there before, but had heard of it often--the music was loud and grungy and easily heard outside. Walking in, not one person turned to look at me, each of them engaged in their own little conversations, most of which involved gulping down a drink.

I hadn’t really thought about the drinking part of visiting a bar, even if it is their purpose, in the first place. As I neared the counter, some part of me screamed to walk out that door right this instant, but the other part wanted this. It yearned for corruption.

Rick, a guy I knew only from viscous rumors, turned around, smiling a smile that had broken many hearts. “Who are you?”

“Kelly.”

He nodded, taking another swig at his beer. He patted his hand on the empty stool beside him. “Take a seat.”

I obeyed, urging my raging muscles to relax. People did this all the time. I would be fine, I thought. Just fine.

Rick called over the bartender and ordered two more beers, handing one to me at their arrival. I stared at it for a few moments, not quite sure what to do, years of lecturing taking it’s toll on my discernment.

“We’re, um, not legal,” I muttered uncomfortably.

Rick smiled, leaning close to me, the stench of one-too-many beers on his breath. “They don’t much give a damn, so long as you pay.”

I looked at him, secretly incredulous, before shrugging and gulping the alcohol down. The bitter taste burned my lungs but, for some reason, it was a good burning. The sensation beckoned more and more of the liquid into my system until I couldn’t think straight, until my dead mother was the last of my concerns.

More and more people came, and I was for once thankful to my inability to sleep. People flooded into the place, dancing and laughing maniacally, and my mind went giddy in the excitement.

I don’t remember much of what happened that night, or what we even talked about. I think most of our conversation was made up of meaningless laughter that came with the heat in our cheeks and gut, the wooziness that had taken me. But one of our talks went like this:

“Your mom’s dead.”

I nodded.

“You sad?”

I nodded.

“My dad died.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

I was vaguely aware of Rick taking my hand and pulling me away from the school, into a room in the back, where I guessed the owner slept. He threw me onto the bed, some sort of chuckles clinging to his throat.

Rick whispered some inaudible words and began kissing my neck, running his hands along my body, sending a strange uproar through my spine. He slid his warm, sweaty hands up my shirt, under my bra, touching skin that had never before been touched.

I don’t remember much more, and I don’t think that I would like to.

I awoke on the floor, naked, a pounding headache in my temples and a nausea clinging to my stomach. I looked around at my surroundings; the unmade bed, the dirty walls, and, most importantly, the comatose man who shared my nudity.

I nearly leapt for my clothes, pulling them on hurriedly, gasping at the clock which read eleven AM.

I drove home as quickly as possible, thankful for my distant relationship with Dad--he had already left for work, and probably hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t there this morning. He had given up on parenting me when I made the decision to mirror his provocative actions, and drown out his yelling by yelling my own insanities at the same time.

My cell-phone was beeping raucously from the bedroom. Sixteen missed messages, the screen flashed, all around nine PM.

I rolled my eyes and deleted them all, too hung-over to really understand the situation, and made my way to the living room. After flipping through all of the channels three times, I finally settled on Disney Playhouse, where Handy Manny was playing.

Ah, the nostalgia of children’s television. My heart ached watching them, a side affect from the innocence that I had let go so mindlessly.

It could be worse, I told myself. I could be moping around in self-pity, like Dad.

The phone rang after about an hour. I stumbled over to it, wincing as my headache throbbed with the movement.

“Hello?” I coughed into the speaker.

“Kelly! Are you alright?”

“Uh…” my mind was blank. “Who is this?”

“Lauren,” the voice cried. “What happened?”

“What do you mean what happened? Why I wasn’t at school today?”

“Yeah,” she continued. She almost sounded angry, which was not an emotion that possessed my dear friend often. “And why didn’t you ever come last night?”

“Last night?” I mumbled. But then the truth caught up with me, tripping me, and I gasped. I had promised Lauren. Never before had I blown her off--our meetings had always been so sacred to me, as Lauren was the only one who was able to help me through the hardest of times.

“Oh, God, Lauren--I’m so sorry. I just… I…”

“It’s okay.” Somehow, her words weren’t comforting to me. Her voice came out too soft, too resigned, to full of the desperateness that had never, even when she had first moved here, noticed before. “I understand, Kelly.”

“I--”

Then she hung up.