I already passed it on. Have fun!
I throw my phone onto my mattress, roll onto my stomach, and bury my face in the pillow. The pillowcase is soft and familiar, and it still smells of Mom’s laundry soap. All at once, my eyes fill with tears again because I feel so lonely. But I don’t want to talk to anyone.
It’s impossible. When I start to talk about it, everything gets worse. But I miss closeness and hugs and someone whispering that it’s going to be okay. I miss Mom’s reassurance that everything is getting better and that I’ll make it. Right now, it doesn’t feel that way. Everything feels extremely hopeless.
Tears burn in my eyes, and I can’t stop them. I’m about to scream, and I try to hold it back. I try to swallow everything. To suppress it. To get it under control. But control is slipping away from me. Suppressing the feelings doesn’t work anymore. And then I scream, wild and raw, in infinite pain. I scream and scream into the pillow because life is unfair, and I hate this weakness. I hate it, hate it, hate it.
Before I know it, I’ve started to cry. Hot tears run down my cheeks and soak into the soft pillowcase. I twist my fingers into the sheets and sob until my throat is dry and everything hurts. There’s only anger and pain inside me. There’s no room for anything else. I’m so angry, it’s devouring me. Every little part of me that’s left.
At some point, crying isn’t enough anymore. My voice fails, and I can’t scream. I punch the pillow with my fist. A tortured sound escapes my throat and cracks, because nothing is enough. Because I’m a failure. I’ve lost myself before, and now I’m doing it again.
Shit shit shit shit.
The pillow flies out of my hands. I didn’t intend to throw it; it just happened. It hits the vase of dried flowers on my desk and knocks it over. There’s a loud crash, and a thousand shards fly. I sob, because all at once, it feels as though I’m the one lying down there on the floor. I’m in pieces. Pieces that I stick together again. Apparently, I didn’t make enough effort to do it properly the firsttime; otherwise, it would hold. Otherwise, I wouldn’t break so easily again.
My bedside lamp lands on the floor next. More crashing, more shards. I wait for the feeling of satisfaction that comes when you destroy something. That’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? In movies and books, things are always being destroyed. People hit each other and feel better because they’ve let out the chaos that’s inside of them.
But I can’t feel anything anymore. There’s only emptiness inside of me, and that’s worse than everything else.
The door of my room flies open—I must have forgotten to lock it. All at once, Jase is standing in front of me, a wild expression in his eyes. His lips are moving and he’s talking to me, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying. My ears are ringing, and that’s all I can hear.
Suddenly, he grabs my upper arms, my body jerks, and then I can hear his voice. Loud, and angry, and... worried.
“Shit, Zoe! What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
I burst out laughing hysterically. Yeah. That’s what’s happening. I’m really losing it.
He holds my arms tighter, and suddenly I’m cold as ice.
“Let go of me,” I choke out. I feel nauseated again. Oh, God, this has to stop.
He immediately lets go, but I can still feel his touch, and for a moment, I want to take back what I said, because I want to feel his skin on mine. But it’s not right. It’s completely twisted. Everything is twisted, including me.
Jase backs away just a little, but he’s looking at me the whole time. His gaze is hard, like it has been since I saw him last week. I hate it, because that’s notmyJase.
He was neveryourJase, the voice in my head reminds me. I want to tell it to shut up, but it’s right. He was never mine.
“Zoe.” My name sounds wrong when he says it. He never used to call me Zoe. Only Pixie.
He stands there with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against my wardrobe. I can feel his worry and empathy beaming directly at me, even though I don’t deserve it.
With trembling fingers, I wipe the tears off my face and look down, because I can’t look him in the eye. He shouldn’t have seen me this way. I’m so ashamed, and I wish he would leave. But I can’t speak, and maybe a tiny, stupid part of me doesn’t want him to leave.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, and his voice sounds like it did then, that first night, after he followed me into the treehouse after the school dance.
It seems like history is repeating itself: I lose it, and Jase is there to talk to me. Except I’m not the girl I was back then, and he’s not the boy who followed me anymore.
I could lie, but what good would it do me? It’s pretty obvious something’s wrong. A muscle in his jaw twitches. He’s silent. Three, four, five seconds. “What happened?” he finally asks. He doesn’t want to ask the questions; that’s easy to see. He doesn’t want to be here. I can tell, just like he can tell that I’m a hot mess. But he’s here, and he’s staying. He’s asking me the same question that he wrote on the very first note.
It doesn’t mean anything. He probably doesn’t even remember. But I do. I remember every question and every answer.
“What are you doing?” I ask back, just like I did back then. My voice is as rough as sandpaper from sobbing and screaming.
His eyes flicker briefly, just for a moment, but enough for me to realize that he remembers too. Then the coldness is back. “It sounded like you were tearing your room apart.”
“So? Why do you care?” The words burst out of me more sharply than I intended.
“You know what? Forget it.” He grunts with frustration. He turns to the door, and I find myself both hoping he’ll leave and wanting him to stay. I can’t tell him, though. I can’t say anything. The door closes behind him with a soft click. I sink back into my pillows, suddenly exhausted beyond belief. I want to pull the covers over my head and sleep for the rest of my life, because I don’t know how I’m going to pull myself together. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t even know if it’s possible. I obviously did something wrong the last time.
