Chapter 3 3

I got home in a haze and stared blankly, trying to comprehend what had happened. My mom guided me to the couch.

"I'm sorry." She said simply, with a dark look on her face. She squeezed my hand.

I wasn't sad at first. I was confused after the shock had worn off. She said something about dinner and then turned on the TV. I sat on the couch, but wasn't really watching it.

All I could see was his beautiful, blue eyes staring into oblivion. I couldn't cry anymore. I felt paralyzed. Like rigor mortis, I thought myself, imagining his body as it reached the morgue. That brought back tears to my eyes and painful sobs that I struggled to hold back.

I didn't remember falling to sleep that night but I woke up automatically and collapsed when I remembered the previous day. My mom's request that I stay home from school that Friday was met with no resistance.

As I sat alone in my room, I thought back to when I had met Nate at summer camp. I had just turned thirteen and we kept in touch throughout the school year. It was his first year of high school while I was finishing middle school. He was so full of life and happiness back then. I remembered feeling so full of glee when he visited me after school. We'd walk to his house and hang out and sometimes West would join us to play video games and listen to music. We had bonded over our similar tasste in music and our love of art. Finally, my freshman year came and I went to high school with him. Nate introduced me to his group of friends and I was so happy that they accepted me. I didn't have many friends in my year. It was a year of firsts for me and Nate seemed so happy that I was with him. It wasn't until the winter of my sophomore year that things began to change with Nate. That was when he bleached his black hair without telling me. I didn't like it as much, but he was still my Nate and his hair color didn't make too much of a difference to me. He had gotten annoyed that I didn't seem crazy about it, but really I was just wishing he had told me. He withdrew slowly, almost unperceptively, but I noticed certain things he'd say and I remembered the moment when I realized a lot had changed with him.

As the loss set in, I started to wish I had died with him and felt like part of my spirit had. I felt like I needed to go back to his house to get something, as if I'd be able to find him alive there, but I knew that he was gone forever. After spending a day sitting on the couch thinking and crying, I looked down at the black heart I had drawn on my wrist during third period the day before. It caught my eye and made me sob harder. The tears stained my face with makeup and I hadn't washed the blood off yet either. I went to the bathroom when I finally summed up enough courage to look at myself in the mirror.

My blond hair was tangled and forlorn, my white Stars and Straps t-shirt was stained with blood and dark tears splattered across it. My face was pale and dirty. I had gone to sleep in the same black skinny jeans that I had worn to school and they were chafing me behind my knobby knees. My makeup had run and smudged all around my eyes so I looked like a demon. My fingernails still had a nasty rust color in the creases that hadn't washed off and I cried as I remembered, it was Nate's blood. My heart felt like it was being crushed within my chest as I remembered his eyes. I fell to my knees because of the pain in my chest and my empty stomach felt twisted uncomfortably and hollow. I grabbed some black scissors from in the cabinet and before I knew what I was thinking I swiped the scissors through the heart I had drawn on my wrist. Anything to distract me from the pain that gripped me at my core. The bright ruby blood from my sinewy wrist ran down into the palm of my hand. I uttered a small low gasp after my blood started pulsing from the cut with each painful beat of my still aching heart. It hurt and I grimaced in pain but didn't utter another sound. I cradled my arm as it bled harder than I thought it would.

I watched it bleed redder and redder and thought about letting it kill me. It felt like giving up. I hated giving up. I wasn't weak and I didn't want to be thought of as weak. I thought about how mad I was at Nate. How could he do this to me? I thought as I threw the scissors against the cabinet and stood up slowly and dizzily. As I staggered to the wall, I gripped my dripping wrist and grabbed my towel to muffle the cut. I sunk to the floor holding it there for what seemed like forever, waiting for the bleeding to stop. I lifted it up after what felt like an hour sitting on the cold tile floor to check if I had done myself in and was relieved to find that the blood had congealed and stopped coming. I pulled myself painfully together and took a quite needed shower. I washed off all the blood and tried to wash away my sorrow along with it. The bleeding seemed to release some of the pressure and stress, sort of like crying. I felt hazy though and guessed; by the damp towel that I had lost enough blood to dehydrate myself. When I finally finished cleaning the bathroom and throwing my blood-soaked clothes and the towel in the laundry, I bandaged my wrist careful not to let anything show and put on a leather wristband to hide it. I felt empty now like I had lost all my emotion and energy. I felt like I had bled some of it away and the rest I pushed to the back of my brain. I didn't want to do anything except sit there in front of the TV or sleep. My mom came home and was glad to see I was clean. I skipped dinner and went to bed. I was numb as I went to sleep until I had a dream. I relived that terrible moment and woke up with a gasping scream. My mom would have come in but she was a heavy sleeper and the walls in our apartment were thick, although I'm sure that even if I had woken her, she probably decided not to bother me. She knew I was in a lot of pain and when I was growing up, she had often left me alone rather than comfort me. I guess I preferred to be alone. After all, I didn't like crying in front of people, even my mom, and I think she knew that.