30. Sydney
thirty
sydney
Beautiful, fragile thing
And the monsters that sing
In the dead of night.
Inevitably, the two clash
An explosive, glittering flash.
Fragility only survives with spite.
I drop my pen. My case of charcoal pencils are open in front of me, and I reach for them automatically. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I have the urge to draw a monster lurking behind the words. Maybe a light monster will be on the other side, like a good-and-evil battle.
The scary monster comes first, all dark shadows swirling around a human-like figure. Then another.
Then a third.
They lurk on the edges of the page, encroaching on the poem.
Poetry is not what I should be writing, but an itch to open the notebook and try again began soon after Penn mentioned reading it.
I give one a sadistic smile with my eraser. One doesn’t have a mouth. The third just a straight across line, no hint of teeth or bravado or joy. It feels done enough, so I turn the page.
I draw a phone with a text bubble. In thinner pencil, I write: Where did you go?
L. has all but vanished. The last time we spoke was on the phone, his voice too low to decipher. The mystery of it is driving me mad . There are little to no details to focus on or exploit, which leaves me at worse than a dead end. I don’t even have a beginning.
It’s worse than the bruises on my ass, which remind me of the run in the woods every time I sit or put on pants or lean over. The cuts have scabbed over. There’s another bruise on my shoulder from where he bit me.
I touch them sometimes. It’s more about remembering—that I want to remember—than the one around my neck. Thankfully, that’s starting to heal and fade. It’s moving through the ugly phases, but every shade lighter it gets, the less time I have to spend blending concealer around it.
The writing class has shifted from entertainment to fiction. We each picked dates to turn our stories in. Since they’re longer, more like ten pages than the shorter ones we’ve been writing, we’ll be analyzing and critiquing two stories at a time.
In essence, I don’t need to hand mine in until three weeks from now.
So it’s on the back burner, although I have a few to read.
My gaze drops to the smudged outline of a phone, and I have to steel myself not to reach for my actual phone and send him that message.
And in the end, I fucking do anyway.
Me
Here’s a lie:
I miss talking to you.
I got attached to you.
I’m afraid of who you are.
L.
That was more than one.
I’m afraid for you to find out who I am.
I miss talking to you.
When I heard your voice on the phone, I immediately regretted not recording it so I could listen over and over again.
What made you text me in the first place?
Curiosity.
What made you reply?
You were different. It’s weird, but the fact that you were telling me to ignore everyone else made me feel a little better.
Were you bullied when you were a kid?
I was called white trash, had my book bag regularly dumped in the hallway. Once, it was outright stolen from my locker. We didn’t have the money to replace it, so when that happened I ended up carrying everything in a plastic grocery bag.
And then it turned up in lost and found a week later.
That sucks. But your dad…?
He’s got money, right? Didn’t he help out?
We had our scheduled visits on the weekends, but I don’t think he knew how we were living.
Barely functioning.
Mom wanted it that way.
Jeez. Mood killer. How did you grow up?
Shitty dad. My mom bends over backward for him. They probably used to be in love, but it kind of fizzled… One sister who refused to get into sports.
Are you? In sports?
Yeah.
Hockey?
Sydney…
I’m going to assume hockey, because that limits my options of who you could be. Two rosters versus two undergrad populations.
Do you still see your parents? Are you close to them, even if they’re shitty?
No.
I don’t see my mom either.
She’s missing…
For real?
I’m afraid to leave town because this is the last place she knew me to be. Her phone is off, her house—well, trailer—is gone. She used to leave a lot when I was a kid, and she always came back.
Something might be wrong.
I put the phone down and close my eyes. That felt too real to admit, but I typed and sent it without even thinking.
Something might be wrong.
She always comes back, and it’s been almost three months.
When I peek at my phone, there’s a reply waiting for me.
L.
No matter what happens, you’ll be okay.
You’re more of a survivor than you think.
Am I, though?
I rub at my eyes and shove away from the desk. I’ve written many poems inspired by my home life. Like the one about being swallowed by the sun. The one Penn mentioned. I go back and grab the notebook, flipping to that page.
I scan it while I pace, too restless to even stay sitting. It’s not so much a poem as flash fiction. Shorter than a short story.
And I can’t bear to think up a response to L.’s latest text.
I love in the same way Icarus must’ve yearned for the sun. So desperate to be close, to climb in someone else’s skin. To be fully seen and understood and accepted. It wasn’t that he wanted to escape—or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to be engulfed by that feeling and forget reality. To leave behind the earth entirely.
If the sun loved me, I wouldn’t hesitate to strap on wings and fly all the way across the universe. I’d open my arms and welcome the burn.
It’s better than the alternative: cold, alone, empty.
To the sun: Burn me up. Love me. Swallow me whole.
I’m not going to judge my writing from almost a year ago. I still remember scribbling this all in one go. Poetry and flash fiction both satisfy something deep inside me. For this one, I was curled up in the floor of the bathroom. Mom was gone, and I was that alternative. So fucking empty.
There was a storm outside. The thunder boomed and echoed in the trailer, and the rain pelting down on the metal roof made everything louder.
It was the first time I remember feeling afraid in my own home.
We had recently sold our television, so there was nothing to drown out the sounds. At least in the bathroom, there were no windows. I stared at the crack under the door and watched it periodically flash as lightning hit.
My mind, back then, turned to my mother. Where she was, who she was with. It was the summer before my first semester at St. James University, and she was gone again . I hated the choking fear that accompanied thoughts of leaving her.
Just six months prior, she had been fired from her job. It left us even tighter on money, even when I got a waitressing gig at the local bar. I wasn’t old enough to bartend—young for an upcoming college freshman at seventeen—and I couldn’t deliver alcohol to the tables. It meant I had to share my tips with the waitresses who could deliver liquor.
But it was money coming in. Money that went to rent and utilities and food and clothes. That job was how I eventually afforded my first crappy car.
Without me, I didn’t know how she could survive.
So I arranged an on-campus job in the financial aid office and sent home almost all of my paychecks to her. Because even while I was here, she was there, and no better off than when I lived with her.
I rub my eyes again, dragging myself out of memories.
This is why I need to find her. Because she can’t function on her own. She could be in a homeless shelter or the hospital. What if she got hit by a car and is in a coma?
What if the hospital couldn’t get through to me because my fucking voicemail is constantly full of vulgar messages from blocked numbers, and I stopped answering calls from people outside of my contacts? What if they have no way to ID her, so she’s just an unknown Jane Doe in their system? Forever?
I’m spiraling.
I don’t answer L. and I throw my notebook back in the drawer. My case of charcoal follows it. I kick it shut and stride away. It’s better to leave my feelings on the page, in the dark, than relive them.