Dare Me to Live

Chapter 1

Mom cried herself incoherent on the day they dropped me off at college. In between the hiccups and tears and sudden bursts of laughter, I deciphered that she was proud of me and to call whenever I wanted. I swallowed the urge to remind her that I was three hours away by car, only two by train, as she hugged me tightly.

Dad gave me a brief, one-armed hug, told me to pick on people bigger than me, and added a gruff, "I love you."

What Dad lacked in emotional displays my mom more than made up for, but Dad was genuine in his affection.

Aside from transferring my belongings from the car to my dorm room and hooking up the television, I refused furthers offers of help and sent them on their way after mom had taken the obligatory first day of school picture.

It was early morning and my roommate had yet to arrive, allowing me freedom to assess the room and claim the bed least likely to be hit by the sunrise. Not having exchanged more than a handful of words over social media, I didn't know much about Amber Garry. We had been randomly assigned over the summer, but we were already Facebook friends so clearly we were destined to be inseparable. Right. If her social media profiles were even the slightest bit representative of her in real life, it would be an interesting co-habitation.

The room itself was cramped, dressed in neutral colors: bland wooden furniture, a gray mattress atop a skeletal black bed frame, boxed in by off-white cinderblock walls. It was industrial, built for efficiency not comfort, and was one of a dozen other identical rooms in this hallway. Looking at it, I couldn't help but be reminded of my hospital room with its stale, almost clinical feel. But I couldn't afford to think like that.

It's a canvas, I told myself. Blank. The fresh start you wanted. Among others, the upside to this room was that I could re-make it.

I set about putting my clothes away and making my bed with a black and white paisley comforter I had selected for my birthday. In hindsight something more colorful might have been better suited to breathing life back into the room, though I had never been one for bright hues. To cover the ugly stone walls I hung pictures of my family and friends along with a Breakfast Club poster and a "Keep Calm Carry On" frame that my mother had given me as a reminder.

In the last spot of visible wall, closest to the head of my bed, I smoothed the last picture into place, my fingers lingering a second on the face of my best friend.

I studied Danny's face, the way the light caught nearly invisible freckles on his cheeks and illuminated each out of place brown hair curled around his ears. His eyes, the color of faded jeans, were alive with laughter and even a small amount of cockiness—you couldn't have done the things he did without some. The angle his arm was slung over my shoulders showed off the definition in his biceps and neck.

It was a picture of vibrant youth—a never-ending adolescence that would never have the chance to gather more freckles like he gathered scars, to decide whether his hair should be long or short, to have that cockiness mold into wisdom, to trade muscle in favor of a long life.

He would have been moving into his own school today. I imagined his day would have followed a similar course to my own, in a nearly identical room with a sloppily-made bed and a few posters tacked to the wall, before he called me to see how I was doing, ready to discuss what new high-stakes adventure would kick off his year.

My breath caught in my chest for a moment looking at the curve of his mouth frozen in laughter, hearing the sound of it echo back from the depth of my buried memories. I was blinking away tears when the door to my room opened and broke my concentration.