We Who Are Jaded

Chapter Thirty Five

There was no reply to my plea when I awoke. There was no reply while I spent a dazed day recovering in bed. And as the sunset and cast a soft glow across my bedroom floor, still there was no word from Indigo Boy.

All there was, was reason not to hope. All there was, was reason to believe Anya had won.  

I ran my thumb over the keys on my phone. It thought about calling Kieran again – several times – but stopped myself. I'd done my part.  Kieran and I would meet halfway or no way. If only things had been as simple all the other times I'd been bed bound because of illness, jumping off a bridge, or being stalked by a Mercedes Benz.

Mercedes Benz...

I threw back my bed sheets, tipped myself off the bed and onto the floor. Gathering all the strength my body had been mustering in it's recovery, I pulled my mattress from my bed. Panting a little, I scrambled back onto my knees and inspected the bed slats and beneath the rickety old bed frame.

A small white square of paper sat face down, almost forgotten. I didn't make any attempt to take it or even turn it so its contents were plain to me. I sat behind my barricade of duvet and mattress and readied myself to confront it. I clenched and unclenched my fingers, readying them for the steal.

Eventually, after inspecting the blank piece of paper for as long as I was sensible, I advanced. My fingers fastened around the paper and I was suddenly faced with a dilemma. I had two options at this point: crush the flimsy piece of paper in my fist or let myself remember.

I wanted to remember.

Not even Da Vinci could capture such essence of heaven.

Kieran

X

The piece of paper wasn't blank on either side, not as it had appeared at first. My fingers followed the flowing curls of Kieran's elegant handwriting. Nobody had writing like his anymore, just another on of the ways he'd made himself special, like no one else. Never again would I possibly hear or see such words from Kieran. My supposed "essence of heaven" had all but diminished leaving me no better than anyone in his indigo eyes. 

There then came the point of actually turning the piece of paper over. I knew what was on the other side, how could I possibly forget. So did I really need to turn the piece of over? Was I not just wasting my time? No I wasn't, I was simply making up excuses to prolong the pain.

Kieran's drawing of me was beautiful – just as I remember it. The beauty was the care, talent and thought that had gone into every  stroke of Kieran's pencil to capture everything that was me. 

What would he have drawn now if he could even care to lift his pencil?

Placing the drawing of me carefully down I went to rummage beneath the lid of my splintering desk. I needed to do something – whether or not it was a good idea, I didn't know - but the need to do it was unquenchable.

Returning to sit in the mess of what usually made up my bed I held the drawing flat in the palm of one hand and my retrieved items in the other. I sat like that, tipping my hands as if I were a scale (or someone who'd had a little too much to drink).

I weighed Kieran's sketch in one have and the letters from Tom in the other, trying to find something of balance. At one time, I would have weighed in Tom's favour and at another there would have been no question that my favour was all for Kieran. 

And now?

Now, I wished that who I kissed was all I had to concern myself with. 

I sighed and fell back onto my duvet. My body was stiff from rejecting the poisons but the pain was fleeting. In my hands were clutched the offers of two boys. One offer still stood where the other seemed to be being slowly and painfully being withdrawn.