25: Mind Or Heart

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Chapter 25: Mind Or Heart?

            Marshall smelled like strawberries. Mixed with a touch of marshmallows. And pink bubble-gum. It smelled so sweet, so childish, and so innocent. Maybe that was why I felt such a calming tranquility within me despite what had just happened, as if his innocence had a way of purifying the darkest parts inside of me. It was like my brain felt nothing. There was no logic and I wasn’t caught in the usual labyrinth woven by my strict reasoning and rationality.

Instead I felt free, and I was so unaccustomed to the feeling that I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was like I had just been given wings without instructions on how to fly and Marshall was, in that weird way of his, teaching me how to use them by having me on his back. I imagined him saying, “now flap your wings Camila, keep flapping, keep flapping” and when the time was right, like teaching a kid how to ride a bicycle, he’d let go and disappear from below me and I’d somehow be able to keep afloat in the air.

            It was so hard to grasp reality right then, but in actuality, Marshall had taken it upon himself to piggyback me home, which was at least a thirty minute walk, all uphill, and he was heaving and saying to me “don’t worry. You’re not… you’re not heavy at all” even though I’d been silent all along.

            When we got back, he finally let me down and glanced around at the house before giving me a meek smile. “Tell me… you have the keys Cam-Cam.”

            I couldn’t even look Marshall in the eyes and could only raise my gaze up to his nose after several hard attempts. I wasn’t exactly sure what my problem was though it was likely that clinging onto him and crying into his chest for almost an hour in the middle of the school parking lot had finally done my pride in somehow. Nevertheless, I pointed at the garden gnomes by the little flowerbed to the right side of the house and Marshall ventured over and eventually found the key underneath the third one in the middle. 

            After we made our way inside, the first thing Marshall did was make a bath for me upstairs. I felt like my soul had just been transferred into someone else’s body and that my mind was slowly coming off a heavy dosage of hospital morphine, but I wasn’t so clueless not to realize my body was a dirty mess, and flaccidly followed him when he led me into the bathroom. There I let myself sit down on the edge of the bathtub before dipping a finger inside the soapy water to test the temperature. It was only slightly above lukewarm and enjoying the new warmth to my hands, I traced the alphabet on the water as Marshall kneeled down in front of me.

            Truthfully, I wasn’t quite sure why he was still there. If it was the other way around and it was Marshall who was acting spoiled and unresponsive, I might have already dragged him up by his collar and slapped him a hundred times across the face. However, he was as different from me as an elephant was to a rock, and instead of being impatient, continued to smile at me as if I wasn’t being unreasonable towards his thoughtfulness at all.

            “I need you to wash up a little okay?” He said to me. “And then we’ll take care of your wounds after that. Are you okay? Can you do that?”

            I kind of just… shrugged, but Marshall took that as progress and reached for my cardigan. “Here, let’s take this off first.” Gently, he managed to slip it out of my arms and throw it over his shoulders like this was all déjà vu to him and he had gone through this at least a million times. “Now then,” he said, and by now my eyes can finally meet his for at least a few seconds at a time, and they shone mischievously as his lips lifted into a smirk. “How about the rest of your clothes? Want me to help you take those off too?”

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