Pretty Little Bones

Love is Not a Choice

Love is Not a Choice

Despite being terrified of words, Ava insisted on immersing herself in them. As soon as she found one she considered satisfactory enough to describe something in her life, she continued to use it, exploiting the meaning until it suddenly had none.

Fine.

Sick.

Love.

They didn't mean anything to her. Not the way she abused them.

When people extended the simple common courtesy of asking how she was without hanging on for the answer, she simply said "fine". But she wasn't fine at all. Occasionally she'd be okay, but never fine. Some days were better than others. She could laugh a little more freely and smile a little more loosely. Those days she was okay, but there were never days when something wasn't bothering her.

Yet she used the word like she knew what it meant. She said it as though it were the gospel truth. "I'm fine," she'd smile. "How are you?"

After she told me her secret, I started to wonder how she defined the word. To her, fine must have been the same as saying "little pieces of me keep breaking, but it's no big deal. If you don't think about it they don't hurt so bad."

Fine had to mean "I hate myself and I want to go away. But I love everyone so much that I have to stay."

Fine couldn't mean that she was doing well. Fine meant she was still drowning, but the waves were making pretty little pictures to pass the time. I was the only one to notice, so it was easy for her to hide behind that lie.

"Sick" was a harder word to live around.

I guess that was her poetic nature. Saying she was sick was a lot more romantic than saying "my head's all fucked up." 

When Ava got "sick", she was forced to replace the two hairbands on her wrist with two plastic bracelets from the local hospital, one yellow and one red. They must have itched, the way she constantly picked at them. That, or she really just hated them.

I hated them for her.

The yellow one was a simple identification tag. Just a label to let people know who she was. Name. Doctor. Hospital. Words the nurses used to define the skin and bones, not the actual girl herself. To them, the mind wasn't important. Only the veins were.

"Allergy Alert" the red one boasted in bold, white letters next to the black scribbles of marker dictating a word so strange, it looked like the doctors had just slammed their hand down on the keyboard and took whatever string of letters came up first.

Each thick band hung loosely from her joint and they scratched against each other noisily. And unfortunately for Ava, they weren't only loud, but hard to hide and impossible to ignore. The bright colors stuck out in blinding contrast against her pale skin as they peeked out from under the cuff of her gray coat. 

Once someone caught a glimpse of them, they'd grab her arm, pull the sleeve back, and gawk at the giant accessories. They would look at her in disgust and ask what it was, not knowing they had only noticed because the hairbands had been replaced. Before she answered, she'd swallow hard. "Oh, I've been sick," she'd say, playing with a blonde wave nervously.

She always wanted to pull her hand away, but didn't for fear of offending the admirer. They would ask how she was and if she was feeling better, feigning interest in hearing about her. The real her. And she was a good little girl. The answer was always "Yes, I'm fine, thanks for asking. How are you?"

That always made me angry. She wasn't just fine. She wasn't just sick. She had a serious problem. A very, very serious problem and she was too ashamed to ask for help. Obviously it couldn't be so bad if no one noticed, she told herself.

But sometimes she thought they did notice and that always tore me apart. Sometimes people would say something specific about her tiny wrists when they picked up her arm, and for a moment, she thought they were seeing under the mask.

The way her gray eyes burned as she stared blankly at their occupied expressions, wondering if they had actually climbed her walls and noticed something about her. Something she didn't want them to know about. Maybe she was finally screaming loud enough. Maybe it worked and they finally understood.

Maybe there was hope.

She'd stay so wrapped up in the idea, clutching at the novelty of it, waiting for them to say that she would be okay. That they were going to get her some help. And she'd smile a crooked, broken smile when they never did.

Poor Ava was a good girl. Good at lying.

Everyone just believed that her wrists were so tiny because she was sick. Because she didn't know what "sick" actually meant. She didn't know what any of the words she used really meant.

So anytime she gave me that mischievous grin, the one that made the skin crinkle into little frowns under her left eye, and said "It's a good thing I love you so much, Carter," I had to wonder if she really meant it.

Did she actually love me, or was she saying it the same way she said she loved her friends—the people that didn't listen. Was it actually love or just the same word she used to describe the things she could live without?

Or did she say "I love you" the same way I did: like a reaction. She always found it easier than I did to feel things. When someone extended the word "love" to me, I gave it back, whether I meant it or not.

Except with her.

When I said I loved her, I meant it.