Pretty Little Bones

Pitching Myself for Leads in Other People's Dreams

Pitching Myself for Leads in Other People's Dreams

A week after I was released from the hospital, I overdosed on pain pills and almost died for the third time in four months.

That scarred Ava. Because three days earlier, she had decided to start destroying herself, and I beat her to it. I was the only one that noticed her, and suddenly I couldn't anymore.

While I was in rehab, there was no one around to stop her from walking around outside herself. They didn't take the chisel out of her hands so she couldn't carve out the insides of her bones, because no one even knew it existed.

No one knew she was an artist. She did her work when people weren't around--which was a lot--building the walls and crafting crevasses to store her emotions.

Eventually, her skin stretched so thin that it couldn't keep anything out. All the rumors--all the things other girls said about her--sank in and ran through her bloodstream until she had a place hollowed out to put them.

Then she kept them with her forever, wherever she went. Just like with people, she couldn't let anything go. She couldn't let it disappear. Forgive and forget was a foreign concept. Everything people whispered about ate away at her insides.

Somehow she felt like everyone was against her, when in reality, it was two bratty teenage girls and two rumors that people only believed for a short time. No one saw how everything they joked about became the force behind her destruction.

If I'd never gone to rehab to save myself, I might have been able to save her. Maybe she could have taken her hand and pulled her out of the skin she hated so much. She might have been happy.

But I didn't. Because when I came back into her life as a supposedly better person, I didn't realize she was the one that had changed. It took me a long time to see that it was all her. I thought it was my fault she seemed so different. I thought I'd changed so much that I just couldn't recognize the girl she had always been.

From the day I was released and told I was good as new, the girl I'd always known seemed to get closer to me. I thought that was my doing, too. I thought the idea of me almost dying on multiple occasions made her want to spend every second with me. And I didn't mind. I just didn't realize that it wasn't because I had been dying.

It was because she was dying.

But how was I supposed to know? Her pretty pink lips would fold into a smile and she twist the rings on her fingers like she always had. Occasionally, she'd slide a long, pale finger under the black band on her wrist and give it a snap. She'd smack on the mint gum in her mouth. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Except she started twisting the rings more often. And she picked at the hairbands almost religiously. Then she started wearing the jacket. Always with the jacket. I'd ask her if she was hot and she'd just shake her head, letting the blonde waves tickle her broad shoulders. So I'd let it slide. She'd been warm natured when she was little.

When people are so tiny and happy, like she'd always been, you have a tendency to overlook them. You just assume they'll always stay that way and you turn your back on their cries for help.

I wonder how long she was screaming at us. I wonder how many times she just wanted to open her mouth and say "Can't you hear me? Why won't you just fuckin' listen to me?"

One time I asked her why she didn't just say something sooner. Why she didn't ask for help before she had no choice. And she gave me a little grin. "Why didn't you?"

Casually, she stuck a long finger under the black hairband on her wrist and let it snap. I laughed. We weren't the same kind of sick. I did drugs because I was bored. She was sick because she believed people thought there was something wrong with her.

She sighed and looked at me long and hard. With her gray eyes so intense I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. That's probably how she felt all the time. "I guess I didn't want to bother anyone," she finally said.

I guess we hadn't been so different.

We all think that we have control over the things we do. It's enticing to think that there's nothing we can't handle. But in the process of trying to control ourselves, Ava and I screwed up. We trusted ourselves too much. Then, when we decided to get better we both trusted me too much. I thought I'd be a better person. I thought I'd be there for her. And Ava did too. She thought I'd jump in and save her. She waited just under the surface of the water, holding her breath and wishing for me.

But I never came.

When I finally realized that she was the one that had changed, I started wishing I hadn't gone to rehab. Getting the help I needed seemed selfish when she had needed me so much more. All that time she'd believed in me. She thought I could control what I did and I thought she was happy. She always looked so happy with her pretty little smile and her loud, careless laughs. The way she listened so intently to the things everyone said.

That was the blessing that tried to kill her: listening. I wasn't there to protect her from the rumors. I couldn't fill her head with all the pretty little things she didn't know about herself.

For a long time, I wasn't around to tell her how she was beautiful in a weird way. No one ever told her that she was something special when I was gone. So after she told me her secret I shared my part of the blame and started wishing that things had gone differently.

I would have been perfectly happy to end up as a worthless burnout if it meant that Ava got the help she needed before she was too far gone. Before she got trapped. Before she hated herself.

People like her are rare.

They're more real than anyone could ever imagine being.