Heartbeats

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I dropped Malcolm off and arrived home a good twenty minutes before I was due. My mum was splayed across the couch with a bowl of popcorn spilling to the floor and a coke can on the coffee table. Taking a deep breath, I started through the dimly lit living room.

“Hey sweetie,” she greeted groggily, but she didn’t move to get up.

I let a smile leak through and waved as I passed through, dodging into the kitchen. Tess was up on the counter painting her toe nails red and yakking away on the phone. I ignored her and continued on to the fridge, realizing for the first time in forever that I was hungry. I snatched a yogurt cup from the shelf and shut the fridge before putting my back to it and sliding down to the floor. I slurped my treat in silence.

After a moment Tess hopped down and sat cross legged beside, clicking the phone off. I eyes her suspiciously before growling, “What?”

“Stacey told me that Leslie heard from her older brother that you dumped Mason.”

“Yeah. So?”

Her eyes went wide. “You dumped him?”

Had she not heard me? “Yes….”

“I can’t believe you! He was, like, the most perfect boy to walk this Earth.”

Whether it be my fatigue, my apathy, whatever, the next words that fell from my lips were, “Besides Charles.”

What.

No.

I didn’t mean that.

Tess raised an eyebrow. “Who the heck is Charles?” She was looking at me like I had just confessed to snacking on the heads of newborns, but that it was also the secret to eternal youth.

“He’s, uh, a friend.”

She nodded slowly, rising as I did, and let me slide past her to the trash can. “A perfect friend apparently.”

I crushed the plastic cup before letting it fall into the garbage. “It’s not. Like. That.”

Tess kept teasing, pinching my blushing cheeks as she walked past me. “No wonder you could let a catch like Mason go. You already had another on the line!”

“Tessa!” I yelped, but she just waved me off and disappeared into the living room. I was practically grinding my teeth as I followed her, all too ready to get to bed.

I didn’t even undress before I fell into the inky black pool of sleep that harbored all my nightmares.

In this one I must have been five, and I was sitting in my bedroom with all the lights out playing with razor blades. My thin little fingers held each blade carefully, pointing the sharp edges away from my body, but I still had cuts all over the palms of my hands. Warm black blood was seeping from them, smearing on the floor and soaking into my clothes.

I heard someone coming up behind me, and I shifted around to face them as they approached. My eyes were colored as they are now, the pupil in my yellow eye more dilated than the other.

“Hi Charles,” I greeted in an adolescent whine, returning to the blades.

The part of me that was conscious of the situation felt hopeful, wanting to see what Charles had looked like at this age, and I was disappointed when a full grown Charles eased to sit beside me. He pulled his legs in until his knees were angled lazily. “What’s up kiddo?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I baby voiced, picking up a tiny razor blade and running my finger along its sharp edge. Charles’s face paled, and he carefully pulled the blade from my hands. When he saw the rest he cursed and took possession of those too.