Thin

Chapter Nine - Destruction

Chapter Nine –  Destruction

“Ali,” I whine in the direction of the bundle of blankets that’s puddled at the end of my toes.  The wool material of the blanket tickles my toes, making a trader smile spread across my face.  A gust of cold wind blew in the room from the air conditioner,  making me wish even more that I had a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

        “What?” Ali asks, her voice is muffled by the thick layers of blankets, but I can still hear her say the words in a faux innocent voice.

        In all the years that I’ve known Ali, she’s always done that same little voice of hers. If she didn’t get what she wanted, she’d pull out the voice. When she wanted to guilt you into doing things for her, the voice would make a cameo. It wasn’t something anyone should do, but when it comes to Ali, I don’t think anyone cares enough to complain about it.

        “You know why!” I really wish that she would just hurry up and giving me the blankets to stop all of the chills from pushing me over.

        “Refresh my mind, Leigh,” I sigh. The temperature is really starting to drop dangerously low in this room.  Does she really have to do this now?  I just want to be warm - the blankets she’s taken hostage would surely help me right now.

        “I’m cold,” I drag the short word out.  I watch her, waiting for her face to appear through the barrier of blankets to let me know that she’ll hand me the blankets.  Knowing how sweet of a person Ali normally is, she’ll detect the chill in my words and fork the blankets over to me.

        She doesn’t move a single centimeter.

        “And your point is?” I guess Ali has now decided that due to me always being such a horrible pain in the butt, she’ll shake things up and be the bitchy one. Great timing that girl seems to have lately.

        “You stole all the blankets!”

        “Did I?” The stupid fake voice doesn’t seem to want to leave her system anytime soon, no matter how tired of her words she must know I am.

        “Alexandria!” I snap loudly at her, finally cracking and crossing the border into bitch land.  It’s not a good place to be, yet I always find myself wondering past the boarder.

        I don’t want to be this sort of person, I really don’t.  Somehow every little mistake, every little word, every action became annoying to my ears.  I can’t go one day without yelling or snapping.  All I want to do now, it seems, is slap people across the face; to scream at the top of lungs; to snap; to finally go so far, that I can’t go back.  What is wrong with me?  I keep pushing all my friends away.  One of these days, I’m going to wake up and realize that I’m really alone in this world.

        “Sorry,” she says, slowly emerging from beneath the blankets.

        I know she isn’t, she isn’t truly sorry at all.  She’s only apologizing because that’s what we’re taught to do from a very early age: you say sorry when you hurt somebody’s feeling or to simply stop them from exploding. The latter of which would currently apply to me. That’s me, Kyleigh, the lunatic who’s always on edge and ready to explode over one lone action; one simple word. But what do I expect of Ali? For her to adapt to my ever changing moods, when even I don’t know how I feel?

        I can’t expect that out of her.  No human being can possibly do that, I’m horrible for even believing that she should be like that.  I’m friend with Ali because of the type of character she is, not because of how much of a robot she can be. Being a lifeless robot isn’t something Ali could be; she’s too much of herself for that. She knows who she is and who she wants to be; she knows what she wants in life.

        I can just expect her to be here with me and that’s exactly what she’s doing. She could be anywhere in the world right now, but instead she’s sitting on the couch with me. She’s still willing to be around me, even though I constantly take her for granted. I’m always snapping at her, yelling at her, hating her. Yet, somehow she’s still here for me.

        I have to stop that rampage of destruction that I call life. All I ever do is mess everything up; everything I do always seems to crumble whenever I touch it. I need to distance the people I care for from all the destructive in my life. I’m the destruction.

        I have to distance myself from them.

         “Leigh?” Ali asks, her voice drifting me away from my thought and to the real world.  I look over at her, her eyes full of concern but her face wide with a carefree smile. I love it when I see her actually smile at me. That perfectly little smile reminds me that we’re actual friends and that she doesn’t hate me for how I treat her.

        I don’t know why I’m always so sure that she hates me. How could she ever hate me that much when she shows so much affection to me? I’m always just too paranoid of being out of control like that, not being able to fully cope with a change in events. I don’t have to be so worried because I know Ali will always be there for me, whether I needed it or not.

        For the first time in far too long, I genuinely grin back at my best friend for years.

        I can’t distance myself from Ali.

 

p.s. thank you lindsey for the (old) cover!