Straight in a Crooked World (Teen Fiction/Dystopian)

Chapter 3

***Jason

Angry, muffled voices pull me out of my sleep. "You can't treat him like you don't care about him, Jane!" My eyes open fully, but the action seems foreign. Pops and cracks ring throughout my body as my bones stretch, like a cat waking up from a warm sunbath. Tightly wrapping my wool blanket around my shivering frame I sit on the cool hardwood floor of my room, close my eyes, and listen.

 "We both know exactly why this all happened Shelia!"

"I know Jane, but we could've told him not to touch him, ever." I chuckle at the idea of telling Nick no, as if he was a small child.

 "I know Jane, quiet down he is sleeping!" The sound of Mom yelling at Jane sends shivers down my spine even within the warm blanket. Not once have I ever heard her yell. She always has a calm, singsong voice.

 "I could care less," Jane spits. Contradictory to her words, Jane did quiet down slightly, "Jason has never done anything to make me care about him in the slightest. He should learn to fend for himself." Jane has never been nice to me, but my heart drops. I am worthless. I am nothing.

            On hands and knees, I crawl over to the wall next to their door and settle in. I can hear Mom let out a sob of unintelligible words. Questions run through my mind. How can they know it was Nick? How does Jane expect me to protect myself? Nick is ruthless.

"How can you be such a cold hearted bitch!" Never have I heard Mom curse before today. I did not think such words were in her vocabulary. I  get up on my weak knees to go back to bed.

"He might be worthless, but I care about him" I hear Mom say to Jane.

I fall back against my wall. Everything freezes. I don't even care if the sound alerts them. Even in the lowlight of the hallway, it appears as if the room and I are spinning in opposite directions. In an army crawl, I drag myself across the hall back into my room. I close the door using the weight of my body, and just sit there like a corpse. I cannot even feel the pain in my joints, only my heart falling into the empty pits of my stomach. My frantic heart beats against my knees. Nausea and disappointment overwhelm me. Disappointment in myself.

            "He might be worthless..." Her words replay in my mind, causing me to fall apart piece by piece. "Death may be the greatest of all human blessings." I quote to myself. Even though I am beyond angry with Mom, I cannot bare the thought of her walking into my room tomorrow morning and finding me dead on the floor. Solemnly, I rise from the floor once more. The room and I have finally stopped spinning, but my mind is still in a fuzz. With a quick glimpse, I look at the time on my alarm clock. 2:00am. I am about to do something I have not done in years. Something I have not done since freshmen year. Since I lost my best friend.

 From under my mattress, I pull out a black box with a gold latch in the front. Mom had given it to me when I was little. I used to keep Pokémon cards in it, but now it held my only release. I hear the light click of metal against metal as I unlatch the lock. I cannot believe I kept this after three years of never opening it but now, in my current situation, I am glad I did. The box has five, perfectly sharpened razor blades set into a perfect line, largest to smallest. They glint as if they were waiting for the day I would need them again. I pick up the blade I knew would produce the deepest cut, the largest one. With two swift movements, I cut each wrist once. After three years, I still have not forgotten my only skill. Not too deep. Just enough to feel okay. I sprawl myself on the hardwood board, cooling my back on the cold floor. The scarlet blood running down my arm drips to the floorboards. Sometimes, when you are helpless, the best thing to do is jump out of the bowl.

 As I stare up at the red ceiling of my bedroom, which ironically matches the color of blood, memories of my childhood  flood, unwillingly, back. I remember Nick and I playing soccer in his backyard and volleyball in his pool. Bad ones closely follow good memories.