Dear Adelaide,

11

I'd left Alec on the back lawn and had run into the house. I knew exactly where I was headed. My feet had taken me through the front entrance and past the foyer. I was about to dart up the stairs when I heard a loud clutter in the kitchen that stopped me. I thought a moment about abandoning the noise and continuing my journey. But that was before I lost control.

That was before the honey took my veins.

It had an odd habit of doing that. Interrupting things and turning me in another direction, until I had a hard time remembering what had brought me to end up there in the first place.

My feet were moved through golden waves until I found her.

And when I did, she was in a panic on the floor, fingers trembling as she tried to pinch the two-toned pills that had scattered amock across the kitchen tiles. She had let out a simpering wail and now sat in a hyperventilated chaos, her own hands ratting her hair, then dribbling aimlessly over the ground, before she noticed me peeking from around the corner.

"Evelyn?"

"Oh! He jokes. But he-he knows..." Her face was red and blotchy and her mascara wet, leaving soggy black puddles where the underneath of her eyes should have been.

"Who Evelyn?"

"Oh dear!" She masked her cheeks with her fingers, scrubbing, working to perfect herself once more. Perhaps realizing she had a piece or two out of place. Then, she fumbled hurriedly to scoop up the quantities of pills that had spilled.

"Are you alright? Evely-" I gasped.

Red.

I shook my head.

Red, tiny drippings on the floor. A swelling in my skull.

"Evelyn you're-"

Red drizzled over crystals of glass.

"You're bleeding."

"Oh! Oh...He jokes and he jokes and he jokes." Evelyn continued, unaware of the fact, and rose her bloodied fingers to her face, doting her cheeks in her own red prints, which turned runny the moment they made contact with the salty streaks moistening her face. "But he knows! Ah!" Tears streamed down past her lips, drawing pink lines through the red.

There was a shattered water glass on the floor beside her, sharp clear shards marking their glinting places on the tile, aside smatterings of crimson from the broken skin on her fingertips. Those that had been sliced open as she'd been caught desperately running her hands across the floor moments before.

"Oh!" She let out another cry and scooped up the remaining pills into a small pile at her knees. Surely there were bits of glass and dirt among the collection. "Would you hand me that pitcher dear?"

I nodded warily and handed her the tall pitcher of water that sat on the kitchen table.

Evelyn picked out a small half handful of the pills from her pile, smudging them red, and dropped them into her mouth. She reached for what was left of the water glass, a top shattered base, and filled all it could hold with water. She shakily brought the broken edge of the glass to her mouth and drank, swallowing sloppily, and slicing open her bottom lip in the process. She didn't even seem to notice.

She sat a moment in silence, staring at the floor, her eyes glossy and distant. Crimson color marking the jagged edge of the glass where it had met with her mouth.

"Evely-..." I watched as the smile returned to her face. She wore the blood on her lips as if it were only another shade of lipstick. Her blue eyes fluttered wide, her breathing returned to normal, and the pale gold of her skin softened back into its usual glow. She wiped the red from her fingertips onto her dress and cleared the wet black smudges from beneath her eyes. She stood to her feet, smiling through perfectly sculpted teeth, gleaming whiter now than ever aside the red. She straightened her spine and rounded her hairdo. Ran her hands down the skirt of her dress now with the calluses of drying blood on her fingers, adding a new color to the fabric on their way down. But she didn't seem to notice. She stood plastic still, her eyes clicking onto mine.