Dare Me to Live

Chapter 25 (Part one)

"It was a long time before I really knew anything was wrong," Tyler said slowly, like he was still trying to figure out how to tell his story. I wondered then if anyone had truly ever asked him to tell his side of the story with the intention of listening, just listening, to the whole thing.

Like the music she played-and loved-Mia had high and low notes. The problem was the low notes were pitched too low for anyone to hear. They had been dating nearly a year when Tyler happened to be around when Mia experienced a panic attack.

"It freaked me out at first, I had no idea she had anxiety. I realized after that she must have gone to great lengths to hide it. I think she was ashamed."

His words nudged me in a familiar way. I could understand only too well what Mia must have felt and the pain she went through to hide it from view.

"I was seventeen and even though you think you're an adult and have everything figured out...I just didn't know what to do." He shrugged in an unconscious sort of way, as though he had repeated these words to himself many times, but still had to check their weight when they settled on his shoulders. In my mind's eye I saw the high school Tyler from the picture in his hallway, with the goofy smile and long hair, trying to figure out a solution to a problem he shouldn't have had to.

"After that she told me about how sometimes she got so anxious she thought she was choking. She showed me her scars and told me how she used to cut on the inside of her arms where people were less likely to see. It was hard, to see all those white lines, but she told me she stopped when she rediscovered music. Her parents never even knew she cut before the trial," he added almost bitterly.

Around us the light has shifted so it was almost horizontal, layered shafts of silver luminescence. The rain had become a kind of fizzing mist like the air itself was carbonated. I wiped some of the moisture from my cheeks and turned to study Tyler, tucking my chin into my shoulder. He was still staring out into the water. His expression was hard, almost stoic, like the scene he was watching play out in the rain was something he had to get through. Grit his teeth, bear the weight, and press on. Was that what his life had been like since her death?

"Things got a little better when she got back into music. She had this unbelievable passion for it, when she played, she was a whole new person. She still had her issues, but whenever she felt like she was slipping, when she wanted to cut again, she would draw a butterfly on the inside of her arm and get her violin. "

A butterfly?

"Your tattoo," I said, realization clicking into place. "The butterfly on your arm. It's for her."

Tyler nodded and rolled up his sleeve to reveal the outline of the butterfly tucked safely in the crook of his left elbow. It was elegant in it's simplicity, and the way the ghostly afternoon light caught the water beading on the black lines made it seem like it had life; a shadow butterfly winging through a rainbow of its own creation, metamorphosing into a life of color.

"She told me about this thing she had found online called the Butterfly Project," he said, tracing the thin lines. "It was for people who cut themselves. You draw a butterfly on yourself when you want to cut and if you don't cut by the time the butterfly fades, it lives. So Mia would draw and then play, for hours if she needed to. She even composed a song for herself-she called it "Wings"-though I only ever heard pieces of it. I think she preferred to keep it close."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly while he rolled his sleeve back down. I wondered what the butterfly meant to him now; if he was still glad he had it, a butterfly for Mia that would never fade. It would live on, as long as he did, even now that she was gone.

"Things were good for a while-until Mia was diagnosed with arthritis."

I sensed he was skipping things, only touching on highlights, the big stuff, but I didn't press. He looked back at Needle Rock, made fuzzy by distance and rain, and his expression hardened again.

"People say it's the jump that killed her or the depression that caused her to jump, but they're wrong. It was the arthritis that did it. It took the one thing that made her feel alive.

"It was months of tests and then months of treatment. It hurt, to watch her struggle and know there was nothing I could do. I couldn't take her pain away, I couldn't find a cure. Then, she got the letter from Julliard-the one she had been waiting for-and she set it on fire. I had to stamp it out. She said there was no way she could play the audition well enough to get in, and even if she could she would fail out. She was so upset she smashed her practice violin-" Tyler paused, seeming to get lost for a second. He swallowed hard, and then continued.

"I was the one who convinced her to go to the audition. I told her would would always wonder what would have happened if she didn't-that when she got in there were still a bunch of other therapies we could try." Tyler shook his head and I saw him press his knuckles to his eyes to hide the fact that they were wet.

"She came home early that day-she was supposed to stay in New York with a cousin but after she did so poorly at the audition, she got a train back. Her parents weren't home when she called me crying, saying how it was over-that everything was over. I got scared she was going to hurt herself so I went to her house."

His voice came out a croak as low and strained as it was.

"I found her upstairs in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub with the kitchen knife in her hand-and I grabbed it and pulled it away." He unconsciously flexed his right hand and I turned over his palm to see the scar that divided his hand perfectly in half. It stood out white against his skin, turned a pale blue from the cold, like an inverse tattoo.

"I threw it into the tub, picked her up off the floor, she was crying so hard I couldn't talk any sense into her. I was holding her up by her arms, she wouldn't get her legs under her, and she kept digging her nails into me-that's why my DNA was under them, why she had those bruises around her wrists. I got her into her room-she was sobbing on the bed-I didn't want to leave her but I didn't know what to do. I ran downstairs to get my phone and I came right back up but she had locked the door. By the time I got it open she was gone."

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I wanted Tyler's story to be one chapter, but it would have been too long :/ Anyway, I'm not really sure I liked how this part came out, still trying to find places to tweak it, so I would love to hear any of your thoughts! Thanks in advance :) The rest of his story will be up soon!