How To Not Die

hands

He pulled me to the porch, then shut the thick, bright red door. It wasn't even a mellow, toned-down, darker red. No, Aunt Jackie liked bright colors, as was apparent in the inside of her house.

Charlie is still holding my hand. This must be important. "What's wrong?" He looks absolutely...I don't know a word for it. It's somewhere between severely depressed, overly pitiful, and rather surprised.

"Are you okay, Nina?"

I roll my eyes, look him dead in his, and take a deep breath. "Of course I'm okay." Because it's none of his goddamn business. I don't need to rely on someone who's just going to be ripped away from me. I need to be strong for everyone now.

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I see him slightly release his features from his tense state and tears fill his bluish-grey eyes. I always thought that his eyes looked like clouds, and seeing him cry only further ingrains the picture in my head.

"No, you're not okay! Stop saying that you're okay! You know as well as I do that you're just pulling this tough-kid routine because you think you have to, but you don't. I bet you haven't even cried yet."

"I-I...shit. Fuck you. Why are you even here?" I don't even have the energy to argue. Had I cried? I can't remember doing it, but I must have, right? Have I lost this much of my humanity, that I have lost the ability to cry? God, I'm an awful human being.

Charlie doesn't say anything with his mouth, but his action speak pretty clearly as he hugs me. It takes a minute for me to realize what's going on. I try to push him off of me as I feel tears welling up in my eyes.

I try to blink them away. The chair. That damned chair. I try to push the picture out of my mind and shut my eyes again. The bottles of alcohol. The car door. Frank's shifty grin. I feel myself starting to panic as my eyes won't open. Frank. The wall. Tears and the wall. The wall was this off-white color that I always hated. Everything hurts. Mom mouthing sorry. Frank hit her. The tears are falling freely now. The lights. The car door again. The chair. Frank. Mom. Blood. The two blankets. The sound of a gunshot. The ground. The lights. Mom. Sorry. The hospital bed. Mom. Frank. Pain. The blankets. I started clawing at Charlie's jacket, thrashing my legs around to escape his hug.

He lets go, confused, and I scramble into the house, up the stairs, and into a closet. My mom is dead. Mom is dead and it's finally sinking in. Fuck. I hear Aunt Jackie shutting the door and coming up the steps. The door to the closet is shut, so I doubt she'll find me. I try to keep my sobs and gasps for air as muffles as possible, having no idea if it is working or not.

Eventually the door opens and so I lie as still as I am able to. It's Charlie again. He sits next to me in the closet, though not close enough for us to be touching. He doesn't say anything; he just sits there, leaving me quite unsure of what he's doing. I sort through the thoughts in my head and he doesn't stop me from doing it. I start crying again, but I hear something like an echo. I stop for a moment to hear Charlie crying and being just as pathetic and pitiful as I am.

That's when I realize he means what he said. It's like something he said once when we were kids; "I don't like when people are sad because it's contagious. Seeing other people hurt hurts me, too." Sure, it was rather sloppily worded, but I give him a break. We were only ten at the time, anyway.

I scoot over so that our shoulders are touching.

"C-can I hold-d your h-hand?" He whispered it so quietly that I almost thought I imagined it.

Instead of answering and forcing myself to hear my weak cry-voice, I feel around the pitch black room for his eternally freezing fingers. He had unusually long limbs, so his fingers and toes were often lacking in sufficient circulation. As soon as my fingers brush against his, I remember the last time.

The last time this happened was a party I went to sophomore year, which I only went to in hopes of getting wasted. That was the night I thought we would be friends again for sure. He was drinking, came over to me, held my hand, and started talking to me. He got progressively fucked by the small amount of alcohol he consumed. He apparently couldn't hold his liquor. He was drunk-talking about something, which I stopped listening to about five minutes in. He was never intrusive of my personal space, though, which surprised me. He just held my hand and talked what I presumed was drunk nonsense. After about an hour, he seemed disappointed in something, but led me to the part of the room where everyone was dancing as our favorite song came on. So, we danced like idiots to "Once In A Lifetime" by Talking Heads. When it was over, he passed out on a couch and I just went home. The appeal of alcohol went down after I saw everyone taking each other to rooms and the screams of sex echoed through the relatively large house.

That was the last time I really talked to him. He didn't say anything about it.or even look me in the hallways for the rest of that year or any of our junior year. So, here we are, stuck in our senior year, hanging onto each other for dear life.

God forbid I suspect that he'll leave again.