H2O | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Five : Knock Knock

"A house made of cards, and us, inside

Even though the end is visible, even if it's going to collapse soon

A house made of cards, we're like idiots

Even if it's a vain dream, stay like this a little more"

Xander

17 weeks after Mesi woke up...

I'd stopped dreaming. Since that day at school I had stopped dreaming. It was like, when I closed my eyes, instead of going to another faraway world, I hibernated in my body, curling in on myself and shutting everything else out. My mind was a blank state. I didn't want to think anymore. I didn't want to hear my own thoughts on my dead friend, or his messed up girlfriend, or the three boys that had dragged me into a closet and ruined my life even more. I didn't want to think about how the story had been on the news, even if my name wasn't. Reporters sent out their condolences to the poor kid who was beat unconscious and then had pictures of him half naked flying around the school the next day with the tagline "Mamma's Boy". I didn't want their condolences. I just wanted to be left alone.

I just...I just...

The whole thing had been surreal. I couldn't even understand what was happening as it happened. I can only remember flashes of stares and snickers, pitied looks and concerned smiles. None of it was what I wanted. I wanted to walk into school and act like nothing happened. Because then, maybe I could convince myself that it wasn't real, that nothing had happened.

But it did. And I knew that when I looked down, and when I looked to my right and my left and even up at the ceiling. They were everywhere—the pictures. Pictures of me with my shirt ripped wide open and my body covered in bruises. Bruises they tried to pin off on my mom.

I remember feeling sick, genuinely sick, like I could puke up my breakfast any moment. And I remember turning tail and running out the doors as fast as I could. I didn't care that my backpack and my phone were still in the locker rooms. I didn't care that I was going to miss another day of classes. And I didn't care that the whole school just saw me in a state that I never wanted anyone to witness.

I remember ending up at the park again and spending the rest of the day there. I remember kicking rocks for some outlet for my frustration.

I remember nothing and everything. If I try to think about it, it's like it's been erased from my memory. There's nothing but a black abyss of darkness, a hole in the graph of my being, an infinity that I'm chasing for answers. I had my hand outstretched, desperately reaching for it, but infinities are not numbers and I was stepping from integer to integer. What I was looking for and where I was were two completely different worlds with a transparent film between them so I could keep my eyes on the thing I chased, always there to taunt me. But if I leave myself alone, if I go to watch some TV or do my homework, a new glimpse will pop into my mind. I'll remember how my english teacher looked from her spot near the door to her classroom, or I'll see a flash of someone shouting at the rest of the students to get to class, or the sound of the PA system will filter through my mind, telling me that if I know anything about the pictures I should turn myself in.

I just wanted those memories to leave me alone. I wanted my whole life to leave me alone. And for the first time, I understood why Mesi did what she did.

...

The doorbell rang, and I glanced out my window that overlooked the front yard to see my two best friends on the front step.