Silver

Chapter 45 - then

My sister was right. I couldn't sleep at night and I was off my food. I felt chronically tired at school, but when I got home I couldn't sleep and I couldn't eat. I just lay in bed saturated by negative thoughts. Everything was tinted orange, not blue. I thought depression should be blue.

I couldn't see any light. All I could see ahead of me were years of orange with Alistair. We didn't speak. He ignored me when we met in the hallway, or in the kitchen. It was like I'd been sentenced to a lifetime of misery because now I was trapped with him.

Less than 5% of the middle and upper class are divorced. Those who divorce become outcasts. There is no one around of any decency to marry, so they end up alone. Some become desperate and get into a relationship with someone of the lower class, but that means a life of struggling for money, eating at fast food chains and holidaying in camping grounds by the coast. Often, the person who requests the divorce loses any child. The whole upper class marriage system is not set up for choice, it's set up for entrapment.

Sometimes I felt so lonely I stood outside Alistair's door, wondering if I should go in and talk to him. Maybe we should try to be friends, because at least I'd have a friend in this world. I stood at his door and listened to the digitised music of his virtual game, upbeat and tinny. Then I heard him clicking on those controls and I became so infuriated by that noise I froze. I felt that if I were to go in I would want to smash those controls and the projector and everything in there. So I went back to my room, to my bed.

I began wondering how Alistair even held down a job. I'd noticed he'd taken two sick days off over the last two weeks. He was also supposed to be studying for his last unit at university, but I never heard that damn game switched off, it was always on. He must've been letting his study slip as well. His relationship hadn't gotten off the ground and he must've been struggling with his job. He was a gaming addict. I was sure of it. His virtual world reined supreme while everything suffered in the real world.

My sister didn't warn me that the medication would make me feel anxious. At school I was on edge. I felt as though everyone was talking about me and seeing me as a desperate loner. I was sure they all knew I was on medication; it must be in my eyes, in the colour on my cheeks, and they must know that my relationship was a failure, that I scored the dud of the century, but even so, he hated me as well.

Mum rang me once a week on a Sunday night. She told me how busy she'd been. Everyone was so busy in this world. It was an excuse for why she hadn't seen me that week, why she couldn't have been home the night I came over for dinner with dad. She told me about the books she had in production. Then she often told me one or two things with great urgency. Something like, don't forget to put your university application in, it is due in two months, or always check that the gas oven or stove top is off twice. My voice got snagged in my throat, like a thread of clothing caught on something, slowly unravelling.

When I allowed myself to think about Jarvis it was only with sadness. It was unfair to have experienced such joy and excitement, for it to only become nothing ...