Firefly

50: tissue

Chapter 50: tissue.

Elena

The reflection in my mirror stares back at me as the woman I saw in my memory today. The woman who I heard. Her touch that I felt. The sacrifice that she made to save my life. 

I remembered my mother. And as spooky as it is that I look just like her, it makes me feel special. I'm her very own doppelganger. 

Maybe tonight I'll sleep well. Without nightmares, without tears, without thoughts. I won't wake up panicking or rushing to the toilet, I won't be throwing up, and hopefully, the headaches will stop. One night of peace amidst a chaos of conundrum. 

I attempt to untie the knot of my red dress behind my neck. Because of the entanglement and the lesser space in the bathroom, I walk out to my room still fiddling with the knot. 

I switch the bathroom lights off with my elbow as I let the door close behind me. My room is dull, dark, and quiet. The biting breeze gives an archetype of the outside weather. I'm about to yank the knot cut because of irritation when I see a figure sitting on the window seat inside my room. 

I'm about to shriek but his striding to me with a finger sealing his lips cautions me not to do what I was seconds away from doing. His whiskey eyes look hooded in my dim-lit room. 

I take more than a tick to cognize the ferocity of the situation. He's in my room and he's asking me to shut up. Why am I even listening? 

Outrage flocks my wits when rumination of his actions hits. The classroom, the locker room, the party. "Leave. Or I will scream for my brother." 

He deepens his finger on his sealed lips. He gestures to his ear and then to my room door. I heed the caution and lower my voice. I see him spying on the lock bolt on the room door. I should but I don't find the need to unlock it. 

"What do you want?" I whisper before I check the almost closed window through which he probably entered. 

He doesn't talk, he gapes. Now that I'm less paranoid and less angry, I take in the redness in his eyes, the distinct smell of alcohol, exhaustion, and confusion. His face resembles the reaction I got when I told him I loved him. 

I believe I'm delusional when I see his eyes hoarding tears. One tear falls, and then another before he closes his eyes. I've never seen him cry. I don't want to see him cry. It's too painful to watch. 

"I-I--" he opens his eyes but he hangs his head low. "I-I'm sorry." He wipes away the tears on the sleeve of his hoodie. "I'm sorry for h-hurting you." 

Pretending to put up an annoyed face, I cross my arms against my chest. "What do you want, Justin?" 

"I don't know," he mutters still looking down. 

Mixed signals. Bad news. "All the more reason for you to leave." 

When his hand hoists up to his hair, I assume he's going to brush it but he takes me by surpise when he clutches a fistful of his own hair and begins to tug on it. "It hurts, Elena. Everything fucking hurts. Every part of me is bleeding." 

My heart yearns to comfort him. But with everything that he's done in the past two weeks, especially today, he's made me numb. "Then go do your thing. Hang with your boys, get drunk, party with chicks, who was it? Candice Kesseler, right? Go back to the party, she'll welcome you with open arms, do a thing or two with her and you'll be fine." 

His eyes lift up to me letting out heartbreaking tears. Such a beautiful face with such tragic tears. The power his gaze holds is unexplainable. His eyes touch me better than his hands. They talk, converse, and narrate a whole monologue of everything he's feeling.