In That Moment

June 16-

 June 16-

Sabine called me last night crying into the phone and I wasn't surprised when I answered. I've noticed recently that she only ever calls me when she needs my help. It's not something that upsets me, I like knowing that I'm needed, but it would feel better to be wanted.

It was two in the morning and I don't remember what she said- I just got up, put on my day clothes, grabbed a flashlight, and walked to her house. We live in the same neighborhood so it only took about ten minutes and I stayed on the phone with her the whole time as she sobbed without words and spoke without meaning. I listened and walked, attempting to comfort her, but she just kept repeating the same name: 

"Calvin, Calvin, Calvin."

 I had to stop myself from sighing audibly into the phone. Calvin was Sabine's on and off boyfriend that she'd been going on about ever since I met her. I felt bad for him, because his life was more fucked up than most, but it didn't mean liked him. He was an emotionally abusive douche- and every time Sabine started to seem a little better, there he came crawling back blaming all of his various disorders for all the shitty things he had done.

When I got to her house it was like a flashback into the school year. We live in a neighborhood where all the homes have a lot of trees on the properties, and Sabine's backyard was no exception, but most of them were pushed against the fence line- all except for one which grew at the very center of her yard. I walked into the backyard shining my flashlight into the tree and, as expected, there she was, sitting near the top. She would always escape to that same tree when she was upset- and she once told me that being up high near the top of the tree helped her feel like she was further from her problems. It didn't normally work too well for her- so as a second resort she always ends up calling me. 

Sabine was wearing a pair of black tennis shoes thrown onto her sockless feet and a pair of pink sheep-print pajama bottoms with a large gray T-Shirt. She was burning leaves from their branches with the end of a cigarette and the smoke from it drifted around her head and up into the star scattered sky and down through the tree branches, as the breezeless night seemed to pull the streams down towards the grass like a weight. Her phone was balanced dangerously on her leg. I couldn't climb trees and I've never tried to learn, so I clicked off the flashlight and sat down at the base of the tree with my phone still pressed against my cheek, just like what we always used to do during the school year.

"You know one day you're going to set this tree on fire and you'll have to explain to your parents how it burned down" I whispered into the phone.

"Just be happy I bothered to put on pants on this time and leave me to smoking in peace."

I looked up, watching her draw on the cigarette, and she looked back down at me- blowing it back out in my direction. I coughed a little and she laughed. A short time passed and I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the bottom of the tree. I don't mind when people smoke- the way I see it it's an awful habit to pick up and everybody knows it- so you either do it for one of three reasons: (1) because you always have, (2) to live, or (3) to die. 

Sabine was a beautiful girl with dark green eyes and the copper skin tone of a new penny, but she saw herself as fat because that's what people told her. So she wore extremely large amounts of makeup as a shield and grew her hair out long so it could barrier her face from their gaze. She also told me that it's the reason why she smokes, the loss of appetite that she gets after smoking helps her to lose weight, or at least she thinks it does. I can see now though that it has become more than simple weight loss. The smoke is what she holds on to, what helps her calm down whenever her world falls apart. So, I suppose, in regards to my theory that would put her in the 'death' category.

"Do you ever wonder," She whispered through the phone "why every time we have something good, it's not allowed to last?"

I shook my head, erasing all the thoughts from my mind. "Sabine, what happened with Calvin?" 

She didn't answer and I sighed. Sabine's arms were crossed over her knees with the cigarette still pressed between her fingers, her head buried in her arms, the phone now clutched between her knees. 

"Come down from the tree Sabine." She shook her head and didn't move so we sat there, for long after the fire gripped in her fingers burnt out, while Sabine silently wept into her arms and I watched the sky through the tree branches. 

"Thank you Ella." She whispered after a while, so faint that I could barely hear it through the phone. 

"You're welcome" I responded. "You really shouldn't let him do this to you anymore." 

"I know," She sighed, finally stretching out her legs to climb down the tree "I must seem so stupid."

"Only little." She looked up at me then, just as her feet touched the ground. "I wont pretend to know much about love or romance, but I do know that what you two have will result in neither." 

Sabine just shook her head and mumbled some excuse under her breath, which made me sad. Even while she was crying because of him she still defended his actions. It was wrong and unfair and I told her so. You can't keep trying to maintain such a shaky long distance relationship with someone of the other side of the country and expect it to work out perfectly. It was a crazy toxic situation. I felt bad while I spoke because she began to cry again but I needed to tell her, I needed her to know. Because it's summer and this all should have ended with the final bell of the school year.

How could I ever be happy if Sabine isn't? We both deserve happiness, and in that moment I started to wish that I still believed in God because then I would have someone to blame. Sabine told me then she was done with Calvin, and I wanted to believe her, but it was becoming a bit of a broken record. How many times has she told me that same thing with tears streaming down her face and how many nights have we spent doing this same thing- with her smoking and burning leaves in the tree and me sitting on the ground at her feet because I couldn't think to do anything better. I said none of this- I just held her and she wept in my arms until my phone alarm told me that if I didn't walk home soon my family would wake up and find me missing from bed.

Sabine forced a smile when I said goodbye and I told her to go straight to her room and sleep. She nodded, I smiled, she said thank you again, and then I left. 

I ran the whole way back to my house as soon as I rounded the corner away from Sabine's street and I tried to avoid looking up at the stars. I needed the world to stay dark tonight. When I got home the walls seemed suffocating so I got a glass out of the cabinet and poured some alcohol into it from my dad's cabinet. I took it to my room and drank until the walls got blurry enough for me to breath again. I used to cough after every drink, but I think my body is used to it now, and I'm not sure how that makes me feel. 

 So I sat on my bed with the empty cup on my nightstand and my clothing in the hamper because it smelled like dirt and smoke and rum. And without thinking I started to cry, but looking back on it now I don't think I was crying because I needed to, I was crying because it felt right.