Chapter Twenty-Four: Faye
What do you do when your whole life is turned upside down? My hands were shaking, little tremors running through them in waves. My head wouldn't stop thrumming. It wasn't just the things that Smithy had told me. I had been half-numb from shock whenever I'd finally come home, but that wasn't the reason why I couldn't seem to walk in a straight line.
I'd just learned that one of my closest friends was suffering from depression. We went way back - ever since I'd lived in Belfast. With a sharp phone call, my mother had informed me that Siobhan had gone into therapy. That was the end of it, apparently. It couldn't be, but it was.
My mind wandered back to times when I'd thought I was suffering from some kind of problem. I seemed so alone, like nothing was worth anything anymore. Looked it up and everything. Then I remembered all the things that had happened. Death. New house. Shocking, unwanted independence. The ever-present sadness just seemed more like a sign of cold, hard grief instead of a need for little white pills. I still wondered, sometimes. Wondered about two words that could label me - anyone - as a freak, a loony, a psycho. Who had that right? Did a stout, bald man, with glasses and a fancy slip of paper get to tell me who I was, what I was? Whether or not I was normal?
Did every teenager feel like the ground was falling out from underneath them, or were we all just messed up products of an unloving society? What happened to the beaming faces of younger selves? Why did they change into sullen glares to match sullen hearts? Daddy issues, alcohol issues, trust issues. Where did all these 'issues' come from? Were they the whispers in the lockers, long glances and vicious rumours, or bottled-up, long-hidden skeletons in the closet?
It didn't matter anyway. Siobhan was gone, on a quest to face her inner demons in ways I never could. She would eventually get out, go about her life, and act normal. Always a little part of her wondering if she was okay, if the monsters under the bed would ever come back. She would revel in the fact that she was different, that she could be the heroine in another messed-up teen fiction. The same little part of her grinning at her supposed madness while she laughed her way through life, knowing that since she was 'mad', she didn't need to fit the mould society would try and force her into.
She wouldn't be mad in the least. She would be perfectly normal. The only thing different or strange would be a blip in her past. But she could let that spark of rebellion catch, turn into a blazing revolution within her soul. She would always be free, because she wouldn't be chained and regulated by ideals and norms.
Isn't that what we all want? To be free? To be unique? To be different?
I didn't know anymore. I used to want to be Jason, to be the living replica of the boy who died. I was confused, the past seemingly the only certain thing in my life while the present ticked away and the future loomed ominously, just out of reach. I had so much I wanted to do with my life, ten years from now.
'Now' suddenly seemed horribly ambiguous, like a shady dive in a deserted street. When was now? Now, or just here, or in one second's time?
I wanted to be like my wonder man of a brother, the perfect son and boyfriend. The real guy who was starting to feel more tangible. The imperfect creature that was slowly starting to form, a smile on its lips while its forehead furrowed into a frown.
I thought back to my past few days, shifting in the chair I had at some point sank into. Rays of light streamed through the window, each one just right in the way I had once thought Jason to be. I had tried hard to do things like he did, and at the start, it seemed to go okay. I talked to Anna, and Keenan had seemed like an open book, full of possibilities and ready to share them. Jason's voice had told me what to do, his smooth whispers seeping into my thoughts like oil slowly drifting through water.
Then Keenan left. Everything shattered. The oil trickled to the bottom of the glass, no longer full of wisdom and wonder. Jason was still there, but flawed, his advice irrelevant and useless, no matter how hard I tried to be him.
Being like Jason, even allowing for the change of age and gender, hadn't really helped me at all. It hadn't been the key to my happiness or even the basic sponge of the cake. It was a persona I had fallen back on in the vague hope that it would make everything better, iron out the creases. Needless to say, it hadn't.
I sighed, a rush of breath escaping through my lips in audible deflation, like the air going out of a balloon. How many months had I spent thinking that my brother was the way back to my normal life, the way back to my parents and my own city? So much time wasted on the irrational belief that if I could just figure out what he'd done to deserve to die, what he did to make so many people love him, everything would work out.
The last beams of pink sunshine made their way into the room, lending a reddish tinge to the air around me, and for one second, turned the ordinary into an extraordinary glow of rose-tinted radiance. Then a grey shadow lumbered across the sky, obscuring the golden warmth filling the earth, and taking with it the last drops of disillusionment I was clinging onto.
I flicked on the light. I was going to go for a shower. That always had made me feel better.