|Chapter Fifteen|
June 1st, 2012
I graduate today in less than three hours, but I have a confession: I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
I’ve been accepted to three different colleges, none of which I even plan to attend. I was supposed to have it all figured out by now—but maybe that’s the flaw in this whole system. There’s never not a flaw.
I haven’t told Mom or Dad I’m leaving—not for college, not for anything. I’m just leaving. I am deserting L.A. and the suffocating pillow of whatever major I don’t want.
How can I possibly go to school for something when I have no passions? Or is that what we’ve come to as a society? Passionless, hopeless, robots fit for uniforms of the highest paying salary? That’s why I have to leave.
I can’t breathe here in L.A. Everything is moving too fast. I see hundreds of people pass me on the streets but their faces are blurs. Their identities are nothingness. I cannot tell who is alive and who is barely holding on.
I’m barely holding on.
I’m getting lost in the crowd.
I can’t stomach the idea of continuing this way. I’m not heard here. I’m not even seen. I’m writing pointless journals, trying to lose myself in someone else’s story, and forgetting who I am. Do I know? Did I ever know?
I need some time to surface, to rediscover everything I didn’t know about myself. I’ll get out of town, find a quiet nook in the middle of nowhere, work a job I can barely survive on, walk everywhere, say what I feel, and just live for once in my life.
I’m tired of being nothing. I want to be something somewhere. I want to be something to someone.
Perhaps I’m unrealistic.
Perhaps this world really is about Pomp and Circumstance—and if so, how utterly awful. Be what they want or be a failure to all. Well, I refuse to stand by and witness what they have to say about me. I won’t fall victim to conformity.
I’m going to be happy one day.
First step: graduation. T-minus two and a half hours.
Isn’t it completely absurd how we don’t believe our life begins until then? A flower only blooms when under stress.
Signed,
Bash Daley
Luis jumped out of my lap with the sound of a knock at my bedroom door. I slapped Bash’s journal shut and pushed it under my pillow.
“Come in.”
Since Bash got home a few weeks earlier, I hadn’t been reading much else but his old journals. Maybe it was a silly sentiment that I’d decided to borrow them, but I really do think my curiosity and overall fondness made me hungry for them. Bash didn’t really like it—insisted that they were for other’s eyes after he was gone. But, with a timid reminder, I brought back the timeless argument that we would eventually go our separate ways and he conceded. But, since he had insisted that they were for nobody else’s eyes, I made a point of hiding them. Especially when an entry made my heart race.
My mother came in with the open door and held out a letter. “I think it’s an acceptance letter.”
I kicked off my sheets and flattened my bedhead as I sat up, eagerly reaching for her. “Where’s it from?” My voice bordered on excited and nervous, and I watched the gentle smile find my mother’s lips.
“San Francisco State?” She flipped the envelope back at herself to make sure. “I didn’t know you applied there.” I snatched the letter from her, leaving her slightly startled and blinking in confusion. “Jovie.”
“Big city,” I mumbled, eyes fixed on the seal of the letter and fingers anxiously ripping at the paper.
The truth was I’d only applied to schools located in big cities or busy areas. She had tried to get me to apply to places closer to home, even threatened she wouldn’t help pay tuition if I left the state, but I didn’t bother listening. I knew what I wanted. I’d been under her authority for long enough. If she wouldn’t help me pay, I’d apply for scholarships. It was as easy as that.
My mother sighed and cautiously balanced herself on the corner of my bed, waiting to see if I’d been accepted or rejected. Her tightly folded hands were something I noticed just as I pulled the letter out. I paused.
“What?” I asked. When she dropped off mail, she usually didn’t bother staying to see the outcome.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “If you get in, will you go?”
I had applied to so many schools I couldn’t remember the exact count. Did I know for sure which one I wanted most? No. I would narrow it down by prestige and location when I’d gotten every answer back. I didn’t know why she cared. She was so eager to lecture me on the importance of this step in my life; I didn’t understand why my exact destination made any difference as long as I was doing as I was told.
“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “It’s already got its appeal being far away from here.”
Her eyes narrow and I glanced down quickly in submission, knowing I made a mistake with the last bit.
“Do you hate me?”
I looked up, catching the seriousness in her tone with the harshness in her stare. She was never upfront about communication with me on this level. The straightforwardness seemed brash but stubborn to adhere. It felt like she’d been waiting a long time to come out with this, and having found the opportunity, was determined to nail the argument to its sticking place.
I found myself stunned to silence.
“Well?” she asked a bit shakily, but with a confidence not found in a city hall meeting room. “Do you think I hate you? Because I told you, you’re my favorite mistake. I love you more than I ever thought possible. And, I get this feeling, with you wanting to get as far away from here as you can, that you can’t stand me. That you hate me. It’s eating at me, Jovie. I have to know. Is it true, or no? Where did I mess up?”
When you’re up against a wall with something of a gun pointed at your head, you forget how to breathe, how to think, how to do anything but stare down the barrel and pray for an easy way out. I felt a little sick, not accustomed, and really, not very fond of the situation she was throwing on me. She had never prepared me for any sort of confrontation like this in my life. We were not confrontation people, my mother and I. It’s something I knew for a fact that I’d learned from her: how to run.
“I—I don’t hate you.” It was barely a whisper.
She threw her hands up in a way that required too much emotional confliction for my mother to possess. “Then why do you insist on abandoning everyone who loves you?”
My eyes stung. She had never yelled at me this way before. It was like my single comment about leaving had unstoppered years’ worth of bottled up insecurities and hurt. It was flowing freely now, and it wouldn’t stop until it was emptied. My heart beat so fast I thought it would give out.
How had everything suddenly gotten this way? Had I missed my cue?
“Mom...”
“Jovie,” the hurt rang as clear as a bell. “I just need to know what I did wrong, because my mother never asked me. I spent most of my life thinking it was my fault, and it wasn’t. And, it’s not your fault, either.” Her eyes began to water. “We’re just really bad at this.”
“You should have said something before,” I said softly, but firmly, not even looking at her now. “You should have said something when you realized it the first time—because this is me. This is what I’ve learned from you. I always thought I needed to be alone.”
“You can stay here, you can stay with the people who love you. You don’t need to travel hundreds of miles away to be alone when it’s not necessary,” she urged. “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be okay. For you to be strong and ready for anything—to have a plan.”
“Well,” I said, lifting the letter, “I do have a plan—and I won’t be alone. I can’t live in Ashwood Creek, anymore. I can’t be around any of this anymore. I need to live anonymously for a little while, recreate what I never got to decide for myself. All of your problems have been mine for as long as I can remember. Mom, I’m done.” I shrugged helplessly. “I need to be anonymous. Identity isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. I don’t have one here.”
She leaned forward, pushing her fingers into her dark hairline and squeezing her eyes shut. I swallowed thickly, regretting every last thing I’d said in these past minutes. Funny how feelings work. You want to vocalize them so badly, but the moment you do you regret it. It’s a subliminal message from our brain saying we’ve opened up vulnerability for attack. It’s the panic setting in. All you can do is breathe.
“I don’t understand,” she finally spoke. “You preach about identity to me, but you haven’t been yourself since that boy.”
“What is myself, Mom?” I asked frustratedly. “That’s the point.”
She let out a condescending sigh. “So you’re going to continue going down this path—dragging that poor boy with you until you can get away from all of us? At least I had enough sense to let your father go.”
“You never let him go!” I argued. “I tie you together every day. My mannerisms, the faces I make, my hopefulness for something good in this world—that’s Henry, Mom. You drop me off every weekend. Every once in a while you walk me to his door. You see him every day at work. You still confide in him, I know you do. He’s the only person besides me that you trust, and you pretend you hate him, you pretend you don’t care! You’re the one dragging a boy around—”
“Enough, Jovie.”
“You act like you have it all figured out, like you’re the victim—”
“Jovie!”
“We’re exactly the same, so don’t judge me! Do I hate you, Mom? Maybe a little, because you’re my default setting, and I can’t stand that part of me!”
She stood and I bolted. I left the letter half opened on my bed and dashed from the room and I didn’t stop running. I snatched money from the change bowl next to my mother’s keys, and with slipper-clad feet I burst out the front door into the chilly December air, leaving footprints in the snow as I ran down the road. The chickens next door were attempting to keep warm in their hutch, not one show-tune followed me down the street, and nothing but my own gasps for air accompanied me into town.
I couldn’t believe what I had done.
I needed to get out of Ashwood Creek.
●════════●♥●════════●
I took a bus to Winsor, the place where Bash and I watched the music festival that summer, and called Quinn from a payphone with some loose change I found in the cup holder next to my seat. The adrenaline that was still pulsing through my system was making me light headed, and the cold was turning my fingers numb. I felt wild, spinning, unaware and confused. My eyes were red from forcing back tears.
“Hello?”
“Quinn?”
“Jovie?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
I heard her pull away from the receiver, “Meredith! She’s here!”
“No! Quinn!” I ran a fist through my hair and pounded my head against the brick building the payphone was attached to. “I swear to God I will hang up. Don’t do this right now.”
“She’s been worried sick about you! Where the hell are you, Jovie?” Quinn demanded, her voice was gritty, terrified, annoyed—something.
“I can’t come back. You don’t understand. I can’t come back. I said so many stupid things. I wanted to say more. Quinn, I nearly snapped. I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired.”
“You need to come home. Don’t do anything stupid, Jovie—”
“Jovie?” It was my mother’s voice.
I slammed the receiver down and slowly fell to a crouched position under the payphone. My forehead rolled against the brick and I closed my eyes, shaking my head.
You’re being so stupid. Stop running. STOP RUNNING.
“God, I just feel so trapped,” I whispered in a croak, talking to that little voice in my head. “She’ll never forgive me. Everything is going to change. It can’t change. I just want to go back. Erase it all. I’m so stupid.”
I turned my head, looking through a thin glaze of tears at the deserted streets—so unrecognizable now that snow had fallen and there were no half-drunk, sun-kissed bodies swaying to music so loud you thought your ears would stop working. Sniffling, I stood back up and held the phone back to my ear as I inserted more coins and dialed his number.
“Hello?”
“Bash, it’s me.”
“Jovie?” Relief echoed in my ears, and I knew he had been told of my disappearance, but from whom, I had the slightest idea. “They’re looking everywhere for you. Where are you? Do you need me to come get you? What happened? Are you okay?”
I ignored all of this. “Bash, do you remember what you wrote on your graduation day?”
He chuckled lightly on the other end and commented, “I was...out of sorts. I wanted to leave, wanted to be something...”
I cut in, “Well, I want to leave, and I want to be nothing. I can’t stay in Ashwood Creek. I can’t keep battling with Meredith and Henry. I’m so tired of going back and forth. I don’t know who I am, and I’ll never know as long as I'm anywhere near where they are. I’m barely holding on, here. I need you to take me away.”
There was silence on his end; it went on for so long I thought he hung up. I pinched the bridge of my nose, ready to give up, and then finally he replied, “You will never heal, Jovie. You can’t leave things like this. You can’t run anymore. Nothing good ever came from someone who grew a crooked heart because they tried to accommodate pain that didn’t have to be there. Look at your mom. She’s...not what she wants to be. You see that. Why do you want to continue the pattern?”
I couldn’t stand still. “It’s just easier, Bash. It’s easier, and I’m tired.”
“What’s easy now,” he told me, “is a trick. It looks pretty on the outside, but it’s only a vessel for hardship and pain—and they are wonderful at disguise. Believe me. I was everywhere before settling in Ashwood Creek. I got beat up, too. I had to fix things with my parents. I had to face them when I felt like a failure. It’s not easy navigating life for the first time on your own. It’s...confounding.”
I closed my eyes, letting his soothing voice and inadvertent wisdom lull me to serenity.
“Bash, I don’t know if I can just fix things with my mother. We’ve never talked to each other that way before. We’ve never...said things before. It was unscripted and terrifying. I lost control...”
“You have school tomorrow. You have to come back. You can stay with me and Greg tonight, but I can’t let you run. You don’t know what’s possible and what’s not. You have to try,” he stated in a matter all too convincing from his mouth.
“I can stay with you tonight?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Winsor.”
He released a breathy laugh. “Why Winsor?”
“It’s the furthest place from Ashwood Creek I’ve ever been.”
“I’m coming.”
●════════●♥●════════●
It was late-afternoon when we finally got back to Bash’s apartment. He called Henry, told him I was safe—told him to tell Meredith I was okay, and to let me be for tonight. I guess there had been some arguing on both ends. I couldn’t quite explain what I felt for Bash when he hopped off the bus and held my hand all the way home.
He let us sit in silence. He traced the lines on my palms and pressed kisses into my hair. I had never been more grateful for him. I still can’t understand how he went through what he did for me, not just then, but the whole time we called each other ours. Maybe he saw himself in the struggling bits of me that he understood. Maybe it was the only thing he ever understood: struggle in the first part of the life you really get to live. He was so fascinated with it—he wanted to answer all the questions that were to be answered there. He loved being the hero of that story.
When it was time for bed, I wore one of his old shirts and watched him journal from his mattress on the floor. No monsters could reach out and tug at his ankles when he crawled in next to me. Moonlight illuminated the high points on his face and made eerie shadows on mine. We faced each other for a long while, not touching, just admiring. Then, he reached between us and ran his thumb along my bottom lip and brushed hair from my neck.
I closed my eyes in anticipation, waiting for his lips to find mine. And they did, again and again until I had the courage to undo the first couple buttons on the old shirt I wore and for him to yank off his own. Then, there was nothing but the sound of lips coming together and breaking apart, choppy breathing, and hands exploring exposed skin.
It was the release of a low gasp that pulled Bash off of me and reaching for his shirt.
I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. That’s it for tonight. Your parents trust me—”
“I’m not a kid, Bash. I don’t want to stop—I don’t need to. I’m perfectly capable of understanding the cons—”
He put a hand on my shoulder and guided me back to a lying down position. “You’re vulnerable from the day. You’re feeling rebellious. I’m not taking advantage of that.”
“Bash—”
“I love you,” he said softly. “We’re not ready.”
My cheeks warmed and I turned my face away, knowing he was right but feeling embarrassed for trying to pressure him, for trying to seem more mature than I’d felt that entire day.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
He pressed a kiss to my lips and wrapped an arm around me. “I just want to sleep with you in the most innocent way possible,” he laughed.
I wrinkled my nose at him. He did it back.
“I like you way more than I ever wanted to,” I admitted.
“I love you,” he repeated.
I brushed hair from his face. “Goodnight.”
"Goodnight," he replied sleepily, wrapping his arm around me more firmly.
Looking back at that night, I should have said it back.