"You're doing better in school now." My mom informed me. We stood in the kitchen, me in my pajamas, and her in her bath robe. She still had a towel wrapped around her hair, letting it dry.
"Yeah," I agreed.
I had been working my ass off to try and get my grades back up. I was functioning under a policy of pretending like all of this was real, pretending like this world was normal.
It was better than dealing with the consequences of being stuck outside of Laurabelle Falls.
"All of your teachers have emailed me back saying that you're turning in your late work. You aren't failing art anymore," I could hear the judgment in her tone; she didn't have to say it out loud, "And you even have a low B in English class."
She reached into the cupboard and turned around. She handed me the little black box that I had relied on for the past three years. I gratefully accepted.
"Thank you," I said, pulling it back.
"You'd better be responsible with it," She warned, "Or I will take it again. I'm serious. You need to spend just as much time studying now as you did before."
It's not like I had been doing anything else the last few weeks.
Maddie was still barely talking to me. Now that I was using a walker to get around, she didn't wheel me to and from class. A few of the popular girls had invited me to sleep-overs, bowling, or out to dinner. I couldn't bowl, and normal food tasted bland in comparison to some of the food that I had eaten in Laurabelle Falls. It didn't really feel worth it to pay $6 for some cheese fries I was barely going to enjoy.
None of them had wanted to hang out with me before the accident. I wasn't about to have a bunch of temporary friends that pretended to care because I was fake-empathy fodder.
"I'll study." I promised.
"It doesn't need charged." She said, "I went ahead and took care of that for you."
"Thank you," I responded.
I eagerly grabbed my walker, setting my phone down on the flat tray. I used it to help me get to the stairs, and left it there at the base. I slipped my phone in my pocket instead, and I used a combination of my grip on the railing and my legs to push-pull my way up the stairs.
I had come a long way in my physical therapy since I had started to act like this world mattered.
I made it to my room, and immediately opened it.
I made my way meticulously through the notifications that I did have, one by one responding to some concerned distant family (again, people who had never cared about me before), and Sam, who had heard about the accident and reached out.
It was nice to talk to Sam again. Their family had moved somewhere south-er, to where the beaches were a little warmer and, according to her, the people were friendlier. It had been a couple of years since we had talked before the accident.
Then, when all of my notifications were checked off, I stared at my blank phone screen. I wondered whether or not I was missing something.
I opened my messenger app again, scrolling down three weeks. I hovered over Clyde's name, seeing the little, colored-in grey check-mark that determined that he'd received my message.
It looked like he hadn't opened it yet.
And that one stung.
I knew that he was probably busy. Hell, he had moved away. I didn't know how much he remembered from Laurabelle Falls, or whether or not he was even allowed to talk to me. But every day my mom had my phone, I had thought of him.
Every damn day, I missed him.
We were soulmates. There was no way this kind of connection could be forged from one side.
He should have responded by now.
Even if he didn't remember me. He should have been looking for something, should have felt an empty place within himself where I should reside.
I pursed my lips together, and gave a tight sigh.
I opened my app again, and scrolled down to Maddie's name. Her contact in my phone was surrounded by two hearts, and didn't have any messages from the last month.
"Hey, can we talk?" I asked, and sent the message. Then, I followed it up, "I just miss you. It would be nice if we could spend some time together."
It didn't take long for her response to come through.
'Can't this week, I'm busy. I have to study for the ACT, I need to make sure I take it early enough that I can take it twice if I bomb it.'
'Okay, what about next week?'
'Let's shoot for Saturday. We can just hang at your place, if you want. I'd love to watch a movie.'
Well, it was better than nothing.
'Sure,' I typed back, 'Sounds great.'
~~~
Saturday night rolled around, and Maddie showed up in her new beater car. It was loud and the air conditioning didn't work. It was what she could afford after the insurance payout; her dad had taken good care of her older car, but the kelly blue-book value had been significantly less than they were expecting.
"Hey," She said, as soon as I opened the door. She was twenty minutes late, and looked frazzled. She held up a pair of slushies. "I got these for us."
Blue and red. I reached out, and immediately accepted the red.
Her wardrobe had more blue, and mine had more red. We had frequently joked that together, we made purple. It felt like a gesture of good faith.
I brought her into the living room. The pull-out couch was now relegated to a normal couch, with a cup holder cushion situated in the middle.
"What are we watching?" I asked.
"What do you feel like, a movie, or a marathon?" She questioned.
"...Well," I said, "You do know that the new season of Bethany Lawless is playing..."
She gave a deep sigh, shaking her head fondly.
"Alright," She relented, "But only if you promise not to give me any spoilers. I know you've already seen every episode."
"Twice." I reminded her. "I watch them once when they air,-"
"-And again before the next one airs, I got it." She shook her head.
"Unfortunately, the coma brain damage doesn't cancel out the brain damage I already had." I teased.
Maddie tensed up, and looked tightly away. She took a steady breath, and moved towards the other side of the couch. I was expecting some sort of laugh; some reassurance that she was okay with what had happened.
But that didn't seem to be the case.
"Have you caught up on the last season?" I questioned.
"Yeah," She said, "I watched it in your honor while you were... Y'know."
"I appreciate that." I said. I sat down, and grabbed the remote. I quickly navigated to the streaming platform where they aired the new episodes. I clicked on the beginning of the season, and started to let it run.
A couple of episodes helped to dissipate some of the tension. Maddie even laughed at a couple of points, smiling and shaking her head.
"Do you think this would be any different if we wrote it?" I teased.
"I think you'd keep everything exactly the same." She responded, with a small smile. "Scratch that. I know you would."
I laughed a little bit too hard, clutching at my stomach as I did.
"...Are you okay?" Maddie asked, her eyebrows knitting together. And man, did I think that she deserved an acting award of the year.
"I know we can't talk about it," I said, my voice coated in the soft blanket of nostalgia, "But I really appreciate you."
"...What... can't we talk about?" She asked. I glanced over, and saw her squirming in her seat.
"Oh, you know," I continued. "We can't talk about stuff, sometimes. Stuff that we're not supposed to know."
"I don't know what you're implying," Maddie responded, looking over at me with concern in her eyes. "What are we not supposed to know?"
The sincerity on her face startled me. The concern, and the confusion. I knew that I had to back off of it, and I had to back off of it, fast. If I pushed too hard, she might have to do something drastic.
I didn't need to go on a grippy sock vacation.
"I just mean, like with the accident." I tried to cover up. "I know you don't like to talk about it."
"What are you talking about?" She asked, shaking her head. "You're not making any sense."
"I just mean that you have a guilt complex," I said, the words tumbling out in a panic before I could vet them, "Even over things that you couldn't control. I don't think you like to talk about it very much, but I... Think that everything happens for a reason."
There was a long stretch of silence, and Maddie's face didn't change a single bit. Then, it morphed into disgust, creeping up to replace the confused neutrality that had been there.
"What do you mean, it happened for a reason?" Maddie asked. "How could you say that?"
"I mean, it was significantly worse for me than it was for anybody else," I spat back, "I don't think it's wrong of me to say that I think it changed me. Maybe for the better."
"I have no clue what you're talking about," Maddie said, "But we're done with this conversation."
Her tone was flat and dangerous, like a knife that had freshly been sharpened.
A few more minutes passed. I kept my eyes anxiously glued to the TV, and I wasn't expecting to hear the wobble in her voice when she interrupted.
"You know what?" She said, interrupting the episode. "Actually, I change my mind. We're going to have some of this conversation right now."
"...Is everything okay?" I asked, looking at her out of the side of my eyes.
"No." She said, flatly. "You think I have a guilt complex. That means you think I feel guilty about this."
"Don't you?" I asked, tentatively.
"No!" She exclaimed, turning full-face towards me. "And that's part of the problem! Someone else ran into us, I have nothing to feel guilty about! But you keep treating me like I'm some ticking time bomb. And saying the weirdest shit, out of nowhere. Joking about brain damage, as if that wasn't exactly what we were all worried about when you were lying in that hospital bed."
"I know everyone was worried," I said, not knowing how to address anything else that she had said. I felt lost. "I'm not saying that you weren't."
"No, but you are saying that I'm guilty." Maddie said. She stood up, and grabbed her overnight bag, slinging it over her shoulder. She refused to look at me as she took several steps towards the door, anger seething out of her. "And if you're saying that, it's because you want me to be."
"Maddie-" I tried to argue, tried to get a word in. But I knew that it would be futile. I would never be able to catch up to her.
She slammed the door behind her, and the hinges rattled. I heard her car start and heard her climb in, speeding off.
I turned back to the TV.
The episode was still playing, flickering light into the darkest corners of the room. I curled my knees up to my face, and I started to cry. It wasn't long until full sobs wracked my body.
She had not been joking. The look on her face, the confusion and anger and anguish contorting her pretty features...She was dead serious.
It felt too real.
And I didn't know how to fix it.