Location: Central
I feel like I've been walking forever, and it's only been a mile or so. But I guess all distance feels like that if you're going to see someone you love.
Love. It feels like such a mushy word this morning. It also describes the way I feel, as I have considered already, and that is by definition pretty mushy.
Mushy is a weird word for the feeling in the pit of my stomach. It doesn't match the smile it paints on my face.
It doesn't match anything. Makes me wonder if it's even really the way it is.
The store passes on my left, and I know I'm close enough to sprint to the front door of Matt and Elena's house, but I don't. Instead I try to worry away the breathless grin that has me caught in the horribly agonizing light-headed happy feeling...
Then, breathing in the gray morning, I find myself on Matt's front step. I knock on the door. And then I knock again, sighing softly.
I wait for a while. Then I knock again and step off the front step, deciding to pace the waiting away.
The door still doesn't open.
I grasp the handle and shove it sharply inward.
The door swings open, into the darkened house. No noise can be heard from anywhere. Nowhere in the shadows, nowhere in the open.
"Hello?" I call, closing the door behind me. I flip on a light, frowning. A bit of sun cuts in through the window, sending sparks across the concrete floor.
The weather is being finicky today. Light one moment, dark the next. Every cloud shares some of its space with the sunny sky.
I pace along the side of the kitchen area, peer into the darkness of my brother and his wife's bedroom, glance into Piper's crib. Then I step back along the wall and the line of cabinets to Femi's curtained-off living quarters. I part the curtains and glance around.
Just a little room, a couple of hangers with clothes on them hanging from a nail in the cracked, plaster wall. Not much. On the floor, a pile of twisted sheets and wrinkled pillows, still dented with the shape of a tired head.
A strand of red hair there. A strand here. There's a piece on my jacket from yesterday.
Where is Femi?
It doesn't add up for her not to be here—Matt and Elena are always up to something, but I don't see Femi going with them on one of their crazy adventures. She would have stayed here for me, because she would know that I'd show up early to take her out to do something. Like vandalize an alley or have a milkshake down at the café. Maybe go on a walk, or just go out and sit on my fire escape.
But she isn't here.
Why?
I let the curtains fall back into place and turn, pacing back down the wall to the kitchen. On the stove there's the coffee percolator that my brother would die for, and a cup of cold tea. But nothing else. My eyes roam further down, to the cupboards and the countertops.
They land eventually on this little square of wrinkled, lined paper, and I step forward, catching the edge of it between two fingers.
Paris
I've never seen this handwriting before, but that doesn't keep me from recognizing it. It looks like the way she talks, all slanted lines and inexact curves. Little curls that aren't usually there, and messily placed.
I had never considered before that writing looks like voices.
I unfold it slowly, trying not let my heartbeat go out of control when I see and feel the damp spots of blotchy smears that must be from catching the tears of a crying redhead.
Dear Paris, in her sweetly-crooked hand, I'm gone.
My heart stops. Or I think it does. But my lungs do, and then they don't, moving too fast, too fast...
I cram the letter into my pocket and start for the door, mouth open to take in as much air as will go, and almost get hit when it comes swinging open.
"Pary?" my brother asks, voice confused. "What are you doing here? I mean, I don't mind, but..."
I shake my head, trying to push past him.
He catches my shoulder, and I try to yank away. "Let me go, Matt!"
"Not until I know what's going on," he argues, planting me in front of him. Elena walks by us, Piper dozing on her shoulder.
Matt looks like he's about to give me an earful for being in such a hurry when Elena says, "Matthew, Femi is gone."
Matt looks from his wife to me and back again, frowning. Then he turns his knit brows and confused eyes to me. "Is this what this is about?"
I grit my teeth, inhaling sharply. "Matt..."
"Pary, calm down. It isn't that big of a deal."
"It is," I argue, choking on my own voice. "Look." I dig into my pocket and pull out the crumpled letter, then hand it to him. "Look, will you!" I exclaim as he continues to stare at me, holding the scrap of paper clumsily.
"Paris, stop being such a drama queen," Matt scolds, frowning.
I cross my arms, looking down. I am dramatic. Pessimistic, even. But this... this.
It might not bother me so much if she didn't always seem to be disappearing, and if something bad didn't happen every single time she did.
Why?
"She's gone," Matt sighs, handing the letter back to me. "Did you read all of it?"
I don't say anything until he shoves my shoulder lightly, and my eyes snap up. "No."
"You should," he sighs. "And cool off. It's going to be alright. You shouldn't go charging off after people. Especially if you don't read the whole goodbye letter."
I glare at the ground as he hands the letter back to me. I don't want to read it. I don't want to cool off. I don't want to listen. I want to escape, and find the girl who seems so set on leaving me...
"Read it, Pary, and stop stewing. It won't do you any good."
"Won't it?" I mutter, begrudgingly lifting the letter to my face.
Dear Paris, I'm gone.
And even though I don't know anything for certain, and I'm overwhelmed by my own mind, and nothing lasts forever, I do know that I do and always will love you. Forever. Like anything and everything. I'll come back in a while, okay? I just need a while to get myself into fewer pieces... I need to collect my scattered thoughts. Away. Okay? I love you. I'll be back sometime. I don't know when. It could be a day, it could be a month. A year, if necessary. Maybe. Don't come looking for me, that will just make it worse, I'm sure. I don't know how to escape all of these thoughts...
A whole trail of teary spots marr the paper.
I'm sorry. Don't lose heart. If you need to talk to anyone about any of this, call this number. She's a friend, and she'd be more than happy to help you. So if anything happens, here's the number of the lady I know.
I don't read the number. I skip through to the next part.
And I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you...
It goes on for the rest of the page, and some of them are only half there, like the bottom half dripped off the page when there wasn't enough room.
My heart throbs painfully in my chest, and I glance up at Matt as he stands across the room. We exchange some eye contact, mine hostile, his patient.
"I'm going after her," I mutter at last, turning.
But Matt moves fast for being so nonchalant and catches me by my upper arm. "Didn't you read what the letter said? She said don't after her. What part of that word do you not understand? Does 'no' mean 'yes' to you? Pary, you're smart. Think about this."
"I don't need to, Matt. She's out there, and I don't know what she might be doing, or who might be with her, and I need to keep her safe and make her feel like she isn't going crazy..." I push against my brother, angry. I don't feel rational right now. I feel on fire. Moving fast. Like too many moving parts in my head are all jumping around at once. Like I could summon compressed power and make Matt let go of me.
I think I can feel every nerve I possess.
"Pary," he starts, pressing a firm hand against my collarbone. "Trust me on this. Wait for her."
"Matt," I groan, closing my eyes. "She's always leaving. I can't let it happen again."
"Let her go."
"No."
We stare at each other, eyes burning, intense, frustrated, fuming.
"Let it be," he says softly. "You don't want to make her feel even worse. Imagine this is like when she was first starting to change. Every touch from you hurt. If you didn't touch her for a time the pain wore off, right? Don't touch her, Paris."
"Matt," I say, but it turns into a whimper. "I have to find her."
So he lets me go. And before he can say anything else, I dart out the door and into the street, down the sidewalk in the direction of the marketplace, the busier side of town. Somehow I just know she's somewhere down there. I know because that's who she is.
She likes the people who sell things. She likes to hear them talk in their unique ways and watch them dress their unique faces in unique smiles. She likes to smell the flowers and run her fingers down the bolts of cloth for sale.
And I didn't have to ask to know that, because we are ourselves, and I know Femi.
Matt told me not to do this.
My feet slow in their running, and I come to a stop, looking around. It doesn't make a lot of sense—it doesn't even make a little, actually—and I start running again, heaving the air through my lungs like an inhospitable host, hurried to get the last bit out for a new breath.
Femi.
And maybe I'm stupid—no, I'm definitely stupid—but I need to know if she's alright. Because she's gone, and I can control what I know in this situation. If I can know, I'll choose to know. Always.
I trip over a deep groove in the sidewalk and do a breath-stealing dance of fearful stumbling, but right myself and keep running. The marketplace is close up ahead, smelling of sweet flowers and buttery bread, the caramelized aroma of sugared popcorn.
I stop at the flower lady's stall first, and she smiles at me, a shadowy, tired, knowing smile.
She speaks before I've come to a full stop, eyes downcast. "My son, I cannot tell you where she is."
I take a deep, rasping breath. "No, I have to know. I have to. You don't understand..."
She shakes her head, silver hair escaping from the graceful braid it's pulled into. "No, I do. She told me that you'd be here, she told me that you'd be out of breath and scared, and she told me not to tell you where she's gone."
"I have to know," I beg. "Please. I need to keep her safe."
"My son, a girl like that can keep herself safe. She doesn't need you for that. Just be there when she comes back, that's all she needs."
"Did she say when she'll be back?" I lean over the counter of her flower cart, desperate. "Please..."
"She did not," she replies, tying a bundle of wildflowers together. "My son, go home. Go home and wait for your girlie to be back. She will come back. She just needs a waiting person. Just wait."
I clench my jaw, looking away.
Knowing that I won't get anything else out of her, I walk quickly away to the cloth seller's little shop, and begin to ask him.
When I look back, the man's words still ringing in my head, Wreatha the flower woman is looking at me with sad eyes.
Go home, my son. Wait.
I shake my head at the warning and roll my shoulders.
She went this way, the man said. An out-of-breath girl with fiery hair ran down this street about half an hour ago, and now I'm running down it, too, and realize that it's familiar.
The street. The one that I first claimed to love her on, the one on which she locked herself away from me. The one where I first heard her voice.
Don't stop running.
I don't. I keep going until I have to force myself to stop, breath coming in ragged, ugly gasps.
There's significantly more traffic back here than there was then. There were never people driving around in these streets five years ago, but they're everywhere here, now. Without any people to slow them down.
I look into the street, feet planted on the cracked sidewalk.
And I see her.
Across the street, sitting on the curb, her arms wrapped around her legs. Thinking.
"Femi," I call.
She doesn't look up.
I look both directions as I start across the street, my steps springy with newfound energy.
She looks up at the last minute, then up the road, and her eyes widen.
"No!" she shouts. "Stay away!"
But I don't listen. Not to her, not to the low rumbling over the tiny hill that I'm too far to see over.
I don't even consider.
I'm almost across when a car comes out of nowhere, and I'm caught in the headlights.
Then I'm on the ground, but the only place that I can feel any sort of pain is my chest. But I don't feel like I've been hit. Not by a car.
I blink, watching the tail lights fade away. They didn't even stop. Why didn't they stop?
A soft moan and the rumble of another car brings me to my senses, and my heart drops when I look to my right and see red hair. A still body.
I dodge a car as I pick her up as carefully as I can and carry her to the sidewalk.
Oh God. Oh God, no. No, no no no... Oh no.
What have I done?
I can hear every warning in my head at once, and I try not to let anything out. The strength of the guilt is like nothing I've ever felt before.
I run a hand over her forehead, brushing stray hairs out of her eyes. She looks okay. A couple of scratches on her face and a bare patch of skin on her collarbone, but okay. She has to be okay.
"Femi? Femi? Can you hear me?" My hands begin to shake as I stare down into her face, and her eyelashes flutter. "Femi?"
Please be okay, my girl... oh God. I did this to her... she isn't mine anymore. I did this.
A rough, choking cough ends the stillness. Her eyes open and focus dimly on my face. She grimaces. "I think... there's something wrong... with my lungs." She winces, and blood begins to seep through her shirt. "And..." she rasps, and grimaces. "I think..."
I silence her in that stupid way I feel like I can't help. Denial isn't good for people. "No. You're okay. We've made it through stuff like this before. You can make it."
She raises her eyes to mine, a strange peace beginning to settle over her features. "Paris..."
I clench my jaw, looking away from her, eyes burning. My fault, my fault, my fault... "I won't accept it. You can't make me believe that you can't make it through this. You're okay." You can't die because of me. You can't die because of me. Too early. Because of me.
Her blue and brown eyes drift closed, and a small sigh escapes her lips. "Just this once... I want to be okay... with not being... okay." She coughs, and blood darkens her mouth. "Let me. Please."
I look around, trying to will the tears to stop blurring my vision. "Please, Femi." Please. The weight of this is already crushing me.
She takes a deep, ragged breath, and the dark, red stain on her shirt spreads. "Paris..."
This feels very much like a nightmare I had long time ago, except it's a little different. There isn't blood everywhere. Just a few places. And she isn't shaking like a leaf in the autumn wind. She's still, frighteningly so.
She raises her eyes to mine, blinking slowly, tiredly. She doesn't bother to speak aloud. My name is Femi. It means love me. Love me.
I try not to cry, because saltwater stings, but I don't work that hard against my warring emotions. A tear slips over my cheek in a tiny river of grief. "I do. I do." I choke on the lump in my throat, and my arms tighten around her still form as I cough.
"You're hurting me," she wheezes, wincing.
I frown down at my arms, something stabbing at me as she breathes raggedly against my shirt. Guilt. This is all my fault. I did this.
Her body tenses in my arms. "Not all your... fault," she whispers, brow furrowed in pain. "Never... just your fault. I... shouldn't have... run away like that."
I shake my head, a tear of mine splattering across her freckled cheek. "I was wrong. I should never have—"
She brings her fingers up to my mouth to silence me. "Shut up, Mechanic." Her breathing has gotten sporadic, not even regular in how ragged it sounds. "Just... don't forget me, okay?"
I clench my teeth, everything in me screaming for this to end. For me to wake up, because it's just another nightmare. Everything screams. Except for my mouth. "Femi, I couldn't forget you. Ever. I wouldn't ever want to."
Her next words come like a sigh. "Just remember that... when things get hard. Remember that you don't want to forget..." Her entire body shudders a bit. I hold her tighter, my own breathing almost as unruly and heavy as hers. I sob aloud, my face twisting beyond my control into a grimacing cry.
Femi. Love me.
"I do, my sweet girl. I do. Don't leave me."
She is completely still in my arms. Not in the way she was before, but in a resigned way. The type of resigned that means she will never move again.
I study her frozen face, her freckled skin, her rusty hair. The chapped red of her lips tinged even darker by blood.
She isn't very colorful, anymore. Her skin is dulling. She's kind of gray.
Kind of gray.
I hold her to myself, sobbing into her hair. Her soft hair that tickles my face. Sometimes she tickles me with it on purpose. She teases me a lot. She laughs a lot.
Never again. Never again, never again.
What insanity.
I pull my face out of her hair, trace over her sweet face, with every moment feeling guilt lower its heaviness onto my soul.
Her sweet face. Her sensitive hands. Her vivid hair.
I rip my eyes away from the blood all over the rest of her, knowing that it's all over me, too. And I can smell it, suddenly. Strong, guilty, like the sound of her raspy breathing had been.
"God," I plead, voice breaking into thousands of sharp little pieces.
I killed her.
And in doing so, I know that I have killed myself, too.
It's morning again when I find myself back on the side of town that I'm familiar with. Covered in blood, not entirely there.
I carried her to the police station quite a while after it all became very still, at midnight. After asking me many questions that were supposed to make it clear that I didn't kill her, they offered some condolences and gave me the boot.
Said I could come back in a day or two for her ashes, if I wanted them.
But I'm cracked into too many stupid pieces at the moment to even wonder if that would be an okay idea. To own what's left of someone when it was your fault that they died in the first place. I don't think you're supposed to rub your face in things like that.
Is it all self pity?
I almost wonder if it would be a good idea to climb the fire escape and fling myself off of it. I'm tempted.
My mind isn't functioning the way it should. It's telling me to escape the guilt. The easiest way to do that is to die. The easiest way to die would be to drink myself into a stupor and dive twenty feet into the concrete at the bottom of the alley.
What happened to life?
I had so many hopes and desires yesterday, and not all of them were attached to her. I had convinced myself that I wasn't dependant on her to have a reason to live. Why isn't that true anymore?
"It is," I whisper to my mind, taking a shallow breath.
I think I walk. I'm not sure. I don't remember how I got here, or when. I just know that I'm here, about a block from Matt's store.
Think of all they're going to say.
Of what they're all going to think.
I killed her. Oh God, she's dead.
She's dead.
It feels so surreal. Like it's not real. But at the same time, it's so real that it makes me want to cease existing.
Responsibility for your own actions is something that people need to understand. And respect for advice. Sometimes you aren't supposed to do things.
I think I live. I think I breathe.
At this point, the world looks as though I'm viewing it through a greased window, and all sound... what is sound? Maybe I'm not present. Maybe I'm dead.
That would make everything so much more simple.
I find myself at the doorway of Matt's store, and I think the bell rings. I close my eyes against the noise, wincing.
"Pary," the words leave Matt in a hushed whisper, the sound of concern.
I crumple to the floor, and don't feel anything. Maybe that could mean something is wrong with me.
Maybe I don't care.
"Bro, talk to me. Where have you been?"
I close my eyes against his face, block my ears against his voice.
Don't go after her.
He puts his hand on my shoulder, on his knees beside me now. "Are you okay?"
I don't say anything. I'm shaking, and I can't stop, and she's dead, oh God...
She's dead.
"Why are you covered in blood? Please, Pary, talk to me."
My eyes are squeezed as tightly shut as they will go, but I can't lock his voice out of my head. I can't keep it from biting at my mind, and reawakening my dulled senses.
I can smell the blood again, so thick and nauseatingly sweet. Like the smell of rust. I can hear her ragged breaths, and she's dead.
He sets his hand on the top of my head, muttering a few words under his breath. "What happened?" He sounds like he's starting to understand. It's rough in his voice. Like tears.
"She's dead," I whisper at last. And even though I'm screaming inside, and everything makes me wish I was standing on the top of a tall building, falling, falling over the side.
"No," Matt breathes, gathering a handful of my shirt into a large fist.
But he doesn't do anything. I open my eyes, fastening their gaze on a speck of mud on the floor close to my face.
"Pary..." My brother swallows thickly, letting go of my shirt. He sits back, a few feet away. "No."
"She's dead," I murmur again, wishing that I could make it less true. But it's true. It's true.
She's dead.
"How?" he asks, voice hoarse. It was full and warm a minute ago.
Look at the way I'm affecting things.
"It was my fault," I whisper.
"What happened?"
I swallow my thoughts, the bile rising up in my throat. The bitter words, the dead words. Why did I have to do what I did? I wish I could turn back time.
"Car."
"They didn't stop to help?"
I shake my head against the hard floor, hair catching on all kinds of things. Sharp things. Glass, maybe. "They didn't stop."
"They didn't stop," he repeats, voice broken.
"She died in my arms," I whisper. "She drowned in her own blood."
Somehow, somehow it is fitting. She died by the way of something that was supposed to keep her alive. Because the things that are made for killing could never reach her. And somehow, that little thing is important. Significant.
"How is that your fault?" he asks at last, voice hushed. Like he's afraid to know. And he isn't the only one. I'm afraid to know, too.
I lick my lips. "I didn't listen to her... and... and she took the car for me," I say it as low and slow as possible, to keep from hurting my own ears and to let it sink in. Then I continue, voice cracking a little. "I was stupid. I shouldn't have gone after her."
"Pary," he starts.
But I cut him off. My hurt... it won't stop. "She was so broken... I didn't remember how broken people can get. I had forgotten what blood felt like on my hands. It's been so long since somebody has died..." I sob. "Nightmares. That's what it felt like. A nightmare. Like one that I had so long ago, and she bled out on me. Do you realize how helpless a feeling it is to watch someone die?"
I raise my eyes to him, but he's looking away, far off. His face is soft, though set against tears. He doesn't say anything.
"And she told me that it wasn't all my fault. Her lungs are swimming in red, her splintered ribs are stabbing her, and she tells me that... like it would have happened even if I hadn't have gone after her. Damn, Matt. She died with her blood on my hands, and I was supposed to be the protector. It was everywhere..."
"Shh. No more, please. I understand," he whispers, setting his large hand on my shoulder.
Something in the warmth of contact comes further feelings and my eyes begin to burn. Then the burning spreads to my cheeks. Soured thoughts hurt when they finally escape.
"Pary, I'm sorry," he mutters, perhaps noticing the tears. But it doesn't do anything for my sobbing. All I can manage to do in answer is cry.
And I can't stop.