Nov. 22
Dear Alex,
I heard you talking to yourself through the wall. I put on an oversized sweater and knocked on your bedroom door. You continued mumbling to yourself, so I let myself in and sat down next to you on your bed. I put my arm on your shoulder and you flinched, looked at me with foggy eyes as if you didn't recognize me, then the clouds in your mind cleared and you sighed and dropped your head into your hands.
"What's wrong?" I asked, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.
"Everything and nothing," you said.
"You've seemed... Distraught... Quite a lot lately. Is everything okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Mhm."
You ran a hand through your hair, then reached over to the bedside table and picked up a sketchbook with a crumbling spine.
"Want to see what I've been working on?" You asked.
"Definitely."
You placed the sketchbook in my hands and I carefully opened it to the first page. A girl with a black eye stared back at me. I winced.
"They get better," you said.
I flipped to the next page, with a sketch of a girl with her eyes closed, facing the night sky.
"I've been focusing on one subject," you told me.
I thumbed through a few more pictures- a watercolour of a girl holding a star, a pencil sketch of a girl smiling straight on, a drawing of a girl covering her face with her hands, peeking through her fingers.
"They're all... Me..." I whispered.
"Who else would be my muse?"
I stopped at a drawing of me and you riding a horse. Riding away. Leaving.
"I drew that during the road trip," you said.
We left that place behind. We left. But not really. It still haunts our minds, our memories. Every time I speak I get tense as if I might pay the price of stupidity. Every time I hear you or Emery coming, I get the fear that it's Sean and that he's raging. I have nightmares about his hands wrapping around my throat, pounding me into the walls, marking me as his.
But we don't talk about those things anymore. We can't. Because if we did, it would drive us insane.
"The last one is the best one," you said, flipping to the last coloured page. It's a watercolour and it's simple - lots of empty space and minimal colour. But it's beautiful. It's me, staring straight on, smiling, wearing my tuque, my pink scarf around my neck, snowflakes trapped in my hair as the wind catches it and brushes it away from my face.
"I love it," I breathed.
You wrapped your arm around me and I realized that I fit perfectly. We 're like two lost pieces of a puzzle. Without each other we are completely incomplete.
Love,
Carrie