I wake up on a cold and lumpy mattress. As I stretch, I notice the mattress was in some type of wood shed. Wood dust covered all of the desks and stools. I also notice that my wings have lost the faded blood stains from when each feather was plucked from my back by the teamwork of Chase and I. I sit up and fix my flowing white top and fiddle with the ends of my torn jean shorts. I push myself off the mattress and spot a bow and a pack of arrows on a wood bench. But unlike the bench, the bow and arrows are freshly carved and cleared of any saw dust.
As I examine the bow, marveling how the bow almost molds to my hands, I see two carved figures. The taller of the figures somehow reminds me of Chase. Perhaps it was the lanky arms or almost too tall legs. Even though the figures have no facial expression or features, I could tell that the figures were supposed to be a couple. I pick up the taller of the figures and put it gently behind the other, wrapping the lanky arms around the smaller’s waist.
“Look it’s easy!” Chase exclaims as he comes behind Lacey’s back and guides her hands with his around the lump of spinning clay. Chase and Lacey had been together for two weeks, ever since Chase asked her out after winning the Homecoming football game, in which he scored the winning touchdown.
“Chase you’ve done this before!” Lacey giggles and I swear her hair and his was the exact shade of dirty blonde.
“I swear I haven’t!” He laughs back and Lacey presses a kiss to his cheek.
And maybe, just for a moment, I wanted to be in Lacey’s place.
After adjusting the figures, and remember Chase for a moment, I turn my attention to the bow. I remember I turned down the shooting class and now I wish I hadn’t. I shakily load the bow and pulling the loaded weapon to the corner of my cheek, trying to remember how Katness did it in the Hunger Games. I focus on a block of wood nailed to the wall, and release the arrow. It hits the wall a foot or so from the block I was aiming for.
~
After a few more shots, some shots better than others, I decide to walk around town because, after all, I hadn’t been down since I left. I walk past a café, with my bow in hand, and see a small boy with a head of dark brown fringe and soft brown eyes. His slender tan fingers strum the guitar on his lap and there’s a guitar case open with a few coins thrown in. The guitar hums chords I wasn’t familiar with.
“I wish that I could wake up with amnesia, and forget about these stupid little things.” His fingers dance along the strings. “Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you and the memories I can’t escape, ‘cuz I’m not fine at all.”
I wanted to tip him, and possibly ask him for the name of the song, but I didn’t have any money on me. More importantly, I didn’t know if he could see me.
~
I felt the need to actually do what I was sent here for, to play love doctor. The sun is setting in the direction of the café and I have my bow in hand. I walk towards a park, but see all those sitting in pairs are already together. I start to walk back to the shed, maybe get some ideas where to go as I walk back, but I’m side tracked by the glowing sign of a club by the name of “Move”.
“What a dumb name,” I think but enter anyways.
I’m surrounded by sweaty dancing bodies and the thumping of bass pounds my rib cage. Finally I see my first target. A woman, more drunk than not, slides into a seat at a bar, next to a man who is downing so many shots I lost count. I load my arrow and look down the arrows pale shaft at my target, the red headed woman. I release the arrow and hit the woman, barely hitting just above her hip. As soon as my arrow hits the woman and the arrow dissolves into dust, she almost leaps forward, her lips smashing into his.
Excited by my first shot, I eagerly glance around the club for my next target. I spot a bleach blonde grinding onto another man in the corner, her lips moving slightly to whisper in his ear. Just as I’m about to release the arrow, I notice it’s Claire, Chase’s ex. She was basically a school slut and I heard she slept with someone at the age of thirteen. She and Chase dated for two months and rumor has it that Claire was pressuring Chase to sleep with her but he refused and she broke up with him. But a year after she and Chase went their separate ways at age sixteen, Claire became mysteriously pregnant and she aborted two months later. I was never particularly fond of her but seeing her move on a man like that makes me wonder how many other times she had a pregnancy scare. I lower my arrow and no she doesn’t deserve to fall in love. She doesn’t deserve someone’s love and care when she won’t care for her own unborn offspring.
I move outside, still fuming about Claire, I see two people, both dressed in leather, walking out. Just by the way he looks at her and then the ground shows he has a little more than a crush. I load my arrow and hit him in the back of the neck, a bit off target. In one swift move, he grabs her face and kisses her, taking the girl by total surprise.
I move around to the back alley and see two females, obviously third and forth wheels to the couple sloppily kissing. I shiver and only then do I realize the true meaning of a tongue bath. I load my bow and shoot the one of the girls and two tongue baths happen in a matter of feet of each other.
~
I shoot another two boys in front of the club and a man and woman walking across the street before I decide I was done at the club. I walk back to the shed, and pass a small coffee shop. A curly headed dirty blonde boy in a maroon sweater sits at a window seat, staring at his coffee through his thick rimmed glasses. You didn’t have to be genius to realize he was depressed and missing someone. Suddenly his thoughts invade my brain.
“She doesn’t love me anymore.”
“Her hair was the color of the coffee.”
“I know my mom keeps pills in the back cabinet…”
At the last thought, I had enough and burst through the coffee shop doors. A waitress come to him, brunette hair tied back and poking out through her hat, and offers him another drink. Without wasting a second, I load my bow and shoot him in the chest.
But something strange happens.
He doesn’t spring up and kiss her, like the others did as soon as the arrow dissolved to a thin powdery dust. For a moment I think I missed but the twinkle in his hazel eyes says I didn’t. He simply grins and accepts her offer on another coffee. But just as she’s about to leave, he offers her his number and says, “Coffee sometime?” The girl, whose name tag reads “Alex”, laughs before responding, “All right maybe I will, Curly.” I stand there, dumb founded, as I try to process what just happened. There was no face sucking, tongue baths or even touching her but yet he looks at her like she puts the stars in the sky. Maybe some people aren’t as forward as others.
~
I decide to stop by my old house while down here, as I hadn’t seen it in years. I quietly crept towards the stone house, although I’m almost positive no one could see me even if I had pounded and stomped my way. I peek through the window and see my family all sitting down at the dinner table. My dad, I had heard, became deeply religious after I left and threw himself into weekly religion classes and Sunday church. I zoned out and focused on my picture, my last school picture, placed on a side table with a candle placed beside it and a bunch of picked flowers in front of it.
~
Eventually, after the dishes were done and the table was cleared, my dad came outside with my little sister, Emily. I sat on the miniature brick wall my mother had built for the front garden to “keep those pesky weeds out.”
“See daddy the stars are out!” The five year old says, plopping down on the grass and tugging her dad down with her.
“That’s right Em,” My dad laughed, sitting on the ground next to her pulling her on to his lap. “How many do you think there are?” he asks, looking up at the speckled sky dotted with silver dots and an occasional streak of light. Emily looks all the way across the sky and behind her before laying on her back as her green eyes count the ones above her.
“Five!” she exclaims, sitting up.
“I think there’s a lot more than that!” My dad chuckles.
“Are there six?” she gasps.
“Six billion perhaps!” My dad exclaims before digging his fingers into her sides and producing squeals from Emily.
“Oi you two! Settle down!” My mom says as she comes outside but smiles anyways as she continues to scold them “That’s your new dress Emily!” But of course it’s not new. It’s the same strawberry pink dress I wore on my forth birthday party. It had been probably packed away in a storage container for years but to Emily it may have been just bought off the shelves.
“Is Maddie up on a star?” Emily asks, flopping back into the grass, her blonde curls fan out onto the grass.
“Maybe,” My dad responds, laying into the grass with her.
“I hope she’s happy,” Emily sighs and my dad just nods. “Do you miss her?”
“There’s not a day where I don’t,” my dad sighs.
“Is that why you take flowers from mommy’s garden and put it by her picture?”
“Yes Em.”
“Then how come when I take flowers from mommy’s garden I get yelled at and you don’t?”
“Mommy knows it’s for a good cause.”
“But I have a good cause too!” Emily exclaims. “What am I supposed to feed Rudy if I can’t feed him flowers?”
“Dog food is a good choice too you know,” my dad laughs.
“Emily! Come in sweetie before the bugs come out!” my mom calls and Emily bounds up, dashing up to the porch and through the door, giggling and squealing.
My dad watches as the blonde curls disappear into the house before he turns to the speckled sky and whispers, “Good night Maddie. Never forget I love you.” He climbs up to the front porch, his knees cracking with each step up the stairs. Just as he disappears into the house, he gives one last look at the sky and maybe my family isn’t as over me as I thought.
~
As promised, I checked on Jack, Luke’s brother, at the University. His roommate was fine. He went by the name of Greg who was a student from a small town in Ireland. He and Jack had clicked almost instantly and Jack invited him to a party run by the seniors. It didn’t take long for the men to get massively drunk and stumbled their way back to the dorm before passing out on their separated bunks, still reeking of alcohol.
Ben, however, was more reserved, as I discovered when I checked on him. He sat alone in his dorm room, trying to cram some knowledge of Australian government before going to sit in the lobby of his dorm. He curls up on the couch and starts to play on his phone. A strawberry blonde sits nearby, sneakily taking glances towards him before glancing to her book. I smile as I load and shoot, landing straight in to her heart and as it disappeared she stood up and went over to his couch. Ben raises his eyes in confusion and she leans in, smashing her lips to his.
~
I sat on the mattress in the wood shed, the bow at my feet. I flop back onto the mattress, remembering all the love I saw today and suddenly I felt lonelier than I ever had before.
“Why can’t I have someone?” I whisper to myself.
“You have Chase,” the voice inside my head says, the same voice inside my head that had told me to kill myself. But this time, as I stare at the ceiling, maybe the demon inside me is right just this one time. I replay the last time I had heard his smooth voice, “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
But he’s gone; he’s a whole world away. He’s in heaven.
As I think, I realize that one thing the cupids forgot to mention how to get back. But I know one way. I glance over at the figurines. The larger one still has his arms wrapped around the smaller one; oh how I long to be the smaller figure and for chase to be the larger.
I pick up the last of my arrows, and I remind myself that yes this is the right thing to do. This is how to get back to Chase. I place the arrow to my chest, and take a deep breath. I press the arrow to my chest and the last thing I see before it all goes black is the two figures as I fall back onto the mattress.