AN; One chapter left... I will be sad to let this one go : ' (
I moved into the dorm building on campus, taking with me only a single suitcase full of my belongings. My roommate was a very reserved German girl, who was a few inches taller than I was. She wore a pair of thick glasses either regularly on her nose or perched on her head and lived in tracksuits. We respected our opposing sides of the rooms and remained civil. I suppose she thought I was miserable. I slept badly and sighed a lot. I didn't make much effort at the introduction gatherings, nor did I go with her to make impressions with our neighbours on the floor. But we stuck together at freshman meet-ups as we didn't know anyone else.
I was miserable. I was drained, and I remained that way for the first two months. I moped and sulked when I was alone, barely paying attention in the first few weeks. And when my mood was lowest, it only plummeted further once I realised, I had no one to call and no one to talk to. I'd left everyone and everything behind. If they hadn't come and separated us, I'd be on the phone to her, I'd be visiting her off-campus, I'd be content in the fact that I would always have her. But I didn't. Her number was still disconnected. I hadn't spoken to her in months, and that fact was what pushed me to try and be better in my new surroundings. To bury my past, I had to accept that she was not going to contact me - and hoping and wishing wouldn't force her to. It was over, and out of my control.
But burying was easier said than done, I had to first distract. So, I threw myself into swimming again, and whilst it made me seem more distant than ever, it worked. The campus had a pool that was accessible, especially towards sport majoring students. I swam in my every free and each night to tire myself out so that I slept well. And eventually, I tricked myself into thinking that things were improving. Life started to flow on.
In the fall, I turned nineteen. It was a lonely birthday, one I felt no one knew about. Celebrated in silence. That morning before classes, I went down to the payphone outside the dorm block and called my dad. The November air was crisp and fresh, but cool enough that I had to go out in my coat over my pyjamas. I dialled the number and twirled the metal cord around my index finger stiffly. The line opened and crackled. I wondered if I would be able to hear my house, anything about it, anything.
"Hi, Dad," I said, watching my breath form around the receiver.
"Norah... good morning." His voice came through sounding gruff and gravelly with sleep.
"Morning."
"What's wrong?"
We didn't call often. To call him, meant something had to be wrong, not that I just wanted to talk to him. Our hug the first day he dropped me at college had been stiff, but the brightness of the tears in his eyes had been genuine. Whether they had been because I was leaving, or because he felt as if he had already lost me, I didn't know. He had been treating me like I was fragile all summer, like I was a stranger in his home and one that was made up like a glass jigsaw.
"Nothing. Nothing is wrong," I assured him.
He didn't say anything for a moment, just yawned into the line, muffled with the obvious cover of his mouth. I was waiting for him to say it, but my patience was running thin and my disappointment was rising.
"It's my birthday," I said, "today."
He sighed. "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Norah. It's very early. You know, I would've called you later, I haven't forgotten. I wouldn't have, I mean."
"I know... I just wanted to talk before my day began. Yeah," I said.
"Happy birthday, darling. I'm sorry." He kept sighing like he was exhausted.
"Thank you."
"How's college going?" He asked trivially.
"Fine. Alright yeah," I said. Then added, "a bit lonely sometimes. How is... Twin?"
That word, and that word alone, sent my mind and our conversation spiralling down in one direction. Her. Burying what had happened had been working alright, but it was her I could not bury. Once she was on my mind, I could not stop. It became painfully obvious how melancholy my life was, how unhappy I was.
"Things are fine," my dad answered naturally.
I leaned my head against the phone box. "And her?"
He said nothing.
"Have you seen her?"
"Don't call me if you're going to ask me stupid questions like that. Leave it alone, Norah," he said, voice awkward and thick.
"I can't," I whispered, clenching my teeth. Then I raised my voice a little, feeling it shape into a pleading tone. "Just tell me. It's easy. Please?"
The line clicked and died, the tone humming endlessly into my ear.
-
A little less sad than my birthday was Christmas, as by then, I had a fairly stable group of friends. I had met one boy, named Charlie, through swimming and he was kind enough to introduce me to his other two friends. Two girls, one very short girl called Karim, and another, who was overly freckled in the face named Irina. They were easy friends, ones that were almost too nice. They weren't brash with their humour like Jackie had been, nor were they unapologetic. It was easy and relaxing; I could be as quiet as I wanted around them. We all went out after the first night of snow to a winter market, where bought very simple gifts for one another. Then they all went home for Christmas and the college campus became a ghost town. I could've gone back to Twin and stayed with my dad, but I opted not to. Being there I thought would've just been painful. The positives of staying on campus during the holiday were that I had my room to myself. My roommate had flown home for the holiday and said she would bring me back something German.
But the loneliness of the buildings made for an active mind. My thoughts were so loud that they kept me awake. I tried to spend the days working on assignments my professor had given me and swimming, and even jogging across the common in the snow. But even all of that didn't tire me out. I spent many nights sitting up in bed, trying to read or simply staring at the ceiling, counting the flecks in the plaster. I realised in those nights that my tether of self-control was short. On only the third night of my college isolation, I went down to the payphone in the dark. I only had socks on my feet and a flimsy hoodie over my bed shirt, and my ankles got damp quickly in the snow. For months, I had kept her number memorised, sang it like a song before I slept, even when I was still in Twin. So, I was quick to press it into the keypad after I'd fed the machine a dollar. I was praying it was working again, that the number was contactable. My fingers were trembling as I punched it in, from the cold and my overwhelming need to hear her voice. My teeth started to chatter as I waited for the number to be registered.
But I knew. I knew really. The number didn't go through, instead, the line jumped and the intercept message was played.
"The number you have reached," the voice then read out the number I'd come to know like the back of my hand, "has been disconnected..."
I didn't use the payphone again. I soldiered on through the lonely break and greeted Charlie and the others happily when they came back from visiting family. With them, I spent the first few weeks of January being distracted from my obvious crippling unhappiness. I forced myself to appear better, be louder, be more involved, and I think they finally saw me as a proper friend, and not just a silent appendage joined to them that didn't contribute much. We dyed Irina's hair in the college bathroom and stained our wrists bright blue and did stick-and-poke tattoos with a borrowed kit that Charlie's roommate had. Karim's tattoo had to be tiny and somewhere easily hidden, so that her parents would not find it when she went back at the end of the term. Mine was a very simple fish on the inside of my ring finger that Karim drew very expertly to match my necklace.
In February, the dorm supervisor came to my room and told me I was being requested down in the main faculty office. My roommate gave me a look on the way out jokingly as if I was in trouble, but I highly doubted it at the time. I was so reserved in my classes and on campus, there wasn't a single thing I could be in trouble for. And I found my suspicions to be true once I got there. I was not in trouble, rather I was being told something.
"Norah Cook?" A tired looking woman at the printer said as I stood awkwardly in the doorway of the faculty office. It was a large room with a circular arrangement of computers and desks, and it felt as if everyone in the room was looking at me.
"That's me, ma'am," I said.
She pressed start on the printer then walked over to me, handing me an envelope and smiling weakly. "Here, I know, it's an easy mistake, but it was on the freshman dorm sheets in the room, did you get one?"
I glanced from the envelope to the woman's impatient face. "Uh, I think so. Yes, ma'am."
"Did you read it?"
I grew a little warm in the face. "Not all of it. No, sorry."
"Well, have you any way to contact the sender without a letter?"
"I don't know who it's from," I said.
"Okay. When you mail them back, let them know if they don't specify, the letter will get sent to the wrong part of the university. The dorms have postal numbers and need the specific codes, or they'll just get sent to the faculty offices. No worries, easy mistake, just let them know," the woman explained.
I nodded and apologised politely, then ducked out of the room. I started to walk quickly, my legs working hurriedly in the direction of my dorm room.
It was the handwriting. I recognised the handwriting. It was blocky and easy to read, and at the end of my name, the 'h' was curled into a tiny swirl. There was only one person who wrote my name like that.
Once I was halfway across the snowy common, I started to sprint, through the dorm building and up the stairs, two at a time. Then bowled into my room, tearing open the envelope.
Dearest Norah,
I have had lots of time to think of what to write in this letter. I don't think anything will be enough, but I will explain the silence. I will explain it all.
After that night at the motel, I was taken back to the house and subjected to an incessant amount of verbal abuse. Eddie found us through card bills when they were mailed to the house. I was banned from leaving and was escorted by Eddie to and from the shops. He hid my car keys, cancelled my phone plan, and broke my cell phone. I spent most days in the bedroom, with nothing but books and feared every time I heard footsteps on the stairs. I was like a prisoner. But still, I could only think of you, Norah. I wondered what your dad had said to you and how your summer was going. I wondered if you had tried to call me, or if you had come past the house. Randomly in the night, I would be hit with painful sadness - did you feel like that too?
I was going to run away again. It was either that or I would die, I thought. As dramatic as that is. I planned to get a bus across the border as it wouldn't be too far and meet you in Canada. But I couldn't leave the house as I was under watch from Jackie and Eddie, and the front door was locked all day. Still, I packed a small bag and hid it under the bed each time Eddie came back into the room. Then I couldn't find my passport. He had hidden my passport and my documents, and after that, I couldn't find my bag either. I broke down. I didn't know what I would do anymore, I felt as if I was being held captive in my own home.
They had taken my bag into the living room and emptied it all over the floor. They called me down only to shout at me. It still makes me cry, even to write and I am so sorry, Norah, but Eddie ripped all of your paintings of me. I had kept them in a compartment in my suitcase, but he found them and destroyed them. They were my pieces of you. Jackie seemed the angriest that day. She had been silent for weeks, but then she started to scream at me. She begged me to stay and to stop trying to run away, she accused me of not loving her and said that I was a terrible mother but in the next breath, she told me she couldn't be without me. She screamed that I was tearing apart the family. I wanted her to know that I did love her. She was my only daughter and she'd always been special to me, but I had felt nothing but hatred from her in the last month or so. So, what she said came as a surprise. But I wanted to please her, and I stayed.
Eddie paid for family therapy. Once a week we sit in this horrible little room that smells like a hospital and we talk. It is awful. I have to sit there and listen to my husband and daughter badmouth me, while I have to express every single mistake I have made. I have to admit how I have ruined the family. It is embarrassing. I am no happier, but things are slightly better at home. I can leave the house when I please and there is no more shouting, but my passport and information is still hidden. I realised that they were holding me until you were gone, until you were too far away for me to run to. Though, it doesn't stop me from thinking of it every day. I plan a full escape each morning when I wake up, and never follow through. Jackie is going to a college a short distance out of town, so she is staying at home until she can afford an apartment away.
I think of you every day, Norah, endlessly. But it has been a while now, five or six months? You probably are a whole new person now, new friends, a new attitude, a new lover perhaps? I want to know this new person. I don't care if you are any different, I want to see you Norah, I want to know what about you has changed. This new you I will memorise too. You have made me quite poetic.
I have missed your birthday and Christmas too. Did you think of me then? It was depressing here, on both occasions. It made me think of how different things were a year earlier. It made me wish I'd loved you sooner.
If you mail me back, send your letter to the address that I leave at the bottom. It's a post office box, as if your letter comes to the house, I will be in trouble and it will be ripped before I can even read it. But I hope to hear from you. I miss you every day.
Yours Always,
Mio.
I read the letter four times, as the first time, I'd been in such disbelief. My hands were trembling harder than they had been earlier on. Everything I had attempted to bury sprung from its grave and my mind was flooded with thoughts of her, and everything I associated her with. Though I'd wanted to hear her voice and speak with her, the letter had been perfect. It had eased almost every single doubt I had so smoothly. I wanted her to feel the same. I had felt her anxiety through the page. I wanted to weep at the thought of what she'd faced.
In the next moment, my roommate came through the door, humming. I hurriedly asked for some paper, flapping my hands wildly, and she handed me a pad of her lined paper and one of her fancy art pens. Then I started to write,
To Mio,
I've read your letter over and over. For months I have been thinking of you, hoping you would contact me. I have tried to call you so many times. At Christmas, I went out in the snow to a payphone and dialled your number from memory (impressive, right? It is the only one I remember) but, of course, you didn't answer. I don't know what I would've told you. I just wanted to hear you talk. I wanted to know you were somewhere and if you were thinking of me. I was so desperate for you to not forget me.
I asked about you on my birthday. That would be my present, to know how you were. But my dad hung up on me and has only called me once since. Are you that dangerous? Are you that bad for me, Mio? It feels as if the whole world is telling me not to love you, yet I still do. I miss you every day as well, and missing you makes me lonely. But I am not too lonely; I have a few new friends. But I think I am the same, maybe just a little quieter. And not enough time has passed for me to want a new lover, I don't think I can love anyone but you. There is just no room in my brain for other thoughts hahaha. You have always made me poetic, but then again, you have made me be lots of different things.
The things they have done to have made me so angry, Mio. I don't know how else to put it. It's the kind of rage that makes you want to cry, you know. But hang in there. Please. I will send you as many paintings as you want. You have inspired me to be creative now. I will send one with each letter, and I will draw the memory that your words make me think of. I won't stop telling you how much I miss you. To this, I will attach the memory of you trying on your Christmas earrings from last year.
Please, write to me again. Nothing will make me happier for now.
Love from,
Norah.