18 | Broken people break people
~KHAN~
She isn't wearing any shoes. I notice that, as she walks away from me.
She must have lost them at some point in Matt's house, and forgotten to go back for them. Maybe she didn't realise. A voice in my numbed mind tells me that I should go and find them for her. To call after her, and tell her...
What? Tell her what?
I watch her disappear into Matt's house, and I tell myself that I should go after her. Even if I can't think of anything to say, I can't just let the girl who is living in my house make her way back there alone, especially barefoot. And in that dress she's wearing- it's thin, short. She'll be absolutely freezing. Does she even know her way back to Emeh's from here? I can't be sure.
She's been to Matt's house before, stupid. Probably a hundred times, back when they were dating.
Thinking of this just throws up a mental image of Matt kissing Lilo barely ten minutes ago, and that just makes my chest pang for a reason that I can't place. Instead, I will my feet to move, to step forward. To head back into the house, out of this freezing cold. A guy with any ounce of decency in him would head after Lilo, apologise for upsetting her and make sure she got home safely. Something tells me that she wouldn't be happy to see me, but that shouldn't be an excuse. I brought her here, and everything that happened tonight was down to me doing that. I bring shit upon myself.
My mind is as numb as my body is, but not from cold. My mouth is still tingling with the sensation of Lilo's lips against mine. I remember how warm they were, and how they felt- they felt innocent. They felt like something fragile, something that was so precious and so breakable. And as she pressed herself to me, I was aware- so aware- of how broken the girl who was kissing me truly was. I thought of what her life had been like for two years- a life of caring for someone who was meant to care for her, and never putting herself first. I thought of how easily she had snapped inside earlier in my bedroom, when she was just crying and crying.
It took everything in me to keep her together, to hold her tight enough to stop her from falling apart.
It makes me wince to think of how much I wanted to kiss her back just now. It took everything inside me not to let myself.
I've learned the hard way that you can't expect broken people to fix themselves for you.
I don't see how anyone could ever understand, because I don't understand myself. It isn't fair. It isn't fucking fair that whenever I love something, it gets taken away from me. My parents and even though my sister is with me in person, it seems like I lost her on the journey to England too. And now a girl who is more complicated inside than anything else I've ever come across in my life wants to kiss me, and all I can think about is how easy it would be for her to be taken from me too.
Life is a bitch.
I want to talk to my father.
Obviously, I can't do that. Instead, I pull myself together- sort of- and head back into my friend's house, the wave of music and heat hitting me in the face like a slap to the senses. I've stood in the doorway for a good half-minute before my brain kick-starts into action and reminds me what I'm here to do. It takes me about thirty seconds to locate the familiar pair of silver shoes, kicked behind a large plant pot and stained with beer. I hold them limply in my hands, blinking down at them almost without seeing them.
Go after her, Khan.
I weave in and out of hot, sweating bodies, the base thumping in my ears and vibrating through the floor, and cover my eyes to avoid witnessing a makeout session that is extremely impassioned and pretty fucking disgusting at the bottom of the stairs. I'm pretty sure that that guy is eating this girl alive- or is she doing the eating? Either way, it's vomit-inducing. I've reached the front door, having been only foot-trampled twice, and am about to push it open and head out into the cold night again when a voice stops me from behind.
"K-K?"
My lips tighten, and I keep my hand on the door-handle without turning around as I say, "Carrie."
"You're leaving?"
I turn to face her, the girl who kissed me this same hour. In the half-hour or so since I backed out of her advances, her hair has gone from stylishly mussed to crazily wild, and I can't tell if the smudges on her face are smeared lipstick from all the kissing she's been doing or messed-up mascara from crying. She must have cried at some point, because there are dark crocodile-tracks running down her cheeks. I wonder if it was because of me. It just makes me feel ten times worse. "Yeah, I'm...I thought I should- um-"
Her mouth lifts into a shadow of a smile. "Philly and that girl with red hair that Delilah hangs out with already went after her, incase you were planning on doing the same."
Fuck. "Carrie..."
She steps down from the bottom of the stairs and makes her way towards me, her steps slow. During my time being friends with Carrie, I have seen multiple expressions on her face- flirty, happy, that dumb-blonde-bitch expression she puts on when she wants to kid people that she's just a stupid girl and not the sharp, savvy, calculating person she is. I've rarely seen this one, though- it's complicated to read. Her mouth slightly uptilted at the edges in a wry smile, eyes full of emotional layers. She is looking at me like I'm a silly little boy, and she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. When I first met Caroline Mathers and she threw her arms around me and announced that we were going to be best friends, I thought she was what everyone else thought- a feather-headed spoilt bitch who was the centre of her own universe. It took me a while to get past that mask.
"Not that that's going to stop you going after her too," she continues, getting closer, and I see how her eyes are red- crying? Smoking? "That's what I've always loved about you, K. When you care about someone, you'll follow them to the end of the world."
"You're wrong," I say, "I didn't follow Lilo, and it's too late now."
"It isn't," says Carrie, "If you care, it isn't too late."
A glazed look has come over her face, her eyes. For the first time, I notice that she's swaying, ever so slightly, from side to side. Since when have her hands been shaking? I blink through the haze that is neon flashing lights and smoke, squinting at my friend as she stands unsteadily on the stairs. She doesn't look alright. She doesn't look alright at all. "What have you been drinking, C?"
She giggles. "Not drinking, K-K. Matty's older brother gave me some bong, it's quite something. Quit fussing, mother."
I look again, harder. "Carrie, that's not just weed."
Her nose is bleeding. Fuck, Carrie's nose is bleeding. What has she done?
She starts sniffing hard, but the damage has been done- blood is dribbling down from her nose and over her mouth like she's in some sort of crazy horror movie. She reaches up to wipe it away, but her hand is shaking so hard that she can't even maneuver it properly.
"Carrie...what have you done?" I ask in a quiet voice. My heart is beating fast in my chest, and I feel fear coursing through me. My friend laughs again, but it isn't a normal laugh. Then she falls forward.
I'm there before her in a second, the weight of her against my chest as I catch her in my arms, blood smearing over my shirt as it runs from her nose like a scarlet fountain. She's much heavier than I anticipated. This is the second time this evening that we've been in an intimate position like this, but she wasn't bleeding the first time. Neither were here eyes so hazy and pink as they are now, blinking up at me slowly. Her lips stretch into a grin, and she begins to giggle. "He-llo, this is cozy..."
"I'm going to find somewhere you can sit down, okay, Carrie?"
She squeals as she trips forward again, her feet clubbering down on my trainers, but I don't wince even though it hurts. "I don't need to- okay, maybe I do. You're so clever, K-K."
I guide her stumbling, tripping body over to the bottom of the stairs, which the pukey kissing couple have thankfully vacated, and I help her to slowly sit down on the bottom step. The girl immediately falls against me, her chin on my shoulder as she beams up into my face. "You're a good person. Have I ever told you that?"
I gently nudge her off of me, instead taking hold of her hands and holding them still. "Do you need- water?"
"I need you, stupid," she says, and though her voice is still sliding all over the place, her eyes seems clearer. "You are so cute, and so stupid."
I blink. "I think I'm going to get you some water, Carrie."
Her arms immediately wind around me, pulling me close. "No, stay. Please don't leave me!" Just like that, tears are in her eyes. I've never felt so unnerved and terrified at the same time- and I am also very aware that the timer is ticking if I want to catch up with Lilo. But then I look down at the girl who is lolling against me, bleeding and quietly crying, and I realise something.
Lilo made her statement when she walked away from me. Phil and Del went after her- right now, as much as I'd like her to, Lilo doesn't need me. But Carrie does. She made her choice. I need to make mine.
"I'm not going anywhere, C," I say quietly, and I slide an arm around her back and pull her against me if only so she doesn't hang like some sort of broken marionette. "I'm staying right here as long as you need me to."
"Why didn't you kiss me back?" she whispers, fresh tears beading in her eyes, and her hands cling to the front of my shirt. "I know I'm messed up, but-"
"It's not you," I insist, folding her hands in mine again to try and control their shaking. "There's nothing messed up about you, Caroline Mathers."
"Yes, there is. I'm a holy mess." She laughs, tears still in her eyes. "Look at me."
I remember Lilo telling me the same thing on the night that her mother turned up at Emeh's house. I remember how she felt in my arms- fragile. Carrie doesn't feel fragile, she feels like an electric wire- unpredictable. Lilo was shaking, though. Like Carrie is now, even if it is drug-induced.
"It wasn't you," I repeat, and I'm not lying. I don't think I could put into words how much I appreciate the girl lying against me right now; how much I've appreciated everything she has done for me ever since I joined the school. I couldn't have looked more different if I'd tried on my first day- a target for abuse. Carrie never let that happen, though. A fierce friend, even if it took me a while to realise that. "Please don't think that it was."
Carrier smiles. "Delilah?"
I don't know how to respond to that, so I don't. I look down at my trainers instead, and try not to picture Lilo walking home by herself in the dark and the cold, with her bare white feet. Picturing Phil holding her doesn't exactly help the mental image. I shake myself, angry with myself. I was the one who made Lilo make the decision to leave, like the dickhead that I am. I'd deserve it if she went off with my friend. At least he went after her.
Beside me, Carrie sighs and nestles into my side. I don't even give a shit about the blood anymore, not now that it's already all over my shirt. The bleeding from her nose has slowed down, at least- now it's beginning to dry just above her top lip like a scarlet shadow. "I'm an idiot, K. When Matty's brother offered me the bag, I didn't even question what I was doing for myself. I just wanted to be gone. The beer stopped working after I threw it all up, and I couldn't stomach drinking anymore. That stuff is disgusting."
I swallow. "Do you...know what he gave you, then?"
Carrie smiles, a small, sad smile. "He called it fun. And it was...at first. Everything was so bright and...and..."
I rub circles on her back as her head rocks back and forth, eyes gleaming. "It was great. I couldn't remember anything."
"I thought you said you didn't want to forget Seb," I say softly, remembering our conversation before she kissed me, and she lifts her eyes to my face.
"I lied, K."
I take a deep breath. Carrie needs- she needs water. She needs to lie down. She needs whatever food you eat to get sober- with beer it's toast, but I have no clue about drugs of any kind. But instead of arranging any of these things for her, I just push her hair back from her hot, sweating forehead and say, "Tell me what you love about your brother, C."
So she does, with the sound of music pulsing distantly through the walls and lights flashing from beneath the door. Carrie talks with her head on my shoulder, and sometimes she smiles, and when she remembers something cute or funny her little brother once did, she laughs. Her voice gets quieter and quieter, drowsier and drowsier, but even as her head begins to nod and her eyes are drifting shut she's still talking and talking. The weight of her against me is heavy, but I ignore it because there is love in her voice.
But even as she's talking to me, I slip a hand into my back pocket and slide out my phone discreetly, placing it on the carpet behind my back. My eyes flit to it constantly, as I'm smiling and nodding at the things Carrie is saying. What am I waiting for? Calls from Lilo? A text? Whatever it is, I'm disappointed. Carrie talks herself to sleep, and my phone stays absolutely silent.
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