“Where were you yesterday?” she said, with a ripple of sadness in her eyes about to break the surface.
“Oh, I’m sorry Char,” his eyes searched her face, knowing something must have gone wrong.
“What happened?”
She looked down, “I just needed you there.” She didn’t add that she wished he’d appeared and saved her from the antagonistic bullies at school, that he would’ve come to defend her, protect her from their vicious cruelty. They intended to see her cry. However, she unfortunately knew he never appeared in those situations.
He grabbed her hand, and started stroking the back. “Where do you want to talk?”
She felt his warmth almost melt the sadness, “Evan, I’m tired of this. I hate my life. I hate everything I see, everything I do, I even hate hanging out with you-“
He yanked his hand back, “What? What does that-“
“No, listen. Every time I see you, you remind me of what I can’t have. You know I can’t be with you. Or when I listen to you, it’s like listening to the Beatles because I know I will never see them live.”
He says, “Don’t think about the present, we just have to get through this and then one day, Char, we will live in a mansion by the sea under the shining sun, and our backyard will be a maze made of hedges we can get lost in together. We’ll have cotton ball bouquets instead of flowers, and waterslides going into our wave pool. One day, Char. One day.”
“We’ll live happily ever after.” She smiled as bright as the sun, and thought about how he always knew what to say, what to make her think about, something beautiful, something in the future, something to keep her going, the little thing called hope. “But, you feel this way too sometimes, right?” As way of explanation, “Evan, like you could cry at any moment, like if there’s no butter for bread in the morning, or when you realize no one is talking at the dinner table. Or the amount of homework and responsibilities amounting to an unsurmountable mountain.I want it to end. I have so much to do, so much to prove…” He nods. “I wish I could evaporate into the clouds, be as serene and calm as them. Doesn’t that sound lovely?” she looks up to them wistfully. They’re walking on the dry, parched grass away from the edifice they call “high school.”
Evan takes her hand again, “But Char, then you’d leave me.”
A little girl walking her dog ogles Charlotte strangely.
Her eyes don’t waver from his as she says, “I know, I know, that’s why I’m even here, why I deal with anything is because of you. Don’t you understand? You’re the reason I’m alive.” She doesn’t add because she loves him he’s just another responsibility she has, a responsibility not to vaporize, a stupid reason to smile every now and then. If she didn’t have said reason, she could easily take off, fly away.
His hands hold her back from sleeping with the stars.
He’s glad and proud that he’s helped her; he knows she doesn’t know how deserving she is of everything; he would give her the world, the clouds in the shape of a wedding ring, success, anything she wanted if he could. But, he can’t. Something holds him back.
Then he jokes a little nervously, “Oh Char, you give me way too much credit.” He knows his breath is pungent with lies, but he avoids thinking of that and instead tells her, “Complain to me, Char. I want you to feel better.”
She wants to thank him, “You know Evan, a lot of people escape by listening to music, reading, doing drugs, sleeping, watching Netflix, but none of those things will ever make me feel better. They’re all temporary. You’re not. You make life bearable, you give me hope, and you let me escape into the imagination of what life will be like one day when I’m out of this wretched town. You’re my healthy drug.” And then she laughs.
He darts his eyes around, avoids her penetrating gaze.
Then an elderly couple walks by, hunching over their canes, staring at Charlotte.
He squeezes the part of his nose right between his eyes in frustration, blows out air from his mouth, and then in a second he feels a physical pain in his heart, not wanting to do this, not wanting to do what he’s about to do, but he knows it’s time.
He grabs her face, wraps both his hands around her cheeks, her ears, and closes the distance between them by mere inches as he wills his eyes to bore into hers.
“Char, I’m so sorry,” his voice cracks. She’s stilled by what she sees in front of her, right by the crinkle in his eyes, she sees a blob of a tear forming. Then, she watches it slither down his face.
“What? Why?”
“Char, listen. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry.” And he has to look down because the heaviness, grievousness of what’s in his head can’t hold itself. His head hangs on his shoulders and she sees streams and streams of water falling from his eyes.
Then, it’s her turn to pick him up, “Hey, Evan,” she holds onto him, “it’s okay. It’s okay. I love you-“
And with that, he starts shaking his head saying “No, no, please don’t say that.” His eyes are so wet, when she looks into them, she only sees herself. “Char…” he starts, his lips are wobbling, “Why do you think those people over there are looking at you so strangely?”
Her head retracts, and she swivels it over, her eyebrows furrowed. “People always do that, but I don’t care because I’m with you when they do. They’re looking at us strangely.”
“Charlotte, you made me up.”
Her eyelashes start to fall
“I don’t exist”
Her arms plummet
“I’m only in your head”
Comets, stars, moons fall to the ground in a crash that splits the Earth in half and breaks the ground she stands on, collapsing right from under her, sending her into a chasm of uncertainty, reality suffocating her, crushing her until she lands as flat as gasoline.
“I’m… sorry”
And those are the two words, the matches that light the mess of her disintegration of soul and mind on the ground into a flame that roars and breaks.
Her words are laced with enflamed gasoline, “Don’t you dare spit your gross lies to me ever again!”
“Char, wait! You need to understand this!” He yells to her, begs her.
“I thought I could trust you,” her words scratch her throat raw.
“I thought you said you could save me!” her words rasp her throat red.
“I never did! You just imagined that I could! That I would! Char, think about this, you never let me save you. You made me up, your mind controlled what you saw in me and you never had me saving you!”
“Remember once when we were lying on the grass, it was sunny and beautiful, everything seemed possible, I asked you if you would? You said you would save me!” She pushed him backwards in anger, and then in sadness, realizing she was probably pushing the cool, indiscriminate air. “Were you lying to me? Was the sun a hallucination? Was all the hope you gave me a cheap, cellophane wrapped sham?”
“All the moments we’ve had together, all the good moments that kept you going were us talking about the future. We always talked about escaping, about what it would be like when we got out of high school, imagining going to Europe, where the sun shone bright, and your ability to conform to society’s norms didn’t matter. Where you were defined by your smile, your willingness to give it; not the letters of the alphabet on a sheet of paper, telling your parent’s how “smart and promising” you are, not the amount of stamped thin paper trees in your bank account, or the amount of whale vomit you slather on your face imitating every fake, mechanical somebody.” He breathed. “That was hope. Hope was your escape drug.
She didn’t say anything.
“So no, I’m not your healthy drug, I’m the drug that prevented you from dealing with reality. The drug that kept you alive, but never fully living. Don’t love me, I want you to forget me and not hope, dream and escape anymore, BUT LIVE! You’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re special, but even without any of those things, you deserve everything. “
She didn’t say anything.
“And note that all this, you’re telling yourself. You know this. You’re going to save yourself. I know you will.”
She didn’t say anything. She reached over to him, and hugged him, she looked up to the clouds, and sighed away all the venom, she hugged herself, suddenly feeling only the air, and loved herself.
