Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti © 2008
Melpomene's Song
by Cassidy Petrus
I am dreaming. I know that I'm dreaming and the things that are happening aren't happening for real, but then, just as clearly as I knew I was dreaming, I now know I'm not, and that everything happening from this point on will be happening for real. This is how your brain works when you are running on three hours of sleep.
Your mind, more than that, more than just your mind, even your dreams begin to betray you.
I think about the first girl I kissed. About when I lost my virginity.
My eyes open and the piercing blare of my alarm clock forces me to rise from the warmth of my covers and click it off. I snap back onto my pillow and am about to slip back into my dreams, but something tells me I can't.
That today is important. Maybe the most important day I've ever lived. Or ever will live.
My eyes look at my alarm clock and they see only blurred red smudges. I push my fingers into my eyes and rub them, then look again, letting them focus until I can read the numbers.
I peel the covers off, letting the cold envelop my body as I slide out of my bed and fumble to my dresser. Slowly I pull my clothes on in the dark. The pair of jeans I draped over my chair last night. A white t-shirt from the bottom drawer. A hoodie from my closet, the one all the guys on the soccer team bought this fall.
I look at the Christmas presents piled neatly next to my guitar. So many kids will be waking up miserable today. Knowing it is the farthest they can ever be from the next Christmas.
I grab a few presents and slip out of my room, glancing back at the clock one last time; it reads 6:00. I silently step out of my house and am hit with a smell of cold. A smell that only exists on a dark December morning.
I settle into a freezing car seat and shiver. My breath stains the windshield as the car stirs to life. I am unable to do anything but sit and freeze. Everyone on my street, in my town, everyone in the world, is sleeping as I sit here and contemplate my life. For the first time in my life I am completely numb.
I pull into the visitor's parking at Woodview Estates and walk to building D. I use the key she gave me and enter, pausing at the foot of the stairs. I take a minute to collect my thoughts. How far we'd come, how far we still had to go.
I climb the stairs to her apartment. I knock on the door, but there is no answer. I turn the knob and let myself in. I silently close the door and make my way to the living room.
She is balled up on the couch, her knees tucked into her chest. I can tell she's been crying. Alone. Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte. Somehow she'd been able to convince them to let her come home early for the holidays.
"Are you ready to go?" I ask.
She nods, uncurling herself, and sits up. I help her to her feet and lead her down to my car. Then I run back up the stairs and check her apartment, making sure everything is where it should be. I lock the door behind me, taking one last look to make sure there was nothing to find us out.
We drive in silence. She stares out the window and I focus on the road. I wonder what she is thinking. I can't ask her. I wonder if she's wondering what I'm thinking. As close as we have become, it seems, we are now growing farther and farther apart. We are no longer in love.
My whole life I feel like I was searching for companionship, and I found it, in the greatest form I could ever imagine. But now I feel more alone than I did when I had no one. Before I found her. When I was truly alone. Now that I've found someone I am feeling more alone than I ever have before.
And we drive. Silently. And I wonder if she feels the same things as me. If she feels as empty. As betrayed by her feelings as I am by mine.
The clock on my dashboard reads 7:00 as I pull into the parking lot. My stomach twists with either anxiousness or grief. I help her out of the car and try to lead her into the building, but she shrugs me off. I straggle behind, only jumping ahead to hold the door. She finds a seat while I talk to the receptionist. Eventually I make my way over to her--the seats on either side of her are occupied by something--and I sit two chairs to her left.
I look at her. She looks at her phone. I don't exist.
They call her name at 7:30. She gets up and is led through some swinging doors. She disappears as they yawn closed. I sit there for a while, looking around at the other people. I wonder what their reasons are for being here. The saddest place on Earth.
I head outside before I lose my mind. The air is no longer cold. Well, it might be, but I can't tell. I don't feel anything. I pace around the parking lot, thinking about what my life is going to be like now. I don't think she'll ever speak to me again. Once I drop her off at home she won't ever see me again. I'll never hear her voice. She will cut me out of her life.
I make my way to the car and grab the presents I took earlier in the morning. I walk towards the center of town; to a pawnshop we passed driving in. The girl at the counter gives me $150 for the gifts. I spend $100 of it on a bouquet of roses.
When I return she isn't back in the reception area yet. The people all stare at me. They stare at my flowers and then back at me. They look at me with contempt. With pity and sorrow. They know they can't buy off their sins. Only I'm so stupid.
She comes out of the swinging doors and sees me. Sees the flowers. It's at that moment that she figures me out. She used to love me. A lifetime ago. She would have done anything for me. She did do anything for me. But it's not me she's dying for. Not now. Not after this. She's died enough for two people, she can't do anymore.
She's feeling more alone than she ever has before.
The weeks go by, and I don't see her in school anymore. None of her friends have seen her either. They all say she went to live with her grandmother down in Charlotte. The one girl she keeps in touch with refuses to even look at me.
I try to get my life together, to go on. Heartbroken people exist in movies and TV shows, but they always seem to recover. Everything works out. Their pain doesn't last for two months.
I'm still waiting for the scene where we confront each other and embrace and realize we missed each other all this time.
Instead, I get a phone call. A number not in my address book.
"Hello?"
There is no answer on the other line.
"Hello?"
I hear a deep sigh.
"Son," the voice begins and then pauses. Begins to say something but stops. He sighs again. Collects himself.
"It's time to tell the truth."
I can hear her in the background now, through the silence. I can hear her sobbing. I pull my car into the nearest parking lot, the one by Stop & Shop. The tears start to come. The ones I've been saving, holding in, for two long months.
I broke down.
I can hear her. Broken down.
I let the voice know everything. Everything I had saved up. Things I had never told anyone. Things I will never tell anyone again. Another deep sigh. He hangs up the phone. But I still have things to say. I talk to the emptiness.
"I'm tired of lying," I say to it.
It absorbs the words like a black hole.
"I'm tired of lying."
The flowers sit in her lap. Despite all the hatred she must have for me, the pain she must feel just being in my presence, she still has her tact. Still doesn't want to hurt my feelings. Maybe somewhere she does still care about me. We've just been burdened with a conclusion before our relationship could really reach love. Maybe this is for the best.
I wonder what it would be like if we had never met. If any of this worth it. If we can ever get over this hurdle. This all seems like a waste. How can anything be worth anything if the end result is a constant unending pain?
Usually I'm a fast driver, but she never liked it, so I always drove the speed limit when she was with me. On the highway I sit in the right lane, letting car after car pass. Up ahead there is nothing, everyone seems to be around a bend and out of view. I look in my rearview mirror and there are no cars behind us either. On this little stretch of highway, in this state, in this country, on this continent, on Earth, in our solar system, in the galaxy, in our existence, for this brief little moment, we are alone.
Just me and her. Alone.
I look at her. The flowers on her lap. The state of shock on her face. The lifelessness. Like she's been abducted by aliens.
She is alone.
A car speeds past us and disappears down the road. I don't feel it. I don't feel her next to me. I don't feel anything.
I am alone.
She's alone and I'm alone.
And now I know it.
Between the dismissal bell and the beginning of track practice there are only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to get to the locker room, change, and get out to the track. That doesn't leave much time to meet with teachers, or really do anything, after school.
Mr. Richards not being in his class when he said he would be is both time-consuming and frustrating. He decides he will wait five minutes. If he leaves five minutes from now he can still get dressed and make it to warm-ups in time. He'll leave Mr. Richards a note. Let him know his time is valuable.
He starts to write on a piece of paper when he hears footsteps coming into the room. He looks up expecting to see his teacher and instead sees her. She enters the room thinking the person hunched over the desk is Mr. Richards, but instead it's him. The girl he's had a crush on for the past year and a half. The boy she's liked since middle school.
They stare in silence. For a brief second they simultaneously picture an embrace. Something like he grabs the back of her neck with one hand and her waist with his other and she puts one hand on his shoulder and the other to his side. Something like he tilts her head back and she closes her eyes and he leans in and he closes his eyes and he keeps leaning in and something like he pauses and she says she's been waiting her whole life for a moment like this and he says he has too. Something like that.
They look at the ground and then back up.
They smile at each other.
They've both mused this moment at one point in their lives.
Someone whispers.
"Hi."
