Headsets For Fear

PRESENT 06 : MAVERICK

Five days after

Eleanor Brooks was a lovely, spirited girl who had hair like the bark of a tree and eyes like young leaves clinging to a plant in summer. A long nose like Pinocchio, which I always teased her about. Rounded cheeks which remained flushed with happiness most of the times.

We read in the same college, so we knew the each other's faces, but never really spoke until we had to do a project together. We got to know we had a lot in common, and enjoyed the ways in which we were different. We didn't even realised when we fell in love with each other.

I still remember the way she had giggled when we first kissed.

We used to talk to each other about a lot of things. The both of us would spend hours puzzling about gravity - the mysterious fundamental force which intrigued both of us equally. We studied equations and experiments, and no one ever realised how the time flew.

Sometimes we would go for bike riding. I loved how her hair flew behind her when we rode together on the rocky terrain, laughing at each other. We would go to to foreign restaurant and try all sorts of strange food there.

That was the perfect part of our relationship. The parts everyone saw. The parts I told my friends over rounds of shots and over the phone at night.

They didn't know how moody Eleanor could be. How she could brood for days about even the shortest of things, like why I didn't take her out for coffee after she had yet another fight with her mom. She wouldn't say anything directly. But I sensed her resentment.

She had some problems with her Mom and Foster Dad, but she would never tell me about that. I figured out that they were really, really abusive from the few things she said about them. Still, she kept on saying that her Mom needed her, and kept sending most of the money she earned in her part time job to her. She had a brother, Elijah, who used to hang out with us sometimes.

Despite never telling me how bad matters exactly were, she expected me to understand. Which, of course, I sucked at doing. I tried my best to hug her and tell her how much I loved her and would take care of her, but I always realised that I was missing something. That there was something she wanted me to say, something I never did. Or never could.

Then one day, I and a couple of my college buddies had a party. I had a good deal of drinks, and was totally wasted by the time Eleanor came to search for me. She wanted to tell me something, but I pushed her away, clearly not being able to recognise her because of the booze in my system.

I wouldn't even have remembered what happened, unless my friends told me about it when I became sober.

I didn't know that she had gone to visit her Mom that day. Or that something horrible had happened.

The only thing I knew for sure was that when I went to meet her at her house the next morning, she was hanging from the ceiling of the fan in her bedroom, her face greener than her eyes had ever been.
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Nora stared at me like she couldn't believe my story. "You told me you'd broken up with her."

I lowered my head in guilt. "Well, you know the truth now."

Nora looked at me in confusion. Slowly tapping her hands on the table we had occupied, she said, "You think that they'll exploit this fear of yours?"

I looked at her uncomfortably. "Why else would I say this? Can't you do anything about it?"

Nora smiled and bit her sandwich. After chewing the piece for a few moments she said, "I can't do anything about it, Maverick. I don't have that power. But you can do something."