Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 37

Going home was a nightmare. Packing enough winter clothes to go home for a month was heavy and involved a lot of laundry, which involved a lot of stairs. I would fill up my laundry bag and drag it down six flights of stairs until I reached the laundry room, realize I had forgotten my detergent and trudge back up the stairs, hoping no one would fill up the washing machines before I got back. On my third trip, Flint caught me in the hallway.

"How are you doing?"

"I should be asking you the same question," I said.

He pulled the laundry bag strap out of my hands and set it on the floor. He pulled me into his arms and hugged me. He must have known. I hadn't told him but he was the most perceptive person I had ever met. He didn't need to see the screen with my grades on it. He didn't need to hear about how hard EMS was getting. He could see it on my face, chiseled into the bags under my eyes. I was beginning to look like a grandmother.

"It's going to be okay," he said.

I smiled at his cliché choice of comfort. It felt sincere coming from him, like he had thought about what he wanted to say and had settled on something familiar.

He left the next day, in the morning, before I had woken up. I went to knock on his door, but his roommate answered, telling me in no uncertain terms that Flint had left at an ungodly hour.

"Almost woke up the whole dorm with his suitcase," the roommate said.

I hid my smile so as not to offend the tired roommate.

I had one more night in the dorm and I chose to spend it alone. I didn't want to go to the office and joke around with everyone playing video games. I didn't want to ask John or Ruby to spend time with me. I slipped up to the roof using a key I had borrowed from the office on my last shift and forgotten to return. They were supervisor keys, which gave access to all the nooks and crannies of the campus that we might need to access to get to our patients. If I hadn't been on EMS, I probably would have called them that night. Confessed everything and asked to see someone, someone who could help me. But instead, I tried to take care of myself. I used my card to get to the roof, slipping between old water heaters and excess construction equipment. I laid a blanket down on the panels of rock and added myself to the forgotten piles of junk.

The sky was unfettered by clouds that night. I felt like I could see for miles and I started picking stars to be my favorites of the night. You, and you and you. When I remembered that what I was seeing were just shadows, echoes of what the stars had once been. I stopped collecting them in my mind. Is someone out there? I asked trying to send my brain waves to pierce through the dark curtain. Can anyone hear me? Give me a sign.

A brick crashed into the rock near my blanket. I shot up. It had been destroyed, crumbled into dust and the wind danced like a victory hurricane amidst the wreckage. For a moment, I was exhilarated, until I realized that I must have nudged the brick with my toe. So much for a sign from above. This was the way it always was. I couldn't keep myself from breaking things. I picked up the dust and held it in hands shaped for a drink of water. I leaned over the side and blew like it was a wishing flower. The wind lifted the blown powder towards the sky and let it disperse, the powder too weak to stay put together.

I brushed my hands on my blanket, feeling the soft fibers remove the dust. My hands were chalky, like a gymnast's. I glanced over the roof and wondered if anyone could make the jump and be graceful about it. I wished I could be light on my feet and strong in my shoulders. I would swing from street lamp to electric pole, escaping into the darkness that enshrouded the night sky. I could land on my toes and slip off without anyone noticing to a place where no one could find me.

"This is SPARTA!" I said, laughing at the sound of my voice.

I peered over the roof to see if anyone had heard. No one seemed to have heard me. The few smokers that were outside were deep in conversation with each other. The ends of their cigarettes glowed, stars on the ground in their own right. I winced as one stubbed his cigarette out on the garbage can. The stars in the sky didn't have a choice about when they stopped glowing either, but at least there was a bigger explosion. They waved goodbye, trading the anonymity of the outside with the harsh beacons that lit the dorm. I wish I could have stayed there forever, watching the people go by, breathing in the crisp air. No one could find me here. I didn't have to answer to anyone or explain anything. The piles of construction materials didn't have anything to judge me for.

I stayed up all night, staring at the sky, hoping to imprint the patterns the stars made in my mind. I traced the lines between the stars when I was at home for winter break as I stared at my ceiling. I was a projector and I recreated what I had seen. I wanted to recreate everything I had done this past semester, redo it and discard what didn't make sense, what I knew now would get me into trouble.