Blanket of Stars (Chaelisa ver.)

Chapter 4: Wall Talk

An orange hue eventually takes residence of where the moon lay mere minutes ago. I think I've been sitting here all night, though I don't remember any of my thoughts, but just a constant longing I've been trying to block out for months. Months that feel like a lifetime. I almost feel like a five year old again, running too fast and tripping over my own feet only to crash into the floor and cry out, immediately calling for my mother.

Except now there are no rushed footsteps hurrying toward me to pick me up, there are no maternal embraces that somehow make everything better, and there are no comforting words. There is a distinct and painful lack of contact, and there is silence.

Each time I attempt to remember the last time I saw any of them, I fail. Deep down, I think I've known for a while. It's almost like when you've known something about somebody for years and then they finally pluck up their courage and tell you themselves: you knew, but it's so different and unfamiliar hearing it out loud.

My thoughts sometimes deafen me, making me wish for company more often. I have to find my family soon, the world is only so big and it doesn't look like I have a time limit.

I don't remember the day I got used to existing without my family. I don't remember when it changed from missing them almost more than I could bear, to just missing them, telling myself they would be home soon.

The unmistakable sound of my front door being unlocked and opened reaches my ears, effectively interrupting my chain of thought and causes me to turn around. It's Lisa. She cringes when the door clicks shut in a less than a subtle manner and I remember how difficult it was to sneak out of the house because my mother was always a light sleeper. I used to sleep like the dead. No pun intended.

Those words are suddenly strange and unfamiliar and cause me to shake my head. I can't be dead. I think I'm just having a really bad, vivid dream. I must have ate cheese before bed.

Lisa walks over the freshly cut grass and if my mother were here, I know she would tell her not to. Her unabashed swagger keeps my eyes glued to her hips; so much so that it takes a few seconds to register that she's now sitting next to me. She's just sitting there, she hasn't even got a cup of coffee in her hands to keep them warm. I don't know why she's out here. Lisa can't see me, that fact is painfully obvious, but I know she heard me knock on her door yesterday. Maybe I just need to practice.

I clear my throat and lean toward her ear. "Boo," leaves my lips darkly, the look on my face no doubt expectant.

Her hand reaches up to her ear, wiping at it again. I notice that she's wearing glasses and wonder what she would do if I took them off her face and put them on my own. If I were her, I'd be halfway down the street as soon as I felt them leaving my face. My idle fingers tap against the rough bricks, trying to resist the urge to touch her fashionably wide, thin black and golden framed glasses.

Lisa clears her throat and I look over to her. She's looking at the space my hand is occupying.

Blue is breaking through the swirl of orange and small, white clouds are scattered about the early morning sky. I shift closer to her and hold out my slender hand for her to take. "Hi, I'm Roseanne," I introduce myself politely.

She looks unimpressed -- bored, even. Her eyes are on a 'hi' I carved into the wall when I was nine years old. I went through a phase of writing that word on everything. I wonder if it was subconsciously written for times like these: to make people feel less alone when that's all they really are.

"Hello to you, too," she says.

I know she's not talking to me directly but it makes my face light up, regardless. I'm sure of it.

I bring a leg up so it's resting on the wall, twisting my body around to look at her properly. She looks like one of the best sights these chocolate brown eyes have ever seen. "Don't scream, okay?" I say unnecessarily before lifting my hand toward her face.

Her attention is suddenly captured by a car starting up at the bottom of the street, causing her head to jerk to the right and causing my fingers to come into contact with her soft dark brown hair. I don't move them, they remain still, barely moving and hardly touching.

The car loses its appeal to Lisa and she moves her head back around. My fingers immediately leave her hair.

Is this what it's always going to be like? I silently ask myself. Nobody consciously looking or talking to me. Is that how I'm supposed to live for eternity? My lip trembles pathetically and my fingers stubbornly push against the hard surface I'm sat on, trying to think about something other than this. Anything but this.

This can't be happening.

I wonder if anybody can actually pin-point a time in their life when they knew it was changed forever. I wonder if Lisa's has happened yet, and I wonder how many people out there pretend like it never happened.

I need something familiar. I need Mr. Banks to smile at me and I need to wave back to him and be sure he saw me. I almost always see him on his bike, he hardly ever walks anywhere and he's usually on his way to get his morning newspaper before he returns home to his wife.

I need my sister to put her arm around me and say "get over it, chipmunkie" in the way that only she can say to make me feel better.

I'll find my family soon. I have to. Or, perhaps I'll wake up.

Lisa and I sigh at the same time and it makes me want to ask her why she's sighing. She's alive, she can do anything she wants. I can't do anything. Not really. What could possibly happen to me now? I can't even make friends with the girl next to me. At this moment in time I'm nothing but thin air to her impossibly gorgeous eyes.

____________

When I return back to my house in the afternoon after my walk the only person who seems to be in is Lisa who, unknowingly, spent the early morning keeping me company. She has the television on, busy watching the rerun of an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I roll my eyes and sit on the couch with her, keeping a seats worth of distance between us. The remote is resting on the untaken seat and I watch her smiling at a scene before I press the channel up button, the picture on the screen changing to lions mating.

She frowns and changes it back causing me to smile and press it again, turning the volume up louder. I don't know why I'm doing it. If I was alone in a new house and the channel kept changing, I'd be at a neighbours faster than a bullet. Alice used to tell me I needed to toughen up. I guess she wasn't wrong.

Another frown appears on her face. "What the hell? Stop it," she says, almost absent-mindedly, to the remote before switching it back.

I smile at her tone. "No, I want to watch the lions having sex."

She doesn't look at me and, just like that, my smile is gone. Bugging people isn't going to stay amusing forever. It's going to get old, fast. "Please talk to me," I ask of Lisa, quietly.

Lisa sighs and mutes the picture on the screen as her body moves back, her arms raising above her head to stretch while a satisfied moan leaves her lips.

I close my eyes when I'm certain I won't get a response. I want to wake up now.

She gets to her feet before walking over to the stairs and taking two at a time. I wait until I hear the door of my bedroom close before taking a deep breath.

Her parents are probably at the supermarket. I'm pretty sure people don't do the grocery shopping before moving house. My feet move to the bottom of the stairs that had to be cleaned countless times from Alice's muddy footprints.

I was never one for impressions but I'll make an exception, just this once. "Lisa, come and help me put these groceries away!" I yell to her in what I hope to be a good impersonation of her mother's voice.

I wait for an answer that doesn't come. "Lisa, we're back!" I hear the deafening silence and close my eyes when I feel myself beginning to get angry. "Lisa!" I yell again, much stronger than before.

"What?!" is her yelled but muffled reply from behind my bedroom door.

It's only one syllable.

It only takes one second to say.

It's all I need.