Head Down

Chapter 23

KATIE'S POV

After convincing Nate to put me back on my own two feet -a more difficult task than I would've thought, I was at the doorstep of begging- I get my chance to asses the room. I hadn't thought there was a third floor, or technically fifth counting the basement, but I suppose having an attic room wouldn't have been inherently obvious from the outside. There are no windows -a fact that surprisingly doesn't bother me- giving the stubby, thin space a bunkerish feel. Comfortable claustrophobia. Does that sound like a band name....?

This is what happens when I lose my inhibitions: my train of thought goes from just that -a solid, iron plated machine on a set track- to a double decker bus precariously perched on a road with a thousand foot drop beside it. Clumsy thoughts tumble over each other into odd combinations, a vehicle with no direction or rhyme or reason but plenty of gas. Random. Off kilter. For example, this analogy.

Back onto the nonexistent track, the room. A skinny bed with a black poofy comforter lines the wall behind me to the left of the door. A wood chest of drawers -in keeping with whatever golden tree the residence is made of- sits opposite the resting place. All four walls are straight up to an awkward, one third point, then slant up to form the roof. Said walls aren't painted and neither is the door, though the entry way has a childish -though endearing- poster with a radioactive symbol. Crimson accents dot the room, in the bed's red pillows, the red lamp on the nightstand, the red rug I can see peeking out of another door set in the wall to my left.

Suddenly, I recall another tidbit of information from that psychic library book in Oregon. In my hesitant, elementary, well trained state, I had decided to look up another color at the other end of the spectrum. Red. John's favorite color. According to the book red represented a violent, angry, restless personality.

"Is this your room?" I ask, because I need to know. Not that I'm going to trust a faulty text some stoner gave me over this boy who I pretty much owe my life to, but still it would be nice in my loopy state to know even some hippie psychic living in a van she bought off of the three book sales she made would say Nate was a good guy.

I'm done with bad people.

But then again, aren't I done with all people? I've made it clear to myself, but now is the time to make it a concrete promise. By next Sunday -no, Saturday- I would leave the Ashton residence.

"Yep. It would be different, I guess, but when people are here this is the guest room. So I let my mom and Laura decorate," he says, standing like a rock beside me, hands in pockets. Funny how he knew just what information I was fishing for.

"It's better than a cardboard box," I comfort, remembering my scant bedroom back at my house before I can stop the words from pouring out.

It's official, I hate morphine. Not only does it make me sleepy, numb, and say stupid stuff, but it lets me KNOW AFTERWARDS too. I would kill to have those lat three seconds back, but I can't.

Then I seize on a tiny detail in my thoughts: I had said MY bedroom. It's not really my bedroom now, because it belongs to John in John's house. I might be leaving the Ashton's in a week, but I'm never going back to my bother. That cardboard box with two or three outfits and blanket that never really kept me warm and window next to the ivy and even the damn staircase I identify with so well aren't mine. They never were, really, and never will be. No, what I have to claim is three months surviving on handouts, possibly residing in a tree, and final exams in between. That, and I'm then my leaving.

The thought of abandoning Nate is painful, more so than the tears I feel in my skin and divides that scrape my bones, but maybe it's some psychological thing. Right place, right time. It has to be, because I can't think of anything else that isn't -to put it lightly- scary.