In Your Head

eighteen

The room echoes with our small movements. Our exhales, our shuffles in our seats, our sniffling noses. So quiet at times I swear I can hear our hearts beating in unison, slowing their pace. But unlike other times, I don't mind the silence; it's a feeling like peace, which is crazy, given the place we're in. Mom sits next to me in the room, her hand on top of mine, lying along the wooden table as the pictures sit inches away. The pictures I study, taking deep breaths, clearing my mind from the jumbled mess it was before. Calming my nerves, I think this is the first time the word has a meaning to me. Everything inside me is steadying, the calm after the storm. And I can think. Really, truly think about the questions I couldn't before.

Why was Trevor meeting this girl? I don't even know who she is, I never saw her in school. Why does she look so much like me? Was she a new student that year? Someone he....took interest in as well?

If she was a student, she couldn't have met him at 1am. Why would she? Didn't she have to be home? Her parents wouldn't let her out that late, right? Why was she meeting her English teacher in the middle of the night downtown? Why were they laughing? What was so funny? Why were they hiding?

I want to kick myself with these new thoughts that are hypocritical. As if I wasn't just like this girl years ago. As if Trevor couldn't charm me into meeting him at 1am somewhere bizarre, somewhere I'd easily turn down if it wasn't for his smile, his eyes casting a spell until my voice and my answers weren't mine anymore, until I'd follow him anywhere. Until I was a blooming, pretty, obedient flower in his garden begging for his sunlight, his water, his attention like I suddenly couldn't give it to myself.

Mom's stare grows on my face, tingling up my neck towards my cheek. Her presence is soft as she holds my hand.

"Do you think that girl.....was in a relationship with him?" she hesitates, not wanting to say his name like a dirty word. I shake my head.

"I don't know, I never saw her in school."

"That was a year after you disappeared though, she could have been a transfer student," Mom whispers. I don't know why we're still talking like this, but it doesn't matter to me.

"Yeah, maybe." My mind wanders off into an unknown realm, an unknown feeling that's never occurred to me.

What did this little girl go through? Was she like me? Did he see potential in her writing as well, until things took another turn? When he took a hold of the wheel, and drove them down another road she couldn't have imagined. A path that became a portal to another world. 'How did I get here?' Is that what she asked herself all the times she was with him? Was there a tiny voice in her head faintly whispering to her that what they were doing was wrong, but she didn't listen? Because sometimes the feeling we think is love takes us down scary paths we could never imagine and never travel down by ourselves. Sometimes we'll attach to anything and anyone, just so we aren't alone.

The silence is deafening for a moment, Mom and I staring down unblinkingly at the photos. An idea creeps up at the back of my head, so prominent it's hard to ignore.

"I feel for her." A frown grows on my face.

"Why's that?" Mom asks a dumb question, I think she should know the answer to that. Taking a breath, I sort my tangled thoughts, pinpointing what I'm trying to say.

"Because maybe she didn't know what she was getting herself into. Maybe she thought he was a good, caring, trusting guy, but she turned out to be wrong. How can she trust her own judgment now?" I can't look anywhere else besides the photos of the girl with no name. Searching her face, as if something will speak out to me any moment. Once more, Mom's gaze is so strong as it makes its way back to me, a look of concern growing from the corner of my eye. But she doesn't say anything else. She doesn't have to, because a small part of her knows I'm not only talking about the girl in the photo, I'm talking about myself.