“You can’t be serious?” I said, staring unbelievably at my mother. She picked my school bag off the ground and hauled it at my chest.
“This is my house, if you don’t like the rules, then go.” I clutched the bag to my chest and turned around, fumbling with the door handle. I could feel the blood rushing through my ears. I had to go, so I did.
I walked a little ways toward the main road, until I decided to turn back, toward the house, I walked past the cracked, asphalt drive way of my home, and up to the driveway of Mrs. Sullivan’s. I knocked hard on the door, I heard no movement inside, I spoke close to the door, I had to get inside.
“Monica?” I yelled “Monica, it’s me, Faith. Please help, please open the door.” I hit the door, hard, 3 more times. Just when I was about to give up, she finally opened the door, a Louisville Slugger in her right hand. I knew if I were her, I’d be petrified in the middle of the night, but a bat? What did she think I was here for?
“What?” she said, holding the bat behind her
“I-I got kicked out of my house, and I-I have no where to go.” I said beginning to cry. She grabbed my arm pulling me into the house, out of the beginning of a storm.
“Why would you come here?” she gave me no times to answer, she tossed me the phone
“Call Matt, if you want to or whatever. You can sleep in Sophie’s room.” Monica walked back up the stairs, and I followed her, entering the bedroom just to the right of hers.
Sophie was Monica’s sister, she was 9 years older than us. When we were younger Sophie was the big sister I always wanted, and it made me that much more jealous of Monica, and what seemed to be such a great life over at the Sullivan’s. I used to see boys come to the house to drop her home after a date, listening to them laugh on a late summer night. Sophie taught us what I always thought being a teenager would be like, late night bonfires in the summer time, head cheerleader at the top of the pyramid, she was the it girl, until she graduated high school.
When we were younger, us little kids on the block always had to be in at a certain time, and I clearly remember the older kids hanging out later than us, I had no idea what they were doing, I was innocent, and I was all about the stellar image they portrayed to us, Sophie and her friends, they were the epitome of the perfect high school experience.
I was 13 years old, in 8th grade, when the accident happened, and I remember the middle of the night when I heard the siren outside my window, I popped the screen out of my window and looked out, craning my neck around the house to see what was going on, there was so much commotion at the Sullivan’s.
The next morning my mother and father sat me down at the table, as I ate my shredded wheat, they explained in an unsympathetic, monotone what had happened the night before. Sophie drowned herself in the pond in the park, two blocks away from our house. I had heard about Sophie after high school, and I hadn’t seen her at home much, I knew months before when another girl who lived in our neighborhood, Katherine, told me Sophie was a “train wreck on cocaine” that it had to be true. We all loved Sophie, and I remember her death changing something in Monica and Mrs. Sullivan.
That was about the time Monica’s parents got divorced, and about the time Monica, who had always teased me, had made it her life mission to make me feel like I should’ve been the one to die. As I stood in the doorway in Sophie’s room, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was the first person to enter here since she’d died. I sat down on the side of the bed, running my fingers through the crocheted blanket that lay atop the bed.
I rested my head on the pillow, too worried to wonder about Matt was doing. He was probably sound asleep at home, the thought of it made my stomach turn, I wish he were here with me. I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up Matt was standing over me, and the shade by the window had been drawn, keeping the light out.
“Hey,” he said leaning down next to the bed, as my eyes fluttered open. “What are you doing here?” he asked
“My mom, is… well mad. I guess that’s the only way to say it, she’s plain old mad, and she told me to leave.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I knew I was okay, and I knew you’d be asleep.”
“You should’ve came by my place, or called me. you shouldn’t have stayed in here.” He said looking around at the walls, filled with pictures, of memories no one ever talked about anymore.
“Do you miss her?” I vividly remember Matt and Sophie being as close as brother and sister. I felt like Matt had sucked all the “cool” out of Sophie, and that’s why he was the way he was in high school. He was a Sullivan, it’s who they were.
“Yeah,” he said his eyes fixated on one picture, all the neighborhood kid under the basketball hoop in front of my house. Matt’s mouth red from an ice pop, Monica hanging off the rim of the hoop, Sophie standing under her, looking up, ready to catch her baby sister, and me, smiling innocently a step in front of them, hands on my hips, as if I was light years ahead of them in maturity. I stood up walking towards Matt, and I enveloped in a hug, I felt his hot tears on my shoulder as his head rested down in the soft spot between my head and neck.
“Why did she do it?” he said with a crack in his voice, I rubbed a hand up and down his back, trying to comfort him, thinking of something to say.
“It was those damn drugs, Faith, before she died, before she… that’s all she wanted. It was all she cared about. It was like she was a different person.”
“She loved you, you know that.” I had never been great when it came to loss. I had never known the sharp edge of a knife in my heart. But as Matt wept in my arms, I felt his heart beat through my skin, as if it was in perfect time with mine, his pain was my pain, and I couldn’t help but start to cry too.
YOU ARE READING
This Kiss
Teen Fiction“Okay, I could be wrong because I only saw him for a second, but I think, I think it was Matt Sullivan.” The music was loud and the floor of the club was crowded with people, at a concert that would soon become the talk of the year. Straight A stude...
