clementine

chapter 33: Clementine is 17 years old

Everything seems to go in slow motion. Actually, more like I am the one in slow motion and everything else is functioning just fine.

It takes me hours to let my feet touch the floor. Days to find a towel to soak up the vile smelling vomit. Weeks to turn on the faucet. Months to undress. Well, that's before I realise that I am only half clothed.

I try not to wonder why.

When I step under the spray, it burns my skin. I twist the hot faucet until it will not go any further. I turn off the cold. I let the water scald my skin, making it bright red. Then, I use a bar of soap and a loofa that is too soft to scrub off every layer of my skin. I don't know why. It just feels right.

Maybe because I feel so wrong.

This takes a long time. Burning and scrubbing and burning and scrubbing. Once the last sliver of the soap lathers into foam on my stinging skin, I stop. My shoulders and my waist and everywhere he touched is raw when the water stops running. The robe that slips over my arms is both too soft and too rough, but I cannot bring myself to find any real clothes to wear.

The dress crumpled on the floor is thrown in the trash can. Then, the roses. When I find my underwear crumpled on the floor just beneath my bed, they go, too. After that, I drag the chair from my desk over to the window and stare out at the street. Below is the back yard, where he stood just days ago and the old oak tree that Clementine climbed on my twelfth birthday.

The leaves almost seem alive out there. I envy them.

Once, my hunger gets the better of me, and I make my way across the room, to go downstairs and get something to eat for the first time all day. But when I reach out to touch the door knob, the lock is twisted in a funny direction and everything inside of me turns to water and drips through the cracks in the floorboards. My appetite disappears after that.

Twice, my mother knocks on the door, asks if I am feeling okay. I tell her that no, I'm not feeling okay, I am feeling the opposite of okay and I am feeling absolutely nothing and last night my boyfriend broke all of the strings inside of me I feel a little sick. Maybe caught a stomach bug. It was a little cold last night. She says that I should have worn a jacket.

Like that would have helped me.

My phone keeps vibrating, but I don't look at it. I don't want to know who is trying to reach out to me now when I needed them last night.

When the sun goes down, tearing pink and purple streaks across the sky, I let the weight of my body slump into itself. Exhausted with the simple act of existing.

However, when I switch on the light, I am wide awake. Because all I can do is gaze at my bed, with the blankets wrinkled and pushed to the foot. The bed I have slept in every night for my entire life. The bed where my mom read me bedtime stories and Shannon taught me how to paint my nails and I can't even think about sleeping there anymore.

So, after standing and swaying and sinking, I make a decision. I rummage through my drawers, dress myself, close my eyes, and reach out until my cold fingers wrap around the even colder door knob. And I twist.