clementine

chapter 37: clementine is 17 years old

When Shannon drops me home from school, it's almost like everything is back to normal. But it's not. It never can be and I don't know why I am letting the strings control me anymore, but it's like I can't cut myself free. I have buried myself so deep in expectations that I don't think I can ever escape.

Maybe I can pretend that I am the same girl I was a week ago. The one who could ignore the tingling sensation of suffocation in my lungs. But now it's burning. I can't accept that my life has already been planned out for me, one steppingstone at a time.

Step one: Graduate.

Step two: get accepted into a prestigious college.

Step three: turn down the opportunity to stay in Crimson Valley with Trevor.

Step four: Marry Trevor.

Step five: Raise a family in the same house I grew up in, waiting for my husband to get home from the bar every night and play with me like a rag doll.

Those are the five generic steps of Crimson Valley. We are all destined to the same, painful cycle of being stuck in the one place forever. No one ever gets out. And those who do, we don't talk about any more.

I couldn't tell you a single person who graduated in the last five years and moved out of Crimson Valley. They are all waitresses or cooks or janitors or hairdressers, destined to join the 3,157 people stuck in this place. Who knows? Maybe they did an online course and became a nurse. Anything is possible in Crimson Valley as long as you stay in Crimson Valley forever.

I mean, if you're polite to the sheriff, you can get your driving permit as soon as you get into high school. If you join the Social Affairs Council, you can manipulate every woman in town into attending your dinner parties. If you make enough money, you don't have to come home from work.

I just keep getting this vision in my head of the family photo hanging up on the staircase. Every time I walk past it, all I can see is the look in mom's eyes, like everything she ever dreamed of has flatlined, and it's never coming back to life. Except it's my face instead of hers, and I'm stuck in front of this stupid house surrounded by a white picket fence and this town is a fishbowl.

The water is rising.