Don’t Think About It
Secrets. Too broad a term for the weight I’m carrying; and too innocent a word for the chains I bear. What exactly is a secret? A crush, a crushed dream, a crushing weight? When do the words that refuse to pass your lips, seal your fate? When does the knowledge of no one knowing, of no one guessing, become more than a sickly, six-lettered sound?
The sun broke over the horizon, jets of pink and red streaking across the sky like paint. In the distance, I could see the faint glimmer of sea, just before water and air blurred into a hazy, androgynous grey. I tried to get to that in-between land, once. I drove and drove and drove; the oily blackness of tarmac winding into forever. It didn’t work. Nothing did.
My hand pulled lightly at the grassy fingers underneath me, the strands toppling in the slight breeze, only to resurrect themselves a moment later. I remembered.
I remembered the the leather steering wheel, hot against my bare skin. I could feel the warm breeze streaming through the car, ruffling the crowning, chestnut tresses tugging at my head.
Don’t think about it. I mustn’t think about it.
I glanced down at the mangled grass, at my green-stained fingertips. I brushed off my jeans and stood, feeling so many years older than I was. I was a veteran of some long, drawn-out war, waiting to die so that I could receive my judging punishment. Who was there to say that I didn’t deserve it, that it was a mistake – or that he came from nowhere? Who was there to plead my innocence except for my own guilty mind?
I started walking, begging each second to stretch a little less languidly, to move just a little more quickly. Time did that, every now and again. It seemed to skip all the conventional rules and be taken over by eternity, just like my life had been taken over by fate. Just like the way I didn’t drive anymore.
I knew I should go home, get some sleep, and finally loose the telling, blue crescents under my eyes. It didn’t mean I would. It didn’t mean I could.
I remembered saying once that a lack of sleep would ruin my life. The corners of my mouth twitched up into a slight smile. I had managed to wreck my existence without the help of sleep deprivation.
The handle of the door felt cool and slippery under my fingers. No one noticed me leaving anymore. They had gotten used to the strange hours I kept, the times when I would seem to disappear for days, only to discover that I had been there the whole time. If I didn’t want to be found, then nobody would find me.
I had always been good at hide and seek, ever since I was a little girl. I used to be able to curl up in cramped spaces for hours, listening to the muffled curses of my brother searching fruitlessly under beds and behind curtains. I could almost see his face sulking whenever he called out defeat, quickly followed by amazement when he realised that I had managed to pack myself into a cupboard.
He was older than me by ten years, enough time for me to see him to go through the angst of teenage years and come out the other side. I had memories of begging him to play with me, only to be met with an abrupt ‘no’. Then there were the times when he smiled and told me I had a minute to run, the accompanying twinkle in his eyes matching the sparkle in my own. I remembered him leaving when I was eight. Mum cried at the thought of her baby boy travelling so many miles from home; or rather across a small strip of sea and to the ‘foreign’ land of England.
I found myself in the kitchen. I flicked the switch, hearing the answering hum that assured me my fingers had actually touched plastic. I remembered.
I remembered the snatches of angry conversations, a jeering shout that broke through the roar of the wind through the open windows. I remembered a dark huddle of people at the side of the road, and remembered dismissing it.
Don’t think about it. I mustn’t think about it.
My brother thumped a path down the stairs, his chocolate coloured hair sticking up at right angles from his head and my own hazel eyes blinking at me sleepily. Needless to say, he didn’t know my secret.
A few people did. A judge with kind, brown eyes, a jury, and my parents.
“Hey,” he groaned sleepily, his voice rasping from the disuse of the past twelve hours. “You been out again?” I nodded, turning the kettle back on so that we could both have coffee.
He pulled me into an energetic bear hug, completely out of rhythm to his otherwise tired persona. His warm arms wrapped around me easily, and for a second, everything was the way it used to be – whenever I was six and all I wanted was my big brother. It was nice to think, for an instant, that I could have all of that back again, the only difference being that I was a bit bigger and a bit wiser. It was nice to think that maybe he knew, that he didn’t judge me. Then the heat was gone, along with the hope, leaving me cold and doubtlessly guilty once more.
I made sure that he had his much-needed caffeine fix, and then went upstairs to get changed. Grass stains streaked my clothes green like some exotic bush.
I had moved out of my parent’s house, feeding Marcus some line about needing a change of scenery or getting kicked out of my old school. That was a year ago. I looked in the mirror. My eyes were dark, clouded with misery and misconceptions that nobody else could see. I hadn’t meant to do it, and I had said as much. I was the girl who was innocent, proclaimed so by the banging of a gavel. He had a death wish, apparently, and I was the supposed unfortunate victim. I wasn’t truly pure, though – not quite a pristine shade of white. Not whenever I could see my own hazel eyes as duck-egg blue. I remembered.
I remembered a black blur, tall and broad, walking calmly across the road – too close in front of the car. My car. I remember the shouts, a shrill screech, and a bump on the bonnet. I remembered the squeal of brakes that didn’t work, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as the metal monster screamed to a stop, and that awful, terrifying consciousness of knowing exactly what had happened.
The sight of his light blue eyes through the windscreen, a second before he died. They had been accepting, almost passive, yet full of panic and a dreadful, eerie prediction of doom.
Manslaughter. The word that didn’t send me to prison for a year, but to the prison of my mind for the rest of my life.
Don’t think about it. I mustn’t think about it.
