Straight On Til' Mourning

IX.

Twelve months ago, she had been heartbroken.

Despite swearing that she would not - could not - fall in love, and that her sisters were fools for jumping into the same strange vortex that spit them out over and over, Kirsten fell. The boy was the one time she had ever entertained the idea that being The Exception was a good thing.

His nickname was Jinx; he was too skinny and he thought that he was different from - better than - the kids in his out-of-the-way southern California town, because he dyed his hair blue and photographed for the local newspaper on weekends. They had met at the beach; they had both been wearing black jeans in a sea of swimsuits, and they had taken a seat in the wet sand, listening to KISS with their pants rolled above their ankles and their little fingers leaving shell-shaped imprints on the beach.

He had never wanted to touch her. Arms locked at his sides, head swung low. Sometimes he confided in her - told her, in his slow, faltering voice, that he was self-deprecating and hated himself. And she would reach out to touch his face or his hands or even just the curve of his shoulder, and he would pull away.

This hadn't mattered, at first. Because Kirsten was unused to affection and even less used to love. Until all of a sudden this had mattered. Her sisters teased the two when they retreated to the house, calling Jinx phobic and her a vicious tease.

Her new boyfriend, not immune to this secondhand harassment, took up a new hobby: patrolling the beach for litter. He claimed that this kept him far too busy and occupied to go on dates or even meet for Chinese food. On weekends, when he did spend time with her, his clothes smelled like cigarette smoke.

Love jumped back to Reality and left both of them disillusioned. Jinx set himself on a new path to save the planet - to save the sharks, he said, all though it was sailing and escapism that he was truly after. Kirsten fell into the throes of inadequacy. She picked fights on the phone, at the movies, during mixed promises.

This carried on until one day he came back from an expedition to Maine and told it was over. He had taken his mixtape back and his oversized denim jacket, and he had not bothered to kiss her goodbye.

When Kirsten, bleeding tears, had told her sisters, they had laughed.

Over a dinner of crab legs with butter and peach tea that still tasted like tears, she attempted to summarize the situation. Inside she felt empty, useless. The strings of memory and thought that had belonged to Jinx, which had been connected to his own memory and his own thoughts, had been yanked out with a forceful hand. And now she was in pain.

"It was a condolence goodbye," she had said. It was hard to be brave in sight of their gleeful faces, their stifled giggles.

Knightly, a butterfly in blue lipstick and seawater green beads, had tossed a roll at her. "Cheer up," she had said. "He was such a freak!"

Miserable, Kirsten toyed with her fork. Her fingertips were slick with butter and she wanted to cry again. "I liked...his hair. And...his music. And he told me -" she inhaled, sharp enough to feel to razor sting of tears. "He said I was beautiful - that's the first time anyone -"

"Oh my god," Kolleen had interrupted. "Whatever. Beautiful? They say that to get in your pants, you know - every guy does. He probably didn't even think that. Hell," and she was laughing, "are you sure he even looked at your face?"

"We didn't..." cowering now, waiting for it "...we didn't do anything. Because. I'm waiting."

"What are you waiting for?" Knightley started laughing again. "Can you blame him for going somewhere else?"

"Shouldn't you be able to fall in love, first?"

"No!" Her sisters said in unison.

One said - stupid, stupid - and the other said - silly idiot - but neither reached her ears, because she was up from the table and out of the room.

And she never stopped to wonder that perhaps her sisters were bitter because it had happened to them, and because it was not as lovely and off-handed as they wanted to make it seem. That they, too, were walking with wounds.

Kirsten, blinded by the selfishness of her own trial, walked past death and did not recognize it.