Better Kept Secret

chapter 33

I wrap my arms around myself, feeling the way my warm fingers slither around each shoulder. I let one finger rest against my skin at a time. Pinky first, paying attention to the way it wraps around. Ring, middle, and then pointer, each taking a turn drumming against my skin, slick with sweat. Then I squeeze. I squeeze tight so it feels like a hug, then I squeeze harder. Harder until it hurts, harder until my nails dig into me, harder until they draw blood.

This day feels like after you drop a dish with your whole meal on it. If you hadn't shifted that way or paid more attention or held on with two hands, you would still have your food and the plate it came on. I feel sad that I don't get my food anymore. I feel angry that that just happened to me. I feel upset that it's not a problem with a solution. There's nothing you can do about a broken dish. It's splintered into hundreds of tiny little pieces, and there's no way to glue them back together again. There's no way to pick the dirt and dust out of my food, so I slither into a pile beside it, defeated, my chest hurting so bad, sitting with the fact that there's nothing I can do.

I wish I could rewind time. I wish I could remember what I even said at the beginning of my argument with my mother, so I could retrace my steps. It was such a jumble though, that I don't remember much of anything that was actually said. I wish it wasn't so hard for me to find a way to say sorry, or to have someone say sorry to me.

I don't know the way out of this mess. I always have some way to survive. I keep things hidden in, a secret for only myself, I try to solve my own problems by myself, I try to pretend they don't exist.

I sit up in bed, the weight in my chest feeling like it's going to soon stop me from breathing. I think to myself, how can I hide this?

No one has to know. Just the same way no one knew of my mom's condition in the first place.

I can fix this by cleaning. However long it takes.

I'll pretend it doesn't exist the same way I did before, by barely thinking about how things are different with my mother.

It calms me, lessons the giant boulder sitting on chest, to make a list of ways things will be better. I also can't lie to myself though, and the second I'm breathing steadily again my mind tells me all the ways in which it won't work.

It hurts to pretend. You know that it hurts to pretend. Just because you say it doesn't exist doesn't mean that it's true. You really think you'll be able to clean up the whole house without breaking down? You really think you'll be able to survive off of your minimum wage job and your mother's checks forever?

A knock erupts through the completely silent and still house. I want to bury my head under my blankets again, but the knock is persistent, and it's better I open the door than my mother.

I walk carefully, hopping over smashed vases and trinkets. It makes me wonder to myself how I didn't hear the sound of breaking glass last night, but then I remember the headphones I wore. If I didn't have them on, if I wasn't so tired, would things have ended up better? Would it have been better to stop my mom while she was in the height of her breakdown, or just to see the after affects?

I put my hand on the doorknob, breathe out deeply and open it a crack.

I see bright blue eyes that I've started into many times, that have kept me up at night and pulled me into sleep at sleepovers.

"I really need to talk to you," Ben says, trying to push the door open but I still hold  tightly onto the doorknob and keep it shut.

"Now's not a good time Ben. Shouldn't you be at school?"

"Shouldn't you be at school?" If today were normal, I would have had a funny remark to bite back at him, but today's not normal so I just look down at my feet.