Always Almost

Chapter 6

Charlie 

After seeing Georgia's post, I went to her table to ask her what the fuck it was about. It was mean. I sound mad here but when I went to talk to her, I sounded like I was almost begging her.

I didn't sound rude. I sounded pathetic.

According to Georgia, she heard about Adam while she was waiting in the principal's office. She said she heard it loud and clear. That Adam killed himself.

I went there wanting her to say maybe she misheard it. Maybe she—
And the worst part was, I knew the tone of her voice like the back of my mind. Even on the days my other friends had to tell me she was using me.

Georgia wasn't being mean. She wasn't being sarcastic. It was the matter of fact. She was telling the truth she knew.

I came back to the three in a daze. The possibility was making my head spin. Emily was blank. She looked blank most of the time. She didn't like giving too much attention to people that didn't matter.

I wished I could be more like her. She looked so unbothered most of the time. I wondered what it was like to live without being buried under the crushing weight of existence and anxiety.

And the fear of losing the people you love.

Blake, on the other hand, looked like he was going to be sick. He looked pale. Like he had gone back in time when he used to be bullied in these same exact halls.

After lunch, we spent two periods in crushing anxiety. Blake and I. Mori and Justin. Emily and Georgia. Probably.

My head kept spinning.

The possibility of losing Adam was always there. It wasn't completely out of the blue. But if it was true, it was the most devastating truth I've known.

Instead of focusing on the class, my mind kept going back to the last time I had seen Adam. Yesterday. Just a day apart.

He kissed me like he always did. Tenderly and yet, passionately. He laughed openly. I loved the sound of his laugh. Yesterday, too, I thought I wanted to be by his side forever so I could listen to his laugh all my life.

He made fun of me for waiting for Georgia in the morning, after she had already left for school with her boyfriend.

By the end of school day yesterday, he had hugged me tight.

Did he know he was going to leave?
Had he decided already?
If I had known yesterday what I knew now, would anything have changed?

I think my behaviour would have been different. I would have been annoying. I would have clung to him like my life depended on it.

I would have cried in front of him, telling him how much his presence meant to me, and how if he ever left, I didn't know what I would do to myself.

The last part was a truth and an act, both. Adam was too nice a guy. He couldn't let people around him get hurt because of him. That's why he stayed with his mum. That's why he stayed to make sure Ahana would be okay.

If he heard me saying I wouldn't be able to live without him, he probably would delay his plan.

Beginning of seventh period, we had an announcement. The news of the death of our beloved school mate and classmate, Adam Jenkins.

Blake sat in front of the class. When he heard the announcement, he turned back to me. His eyes met mine. He looked... so scared, so tired.
So empty.

They continued with more nonsense about grief counselling and all that crap but I couldn't hear anymore.

It's like sometimes when your mind is blank, and you ended up staring at a spot and although you knew you were staring, you can't look away. Because if you looked away, your mind won't feel the same humming anymore.

Because if you looked away in that moment, nothing would be the same anymore.

My head felt heavy like my brain was made up of lead and this was the first time I was feeling its real weight.
When I was younger, mom and dad used to fight a lot. Mom used to cuss at me a lot.

It was after I started dating Adam that I realised a lot of moms did that. Blamed their children. Mori's mother and Adam's were similar.

It took me a while to realise that it is what people called faulty parenting. I wasn't broken.

Often after fights, while my mom was still hurting and had no one to lash out on, she would scowl at me, and in a scratchy, broken voice, she would say,"You won't be able to laugh anymore when you realise the pain I have lived with! All because of you!"

I wished I could rest my head on the desk and fall asleep. Maybe when I woke up, I'd realise it was all a silly dream. A nightmare.

The announcement was official. And yet, there was still a voice in me saying that there are several ways they could be wrong.

Maybe Adam went off to the woods and while looking for him, the police found a dead body and identified it wrongly?

Maybe he was in a state of suspended animation?

Maybe he was—

"Alright class, pay attention!" The teacher called out. And I couldn't remember her name. I have known her for about three years now. And I couldn't remember her name. And I wanted to remember her name.

But my brain wouldn't agree with me. It stopped attempting to do the things it was supposed to do.

At the end, it was me, sitting in a classroom of a teacher I couldn't remember the name of, and the curse of misery I gave to everyone around me.

"If it weren't for you!"

And maybe, I did want to know what changes were possible in this world if I wasn't here. If I died the moment when I was born.

"I wish I had strangled you the moment you were born!"
Same, mom.
I wish the same.

I didn't want to continue living on as a husk of a human being either, mom.

I had typed out this chapter a while ago but I got distracted and never got around to posting it.

It doesn't seem like anyone's reading it or keeping up with the updates so it's a little discouraging to update.

Anyways, this will be a great lesson to learn, as well. To write when no one reads what you write.

And if anyone's still reading, you have all my heart. Thank you.