How To Fathom Violet

Folie à Deux

I couldn't tell who was in more of a folie à deux. Me and myself? Or Louie and Elena?
-Violet's Diary

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Today 3:29 PM

Sam: we haven't talked in a while

Me: yeah

Sam: is something wrong?

Me: no.

I didn't know what it was. I felt as though misery wanted me closer that day. Friday. The day Hugo was supposed to be happy. Why couldn't I be too? Why couldn't my breath stop breathing the warm air of the craving of death? I loathed being alive at this moment, and that made me loathe Sam's questioning.

Sam: anything I can do?

Me: cancel your anonymity?

Sam: I can't do that :'>

I sighed loudly even though there was nobody around to pity me but myself. Father was still missing and I didn't even know whether to be scared, worried, or relieved. The only thing I felt was for myself and for my mother, but my mother only longed to cling on to my father. She always complained of the unfairness of the world on people. She always claimed that people who stayed in abusive relationships were out of their minds. She claimed all these things, but she didn't bat an eyelash at the acts that often unfolded between my father and I. Worse, neither of them could read me when I was eternally drowning in an ocean of flames licking my face and burning my already seared heart.

The only thing I could do to occupy my mind was ponder on who "Sam" was. I went through all the people that I knew with brown hair. Hugo, I laughed at that idea. Sam was much too pompous and outgoing to be Hugo. Disney Boy, I laughed a little too because I'd heard him sing, and it wasn't Sam's voice. Oliver, Oliver was awfully loud and obnoxious. It might have been Oliver, but I didn't like Oliver much. I was too convinced that I had fallen in love with the fantasy of this mysterious boy to believe he could be Oliver from science class.

I stopped in mid-thought. This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. This is why I didn't like the anonymity anymore. I was in love with his voice, his way of speaking-solely over text-and I loved his golden brownish hair. I knew it was all worthless. I knew I'd meet him and he wouldn't be who I thought he'd been. I knew he'd meet me and he'd find me even homelier in person than he'd ever expected. He'd look at my nose and poke at it and tell me how awfully strange it was. He'd ask me if there was any cartilage in it. Next, he'd close his fingers around my braids, tug at them, and ask me why my hair felt so awfully strange, and then I'd tell him they were extensions and he'd laugh and say how "gross" it was. He'd then ask me how my hair would be without the braids. I'd answer and say it would be an Afro. He'd then laugh and feel my forehead, commenting on how bumpy it felt. After that, he'd expect to be my friend. The friend that he would never talk to, but that he'd still call a friend. And I would sit here, asking him, trying to be his friend, nearly begging him to hang out with me, to help me, to talk to me. He would always reply with an excuse, but later I would find out that he had gone off with some other friends on the same day I had asked to hang out. I knew this with all my heart, yet I still scraped and scraped to find more friends, yet I still dared to fall in love with my fantasy of the boy with a red velvet voice. Hell, he might have been Oliver the Obnoxious. I wanted to sob at my misfortunes, but I wasn't that much of a loser to do so. I remembered something Hugo had said to me in one of our first conversations: "You're not that ugly." As if he thought I was at least enough ugly.

At this point I wanted desperately to text Winter, to text back Sam, to text Hugo-although he was probably with Louie-, to text Carolyn, but most of all I wanted to talk to Disney Boy. I sometimes hated his Disney spirit, it was like adding a sweet cherry on top of a sandwich of garbage. It was like smiling at the funeral of your beloved mother. It was like being buried with your eyes not yet closed. But today I needed that cherry on top. Maybe the sweetness could give me a moment-if not, a second of happiness. I'd laugh once and then I may be done forever, but at least I'd laugh once and have that memory forever.