Lying on the Ground

Hey, you! Why are you looking at me that? Right, maybe it's because I'm lying on the floor and talking to you, a black and white picture of Nicolas Cage taped onto the ceiling. Why, you ask? I don't really know. Still, it doesn't mean you have to stare. Except for the fact that you're not a cool Harry Potter picture that can move.

Ha! Frozen-face.

...How do you deal with all of it? How do you cope with all of the "Nicholas Cage: The Best Actor in the World" crap? I mean, you must know by now that when they say that they mean the exact opposite.

Sometimes people call me Pretty Girl in the hallways. And I used to be beautiful too, you know. I used to have a pretty face.

Every once in awhile I can still feel the heat scorching my cheeks when they call me Pretty Girl, and I can't breath for a second, 'cause all of a sudden it's like there's only smoke surrounding me, an all-consuming blanket threatening to smother me into oblivion. I can taste it coating my tongue and burning my nostrils.

I can hear her screams for help.

I swear I didn't have that much to drink that night, Nick, if it's okay for me to call you that. James only filled my red Solo cup a couple of times. I felt fine, more than fine, like I was at the top of the world and nothing could stop me. I had gone home without a hitch plenty of times before, and far more tipsy. I usually don't drive with anyone else in the car, just in case...

Well, just in case.

But that night Mels was even more drunk than I was, and she didn't have enough money for a cab home, and I thought I was being a good friend by helping her avoid the doomed Walk of Shame in the morning.

I take the Walk of Shame through the hallways every day now. It's as if "Murderer" is flashing on a big neon sign above my lowered head, and a symbol indicating my soul has been sold to the devil is stamped on my burned forehead.

Maybe that's why they call me Pretty Girl, Nick. Not because my face will forever be covered in scars, my own personal Mark of Cain, but because my soul is no longer pretty. It's twisted and bent and mangled and dark and sometimes I think it's turned as black as the devil's eyes, which are surely twinkling with laughter at me.

I try to make up for it. I bring her fresh flowers everyday, especially roses. I still weep at her gravestone. I still cry when I read it. Melody Rose MacDonald 1994-2012. Roses always were her favorite, they made her giggle. When we were really little, she used to think the flower was named after her.

I avoid her parents like the plague. I know they hate me, so I try to not be around, that way they won't hurt as much. It hurts me knowing I've sentenced myself to a life of not seeing their usually warm faces. We would trample in the front door of her house together everyday after kindergarten to find Mrs. MacDonald wearing an apron and a smile, holding a batch of cookies or cupcakes. Mr. MacDonald would get home at around 5:30, tired from a day at the office, but always happy to see his little girl and her best friend, before I was whisked off by my own father, too busy with big decisions to notice how many teeth I had lost.

I go to church every Sunday. I think the whole congregation was surprised, as I used to only go when Mom practically dragged me by my ears into the sanctuary wearing my Christmas dress or my Easter's finest. Even though I'm there without fail, no one in the congregation likes to look at me.

No one does, and not because I shrink away from my own reflection in the mirror nowadays.

I don't think it's ever going to make things better though. Sometimes I wish they had locked me up, that Mom and Father hadn't hired the fancy lawyer with the posh wardrobe and sharp nose. She had somehow convinced the jury that Mels had snuck into the car without my knowledge.

The lawyer should have really been a farmer, because the seed of doubt she planted in every one of their twelve heads had led to a reduced charge, and now I'm on community service and probation. In my opinion, I should be behind bars and making license plates.

So how do you deal with it? The humiliation, the pain, the anger, the remorse that eats away at your gut, a virus planted in your very soul? Do you even know what remorse is, Nicolas Cage?

I do. Maybe that's why I'm lying here talking to a black and white picture of my best friend's "favorite" actor taped onto the ceiling from our last sleepover.