These Days

iv

"WE MET ON OMEGLE... YOU DO KNOW WHAT THAT IS, RIGHT?" HE QUESTIONS, ARCHING AN EYEBROW AT THE SLIGHTLY DISBELIEVING, SLIGHTLY PISSED-OFF LOOK ADORNING HER FACE.

"Hell, I know what that is," Ciara snaps back. "That bitch promised me she'd stay off there after she lost her eyeball virginity to some creep wanking over her!"

Aaron cringes. "Nice," he mutters. "Not graphic at all."

"Not for a fourteen year old Hope, no, apparently -"

"Anyway," Aaron interrupts. "That night. The night that she... that Hope died, I was supposed to kill myself. The pills were there, scattered over my bedside table alongside a bottle of wine that I thought would be useful for downing them. I went on Omegle to say goodbye, I am about to die and then instead, I connected with some goddamn awful intoxicating, goddess who basically just says cool, bye mate and she was so funny and so intriguing and God, just so everything that I didn't do it - I couldn't do it and I'm still here today because of her and she's not." He looks up at Ciara, with her mournful eyes throwing mournful spears of water down her mournful cheeks and in that moment, he is jealous of her, so goddamn jealous that this wreck of a girl sat right in front of him now had the privilege and luck to actually physically hold the wreck of a girl who saved him, to kiss her and to love her and just know her, to know what she looks like when her eyes light up and to have heard her laugh with her own ears. "Fucked up, isn't it?"

"She didn't choose to die, you know," Ciara says softly. Her voice is shaking and suddenly it becomes apparent that she has (by choice, she points out) become what she has always feared being: weak. Vulnerable. Open. "At first they said that she died from the painkillers that weren't even the right ones to kill the pain in her chest. But now they're saying that the hole in her oesophagus probably killed her first, that the contents of her empty stomach leaking out into the frame of her body probably beat the pills to it. She didn't choose to die, Aaron."

"But what if she did?" He's croaking now, his voice hoarse and broken. It pretty much sums him up - cracked, frayed... broken. "We both know that the ruptured oesophagus was caused by the bulimia. And she knew about it, Ciara - that night, she told me about the blood in her vomit. She told me that she was scared... What if I wasn't the only one who went onto Omegle that night to say goodbye?"

"She told you she was scared?" Aaron nods. "Oh my God."

"What?"

But Ciara is still very caught in the midst of shaking her head, mouth gawking in horror. "Hope was scared of nothing," she whispers as though she has just been enlightened and warned of something terrible. "Nothing at all. She told me that fear was stupid, that being scared was something that would never change the real life situation that you were facing. 'Fear just makes you vulnerable and when you're vulnerable you do stupid things.'" Ciara pauses, looking up a little. "That's what she used to tell me whenever I was scared."

Aaron swallows. "She was wrong, you know," he tells the teary eyed girl, scuffling his fingers along the grubby table top. "Hope Waterman was right about a great many things, but fear was not one of them."

Ciara cocks an eyebrow at him in response. "Oh really?"

But Aaron isn't threatened by the challenge. "Yeah," he says firmly. "Because think about it, Ciara - what are you scared of? I was scared of dying. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be here right now talking to you. I wouldn't have had the chance to talk to Hope that night. Most of the things that we're scared of in life aren't actions - they're consequences."

"I was always scared of losing Hope," Ciara mumbles.

"And I bet she meant more to you than ever because of that."