Timeless

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

            Now I really was going crazy. Life is fast. You know that? Between the months of August and January I’ve met six psychos, had my sister taken away, (because of me) started cutting, and managed to keep a C- average.

            And London. London had kissed me.

            And she was going to help me. Maybe.

            I started talking to her again in computers class, but it was awkward. So, so unbelievably awkward. I guess she wanted me over after school, finally gonna meet her parents and all. Had this happened a month ago, I actually would’ve been very, very nervous and very, very excited. Finally gonna meet the people that raised Laser Eye London, but I didn’t feel anything right now but submissiveness. I didn’t feel anything towards anyone or anything. I just wanted my sister back. Don’t you wish you could go back to when everything was simple?

            You know how people sometimes wonder what depression is like? Some reply, “It’s like you’re drowning and you see everyone around you breathing.” I say depression is like looking at your life in a mirror that everyone else sees as perfect, but you’re the only one that sees it’s broken. The question is, which one is it really?

***

            Brendon came with us after school. I don’t know why, but he was really starting to upset me. Not in a bad way or anything. Just like...I wanted his crush to turn him down or something. I was that kind of annoyed with the dude. Anyway, I know the way to London’s by heart, I could probably walk there with my eyes closed. I know where all the little, irritating bumps in her lawn are, I know the usual places where objects are scattered about, I even knew the exact spot on her front door where a very large spider or a baby dinosaur made its home. It’d bite you if you took too long opening the door.

            We went inside her house and London told us to wait in her bedroom while she went to get her parents from the backyard where her mom was gardening and her father was reading the newspaper.

            “Oh, sometime whenever you get the chance, you still owe Ashley four dollars.” She said. That brightened my day...just a little bit. Looking around, I actually analyzed London’s room. Nothing had changed since I was here the night of the party, but I never really observed the objects London kept. Her bed was a mixture of zebra-colored pillow cases and a Nightmare Before Christmas blanket. Her windows had drawings all over as if a rainbow puked on it; coating the glass in transparent pink, yellow and lime, casting neon colors all around her room. Three bookshelves occupied the corners of her room, all overflowing with books. I looked at some of the titles. Stargirl. Out of my Mind. Sense and Sensibility. Flipped. Divergent. Emma. Hurricane. And then there was her desk and her vanity.

            It wasn’t that a tornado had gone through them. It was...just that...a tornado had gone through them. I saw not one ounce of makeup, but instead glass lens and gold charms and scribbled journals on her vanity. Her desk consisted of scented candles—one, two, three—seventeen of them, mushrooms, vials, (some with purple liquid in them) pens and pencils and lots of stationary paper. It was just so...London. I sighed her name. London Cole.

            Brendon was running his fingers over the spines of the books, smiling lightly.

            “Twelve new books since last time,” he said to nobody in particular. Especially not me.