When China Breaks//Ed Sheeran #Wattys2016 #NewVoices

the c-word

*surprise surprise, keep reading.*

I had been broken so I knew all the signs. Sadness, seeming withdrawn, being unable to grasp anyone's reality except my own. All those things that I went through and saw, Ed was there, and it was the worst thing to witness.

He picked me up the first day back to school. Mary Ella waved me off as I climbed into his truck, unassisted. Ed was leaning over the steering wheel, his body looking limp as if he were unable to hold himself upright. "Hi," I say with a small smile. He looked over at me and his eyes were slightly dark as if he hasn't slept in three days. His already pale complexion looked a bit pasty, so his freckles seemed brown. "I've been texting you," I told him. "I didn't even know you were picking me up."

He started the truck and it gave the most half-hearted shudder before jolting to life. "My phone wasn't on."

"Did you run out of minutes?"

"No. It just wasn't on." He replied. We drove away from my house, leaving it behind. I wanted to ask him why his phone wasn't on, but I decided to leave it alone. Seeing Ed so miserable took a mental toll on me, and it made me feel sick. I understood he had just lost a friend, but it looked deeper than that. It looked as if somehow deep inside, he felt responsible.

I reached over and brushed away a lock of his hair. I tucked it into his snapback, which he was wearing backward, probably to hide the fact that he hadn't washed it. "I missed you," I whispered. He didn't say anything, only gripped the steering wheel harder until his knuckles turned white. I took the cue and pulled away and looked out the window.

When we arrived at school, Ed and I walked into the school together. People were looking at the two of us and whispering as if we were something new and special, but we weren't. I didn't want people to look at us, especially not Ed when he was already feeling so low. Shanna from McDonald's waved in our direction, and I waved back sheepishly, but Ed didn't really say anything at all.

"Want me to carry your bag to class?" Ed asked the longest sentence he had spoken to me since dropping me off at home the day he returned. I looked at him and felt sick again.

"When was the last time you ate?" I asked him, shutting my locker.

"Do you want me to carry your bag?" He asked again, ignoring me.

"God, no. I don't want to be an inconvenience to you." I said, feeling a lump rising in my throat. My voice cracked and I tugged my morning bag out. Ed simply walked away, leaving me feeling abandoned and like a bitch for giving him a hard time. I simply closed my locker and walked to class on my own.

I wish that I had just shown up in my wheelchair to avoid having people ask about my leg, but it was too late. People were suddenly bombarding me with the questions they should have asked me several months, things about my amputation, where my leg went, how the prosthetic feels, even if I could feel with the prosthetic like an actual leg. It was all becoming overwhelming to the point where the biology teacher had to tell them to leave me alone.

All I could think was Ed, sitting in class, suffering in his own world and I was on the outside, unable to break him. I wanted him to cry. I wanted him to stop pretending as if he wasn't hurting because he was. The sooner he accepted it, the better for him it would be.

At lunch, he was waiting outside of my classroom, hunched over, leaning against the lockers. "Take your hat off," a random teacher told him. He ignored them and the teacher just let it go and continued on, not wanting to ruin their lunch over a disobedient teenager. I reached down awkwardly and tapped his shoulder. Ed looked up at me and climbed to his feet. He looked unfocused for a second before coming too and I was beginning to get worried