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Chapter 30

Charlotte O'Brien 

My skin tingled all over as Tyler stood behind me, watching over my shoulder as I hit save and print for my argumentative essay on the topic "Slavery caused the Civil War." Mr. Smith, my United States History teacher, was a very liberal, very devoted Democrat, who spent the first three classes of the year going over every reason our country was failing without having a Democratic president. I'm sure he was expecting thirty copies of almost the exact same paper, condemning the Confederacy and praising the Union for their long war against slavery. That was the very reason I chose to make my paper about states' rights as opposed to federal rights to decide individual conclusions; I focused on the broader ramifications rather than just that one institution of slavery. I was immensely proud of it and thought it was the best thing I'd written all school year.

I turned my desk chair around so that I was facing Tyler's energy, while behind me the printer clicked and whizzed across the sheets of paper, stamping my words with ink I would never be able to read. "Did you read all of it?" I asked Tyler and held my left hand out, excitement and anticipation making my heart beat faster and my head feel slightly lighter. There was a pressure, a tap, once on my wrist, and I tried to control my joy and enthusiasm. Every time Tyler's skin made contact with mine my heart beat a little faster, a little harder. Even when he was telling me things that I didn't want to hear, things that made me scream in my head and made my muscles seize up with fear, my heart beat harder, harder. Maybe one day it would beat right out of its prison and burst through its bone cage, get out into the world to see what made it react in this way.

"Did you like it?" I questioned, nearly hopping in my seat with anticipation. I wanted him to say yes, of course he liked it because it was a literary masterpiece. I wanted him to say that I perfectly captured the perspective of the South, and that he would be proud to turn this paper in to his own United States History teacher. Even though it was all impossible, because he could only convey yes or no, I still craved the conversation. I wanted so desperately to talk to him like I did in the Darkness that just getting his confirmation or denial of something was like eating a crumb of a cheesecake and not being able to eat the rest.

Tyler tapped my wrist once again and I grinned in response, feeling light as a feather. It had been at least a month since I had gotten so excited about an assignment, or rather so excited about anything, and I reveled in it. Two weeks ago I thought that I was splintering apart, cracking like a mirror or one of my mother's china plates. It felt like I had been letting all the good aspects of myself drain through those cracks, leaving me an empty shell with no want or desire other than to mourn what I had lost. But now? Now I was finally scaling the mountain, collecting tape and glue to mend the cracks along the way, while my support system cheered me on from the sidelines. But my biggest cheerleader was someone you couldn't see. He was someone who stayed in the background and if you really tried, you'd feel his presence. His warmth. His life.

I turned and snatched the papers that were spit out of the printer, placing them in one of my folders, and Tyler moved away, towards my windows. He had been beside me the moment I had woken up that morning, hovering over me like my dad used to whenever I so much as coughed when I was younger. He had followed me to the bathroom door, where I quietly closed it on him, and down to breakfast with my parents. It almost seemed like he had been trying to prove that he was lying the night before when he said that he didn't like it here, or maybe prove that he wouldn't leave me, even if he could. Even if he could. Those words chilled me, sent the tears rushing to my eyes, and made my hands tremble. After I had finally fallen the asleep the night before, I was plagued with nightmares of the sound of clinking chains and tortured screams. In the dreams I could hear Tyler crying, snuffling and choking with the force of the tears, and begging me to please let him go, to release him from these chains and this dungeon.