Dancing With Keenan

Chapter Eight - Promises Made

My alarm went off at one-thirty. I had to leave for rehearsal soon, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. As much of a mistake as it was seeming to be, I'd agreed to this, and I couldn't just hang the rest of the band out to dry.

Hell, I couldn't even leave Keenan out to dry, no matter how much he had hurt me.

I'd managed to pull myself together about an hour after Keenan had left. The remnants of my coffee cup were in the trash, but there was nothing I could about the hole in my wall until the next day. I'd spent the hour since working on school work.

My Poetic Expression work was simple: write a free-verse poem about tragedy. All I had to do for that was go flipping through my journal until I found a suitably tragic piece and edit it. That took less than ten minutes.

English Literature only needed some reading. Classical Literature was the same. The only class I had that required anything else was my Poetic Theory class, which needed an analysis of any poem from any style. I'd learned at the start of the year that I could pull one of my own poems from a few years ago, sign it as "anonymous," and pick at that until I had enough to turn in. With the change in my style over the years, the professor hadn't noticed any similarities between the poetry I authored for the class and the poetry I analyzed.

Focusing made the reading for my literature classes difficult. My thoughts would constantly circle back to my argument with Keenan, which would then lead into thoughts of our past. It was an ugly cycle that I was constantly fighting.

When the alarm went off, I packed all of my work back into my bookbag and set about erasing all traces of my meltdown. Funny the things you learn because of depression. Make-up had always been my little sister's thing. Where she was a natural with the products and tools, I had always dabbled at the edges of whatever I could pick up on.

But with the depression came the red and splotchy skin, the puffy eyes, and the dark circles that shouldn't have been so prominent. Eventually, as I was "healing" from my original breakdown, I'd invited Meghan down to see me, and during that visit, I had her teach me how to camouflage the signs of my sorrow.

She had done so, but she had also extracted a promise from me. At any time, she would have the right to ask me to remove the makeup I wore. It was a fair trade. I could hide my grief from those who would never understand, and my little sister could check on me if she wanted to.

Practice had made it easy, and thirty minutes later I was locking my apartment door and heading down to my car.

I was halfway there when my cell rang.

"Please don't be Keenan," I muttered to myself before clicking the button on my steering wheel to answer the call. "Hello?"

"Hey, Lilac," my father greeted, using a nickname he'd given me when I was a young child.

"Hey, Daddy, everything okay?"

In the last couple of years, my calls to my family had been few and far between. They meant well, but whether they'd intended to or not, their treatment of me had changed. They were so much more careful with me, and it had become overwhelming. As time went on, my calls had become fewer and fewer until the only time I spoke with them was when they called to check on me or on holidays. I hadn't even gone home for Thanksgiving the year before, instead choosing to spend it alone in my apartment. I still went home for Christmas, but it just wasn't the same.

Holidays would never be the same again.

"Lilac?" Daddy prodded, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Sorry. What's going on at home?"