Ophelia Study No. 1

Chapter Nine

It was within the next week that Emily Kimura was expelled from her prestigious Catholic school.

She had told me all about it in tears over the phone. She hadn't spoken to me all that week, not since the night I shoved her out of my car. Then, bam, something went wrong, and there she was, sobbing over the phone.

I lay there in my bed, only half listening. However, I was paying enough attention to pick up the reason for her expulsion, being caught smoking in the girls' room.

"Wait, you got expelled for smoking cigarettes?" I asked.

"Well," she hesitated. I could almost picture her biting her lip and playing with her hair. "I also drank some. They're strict about that stuff."

I didn't say anything, just listened to her ramble on and on about her school's dean of discipline and how he's so ready to expel kids because they hardly ever do anything wrong. I suppose being in charge of discipline in a school where there's not much to discipline gets boring. God must've gotten tired of watching over angels, so he created sin. And sin is beautiful in its own, mortal way, but in the end, it's what tears us apart.

Even if there's no one to police you, you get tired of being the bad guy. I hadn't reached that point yet.

No, I was still preoccupied with caring for no one but myself. I'm assuming I thought I was doing the right thing at the time; there was a time when I put others before me. But when I got taken advantage of, that was when I put myself ahead of everyone. It's unacceptable to take care of everyone before you, but in the same way, it's despicable to take care of yourself before anyone. It's a fine line we walk, between caring too much and too less. Once, I cared too much, and I told myself I would never let that happen again.

In the self-improvement process, I didn't get hurt, but Emily sure did.

She caught my attention again by pleading, "My home really isn't good right now. Do you think I could stay with you for the night?"

My initial instinct was to say no. I'd gotten used to telling her what she didn't want to hear. Luckily, something in her voice made me feel sorry for her, and not out of pity, but sympathy. So I told her, "Yeah, I'll pick you up in ten."

She was waiting on her porch, still in her school uniform. She'd walked slowly over to my car, ducking inside. She smelled overwhelmingly like cigarette smoke, which wasn't unusual anymore. She told me that cigarettes calmed her down, and by the looks of her, she was getting more and more nervous. She held her backpack tightly to her chest and didn't say a word, her swollen eyes glued to empty space.

It was once we were inside; laying in my bed that she said something. Quietly, she'd asked, "You didn't mean it the other night? Did you?"

"What? About kicking you out?"

"No," she'd muttered. "When you... when you told me you didn't care what happened to me."

"When did I say that?" I wish I was lying, but I really had no memory of saying anything to her except vague remarks about the weather.

She rolled over to face me, her dark hair falling into her eyes. "We were arguing, remember? I said something about us breaking up and..." She turned back over, mumbling, "You got real angry out of nowhere."

"I'm sorry," I admitted. I knew that it was because I was buzzed and irritated, so for the first time in the relationship, I actually held myself accountable.

"Pft, yeah right," she scoffed.

There was a short silence, broken by her adding, "It was weird, you know? You were really out of it." She faced me to say, "You weren't acting like yourself."

"Oh? And how do I usually act?" The more she talked, the guiltier I felt. I was desperate to change the subject.

"Well, not exactly perfect," she admitted. She smiled, and it was something beautiful, something that I didn't realize I'd missed seeing. "But, what I am with you for is... let's call it your genuine intentions and ambiguous love and care."

I couldn't help but ask, "You think my intentions are good?"

"Perhaps not completely pure," she answered slowly. "But not bad either."

We lay there in the dark, and she assured me, "You're a good person. Don't let yourself think otherwise."

"I could say the same for you," I countered. She remained quiet, so I proceeded, "I know why you get so sad. It's because you don't like yourself. And that's okay; it doesn't make you any less of a person but..." She gazed at me with a look profound enough to make me almost completely lose my train of thought. "You don't deserve that. Why are you so hard on yourself?"

She looked up at the ceiling and replied, "Maybe there was a time where I wasn't hard enough. A time where I lost myself."

"That's okay," I pointed out.

"Not like I did."

I peered over at her to see that her eyes were shut. She was done for the night. It had been emotionally taxing on me, so I couldn't imagine how it was for her.

I knew in the back of my mind that I couldn't fix that girl, that there was nothing to be done. I made a lousy knight in shining armor, but not through fault of my own, but the fact that I couldn't chase off or kill whatever was in her head. I served no purpose whatsoever in her life; I was merely there. She was the beauty and the beast, and in this story, she'd have to save herself.

I couldn't save her, but what I could do was lie next to her and wrap an arm around her, serving as a reminder that she wasn't completely alone.