Fix me

Epilogue

That; however, would take a long time.

A few days before I was scheduled to go back to school, I told my parents more about what Jeremy had done to me since That Night. They wanted to see if I had any bruised or marks on me so that they could photograph them to show to the judge as evidence if I decided that was what I wanted to do.

During this “inspection”, they discovered the scars on my wrist and my mom started crying again.

A few days after that, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some chemistry homework that Hunter had dropped by and I couldn’t figure out number 3 and I was thinking, I should know this; why don’t I know this; I should know this. And I fell out of my chair and I started screaming and I couldn’t stop and I saw was Jeremy and fireworks and the dark ceiling of my bedroom and his teeth, shining.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

I went to the hospital for a while and I got to wear my pajamas all day, but I couldn’t have my cell phone or shoelaces and I had to take some pills.

I still couldn’t sleep in a bed.

My family got to visit me and Hunter came every day after school. It was nice. The pills helped me sleep and the doctors were nice. They had to monitor me though to make sure I didn’t hurt myself again.

Vanessa came by one day.

I wasn’t expecting it. I was waiting for my parents actually. Susan was going to go back to school in a few days and I was going to see her one last time before she left.

But it was not her knuckles I heard knocking on the hospital door.

Vanessa stood in the doorway. Light make up dusted her face and her hair was down, making her cheekbones look sharper, pretty. She made me feel inferior with my days old pajamas and bed hair. She wore a light jacket even though there was snow on the ground and boots that reached all the way up to her knees. Her expression was one of sadness and sympathy.

“Hey,” I said, sitting up and crossing my legs.

She smiled at me, but it was not Real. “Never thought I’d see you here,” was all she said.

I shrugged as if to say, “What can you do?” I wanted desperately to ask her what was going through her mind. What did she know? What had she heard?

“People at school are talking about you.” She said. She stayed by the doorway, just outside the room.

“Oh?” I asked, although I already figured this. I could tell Hunter had been hiding this from me whenever he came to visit and I would ask how school was and he would shrug and just say, “Not the same without you,” but he would never meet my eyes.

Vanessa nodded and there was something she wanted to say, but she wouldn’t say it.

So instead, I said, “Why did you come here?”

She pushed some hair back behind her ears, but then couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with her arms so she finally decided to cross them over her chest, looking everywhere but at me.

“To see you,” She said, but I knew there was more and I was too afraid to not ask, “Do you believe me?”

And then every single letting in the alphabet and every word in the dictionary had disappeared and we had to make up new ones. My best friend said nothing and I thought she would come sit on my bed and talk to me like old times and everything would be fine like it was in movies, but this was not a movie and Vanessa stayed exactly where she was.