Ten & Levan

30. Thirty

LEVAN

She knows.

She knows, she knows, she knows.

I know, by the way she's looking at me, that she doesn't just know...she has known it all along. I bet she doesn't see me, her eyes see a dark shadow, something that ceases to exist, something she doesn't want to keep looking at anymore. She doesn't want me close anymore, she doesn't want me here, she doesn't want what we have, she doesn't doesn't want this.

It's like she's the sun and I, her eclipse.

And all this time, I thought she really saw someone different when she looked at me; someone who isn't suicidal Levan. I thought, up until now, that Ten only sees Number Eleven...one who's okay with existing, who accompanies her on her random adventures, who might just be a little fun. It's as if I'd started to believe I was who she thought I was and now that her eyes don't sparkle as she looks at me, it feels like I never knew who I was to begin with.

"But here's the thing..." she says, rolling over and encaging me the way she did at the beach, right before she kissed me. Maybe that was her way of showing sympathy to poor, suicidal Levan. It makes me feel sicker than I thought I did, as she pours her gray, gruesome grief all over me. It doesn't just make me feel sick; it makes me want to toss her arms away and sink into the dirt beneath me. It makes me feel like I don't just contemplate dying each day, it's like I'm already dead.

"I try not to judge people," she says, frowning at me. I swallow a lump of guilt; it tastes like sand going down my parched throat. It's no good, it's never been. "And I sure as hell can't judge you..."

Four, five, six, twenty, a million seconds go by before I take my next breath. But when I do, something inside me bunches up into knots. But maybe it's only me, crumpling up into oblivion. Who knows?

"It's fine," her words hit me hard; harder than waves at the shore, harder than sunlight, harder than my heartbeat. It's fine? Is it fine?

"Some people choose to live; some...don't," she says, and in that moment, her warm brown orbs aren't all that warm. "I know what you're going through, I know how hard life is on you, and I appreciate the fact that you've struggled all this time for yourself as well as your sister, I really, really appreciate that. But at the end of it, it's your life. You get to make the choice for yourself," she tells me, rolling away and lying on her back, as if she didn't she just tell me that she knows I was going to jump and never emerge that day.

I lay here with my hands nailed to my sides, my senses lost and my brain a total mess. I don't know how to feel. They don't do this in movies or books even, they don't react this way. But it's Ten, how can I forget? Ten does things no one does. And this story is beyond what's extraordinary. She continues to gaze at the sky, her eyes wide, and I remain blank as the sheets I decided to write about Ava on.

"It's funny, you know," she mutters. I find myself looking at her as if it wasn't just two minutes ago that I was petrified she knew everything I never wanted her to. I look at her and my fingertips feel light and cold, my frenzied thoughts all settle down like dust. I look at her and I float. "I want something you don't want, you want something that I don't want," she mumbles, darkly amused. I give her words time soak into my skin, but they never do they just sit on my skin like fresh snow. "All of us are going to die someday Levan...because of age, fate...illness, or by choice. How does it matter? We're born to die. Both of us are going to be dead one day or the other, aren't we?" she says and turns her head to me, her words burying me.

She closes her eyes and takes deep calming breaths like she does usually, except a small disguised smile resides on her lips. She breathes and breathes for so long that I start to believe she's asleep. But she's never this silent, so she must be.

Except she's not; she's just trying to find peace.

"But when I die, Levan...I don't want to regret that I didn't even live," she says, her voice so soft and tired that the words swirl straight into my bones, building a home, "make sure you don't either." She stands up then, looks at me over her shoulder, smiles just the way does, before breaking into a sprint. Her hair floats behind her, painting the breeze the darkest brown, so dark it almost blinds me.

***

I usually don't think about Ten. I also usually not not think about Ten. In fact, if I'm not with her, I think of what we would do if I were. She mentions wanting to fly on a daily basis, she tells me about her other adventures, those she had before me and those she wants to have in future. I don't know if she wants me in them, but for some reason, I want to be a part of her plans...all of her gigantic, out-worldly, electrifying plans. Simply because I don't have any of my own.

So eventually, I roll over onto the vast expanse of my scattered sheets of substantially nothing and find one that needs to know more about Ten, and then I begin to tell it all I know about her. But what do I know about her? I strike Ten's name out and continue writing about the girl who knows me, the girl who doesn't judge, the girl who says it's okay to want to die because it's my life.

But tell me why, now that she knows, I don't want to die?

I let the frown between my brows fade away and my hands don't quiver as I write her name down again. At this moment, my story seems almost complete; feeling a sense of accomplishment, I start to bundle all the sheets up. Just as I put them in a carton under my bed, the door bursts open and a mass of deep, dark hair flows into the room first.

"Levan, I need help," says Ten. With two carry bags in both her hands, she struggles to get her hair off her face.

Startled from her sudden appearance, I stand frozen until she drops both the bags on my bed and messily pulls her hair back in a ponytail. She sighs and flashes a brilliant smile at me as she waves her hand in front of my face.

"Are you daydreaming? Did I disturb you?" she giggles. I blink instantly. But how do I tell her how much I wanted to be the one to touch her hair? "But I need you right now, so don't get lost on me," she warns me with a pointed finger and raised brows.

She empties both her bags on my bed and out flow about five dresses.

"What's this?" I ask her.

"You've gotta help me decide on what I should wear on a date..." she says. A date? I swallow a dry rock down my throat, it falls into my stomach with a bang.

"A date?" I mutter. For a reason I'm not aware of, my heart starts to thud weirdly.

"Oh yes, a date," she wiggles her eyebrows, "Justin Cash from the football team? He asked me out yesterday." My thudding heart does a weird tumble inside my chest. Is it falling out? Can she see it?

"Oh," is all I can say.

"Now, it's in exactly three hours so I need you to help me with my outfit," she says, widening her eyes and pursing her lips.

"I'm not the right person for it, Ten," I manage to tell her. I do everything to not look at her, I can't meet her eyes, she'd know. "Why don't you ask Thea to help?"

"Oh, Thea's parents took her out for a weekend, and I can't really reach her cell, so you're my next best option." She lets her shoulders fall. "Come on, you only have to tell me what looks best." And so I do, I tell her she looks best in yellow. Most people can't pull it off, but Ten...Ten's brighter than the sun; she's blinding gold, I remember.

And when she's gone, I shut the door to her laughter and open up to my silence. I calm my heart down but it keeps running away, farther away from me. I know the things that I shouldn't say are all I want to. I grab my hair with both my hands and clench my teeth silently before I hastily pull the carton out from under my bed, take a raw piece of paper and close my eyes, for I need to know if the things I want to say will suffice. Is it wrong or am I right?

I take a sharp breath and let the raucous silence subside. The pen shakes as I bring it to the horizons of the empty white.

Do I?

Do I? Do I? Do I?

I close my eyes and let my shaking hands write.

I love her...god, I love her.

Why?