She seemed to be jealous of my eyes. Despite the way her gaze perpetually wandered from place to place, it always trailed its way back to my face, her dark irises tilted shyly upwards under thick brows and lids lined with maroon eyeshadow, and it would stay there as if she were spellbound. For some reason she never just looked at them; she watched like she was asking permission to do it. I asked her why, but she never was one to give straight answers, no matter how sincere she sounded as she evaded the questions.
“Have you heard the Spanish name ‘Marisol’? Mar y sol—the sea and the sun. That’s what your eyes remind me of. The lashes are so bright, and the irises are so blue and pure.”
“Everyone loves my eyes, but I hate them,” I replied, tugging at the grass beneath me. “They might as well be ash.”
“Don’t say that. They’re beautiful. They’re like crystal. I would call you an angel, but…” She trailed off like she did sometimes, her eyes still lingering longingly on mine. I leaned forward curiously.
“But what?” I asked. She smiled softly.
“But angels aren’t that pure.”
I was going to ask her what she meant by that, but something about the way she glanced down and turned away, fiddling agitatedly with her sleeve, made me stop. I should have asked then. Maybe then I wouldn’t have lost what meant most to me.
I can’t really blame myself for not asking, though, because Helen startled me by wrapping her arms around my neck like she wanted to be comforted. It was such an innocent action, so sweet and childlike, that I almost felt myself melt to her. Almost. Her perpetual virtue had that soothing effect on me, but I hated that because it reminded me how filthy I was. I didn’t want to let her save me, and I didn’t want her to call me pure. There was always something deceitful hidden behind purity.
That proved to be true at that moment, too, when I felt something sharp at my throat and I jerked back to find blood on her mouth. It was only the second time she had done that, so it’s normal that I was disconcerted enough to hold a grudge and dye my hair black the next day, just to spite her. Probably out of guilt, she avoided me for the next few days. Those next few days, I needed her company, unwanted as it had always been. Those next few days, I didn’t find out that angels are impure in their power. I never found out that because Helen was an angelic girl hiding fiendish power, she thought the way my inner demon was exteriorized in my scars was beautiful, and she wanted to save me from it. I couldn’t find out for sure. That’s what I’m guessing.
My dad had shown me where the pistol was when I was in my junior year of high school, but I didn’t use it until I was twenty-one. It was deafening and felt much, much more final than a razor blade. There was something I liked about that, and something I hated. I kind of wondered if I would have considered punching a hole in my chest if she hadn’t been avoiding me, but I figured that even if she were there, the idea would have come to me anyway. After all, death was always on my mind. It just happened to happen on that day.
I think I’m digressing. The point is that when the hate and depression all accumulated to a point where even the cutting wouldn’t help, I took that gun and pulled the trigger, leaving me lying on the floor as my own blood slowly filled my right lung. Someone kept pounding on the door during what I later found out was the first minute or two. At the time, it felt like hours. Whoever was knocking never got in, so I think that Helen must have entered through a window because she was suddenly there, calling my name urgently and moving me someplace else, someplace I didn’t recognize. She took my razor with us.
