Runaway Cleo

Ch 1: Why now? Why me?

She is at my window.

The girl I was in love with half of my life. The girl I just wanted to so desperately come back to me. The girl who didn't even know I existed, or so I thought.

"Cleo..." I whisper so quietly there is no way she heard me through the window. I mean its impossible for her to come here to me. Its impossible... Isn't it?

"I need your help," she says to me from outside, so i opened the window and let her climb in. She did it casually, as if this was something that she has done many times before. Except she has never done this before. Not with me, not with this room, not with this atmosphere.

"What do you need?" I ask when she settles into my room. She seems very uncomfortable standing there. Almost like she regrets coming in. Almost Like she can't wait to leave.

Instead of answering my question she stands and looks around my room in one fluid motion. I don't have much in here but she seems fascinated with it all. She goes over to a far wall and starts to look through my many records and books. I watch as she scans them all cautiously with her eyes and skims a finger across their spines like they were precious treasures.

Finally she stops on one of the books on a bottom shelf. This book just happens to be my freshman year notebook.

Every year since I was diagnosed with anxiety I have kept a notebook. They have been the best friends a guy could ask for. The one she happened to hold in her hands was the one from the year she left. The year I felt like my whole world fell apart. I could see a sense of recognition in her eyes as she stared at the cover.

"What are you doing here, Cleo?" I ask, just trying to keep my tone even. The truth is that I am so nervous. I am nervous because I never knew who she really was. She never really knew who I was. So, why was she here?

"I already said it," she states plainly, "I need your help."

"But with what? What could you need ME for?" I ask dumbfounded. She has been gone for 3 years and no one has seen her since that night she left.  After a few moments, When I realize she wasn't answering, I ask her again, "Why today? Why now? Why ME?" I'll admit that the last question was the only thing on my mind.  She used to be the girl the little kids would try to become. I was, and still am, the loser who sits in the corner with a notebook and my thoughts to tear me down.

"I am tired of being gone. I never should have left, Christian. The world is so terrible. I got a job outside the city a month after I left town. I've been fine. But what's living when you have no one to stay with. What's a life with no meaning? no family? no future?" She turns back to look at me with these eyes like she's known the worst things in life. She looks at me with fear.

"I still don't see what thi-" I start to say but am soon cut off.

"This has everything to do with you. You want to leave and you always have. Those scars are battle marks. These notebooks are keepsakes of the times you never need to have again. I need YOUR help, to know that you won't make my mistakes. And I am going to make sure that this happens. I need to know that you are safe. No more watching from afar. I am going to be your guardian angel." She moves her head to the side and I notice  that she is staring at my bulletin board. I have drawings of band symbols and many poems that I have written in times of pain, but she was looking at something completely different. My prized possession.

"What's that?" she whispers so quietly I almost miss it.

"That was the one thing that kept me going. My one and only hope of something better." It frightens me to admit it but i am not lying, it's the work of art i am most proud of.

"Is that- Is it, me?" she asks, I could see her gasping for air. She looks stricken. She looks ashamed. She looks scared.

"Uhm, yeah... I, uhm, I always wanted to talk to you, Cleo. You did everything I've wanted to do in a matter of seconds. You had no second thoughts that would eat you alive. I want that faith in myself. I wanted to take a chance too. But I cant, I am not you." I look down while saying it because i know it's true and that scares me.

She has those weird eyes again. Her head is just barely turned away from me and I feel so open and vulnerable. I put my head down for the twentieth time since she's been in my room, just not wanting her to see how my hands were shaking. Not needing her to realize what a screw up I really was. She wants me to let her fix me. But some things are so beyond repair that they aren't worth the fix. Some things kind of like me.

"Christian, look at me." Now, I notice that she is facing me. She looks fierce. I could see this desire within her, like she needs to tell me something deep and unimaginable. But instead she holds my shaking hands in her own and gently meets my eyes.

I start to nod my head, like a 4 year old who had just learned something new.  I did not know what else to do to show her my understanding of this situation so far. So i nod.

"You, Christian Kyle Baker, are not a screw up. You not running away, was not a cowardice act, it was a sign of the bravery you really have. I was tired of being lied to. But I never told anybody the full truth abut that night. I left for me, because at that point I cared not for anyone that cared for me. But you are the one I need to save because, Chris..."

She suddenly breaks down crying. I grab her around the waist and hold her. As the seconds pass I notice my grip getting considerably tighter. She is weeping into my chest and I can feel the sincerity of all that is happening tonight going through her in heaving waves.

Her tears never stop. She looks at me and through her tears I hear the words I never thought I would hear from Cleo.

"I'm dying."

My whole world has just fallen apart. And I know that there is not one thing I can do to put it back together.

•••
Pictured is what I imagined Christian to look like.

Also, Cleo is 17 and Chris is 18. Cleo left her house when she was 14 and they would both be juniors if they were still in high school which neither are because they both took online classes to graduate early. Chris is funded from his family and Cleo had a job before she was diagnosed.