Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 6

“So, I have a swim meet tonight, but my art is in a showcase right after. You should come see what I’ve been working on, man—it’s pretty tight, I think you’d like it.”

         God bless Trey for trying. I’ve watched him try over and over again to engage Jason since I died, and watched Jason shoot him down—nicely. But Trey never gave up on him. By now I would have just said ‘Fuck it’ and dragged Jason out against his will, but it wasn’t in Trey’s nature. He was irresistibly kind.

         But I knew that no amount of kindness would move Jason today. Today was my birthday. Well, it would have been my birthday.

         “I dunno man… Thanks. Really, thanks for the invite, but I think I’m gonna hang at home.”

         “You sure? Want me to swing by with the Xbox later?”

         Jason’s smile was sad. “Nah, that’s all right. I’ll catch you over the weekend.”

         “All right. You call if you need anything, okay?” Trey was concerned. It was written all over his face, but he was good. He made himself sound hopeful. Jason nodded and Trey gently patted him on the shoulder. “I still miss her too, buddy.” And with that, he walked down the hall. Jason shut his locker and closed his eyes. I watched his jaw clench and I realized that he was trying not to cry, and my heart shattered again. I’ve come to accept that I can’t do anything about it, but seeing him so upset because of me was worse than death.

         “—such a fucking fake! You don’t look the part, Preston.”

         My ears pricked up, and so did Jason’s. There weren’t many people with the last name ‘Preston’ around here, and the only one that came to mind in this school was my Preston—Lena.

         “She’d be uglier in Emo garb, Brie!” I heard the cackling of Brianna Savage’s little cronies and wanted to barf. I whipped around the corner so fast that they had to have felt the gust of air that followed me. It took me a split second to realize that Jason had rounded the corner ahead of me and was marching straight into the circle of bitches surrounding my best friend.

          “Is there a problem here?” He asked. His eyes, the ones that I knew as friendly and warm had turned fiery and narrow. Lena cowered next to him, and I stepped in to take a closer look. Her hair was greasy and hung limp. It looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.

          I watched her discretely tugging down her sleeves but before she got them down, I stopped in my tracks. Several short vertical cuts decorated the underside of her forearm, covered up by her silver cuff bracelets and her sleeves.

         Lena was cutting again. It had been three years. Three years since I first saw those cuts and had a sixteen-hour talk with her about what was going on. Three years since we’d gotten her to start seeing a therapist for her depression, and three years that she’d been recovering beautifully. The Lena in front of me looked exactly like the Lena I remember on that day.

          “Just some lame little Emo attention whore,” Brianna purred, leaning into Jason and running her hand across his arm. I watched the disgust spread across his face as he yanked his arm away roughly. Brianna frowned and turned her attention back to Lena, pointing a perfectly manicured finger in her face, “If you really wanted to kill yourself, you’d be dead by now like Remi.”

          The surge of rage and shock hit the air so hard that I almost fell over. Jason grabbed Brianna’s wrist and threw it back down. He was seething.