The In Between

7: Fallen Angel

Fallen Angel, in the dark, never thought you'd fall so far

Fallen Angel, close your eyes, I won't let you fall tonight

Fallen Angel, just let go, you don't have to be alone

Fallen Angel, close your eyes, I won't let you fall tonight

It was probably around 6:30, when I got the text, and then the phone call.

"What's up, Cam?"

"Hey, are you busy," he asked. He didn't sound okay.

"No, not at all. What's up?"

"Remember the other day, you said if I needed help you'd be willing to try?"

"Yeah..."

"I kinda need you to come over. Like, now."

"Okay, I'm on my way," I say, grabbing my keys and walking outside.

He gave me his address, and then said, "Hey, sorry, but there's a big possibility that you might have to climb in a window..." This should be interesting.

"Dude, it's fine. Did you know you only live two streets away from me? Jeez. I'm almost there now. Is the window thing a reality?"

"Umm..." He thinks for a minute, and that's when I hear the yelling in the background. "Yeah."

So I climbed in the window that he directed me to, feeling like a burglar the whole way. Once I was in, I asked him, "Alright, what's up?"

"I've been lying since yesterday," he says, "I'm nowhere near okay, which I guess you could probably tell, since you asked so much. Not complaining," he says, throwing his hands up, kinda defensively, "just... stating facts."

"It's fine, man, if I had a dime for every time I said I was okay and wasn't..."

"No, but I'm seriously not okay, dude, I've been thinking of ending it all day." One look at him says he's not lying.

"Okay, I can see why you asked me to come over. That's definitely not an ideal situation." All that freaking commotion in the living room, I turned and stared in that direction. "Are they killing each other in there?

"Dude, I just-- Things are falling apart and I don't know what to do, like, my parents haven't stopped arguing with each other all week."

"About what?"

"Everything! They just can't shut up! They fight all the time, but this is the worst it's been in years. I told them that I had the counseling thing after school, but they got home early yesterday, and I got in trouble for being home later than I should've, so I got chewed out for that, and then that started a fight. They moved to the argument to their room, and Charlie got in the fighting mood. He kept telling me that this was my fault, and why even bother with counseling. He swears that they got like this after I was born and that maybe it would've been better if I never existed. And I started to believe him. I come home today, after wondering how much of that was true, all throughout the school day, and they're arguing and throwing stuff. If I was anywhere near one of them, it was, 'Look at how you've messed up our son, he cuts himself, he wants to die' and all this stuff, if there was a lull in the argument and I just happened to be in the wrong place at the time, I was reminded of everything wrong with me... I don't know how I have any hope of getting through this. I don't know how I managed this long, honestly. At any point in time, I could've been done with this. I could've cut just a little deeper. I could've 'accidentally' walked too close to the road. I could've just taken a few too many pills. So many exits and I choose to stay. Why? What's the point, if I have to survive another 3 years of this?"