Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 10

After the debacle that was Jason’s therapy appointment, I decided that it was time to take a closer look at Lena—who was already suicidal.

            I poked around her room that afternoon after I checked in on her at school. She was quiet, as usual, and I couldn’t get a good read on her while there were tons of other people around anyway. Lena was no fool, and she certainly wasn’t going to make any grand confessions while she was in school.

            So I went through her diary. Maybe it wasn’t playing fair, but it was the fastest way to get the answers I needed. Besides, I never cared about playing fair, anyway. With Jason hearing voices, and me dead, the next logical thing for Lena to confide in was her diary. It was easy enough to find; she hadn’t moved it from the spot I found it in five years ago, tucked under her mattress.

            I casually flipped through the pages from the beginning until I reached the last entry before the accident. The next one was dated nearly a month later, and it looked different. The handwriting was tinier, cramped and shaky. I didn’t even need to read it to know what it said.

            The next several entries started to change. There were a lot of scribbles in the margins. Not pictures; just places that she had dragged the pen around in fast, deep circles that tore through the pages in some places. I flipped through a few more entries and I saw something familiar. Pages filled with short red slash lines, drawn in a red marker.

            I found the very next page with writing and scanned the words quickly, looking for my name.

            “…Remi always used to tell me to draw these lines whenever I felt like cutting, instead of actually cutting. It’s working for now but it’s getting hard to resist…”

            There were at least fifty pages filled in with the slashes, front and back. I groaned and felt anger start boiling inside me again. If I were still around, she wouldn’t have to had fill so many of those fucking pages. Logically, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. But I didn’t want to think about what Lena’s arms would look like if I hadn’t told her to draw instead of cut.

            I kept scanning, trying not to pry too hard. Being a ghost had its advantages but I wasn’t here to be sneaky, for once.

            Suddenly, another name jumped off the page: Jason.

            “…really worried about him. He’s taking it all so hard and I’m so scared for him. I want to make sure he’s okay but I don’t know how. I miss talking to him, I miss what everyone used to be.”

            A few more entries, and a few more mentions of Jason’s name. But the tone of the entries was getting darker and darker; more pages flooded with slash lines. But then another section of text caught my eye. I saw Jason’s name, and my own; and some words I thought I’d never read in my entire lifetime.

            “Just because Remi is gone doesn’t mean she’s not still my best friend. The feelings I have for Jason are wrong. I can’t love him. I can’t. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I’m sick. I’m disgusting. I’m a traitor. I deserve every ounce of the pain I’m feeling. I’m disgusting.”

            The last line was repeated over and over again—it filled the rest of the page. I was stunned and stood there staring at the page for who knows how long. Lena was in love with Jason? My Jason?

            My teeth ground together and the anger came flooding back all over again. The pain of realizing I’d never kiss him again, the unfairness of the fact that I was the only one not to walk away from an accident that hadn’t even been my fault. And now, the slap-in-the-face realization that my best friend was in love with my boyfriend.