Perspectives

20. Hero

The rain beat on the window to my bedroom, almost rhythmic like music.  I sat on the chair just in front of my mirror, my hair tied back, my face contorted into an expression of pain, my mascara and eyeliner smudged from wiping my eyes to clear the tears that didn't exist.  I didn't cry.  I couldn't cry.  I stood from the position I had been sitting in for hours.  He's dead.  I can't wash that thought out of my mind.  He's dead and there is nothing I can do about it.  

I opened a drawer and pulled out one of the many notebooks, ripping the pages from it.  I screamed as I threw the notebook across the room.  It bounced and slid before hitting the wall and sagging back to the ground like a sad teddy bear.  Guilt washed through me and I ran to go pick it up but it was too late.  I threw it again.  Why was I like this? Why did I have to always be this uncontrollable?  The deep blue sky shone through my window and I opened it to let the air in.  I looked out the window but saw nothing.  The blackness outside swallowed my tiny body and I wondered just what would happen if I decided to end it.  What if I just wanted it over? I could have jumped and found out who cared but I didn't.  A different force stopped me.  It was him.  He wasn't even alive and he was still controlling my every breath.  He was still considered in each impulse.  Maybe I could stop breathing and be somewhere else.  I knew I couldn't.  I was smarter than that.  But it was different.  He already seemed to be everything to me.  

I closed my eyes trying to wash it all out of my mind.  I could have lied to myself and said that it would all be over by Monday.  But then I would be lying to even myself.  his multifaceted being would haunt me and there was nothing I could do to change that.  So I went back to my place, sitting on top of my dresser this time.  I stared ahead, looking straight out, wonderingwhat would come of this.  Wondering what would come of me.

Secrets.  We all have them.  Some of us want no one to know and some of us want to tell the whole world.  That word has a different meaning to each of us.  We all view it differently.  We all view everything differently.  It's our perspective and no matter how much one tries to change themselves and their way of thought, no two perspectives are just identical.  

My mother had secrets.  She used to have dreams of dancing in a very prestigious contemporary dance company.  It was a dream that she never acheived and is now an embarassment that has grown to be a secret.  Sometimes I can see guilt in her every time she says something unkind to me. Sometimes I can tell she wishes she wasn't this way.  She only started smoking because she felt like it was the only way she could deal with everything.  Her hair was the only thing her mother was proud of her for and now, my mother, ashamed of it, ties it back every morning before she leaves for work.  

Claire ha secrets.  Gray scars decorate her left arm.  She is tortured with a low self esteem and a high set of standards for herself.  She watches the sky at night almost every night just so she can wish for Drew when if she sees a shooting star.  Her greatest fear is that life will move too fast and she'll miss something.  The day Nahuel Casteñedas left us, Claire sobbed for hours to her mother exclaiming that it was her fault.  She writes to let out her emotion.  Sometimes when she's alone, she wishes she could be just like her sister.  She insists that she share a room because she doesn't trust herself to stay inside the windows.  Some days when she is doing something she loves, she wishes she could be somewhere doing something small like skipping rocks.  Claire had plenty of secrets.

Cara had secrets.  She spent her life putting others down.  Something she thought was a perfect mask as to who she really is.  However, this flawed mask shows clearly how she feels about herself.

Nahuel had secrets.  Clearly he had secrets for none of us knew all that much about him.  Both his arms were covered with deep cuts that his soul seemed to be slowly escaping from.  Every time you talked to him, it seemed like he was less there.  His eyes were the only way you could tell anything about him.  His dark brown eyes seemed to hold every answer to every question I had to ask him.  His entire life seemed like a book of secrets.  I would have traded every book in the world for that one book.  I wanted to read it.  I wanted to know everything.  Every letter to every word to every page.                                                           

My father had secrets.  Many a time, he dreamt of being an artist.  He never pursued his dream.  THe only memory of his dream is a few paintings that my mother kept.  I really was just like him.  My love for music, my love for art, knowlege, reading sports.  The only difference was that hewas very loving and very forgiving wheras I am very hateful and I don't often forgive.   My mom kept what was left of his supplies in a tiny metal box in her room. 

Suddenly something occured to me.  I stood and went to my mother's room taking care to step lightly so I wouldn't notify her of my destination.  She was asleep on the couch but she would awaken at the creak of a floorboard.  I opened the white painted door slowly and quietly.  The light was unnessesary because I'd remembered every fiber to the room.  I opened just the right drawer and lifted just the right sweater and pulled out the box.  I lifted the lid trying to be completely silent.  A folded piece of canvas lay on top of everything.  Under was a few paintbrushes kept in perfect condition, a small case of blue paint, a few photographs with his inspiration, a cardboard box of pastels and another cardboard box with colord pencils.  I took out this cardboard box, opening it to the response of many colors.  I ran my fingers over them, wanting to use them but being stopped by some other force.  

I, in one moment saw just what I was looking for.  A slight glimmer in the box gave me chills.  With shaking hands, I picked up the razor blade that my father had used to sharpen his colored pencils.  It's shining, smooth, silver surface stared back at me and I suddenly had a glimpse of my father.  I remembered him showing me how to draw.  I broke his expensive green colored pencil.  He laughed and showed me just how to sharpen it.  

"Be careful," he always used to say, "It's very sharp."

This time that was just what I needed.  

I sat in my room again, staring at the shiny surface of the razorblade that was sitting on the table just in front of my mirror.  It's shiny silver contrasted from the dark wood.  I looked into the mirror.  Everything was passing through my mind as my reflection looked back at me.  I tried to look into my pale green eyes but I couldn't stand what I knew i would see.  

With shaking hands, i picked up the blade and gently rested the corner on my wrist.  I applied pressure to it, ready for the skin to break, waiting for the blood.

"Don't do it."

I dropped my blade on the desk, whipping my head around.  The girl was sitting in my window, her moss green eyes staring at me intensely.  

"Who are you?" I asked, needing to know.  She stepped down from off of the window where she sat.  She looked at me as though she was studying me.  

"My name is Auburn."

"Why are you here? How did you know I was going to do that?"

"I know everything," she responded to my horror.  

"Are you..." I asked, trailing off only to receive a nod and a slight movement of her hair revealing to me the black tattoos for the second time.  

"Answer your cellphone," she said calmly.  i picked up my phone just as it began to ring.  I answered it confusedly.  

"Hello?"

"Hero!" it was Claire, "Nahuel isn't dead!"