Frisson

Chapter 6

Hello my beautiful readers!  This chapter is quite different from the others and so I feel that I cannot post it in good conscience without giving a warning.  This chapter talks about some heavy subjects that some readers may find upsetting or triggering.  If this includes you, please, continue forward only at your own discretion.  If you have any questions or comments, please don't be afraid to send me a message.  Okay, sorry for the long note.  Here are the songs:

Location- Freelance Whales

Youth- Daughter

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*Eliza's POV*

Crying is a funny thing

It’s tricky and hard to judge

Because sometimes I feel better

When the poison’s all bled dry

But sometimes I feel worse

And maybe this is why

I am one part shattered bones

And two parts salted water

And now I don’t even feel half full

I stare slowly at the crumpled page, absorbing the words I had scribbled down in my journal before falling into a restless sleep the night before.  As soon as we had pulled in the driveway last night and said goodbye to Sam and Kathy, I had gone upstairs to my room and shut the door behind me, not wishing to be disturbed.  My hands had unconsciously tightened the straps of my backpack as I made my way across the floor to the window next to my bed, slid open the glass pane for perhaps the thousandth time in my life, and crawled onto the roof despite the shingles made slick by the recently fallen rain.

Allow me to explain.

When I was ten years old, I discovered the single best-kept secret of this old house.  Anyone walking down our street can see that the window in my room lets out directly onto the slanting roof above the living room and kitchen on the ground floor, but what no one else realizes is that the window to the attic is also accessible from the roof.  At the tender age of ten, I crawled out my window, scaled up the roof, and shimmied through the attic window for the first time.  Sure, the real entrance to the attic would have been a lot easier to use, but it was also much less private and, honestly, much less adventurous.  And what ten year-old doesn’t crave a little adventure in her life?

Needless to say, the attic quickly became my own private hideout when I needed a place to think and write and be alone.  Every night for two weeks after I discovered the secret entrance to the attic, I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning to ferry pillows, blankets, and art supplies up to the slope-walled loft.  For weeks I would wait impatiently until it was dark enough to climb up there and read by the light of my favorite Tardis lamp.  Even then, I knew my mom would kill me if she had had even the slightest idea I was climbing all over the roof in the dark of the night, but quite frankly, I was far too excited with my secret to really care.

As I got older, I came to appreciate my little getaway more and more.  So much so that when the day came that I was diagnosed and I realized that my nightly visits upstairs had come to an end for the foreseeable future, I cried nonstop for two days.  That was one of the hardest parts about going through treatment: not being able to come home and crawl up there to escape my mom’s tears, my sister’s shaking voice, the sudden hugs of my dad, and my nephew’s constant questions.

But I got through it.  And I’ll never forget what it felt like to come home from the hospital and sit on the roof for the first time since I learned I was dying.  After that night, I would crawl up there after dinner at least four times a week to sprawl among the pillows and blankets that had been there for years by then, and watch the stars through the two slanting skylights in the ceiling, trying to count them all and failing with a smile each night.  By then, it had truly become my sanctuary; a place that no one knew of, not even Sam.  A place I could go to unwind and relax and create.