The Moth

Chapter Twenty Two: Rooftops// Wonder

Chapter Twenty Two: Rooftops// Wonder 

She sighed and looked down at the camera in her hands. We'd started taking walks around town, her occasionally pointing out places in her story. Tonight, we were sitting by the lake. I stared at her, watching the moonlight reflect off her blonde hair and the tip of her nose.

"You know, my mother was a strong woman. She played by her rules and no one else's. Before she left, she gave me my first camera."

She shook the one in her hands. "Not this one. I bought this one myself. She gave me the polaroid one. And I remember, before she walked out that door for the last time...before she turned her back on me completely...I remember her standing in the doorway."

I swallowed. Her eyes were glazed over again, moving slowly, tracing the world around her like she was watching someone I couldn't see.

"I stood barefoot in front of her, holding the camera she gave me. And she bent down on one knee and put a hand on my shoulder and one on my cheek. She told me...she told me the same things she'd been telling me my whole life up until that point. That if I put my mind to it, I could do anything I'd ever wanted. That the hardest fight I'll ever have to fight is my battle against the world. Against the way that everyone else wants me to be. Against my own longing to fit in with everyone else. Because if you blend in, you lose yourself. And if you lose yourself, you lose everything." She became quiet for a minute, the muscles in her jaw moving ever so slightly.

"I believed her. She told me that my willpower could move mountains, and that my reality is shaped by my own thoughts. That I'm the master of my own life, and I should never let anyone tell me otherwise because they're just trying to make me smaller than I am. She was down on her knees in front of me for a long time that day. She reminded me that if I want anything, I can make it so. And if I want to be anyone, I can become that person. That my thoughts shape my own reality, and I was her little warrior, and my head should never bend downwards because there's a crown on top that only she could see. And if I let my head down, it would fall off. And I believed her. She was my mother after all. My world up until that point. Her and my father were the only ones I cared for. When she left, I didn't think she wouldn't return. I didn't... I didn't think my world was being torn in half in front of my very eyes and I would be powerless to stop it."

She picked up a stone and studied it.

"But now I'm older and I don't see that woman as my entire world."

I reached out a hand towards her shoulder but she didn't take any notice of it, glaring out across the lake instead.

"Now I see her as she really was. A broken woman who stayed at the mercy of her own feelings. A woman who left her husband and child to fend for themselves on a Saturday night. Someone who couldn't even keep in touch with the daughter she claimed to love so much."

Her eyes burned as she raised her arm and flung the stone across the water. It sailed out into the darkness and skipped over the surface with little plip, plip, plip sounds before sinking into the lake. She picked up another one and threw it again. Harder this time. There was just one sound. A single crash where the stone hit the surface and sunk.

"You don't leave the people you love," she whispered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She sniffed. "And I believed her. Believed this...this woman who claimed the whole world was in the palm of my hand if I wanted it to be. She'd told me that so many times it was crushed and grounded into a powder mixed in my veins. This...belief is what I grew up on. Anything is possible."

She swallowed and shook her head vigorously. "That's not true though. My mother was wrong. Not everything is in my hands. Barely anything is. Not everything can be changed, and I don't have that kind of power. My whole life, I've watched people walk away. First my mother leaving on a Saturday night, not keeping her promise to take me to the library the next day. Then my friends. Then freaking Lyon.

She wrapped her arms around herself and sat down slowly on to the grass, curling herself up. "You don't leave the people you love."

I sat down next to her, knowing there wasn't anything I could do at this point. She wasn't here. She wasn't with me. She was with her demons.

"You know, I kept telling myself that it was gonna be okay. That I may not understand it now, but that eventually everything will work out and it'll all be fine and...and..." She waved her hand and looked directly at me for the first time.

"And you know what? I hate it. I hate that it's true. That everything really will be okay. That just because I lost my mother, my friends, the one person I've ever actually loved romantically...that the world doesn't stop turning. When my whole world is breaking apart, I want... some sign that it even matters. For the world to... shake for just one second, or raise a thunderstorm in the sky. But nothing changes. Everything stays calm. The same.

And that's the coldest part of it all. I hate it. I don't want to move on to some... some new place where all of this is in the past. I didn't want any of this to happen, or for the world to keep turning even through it all, or for myself to be okay with all of this. I hate it. If there was any way I could change it all, I'd do it. Totally, completely."

Her voice cracked.

"You don't leave the people you love," she said, the tears flowing freely down her face.

I sat there for a minute, studying the watery tracks on the face of this broken girl sitting in front of me.

Then I held her. Because that's the only thing I could think of. A thought prodded the back of my mind, a small question I tried to push away when I pulled her closer to me.

If she really could go back and change everything, she would. I wondered if there was a list of things she'd keep the same.

I wondered if that list included me.