Under the Bridge

chapter twenty eight-"i hate life"

IT'S BEEN TWO DAYS SINCE I LAST heard from Liam. Two days of worry and anticipation. Two days of stress-eating candy bars and reading. Two days of wondering if I was going to die alone with all of my cats. I wonder what is going on with him, and what he wants from me, if anything. 

All I want to do is be with him again. 

Instead, I'm at the piano. It's been awhile since I've played anything of my own volition. I lied to Liam when I said all I knew was Imagine, but to be honest, it was the only thing I had completely memorized. From the sheet music, I'm able to compose the sounds I'd been taught to mirror. 

I'm not a savant, like Liam. I can't come up with harmonies without trying or bring life to the room with just a couple moves of the hand, but I know the technique, and I can sight read like nobody's business. 

Yet I'm having trouble pushing down the keys. My fingers are looking at the paper, I'm staring at the measures and able to read them perfectly. I know where my hands should go and how they should move, but I also feel like there's something keeping me from returning. 

The worst panic attack of my life was the one I had right before that choir performance. 

The practice for the solo was the last time I've sang outside of the shower. 

Imagine was the first time I've played the piano since that day. 

I am alone, except for Crookshanks, who was on the couch. Crookshanks can't judge me, Crookshanks can only hiss. I should be playing, I don't know why it's so hard for me. I don't want my breathing to sharpen again, I don't want to tremble, I don't want to cry. 

I don't want the bad part of my brain to take over again. 

I can't do it. 

The ringing of my phone causes me to jump back into my seat. It's the perfect excuse to leave the instrument. The number on the screen is far from foreign, and I immediately pick up. 

"Hi Liam." I say, sheepishly. I don't know how to act around him now. I feel anxious, and stressed. 

"I'm under house-arrest, please entertain me." He instructs. "Talk to me, make me laugh, save me from this unending lonely hellhole." He adds extra drama to every word. 

I laugh slightly. "Why are you under house-arrest?" I ask. 

"I was dumb last night and left my pot on my dresser." He answers. "My mom thinks I'm going to hell or something. The only time I've been allowed to leave was for church. And I am not a church kind of guy." 

I feel a smile creep onto my lips as I lean back on the couch. "Did you go?" I question him. 

"I had to go to confession, apparently. All of my sins are just magically went away because I told some guy in a magic robe" 

I don't want to tell him that that's not how confession works, that the point is to repent and stop committing those sins. I'm enjoying the fact that our conversation is about nothing really serious, and I want to keep it that way. 

Instead, I say: "You're Catholic?" 

"My family is--well my mom and dad are. Brian is the kind of guy who only uses Church as an excuse to be a conservative." Liam's voice tenses at Brian's name, again. 

I lean back against the cushions and put the phone on speaker so I can lay down while he talks without risking dropping my phone under the couch or between the depths of the pillows where all the dust bunnies and change lived. 

"I went to a Catholic boarding school when I was a kid." I tell him, recalling all the nightmares I faced in upstate New York with all the snobs and nuns. "Then I got old enough and my mom started a big donation to public education in the area and she thought it would be hypocritical if she kept paying fifty grand a year for a school."