|Jade|
I wake up to a ceiling that isn't mine.
I blink a few times. A dozen scenarios flood my brain: I've been kidnapped. Someone abducted me from my bedroom and has sentenced me to a life of torture in their basement. I am waking up from a four year long coma. I was in a car accident and my body is in pieces and the doctors are just about to give up on bringing me back. I do remember riding in a car at night and watching lights change and horns bellowing and a hand that I was gripping like it was the only thing keeping me afloat but there's no sound, no screeching rubber or metal crumpling like aluminum foil in a fist, no glass shattering and embedding into my face, no whiplash, no sore neck from the seatbelt.
So, I'm alive. There's that, at least.
I blink once more, and that's all it takes to push the sleep away, to come back into my body limb by limb and really figure out where I am. The walls are purple and white and in the center of the ceiling is a dome shaped light that's off, but there's sun leaking through the cracks in the curtains. I follow the streams of yellow across the white carpet, up the side of the bed, and finally over a lump beside me with just a fountain of brown hair spewing from the top. Soft sounds of breathing accompany the slightest rise and fall of where the lump's chest would be.
Sitting up as carefully as I can (which is weird because I don't care if I wake her up and yet here I am gingerly peeling back the comforter and stepping off of the bed), I move around the bed and out the door, looking back and forth down the empty hallway. It must still be early because the house is silent - no music, no voices, no TV. I cross the hall into the bathroom, shutting the door with a soft click behind me.
Tori's pajamas fit me pretty well. My tits are bigger than hers, but there's plenty of room in the baggy t-shirt she gave me to wear. It has some kind of charity on the front, represented by a beach ball and palm trees. I didn't ask what it was for. I don't care. Her sweatpants are rumpled and warm from me sleeping in them, and I let them fall to the floor in a heap. I go to the bathroom and then crank the shower on, the loud thundering of water beating against the bottom of the tub erupting. The shirt joins the pants and then I'm stepping into the hot stream, twisting the handle as far to the red bar as I can tolerate. My skin beams red from the heat but I keep twisting it, until I cry out loud, whimper, and fall to my knees, wet, black strands of hair twisting down the sides of my face and shoulders.
I cry in there for a long time. The steam clouds the entire room in a fog. My fingernails carve crescents into my knees. I look at Tori and Trina's soaps. Pomegranate, cherry blossom, citrus, vanilla - some of the bottles have TO marked on the top, others with TA, but I wash myself just with Tori's, though I couldn't tell you why. I use all of her scents and then her shampoo and I even find her razor, pink with butterflies spiraling toward the top, and I run my thumb across the blade. It doesn't work the first time, so I do it again - harder, faster, and with a great, gasping sting, blood swells from my thumb and drips the water pink before swirling down the drain.
By the time I finish, I feel like an entire day has gone by. I turn off the water, my skin hot and numb and wrinkled and aching, thumb pulsing, and I tear open the curtain. The mirror is completely shrouded with steam and I use my forearm to wipe it clear. My eyes and face are various shades of red, my shoulders blotchy from the extreme temperature of the water. I snatch a towel from beneath the sink and wrap myself in it, crumpling on top of the toilet.
Last night, Tori put in some comedy that I have already forgot the name of. I didn't even pay much attention to it, even though my eyes were on the screen. Tori didn't seem to mind. The popcorn she had prepared remained untouched and she didn't hold me or force me to talk about anything the whole night. The movie ended, she put the popcorn on the bedside table, and asked if I was tired. I had nodded, throwing the blankets over my head, and burrowing myself in the softness of her mattress. As soon as she had laid down, however, and I took a deep breath that smelled nothing like Beck's cologne or Beck's car or Beck's house or Beck's coffee, I had pressed my face so far into Tori's pillow I couldn't breathe, and sobs wrenched me into pieces.
