jace

September: Emails with Improper Punctuation

sunday
I packed my clothes in a small canvas bag my sister had brought. I made my bed and left a note for Nurse Rebecca, who brought my Dullinathol every morning. After I loaded my stuff into the car, I went to Elizabeth's room, 193. She was sitting in the middle of her bed, looking out of the window. She seemed tired, with her head on top of her knees, her fingers absentmindedly working at the polish on her nails.

"Elizabeth?" I approached her slowly.

She didn't respond, she just kept chipping her polish.

"I'm leaving now and I just wanted to say goodbye."

She dragged her eyes across the floor, as if following a sulking shadow. "Bye," her salutation came out just above a whisper, it tickled my ears before fading completely. And it seemed the she'd forgotten me just like that, because she'd disregarded my presence as if I was just a fly on the wall.

"Oh...okay."

My emotions didn't exude often, but when they did it was usually extreme. Maybe that's why I felt like I was drowning. Maybe that's why every part of me felt ablaze. And maybe I'd fooled myself into believing that we were friends because we spent 100% of our time together, my mistake. I forced myself to calm down before I walked out to my sister's car, I'd just been released from Nebraska Psychiatric Hospital, I didn't want to be readmitted.

"jace, she's unstable. That's why she's here." Courtney was bubbly that day, probably because I was going to meet Elijah for the first time. My parents still hadn't met him, probably because they didn't want to. "You gave her your email and your phone number right? She'll let you know when she comes around."

"I just thought she would talk to me, I thought she was my friend."

"Everything will be alright, you'll see."

It was a 13 minute 46 second drive to Courtney's house. She lived in a big development where each house differed from the next. Her small single story house was right next to a two story palace, who's shadow consumed my sister's home in one gulp. There was a minivan in front of the house, stickers slapped all over the back window. The inside of the house was decorated with odd furniture that didn't seem to have any common theme, it was a form of organized chaos.

"Meet us in the kitchen when you're done putting your stuff away, it's the door at the end of the hall."

My room was painted dark blue, with a twin sized bed and most of my stuff was already tucked away in the drawers. I wanted to be alone, but I needed to be polite.

Elijah was a tall, skinny guy with black hair pulled into a ponytail, and I could tell right away that my mom wouldn't like him--she always told me that men weren't supposed to have ponytails. He and my sister were dancing around the kitchen to a Beatles song, and Courtney was smiling wider than I'd ever seen her smile.

"Nervous for your first day of high school?"

Courtney had forced me into helping Elijah unpack some of their belongings while she went to the store and got things for dinner. We were unpacking a pretty large box in the living room, it was filled with ceramic trinkets and figurines made of precious glass.

I had come to the conclusion that Eli was the master of small talk, as he managed to keep engaging me in conversation no matter how hard I tried to refrain.

"Not really, just worried about the work," I handed him a ceramic elephant that was wrapped in an old newspaper.

"Courtney tells me that you're a great student, you get straight As."